Easily Explaining The Financial Mess

Dear Editor:

Many news articles are “hand wringing” over why Americans aren’t “buying” this bailout. I’m hope the following sheds some light on it.

First, mentally picture a human body, our own body. Our body is the United States. Next, let’s picture each of us within that body. Each of us is an individual cell, and each of our businesses or employers, they’re another individual cell. We depend on a strong flow of blood to bring us both the cash to buy sustenance, bring that sustenance to us, and to take away our cell’s waste. This strong flow demands a strong, healthy heart in our body, the US of A. The heart is our financial system, including Wall Street.

Functionally, our credit crisis is an enlarged, failing (and rapidly worsening) heart. It’s a decreased flow of money which to we individual cells is a decreased flow of blood.

Due to this failing, enlarged heart, we’re starving for air, and having shortness of breath. We have constant grinding hunger, which distracts us from getting anything done. We try valiantly to think through problems, and mentally, we simply can’t concentrate. We can’t do simple math. In a fast paced world, we’re slow and getting slower.

And now it’s “9 1 1 call time”. The Emergency Services have been called, and we’re trying to get the ambulance on its way. This ambulance is currently being debated in our Congress. And medically, we’re told we need an expensive “heart transplant”.

This bailout is a “heart transplant”. Without this “transplant”, we simply as a person, as a nation, go “Pppffftttt!” just like the air escaping from a decompressing balloon. No action means things get worse. We still need to work, to do our jobs, to help nurture our families, and all the rest. Going “Pppffftttt!” simply isn’t an option.

And remember, the 1992 slogan was “it’s the economy, stupid!” Our liberties, our SuperPower status, depend on our economy, on our “heart transplant”. And our economy is what’s been our Republic’s best defense ever since our 1860’s Civil War.

Should we all be angry? You bet! I’m VERY unhappy! Highly paid types started and encouraged this folly, and lived in obscene luxury and now want to dip into any pot of money that’s anywhere. This means our “painfully sacrificed for” and frugally gathered nest eggs. This bailout plea reminds me of that old Aesop’s Fable of the ant and grasshopper during the days of summer. The ant, the very frugal citizen, gathered food and resources for the coming cruel winter. The grasshopper, a reckless Wall Street type, recklessly fritters away his summer food, and then come wintertime, begs tearfully at the ant’s door for sustenance. The sad part is, just like our body’s heart, we need that durn grasshopper, like it or not.

Why are we so angry? Well, in our civics lessons we’re taught about John Locke’s Social Contract. Well, viscerally, any lawbreaking is “Treason” against that Social Contract. Our passions demand that “Traitors” to that Social Contract need to hurt a lot more than our own very self limiting and painful “straight and narrow” deeds. If bad deeds don’t “hurt” more than “being good”, we feel HUGE betrayal, like we’ve been taken for fools!

I hope our officials look very hard at both criminal and civil actions, both to punish, and to recover what pittances there might be, from what surely is wanton misconduct. I mean, if these reckless financial actions were taken in medicine, isn’t that the equivalent of malpractice? For better or worse, capitalism DOES allow one to be stupid!

And I keep hearing of stories of fraud, where both the lender and mortgage seeker falsified income/assets records. Where true, aren’t we talking of fraud, or perhaps perjury? And for these folks making incomes from failing banks, civil suits should recover both these huge severance/golden parachute payments, AND the huge pay they got while mismanaging us all into today’s huge risks.

We need to treat these reckless financial folks as “children”, reckless children. They’ve proven that they can’t be trusted. A $700 billion price tag says they can’t. And everybody needs an awareness that any position of trust, even with a private employer, is partially a Public Trust. You misbehave on your job, you partly betray The Public who makes possible your prosperity.

Looking ahead, we John and Joan Q. Citizens need to be mindful of two famous quotes. One is something like “war is too important to be left to the generals”, and 2nd, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Part of the reason we’re in this “pickle”, is “go look in a mirror”. We must say “Shame On Us!” We must hire our top officials, true. But some adults, in the highest of places, will behave like irresponsible children, or they’ll be in mental ruts (like the generals, the Wall Street or govt folks). It is still the Ordinary American whose experience has the most common sense!

And it’s no mistake that a name for Washington is “Wonderland”. Nowadays, for both Washington and Wall Street, “Blunderland” seems to fit!

I humbly submit this letter to better explain our collective predicament.

Bill Ramsay