This Too Shall Pass

That is the City of London (the Square Mile, so to say) as seen yesterday afternoon from the offices of Legal & General, a fine insurance and investment house. Contrary to rumours that may have been spreading, there was no smoking crater to be seen and no one around me seemed to have the urge to leap from the windows.

I've lived through and managed to keep my jobs during the last several of these sorts of meltdowns over nearly 20 years. I'd like to think it was because I was good, but chances are it was because I chose my risk exposures carefully. I never made a huge chunk of money in my portfolios, but I also never lost much of it. And so the world goes on.

Unfortunately, my fall-back position in the banking world is probably gone because the masters of the universe who were running banking seemed to have somehow killed the goose that laid the golden egg for so many years. Now that really took some talent ... way to go, guys.

And as I walked around the streets of London, I realised that other countries have survived prolonged bouts with socialism and emerged to thrive. England, for example. So the US wanders down the path to socialism. This too shall pass, but not before a lot of human potential is wasted.

What really pisses me off about seeing the US fall into a socialist model is not so much that it was accomplished without rioting in the streets or a shot being fired, rather that it was accomplished by the people who claimed to be on the side of a free market system.

It wasn't Republican cronyism that led to this meltdown ... sure, they were in there hat in hand, but for the most part they merely fiddled while the fire burned. I will only offer the testimony that the creeps at the epicenter of this meltdown were giving hugely to the Dems (Number 1 beneficiary of Freddie/Fannie political contributions: Chris Dodd, D-CT, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which was responsbile for oversight of the two GSEs ... Number 2, Barack Obama, D-IL) as well as employing several former Clinton-White-House staffers (giving them pay packages of tens of millions of dollars) who have since gone on to join the Obama campaign.

The least the Republicans could do in exchange for taking the blame is to walk away with the most money ... they couldn't even get that right. Nice job, guys. As Al Goldstein used to say so eloquently on Manhattan Cable channel 64(?), "Republicans, F*&k Y** !"

Meanwhile, in the name of making everyone feel safe and better about their economic futures, the country that preached free market economies to the rest of the world very publicly dismantles its own when things start to get to be a little uncomfortable.

I am reminded of an old Dead Kenndys album title: "Give Me Convenience, or Give Me Death."