CT Blue

According to MSNBC the nations investment banks are borrowing an average of 32.9 billion dollars a day from the Fed. I think even nowadays that’s a lot of money. The total proposed budget for the state of Connecticut for the fiscal year 2009 is about 18.4 billions, which means that the banks are borrowing a little less that twice Connecticut’s annual budget every day. Other comparisons suggest themselves. The amount borrowed in three days would be enough to fund Hillary Clinton’s health plan for a year. One day would pay for three months of the immoral war. Finally, that kind of money would allow me to get a new computer every day with a new camera thrown in on weekends for the rest of my life, guaranteeing that I would die with the most toys.

Imagine, if you will, that one of our states had created a fiscal mess of the magnitude of that created by these investment bankers. Would the federal government come through with money with no strings attached? (Hint: No). Oh, sure, the banks have to pay the money back, but if they don’t we taxpayers will have no redress, except some overvalued junk assets. If the banks do pay the money back, they will, if the Republicans have anything to say about it, be allowed to go their merry way, with full freedom to wreak havoc through more fiscal chicanery, free of those burdensome regulations which might have prevented the present disaster. Either way, whether the banks re-pay us or not, the executives who led us into this mess will remain filthy rich and reap further ample rewards for their failure, while paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than you or me. Oh sure, some of them are suffering. James Cayne, the guy who ran Bear Stearns into the ground, just sold all his Bear Stearns stock, stock that was valued at over a billion dollars just a few weeks ago. The poor guy had to make do with a mere 61.3 million dollars. To put that in perspective, he could probably only afford to buy a new computer every other day for the rest of his life. But before you shed too many tears, remember that’s just what he got for his stock. Who knows what he did with those multi-million dollar bonuses he gave himself every year for crafting the business strategy that got Bear Stearns where it is today. But we can’t fault him, can we? Who could have predicted that lending money to people who can’t afford to re-pay wouldn’t work out?

I freely admit, by the way, that I don’t know precisely how a Fed loan of 32.9 billion is accomplished. Is it the functional equivalent of printing money? I don’t know. But I’m convinced that however it is accomplished, 32.9 billion is a lot of money. The folks who slept while this crisis was brewing must be deathly scared now, since they have abandoned their orthodoxies to bail out these sharks.