It is hard to see nations falter on the cusp of their brilliance. It is hilarious though to see superpowers implode on their own self righteousness and this is exactly what the world is watching as America rejects the bailout plan to save their precious wall street.
Lets be neutral about this and forget for a simple moment that the American government via this bailout plan is trying to ask its populace to bear the brunt of corporate America’s greed to make big bucks via housing and irresponsible loan handouts to people who could not afford them in the first place. Oh and by the way I am not saying this just from the view point of a foreigner who went to college there. I just so happen to have a degree in economics as well as the geeky Computer science program I excelled in and before i even graduated I could see that the bubble was too big to keep expanding. This was back in 1998 and by god if I was to say that America at that time was the easiest..and by far the fastest credit giving nation in the world it would not be an overstatement. The day of my orientation in college in the U.S we were all trooped into the student union and handed at least 8 different credit applications by all the credit card companies and banks reps there with 0 interest, with no yearly charges with such limited questions asked about our backgrounds and credit history that it was baffling. I walked out of the union that day with a still nil credit history and 6 different credit cards and a credit line of over 20,000 USD.
Does that seem miniscule to you? Perhaps you think I am overdramatizing a simple procedure. Well I am not, just consider the personal example I quoted above and apply that on a country wide housing scale and you will see just how the biggest bust in the history of corporate America is taking place.
Add to this the fact that America literally woos, cajoles bad creditors and defaulters back onto high interest credit cards and higher interest loans and you have in your face a massive implosion. Of such magnitude that it will reverberate throughout the worlds economic markets and will mean the laying off of thousands of employees nay perhaps hundreds of thousands and in the end make the whole world a much poorer and the U.S a semi crippled nation.
Now as addle brained as the Bush administration has proven itself to be. This bailout plan they were trying to pass to the tune of 700 billion dollars from public funds to take on these massive bad loans from banks in return for public ownership and accountability was lets just say a desperate but necessary measure. However both Mccain and Obama have miserably failed to handle the first hurdle that comes in the way of their future governments to be by doing what?
Yes it will use consumers and taxpayers money, yes it will lead to middle America getting poorer but consider the result of every major financial institution in America going belly up and the end result will be a loss far greater than these 700 billion dollars to the general public. It will mean the end of America as they know it, the end of largess and caddys that go 6 miles a gallon, the end of a carefree lifestyle and piling on credit till ya die as it cannot be passed on to your kin.
Is the next government ready to handle governing a country forced to cope with a totally different lifestyle than the one they have been wooing for their votes in the past few months? Yeh i know the result was the decision of a vote also, but if you think that the leaders cannot influence their parties vote you need to wake up. If not i suggest the American leadership rise above blame mongering and playing to the public by “claiming” to defend middle America and get their act sorted out, or in the end the united states may not remain so united anymore specially if Mum X is kicked out of her house and she cannot afford to drive down to denny’s to have a waffle either.