Bear Stearns shareholders were saved from owning a bankrupt company, JP Morgan got the Fed to guarantee its risky investment, the Unitary Executive Unclear on the Concept is proposing fake regulations and less of them, stocks shot up on news of massive job losses, and “foreclosure relief” bills are doing very little for consumers but lots for banks.
“Free-marketers” are not really about a free market. That ethos is a tool to excuse the flaws in a system set up by people who are rich or hope to become so, to be quietly set aside when it turns around to bite the wielder–as does from time to time, but we can’t have that, can we? Market corrections are fine when they put blue-collar workers out on the street, but God forbid the executives of an investment firm have a drop in their 401(k) plans.
It’s to be expected, but the real grind-mythago’s-ass feature is the duckspeak they employ to try to pretend they’re doing something other than spending everyone’s money to protect their own. Yes, Henry Paulson, I’m looking at you and your “Recent market conditions are an exception from the norm. At this time, the Federal Reserve’s recent action should be viewed as a precedent only for unusual periods of turmoil” blathering.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a Paulson-equivalent stood up and said “Jesus, people, we have the power to stop the money bleed; you think we’re going to sit here and let our stock holdings go down the tubes?” At least in public. You know that’s exactly what they tell each other in private.
mythago
5 Responses to “The Invisible Handjob”
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Wait a minute, mythago. Free markets are about privatizing profits. Losses aren’t supposed to be part of the bargain, so it only seems fair that the taxpayer should pick them up.
Besides, if a for-profit enterprise loses money it’s probably the government’s fault anyway… to much regulation, to little regulation, whatever… so again, why stick the poor shareholders with the losses?
Bear shareholders got hosed. they probably would’ve gotten more out of a bankruptcy proceeding than this “bailout,” but valuations are a matter of opinion.
the free-markets lost too, but it was hardly a gift, except to JP Morgan.
Hello Mythago,
Would you believe that there are actual “free market” believers out there who believe in losses and bankruptcy for inefficient businesses and deeply resent the government’s interference in the process here? Some espouse a creed because of the benefits in it for them, but don’t really care a whit about the creed itself. This applies to liberals, conservatives, free-traders, feminists, MRAs, and anything else that you can name. One does not learn anything about the validity of the principles of any system by examining the behaviors of the worst among them who are in truth only there for what they can get out of it.
Certainly. But those in power in Washington who apply the term ‘free marketers’ to themselves, aren’t.
Would the answer be, then, to reduce the power of those who hold power, so it can’t be abused?