I Think I Am Now Uncertain

The other day I commented on the financial meltdown by listing some of my observations about what had changed in a week on Wall Street. That was quick, off-the-cuff and based on limited news at that point. We have had a few days to absorb what is perhaps going on and to see some responses to the bailout. Here are some more observations.

1. $700 billion. That's $700,000,000,000. Absolutely mind-boggling and beyond our ability to envision. Which may be the point of it. If we can't imagine it, we have no idea about how huge this thing is.

2. We are in a difficult time. I gather that last Thursday was scary enough - and close enough to the real brink of disaster - that the Bush administration was ready to take unprecedented steps.

3. No one outside of the White House, the treasury, the Fed, and Wall Street likes it. Or more to the point they are scared of it and what it might mean to a meltdown and complete restructuring of the American monetary system.

4. Perhaps the scariest- dictatorial powers for the Secretary of the Treasury. These are to be powers that are not even reviewable by courts. WAIT! Not even reviewable? No safeguards? No oversight? Uh, what about the constitution? Oh, that's right, this administration has had difficulty with that old document for a long time.

5. The Bush administration does not want to tie this to any limits on executive pay. They are, in other words, willing to allow the people who got us into this mess to benefit even while the rest of us suffer. But there is precedent of course. Just remember Enron.

6. Let's push it through quickly, in secret back rooms, in the last week of the Congressional session before the elections. Hurry up. Rush. Do it yesterday. Just like a certain war in Iraq.

7. But something is necessary. Absolutely necessary. The weak link underlying the American system has been at least bared in some small way. I have a feeling we may never know how weak it has become and that the bailout will simply be more of the same. Again, I am not an economist and have no idea about the ins and outs of all this, but while I have grave reservations about what is being planned, something needs to be done.

Perhaps underneath it all is the most profound weakness of the whole system. It may very well be greed. The desire to get rich quick from me to the top and from me to the bottom. It is a system based on spending and buying and risks that could turn us all upside down. It has become a system that worships the dollar as the ultimate. But money is a harsh mistress and a powerful addiction. The more we get the more we want.

Somehow I think there has to be a better way.