It's absurd, but it's not theater

Legend has it that Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned, of at least that is a well worn expression for the kind of behavior that we saw in Washington this week. Congress fiddled while the economy burned in the background. After taking the easy way out of unpopular dilemma (voting down the relief bill) what did they do – what every politician does; they took a holiday. Too bad that we out on Main Street couldn’t take a holiday from our financial problems.

The current impasse is caused as much as anything because of fear and anger out in the hither lands. People should be angry. They have a right be angry. The mess on Wall street was caused by greed (yeah, I know I’ll get emails from the greed is good crowd), lack of any oversight of the arcane areas of the financial industry and stupidity in Washington, on wall Street and, yes, on Main Street. There’s certainly enough blame to go around and finger pointing seems to be the order of the day, rather than serious problem solving efforts.

The favorite question seems to be - where is this money coming from that will bail out the banks and Wall Street? There are few choices on that question. The only place government gets money is out of our pockets, whether they take it now or borrow and take it later, it all comes from the pockets of the taxpayers eventually. Some in Washington seem to think that the government should just guarantee the bad loans, instead of buying them. Well, how long do you think it will take to call in those guarantees? That’s just trying to hide the issue behind words that sound better to the masses. “No, we didn’t give them the money. We didn’t buy the bad loans. We just guaranteed them.” Oh, OK, then. You guys did a heck of job! Does that sound familiar?

Maybe we could put the FEMA guys in charge. Then they could buy trailers for everyone who looses their home and bring them ice, too. Of course later we would find that the trailers make everyone sick, so they’ll have to be replaced. I know. Buy them all houses. The government will own a big inventory of homes that they had guarantees on by then. See how it will all work out in the end. Honestly, I don’t think even Beckett or Pinter could have imagined any more of an absurd scenario than is playing out in front of us right now.