Shambles

As immersed in the media as I spend my days, I've heard from about eighty different people over the past week how doomed our nation's economy is. Yet I'm a little alarmed with how frighteningly easy it's been for me to accept this.

There's no question that this past week has been bad for our nation, and not just one group either. Throughout the strata of society, everybody's getting hurt by this unfolding economic disaster. Workers are getting laid off, budgets that were once tight are now broken, families are losing their homes and homes are losing their worth.

But none of that is anything new: this pending recession, if that is indeed what it is, has been building up a head of steam for a couple years now.

What's new is that for the first time, the people at the very top are feeling the hurt, and they're showing their true colors. Unlike the level-headed people in middle America, who have uncomplainingly tightened up their belts, gritted their teeth and settled in for the long haul, America's rich and prosperous are panicking, yelling and screaming at the prospect of economic doom. And after years of telling those less fortunate to pull themselves up "by their bootstraps," of explaining to jobless workers their termination was the result of "the market correcting itself," of mocking and despising anyone so selfish as to "neglect their personal responsibility" and "leech off welfare," it only took the span of a week for them to do the unthinkable.

They're begging for the federal government to intervene, and I wish them the best of luck in cramming it.

That's right, it's a bloated bureaucracy that eats tax dollars and shits unnecessary regulation, and it certainly can't be trusted to administer a system that would guarantee free health care to every United States citizen, but darn it, the federal government is good enough to shell out $700 billion to "ease investors' confidence" after the Dow drops 7 percent in a day.

When I had to replace a failing wheel bearing on my car last winter to ensure I could make it to work, it cost me about 33 percent of the liquid assets I had on hand at the time. I didn't need the federal government to hold my hand and tell me it was going to be all right.

My Dad taught me an important lesson when I was young... just old enough to get into a casino on international waters, in fact. As I bellied up to a blackjack table for the first time, he told me, "You never gamble with money you can't afford to lose."

When you stack those chips on the felt, you have to divorce yourself from the notion that they represent money that belongs to you. They're a part of the game, numbers in a formula you only control part of. A wise gambler accepts that the chips could come back unscathed, they could mutiply or they could disappear entirely, and strives only to manipulate his or her part of the formula as best he or she can.

And what is the stock market, after all, but an exceedingly complex game without the element of pure chance, controlled only by the whims of its millions of players, each of whom control a small part of that formula? And right now, most of them are getting cleaned out because a great number of them have been exceedingly irresponsible.

Predatory loans, adjustable rate mortgages -- even payday financing. These are some of the threads the credit industry used to build a web, the design of which was to ensnare the less fortunate, foolish and desperate and profit from them. The motive was greed, simple greed, and now, it seems, the credit industry has used those threads to spin a sizable noose on which to hang itself.

What's the bigger tragedy here: the wave of defaulted loans that has welled up to beat against the institution of Wall Street, or the thousands of borrowers who drowned in bankruptcy to form that wave?

As a result of those defaulted loans, banks like Fannie, Freddie, Citigroup and JP Morgan all have millions in unpaid debt hindering their ability to grant more loans and thus make enough money to cover their debt. They want the federal government to step in and shoulder that debt for them, to bail them out as George W. Bush first said they never would.

I've got ten-and-a-half grand in student loans hanging around my neck like a millstone. A year ago, that was about twelve grand. I could certainly become a more active contributer to the economy if the government were to bail me out of that debt, but instead, I keep my nose to the grindstone, my back to the yoke, working my way out one payment at a time.

And I'm one of the lucky ones in America. I was able to count on my parents for some support in college, and I was also able to find the time to work two jobs throughout most of my schooling. I don't owe anything in credit card debt. The average student graduates with a bachelor's degree and $19,237 in debt. The average American carries a balance of $1,673 on their credit cards.

Most of them aren't screaming, crying and begging for help, but if they were, you can rest assured the biggest proponents of a Wall Street bailout would tell them to stick it.

I'm not so naive or blinded by schadenfreude as to think the bloodbath on Wall Street won't affect me. It's certainly taking its toll on people I care about -- my parents, my grandparents and my co-workers are all hurting, and badly. But with steady employment, little savings, some debt, no investments and no immediate need of a loan, I'm in the unique position to weather economic hardship.

That doesn't mean I have any plans to sit back and laugh at the expense of everyone else who's watching their soundly well-laid plans crumble in front of their eyes. Unlike those who champion the cause of an "unhindered, unregulated free market," I believe that society as a whole needs to pull together to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As UW Sociology Professor and director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy Joel Rogers is fond of saying, "The markets are useful tools, but they make terrible gods."

So if I'm expected to pony up and pay my share (which is $2,300) for a $700 billion economic bailout package, which I'll never see but my grandchildren will still be paying for someday, I want a few guarantees. I feel Wisconsin Senator and all-around BAMF Russ Feingold, as usual, is spot on in what would begin to constitute a fair bailout package.

That is, of course, assuming a bailout package is needed. I'm still not convinced we shouldn't just let these firms go bankrupt, watch the market tumble, then build itself back up. I was fairly certain that was the way capitalism was supposed to work.

So if we must bail, Wall Street, which stands to benefit most from the package, should shoulder the majority of the burden. The package needs to help the families who are suffering in the midst of the housing crisis, not just the financial overlords that helped them get there, because trickle down economics is bullshit -- if anything, the current market condition proves the middle class's economic woes have trickled up. And the package needs to be more than just a blank check: it needs to include oversight, regulation and serious penalties for the people who gamble with our nation's future to ensure this doesn't happen again, because this has to be the LAST time it happens.

Also, I'd like it if we made the potential recipients of this cash crawl naked across a sandbox full of broken glass and rusty nails, but Sen. Feingold did not include that in his recommendations. I'm sure that was just an oversight on his part.

