if this were a just universe, the U.S. would have to be begging the IMF & World Bank for loans right now, and they would respond by having us slash and burn our few effective public institutions for the profit of foreign investors. -- El Cid in comments at Greenwald's Place
Yes. Well. The way the markets are crashing and burning, and the way that high end credit at low interest rates has disappeared, it's more than likely that what little is left of the New Deal will have to be sacrificed on the altar of the Confidence Game just to get through this next period.
Our previous incarnation being unsustainable -- but we knew that -- we'll have to become something else again.
In some sense, it will have to be a reversion to an earlier ideal, and Americans have successfully gone through that sort of thing periodically throughout our history. "Back to the Land," "Simple Living," all that sort of thing is ingrained in our national character.
But something else again doesn't just mean going backwards. It means finding some what forward as well. We won't have as much money to do it with. Indeed, we may not need as much money.
All the propping up that's been going on is intended to preserve as much of the financial and market status quo as possible. What can't be saved can be picked apart and recycled.
But the signs are that the markets and the financial system had become rotten through greed and corruption as well as fundamentally reaching the end of the line. The Confidence Game (see below) could not be sustained, there weren't any more pockets to pick, except for that of the Treasury itself, directly.
Trying to keep that system and its markets alive is a fool's gambit. Let it go.
Yet there is plenty from the past that is worth saving and building up.
Recognizing and doing what's right is going to take the whole country -- and then some -- working hard, in concert, to renew and restore full faith and credit in the United States of America, its people, and its ideals.
Some task, eh?
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