It's the market, honey, and it's not funny

"Honey, I’m afraid it’s money," says he.

"Did you loose it betting on the horses? says she.

"No, playing the economic forces, " says he.

There are several ways one might use to come to terms with stubborn realities. Stick your head in a hole, for example. Pretend the ugly reality doesn't exist. Try to find out why it happened in the first place. Try to prevent it from happening in the future. Take actions to avert what you know is going to happen.

Did big business and the George Bush Administration know that a crash was on its way? Very likely. If you give gigantic tax cuts to the "market leaders" on the theory that they will then produce enough for your reduced taxes to pay your bills, you probably realize that sooner or later "reality" will catch up with you. And then at the same time the government knowingly went into the red financing the endless "war on terrorism," and began taking loans from abroad...Anyway, practically all textbooks on economics talk about the inevitability of periodic recessions and crashes of diverse magnitud. 

 If you pardon the expression, there is a certain similarity between what the mass media calls "economics" and the "casino." If you have a lot of money, you are more likely to put it on risky operations. Wasn't that what happened? Wasn't that what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae did? Offer low interest to capture home buyers and then happily watch the interest rates rise...until...help! their clients started having problems paying their bills.

Well, there was a lot of money around, and so a good thing to do with it seemed to be investment in housing, mortgages and loans. Beefing up housing is always good business, because there is always a lack of housing--especially in the U.S. where the "American dream" is to own a home. A big one. Although the ownership aspect is probably more theoretical than practical because you'll be paying for it through your nose for decades, although maybe will get it by means of a first or second mortgage... 

Once upon a time there was an economic notion in the U.S. that it didn't matter how high your debts were, as long as they were with entities in the country. Well, this writer does not pretend to be an economist, but a little bit of reasoned thought leads even the most uninformed to observe that something blew that theory to ruins. For example, globalization. Companies began to go abroad to seek the advantages of paying lower wages to produce their consumer society products. Or they began to break up or buy into other firms, to farm out, to outsource.. 

Oh, we forgot to mention something. Conservative governments, such as the present one in Washington, such as the one on the eve of the 1929 crash, are supposed to be opposed to the intervention of the State in economic affairs. But then there was an injection of $200 billion to save Fannie and Freddie, and then another $85 billion to save the world's biggest insurance firm,AIG, to which one should add a few billion more last year for diverse "rescue" operations, the injection of money by European Central banks...

Maybe we are too naive, but doesn't all of this express clearly political intentions? The United States proudly occupys the position of dominant player on the world scene. In order to maintain that role it is obliged to defend its economic interests, or to stimulate their growth in the context of the "globalized" economy, likewise organize commerce to its benefit and exercise a decisive role in the world's system of security (expressed by the Bush Administration in the struggle against the so-called "axis of evil," the "preventive war" in Iraq and other actions.

At this point we prabably have guessed our next question. What will Republican presidential candidate John McCain or Democrat Barak Obama do about this situation? What should they do? Ignore the situation? Keep pumping up the crisis with taxpayer's money? If anyone has an answer to this, we would be glad to receive their ideas!