And whether the bailout works or not, be it officially decreed that no Republican is ever allowed to tout the value of deregulation ever again. The last eight years of financial deregulation are what has led us to this point, and without a fundamental change in the way government interacts with business, we're doomed to repeat it.

The Quick Fix

It's hot. And it's going to get hotter.

This week is going to be the kind of hot that pulp fiction writers open their stories with. The kind of hot that settles in over the late summer darkness, and can only be cut through by a police siren. The kind of hot that simmers tempers, boils away consciences and melts perspective to its warping point.

It's a little bizarre, because as I was percolating that introduction, the part about a siren, all of the sudden I heard a siren come screaming down my street. The ambulance ended up parking right next to my house.

At any rate, it's the kind of hot that makes people crazy, and that means my work week stands to get a little more interesting. But before that happens and I have to get all serious, let's take a moment to celebrate someone who was crazy of his own right before the heat set in.

By now, I'm sure most of Wisconsin has heard of Keith Walendowski. If not, let me assure you this man is worthy of your hero worship. Someday, amid the annals of battle cry history, Walendowski's inspiring words will ring as true as any ever shouted in the heated throes of battle. "Viva la republic!" and "Remember the Alamo!" and "Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" all pale in comparison to "It's my lawn mower and it's my yard so I can shoot it if I want!"

If you're one of the few who hasn't heard the story yet, I'll try and summarize. There's really not much to it. Walendowski was out in his backyard, like any good hard working Sconnie, trying to get some yard work done. And when his lawn tractor wouldn't start, he did the logical thing.

He went into his house, grabbed his illegal sawed off 12-gauge shotgun and blasted the holy hell out of the belligerent piece of equipment. And from the sound of it ("It's my lawn mower and it's my yard so I can shoot it if I want!"), Walendowski would do it again, too, if given the chance.

Oh, sure, you'll have buzzkills like Walendowski's neighbor, who called the police on account of one little, teensy bit of reckless endangerment that runs contrary to everything an educated sportsman or sportswoman learns about firearm safety. A few nervous nellies will point out that the gun he was plunking away at the Lawn Boy with was really illegal under United States law. And there are those who will point out that Walendowski was thoroughly, groin-grabbingly intoxicated at the time of the whole incident, but they're mostly out-of-staters who don't know that Wisconsinites do their yard work drunk 98% of the time.

But I, for one, recognize Walendowski for the true American hero he is. In spite of safety concerns, thumbing his nose at legal issues, leaving sobriety in the dust of common sense and AT THE RISK OF VOIDING HIS WARRANTY, Walendowski had the courage to deal with his problems like one would deal with a pesky gopher in the garden: with a widely scattered hail of white hot buck shot.

And when some schlub with a badge was impertinent enough to suggest Walendowski was out of line, this Modern Day Richard Lionheart uttered the bold words that will inspire me in my darkest moments for years to come: "It's my lawn mower and it's my yard so I can shoot it if I want!"

These are the kinds of problem-solving skills you can't teach in any school. Sure, blasting the lawnmower did nothing to better his situation, and actually landed him in a significantly worse one. But, damnit, it was loud and fiery and satisfying and, above all, really damn COOL.

This man doesn't belong behind bars. We need to appoint him the head of a task force to address partisan gridlock, an ailing social security system or a deeply troubling growing national debt.

...

Actually, with a 482-billion dollar deficit forecast for the United States' books this year on account of a "National Stimulus Package" that spurred little more than the sale of Excedrin to thinking people everywhere, maybe we've already appointed a Walendowski to lead our country and we didn't even know it.

Guy's Good

You. Barack Obama. You're very good, you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAhb06Z8N1c&e

The latest figures I saw say two-hundred thousand people turned out to see Obama speak in Berlin today. Well over a million Germans tuned in to watch it on television.

That settles it. Our European Union counterparts follow American politics better than our own citizens.

The sheer fact that Obama drew such a positive response from the German people tells me they're even more desperate for a change in American leadership than we are at home. Why wouldn't they be? The policy decisions of the Bush Administration have had just as much of an impact on them as they have anyone else in the world. Through the seventies, eighties and nineties, the United States worked its way up to be the pillar of the world economy, so now that we're in the process of quietly imploding, we stand to take a good chunk of the world with us.

Come election day, there are going to be just as many disillusioned Europeans perched in front of the TV, hoping, albeit against their better jaded judgement, that a majority of Americans have had their goddamn eyes opened. The economic and foreign policy judgements made over the past year have placed us all equally in the recession crapper.

Europe has been so affected by this country, one questions whether it might actually be fair just to dole out one electoral vote a piece to each member nation of the EU.

So George Bush goes to Berlin and makes Chancellor Angela Merkel increasingly uncomfortable each time. John McCain goes to Ohio and orders the schnitzel. Barack Obama makes the trip, gives an eloquent speech and fosters international goodwill toward America before he's even the party's official nominee.

If there's a reason for Americans NOT to vote for Barack Obama, that's it. He said it oh-so-articulately himself during today's speech.

"In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe in our security and our future."

And you'd better believe those voices are terrified of black people, loathe an inspired leader who can speak a coherent sentence and don't think they have any use for health care... that is, until a lifetime of avoiding the doctor's office catches up to them and they're wards of the state.

God. Damnit. I know things look pretty good in this race, but I will NEVER, EVER underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers again.

The morning after that fateful election day in 2004, the cover of The Mirror, a paper in the UK, showed a picture of G W Bush making one of his infamous dumb monkey faces. The headline read, "How Could 59,054,087 Americans be so dumb?"

I only hope that this year, in 2008, we can prove there were plenty of Americans shaking their heads and asking themselves the same damn question.