wow, this '700 billion dollars to bail out Wall street' thing is getting a lot of attention these days. And for what? So the government can step in and put down American tax money in exchange for... debt? I'm confused. I thought that generally when one made an exchange, the party with capital exchanged it for a commodity - lets say 'infrastructure' (high speed rail service would be nice). But in this particular case I'm not sure what's being purchased. Anyway...
I sure am skeptical when I start hearing about all of these big fancy numbers, with all their place-holding zeros and such. They think they're so quantitatively superior - all a politician has to do is mention something big like '700 billion' and the peon populous just sits back and lets the experts decide. As if our politicians are so brilliant that they have a handle on such an abstraction.
I mean, I don't even know how many zero's make up 700 billion (dollars), and I'm pretty sure my calculator doesn't know how to count that high either. Hence, you can imagine my lack of confidence in Bush & company - not to mention the democratic Congressional 'majority' - in deciding policy involving such a huge bailout. So I decided to Google the whopping digit in order to put things in perspective. This is what I found:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
$700 billion is $140 billion more than has been spent on the Iraq war since the invasion.
It is $120 billion more than that spent on social security benefits.
It is nine times the amount spent on education in 2007.
It could pay for 2,000 McDonalds apple pies for every single American.
It is 35 times the amount spent on all foreign aid in most years.
It is more zeros than the calculator that comes with my computer allows.
It is 7,000 times bigger than the Sierra club’s yearly budget.
According to some estimates, it is three times what it would cost, over 10 years, to reduce oil dependency by 20%.
Its over twice the amount of all money given to all charitable organizations in the United States in any given year.
It is more than $100 for every person in the world.
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Now this one is my favorite: It could pay for 2,000 McDonalds apple pies for every single American. Assuming that an apple pie is $1, that's $2000 each of us is paying to bail out Wall Street, OR, rather than bail out Wall Street, the government could send us each a check for $2000. (I'm partial to option #2). But regardless of which option you prefer, doesn't something seem royally fucked up about this whole shit-storm of a political decision-making process? We're each paying $2000 to cover the mistakes of 1) greedy Wall Street fuckers who had to make more money on risky sub-prime mortgages and 2) lazy politician who didn't do their jobs and oversee the financial markets.
Well, it really doesn't seem like everyone should be responsible for cleaning up this mess, but only stupid capitalists who believed in deregulation and greed. So here's my plan: leftists who believe in fettered markets each get $2000 for being right, while asinine market-fetishizing capitalists can go ahead and pony up $4-6000 each to cover their own stupidity as well as the told-you-so tax that all of us socialist-liberals (who believe the human capacity for planning deserves more respect than blind market forces) are entitled to.
So, here's my final thought on this 700 Billion dollar bailout: all of you free-market ideologues can suck it. Obviously, your fundamental philosophy is fundamentally flawed. And guess what: I'm loving it.
1 comment:
not too mention that those wall st. dopes are each making millions of dollars a year! how about adding a pretty fair $500,000 tax on their greedy asses for fucking everything up, and then you can let all of the supposed American fence sitters on economic policy get away without being taxed or compensated. if only my parents didnt depend on their stock for retirement, i would be much more excited about the prospect for revolution.
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