Sheila Bair, the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has come up with a way out of all our woes.
Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I’ve got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.
For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the “carry trade,” has been enormously profitable for them.
So why not let everyone participate?
Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest ...
I like Sheila's plan.
A lot.
See, for a long time, I was resentful that only big banks, Goldman Sachs, and a few hedge fund managers could get free money. It just didn't seem ... I donno ... fair*.
But with this new plan, all my resentment washes away. I'll get my $10 million loan, put it in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds, and retire from the union repping business. (There won't be labor unions much longer under Sheila's plan, anyway. Just like the Wall Streeters, all of us wage slaves will have our very own supply of cash, and no need to worry about icky things like salary minimums and health coverage any more. I'll be a little sad, but I'll get over it.)
I'll be circulating a petition soon to bring Sheila's brain-wave to reality. Be sure and sign when I circulate it.
* As many of you know, I don't believe in fair. But for purposes of this post, I believe. I BELIEVE!
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4 comments:
Everyone getting 10 million dollars is the same as everyone getting zero dollars.
The solution is stop giving money to the financial sector.
Playing devil's advocate here - giving the banks billions for free was also supported heavily by the left, as some of the largest public pension schemes were all caught naked in the mess. The same state of affairs still holds true. The banks evaporate, so do the boomer savings. It's as simple as that, not a single thing has changed. The banks are still holding a gun to the head of the Fed, the Fed holding it to Congress, and Congress holding it to you and me. That stalemate is still in place.
Playing devil's advocate here - giving the banks billions for free was also supported heavily by the left
Welll ...
Here's one Democrat who wrote, phoned and e-mailed his congress critters to not bail out the banks. (Fat lot of good it did.)
The guvmint should have gone Swedish on them: supervised a controlled liquidation (a la GM), fired bank management, and then spun off the healthy parts of the banking companies.
Paying off AIG bonds 100 cents on the dollar? That was a REALLY bad idea. Nobody in the financial sector learned a goddamn thing ... except that Uncle would bail them out, few strings attached, when they fucked things up.
No consequences for bad behavior = no lessons learned.
Giving Banks Billions was not supported by the left. It was supported by the Democrats and Republicans, who are either centrists or right wing.
There were lefists that tried to block it and almost succeeded.
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