Wall Street Got Drunk
In less than eight years, we were ruined. America was bogged down in two unpopular foreign wars of dubious benefit. As another conflict was brewing in Pakistan, George W Bush simply walked away as if nothing had happened.
It was a horrible legacy. After having declared war on two Middle East nations, the Republican president left the public a $750 billion going away-present. Bush borrowed the same amount from the communist Chinese to finance the war. The perpetrators of this fiasco justified the necessity of their actions by saying that the affair was equitable due to Saddam Hussein’s ‘Al-Qaeda ’ nexus . Though that connection proved to be fiction, the cost was real. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars was the immediate cost of the bailout.
What exactly happened to the American financial complex? Did the Chinese government pull their $750 billion war loans out of the banks, thereby collapsing the American banking system? Was it the huge increase in fuel prices that drove the economy into the ditch? Perhaps it was both. In any case, Bush and his well connected buddies were rich because of it, while average Joe was descending into the pit of insolvency.
Americans began losing their jobs and their homes in record numbers. Throwing a steady stream of mind numbing television programs down their throats like so much cheap gin, America tried to forget that the whole thing was based upon deception. Television programs like "American Idol" distracted the people while the economic structure disintegrated. America was in a hand-basket and few cared where it was going. There was little reason to worry. The new president said the basket would be okay. It would of course take yet a few trillion tax dollars more, but Joe was good for it.
The big banks were treated to a cash giveaway which they used to gobble up little banks. Bush would joke that Wall Street got drunk and that the collapse of the economy was the hangover. He should know. It was he who had given the party and what a bash it was. As the investment sector, feeling sick and demanding more of ‘the hair of the dog’ that bit everyone, average Joe had to take care of the housekeeping. Joe began cleaning up the regurgitation while the bankers staggered again toward the open bar, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank.
The system worked...for some.
© 2009 Craig Portwood
Well written.
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