Wall Street is taking a dive. That isn't new. What is new is that now the global markets are diving with it. It could be a worldwide freefall.
There is a logical reason for it.
Our government has borrowed up to $1 trillion for the Iraq war and our deficit spending has ballooned while we exported jobs and imported all our consumer goods, manufactured fuel hog cars with zero energy policy, and failed to take action to correct the subprime fiasco. Now our major corporations are owned by the Mideast countries we send our billions to drive F-350's.
Maureen Dowd says it best when she says:
"Tom Toles summed it up best: “Great to be home,” W. enthuses on Air Force One, heading toward the East Coast. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?” Hanging on the skyline of New York is a sign reading: “U.S.A. Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors.”
Dumb moves by our government and business have cost us a generation of ownership and future control over our own destiny. Bush's government has given the next generation a $1 trillion dollar IOU on Iraq -- while our corporate financial giants were playing with bizarre, risky scams that were not subject to any oversight by the administration. Then everyone was surprised when the ship of bizarre financial instruments hit the (melting) iceberg.
We need stability. And someone paying attention in the Captain's wheelhouse.
The lack of rational fiscal leadership has put us in a strange new world of global instability and worldwide financial uncertainty. The markets from Tokyo to Europe took the biggest hit since 9/11 - without a terrorist attack.
Unfortunately, none of this seemed in people's minds at the Democratic debate in South Carolina last night which was shocking in its intensity. It sounded as if all were running against John McCain, which can't be good news for the rest of the pack. It was great TV but not a good sign.
All this won't matter if we hit the iceberg and the fiscal irresponsibility sets off a global meltdown. It definitely matters who we pick to be an adult and lead us out of this dangerous mess.
We need some adults focused on real solutions. We need real long-term fixes instead of more voodoo economics and half-baked, band-aid solutions.
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2 comments:
A simpler and sounder solution would be the abolishment of highly-leveraged derivatives, the trading of which is undermining the world's financial systems. The wholesale adoption of pricing by these derivatives, rather than pricing by transactions of the elements themselves, is what allows a single trader to throw markets into a panic mode. This applies to equities, financial instruments, and oil.
That makes great sense to me...we need some common sense solutions here.
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