Purely shocking, it's been, to come to fully grasp what an old rickety ship of state our country has been allowed to become as events in our economy have unfolded since September.
How could we ever have ever allowed this to happen?
Never in my lifetime have I thought I'd be asking this, but how are we really all that much different today than where Russia found itself in the fall of 1991 with the collapse of its delusional economic system, communism and its overextended empire, the Soviet Union? How could we, in our own right, have gone that delusional?
In retrospect, tell me how is George Bush's attempt at imposing democracy on Iraq by force been any different than was the Soviet Union's Leonard Brezhnev attempt at imposing communism on Afghanistan? Has our experience also not been found debilitating? Overextending? Wouldn't our resources spent there, especially given our overall circumstances, have been better applied elsewhere? If life is sacred, how about all the death by opting for war we are responsible for inflicting?
Ironic, isn't it? Just as Russia found itself having to desperately recalibrate itself with reality after running aground because of the warped rudder of communism, we, too, are, today, found having been cast up on treacherous shoals, in the throes of our own dire reckoning with the bottom line, trying desperately to bail ourselves out.
Do you think, perhaps, a parallel could be made between the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the cracking of our financial system in 2008 as manifestations of both underlying operating systems being inherently flawed? Or do you think it's incommensurable, weighing, that is, apples and oranges?
Myself, I don't think so. To me untenable is untenable. And earthshaking is earthshaking. Both events certainly showed something profoundly untenable and were, indeed, soundly earthshaking -- to roll on down through the corridors of time.
Interesting it will be to see to what degree we have to recalibrate ourselves.
Who knows how this is all going to turn and what it's going to open, especially after watching this past spring Bear Stearns go broke and be absorbed by Chase with some hefty federal support. And, by summer, California's Indy Mac Bank had to be taken over by the FDIC. Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac also had to be bolstered to the tunes of billions upon billions upon billions.
By the end of August, I believe, the federal government had racked us up over a trillion dollars in bail-out support.
That certainly was a significant turning left of the adjustment screw don't you think?
Even according to the president, himself, at gut level, a fabled free marketer, government intervention at this massive scale is inescapable to stave off depression or worse. Might not that, anthropologically speaking, be called having a Gorbachev or, rather, a Gorby moment of realization: the jig is up?
Has nearly 30 years of following the course of Reagan- omics -- whose horizon sights measured no further than having it all in the here and now -- culminating with W's administration having gone full bore into the "now" of making up oneself a good old vainglorious war and making up a -- to good to be true -- pathway to utopia called the "ownership society" -- finally put us up on the rocks?
It took the warped rudder of communism more than twice as long to land the Soviet Union ship of state high and dry where it fell apart.
That can't happen to us? I mean the falling apart part? I believe, someday, communism and "now-nowism," what Reaganomics was really all about, will be considered the two great sirens of the 20th and early 21st century.
Anyway, interesting isn't it that the staggering sum stacked up against the American taxpayer by summer's end is, for some reason, barely discussed. But what is, is the $700 billion life buoy thrown to our flailing financial institutions barely a month afterward, in the aftermath of the "financial Katrina" that came in September.`
Just when you thought you saw it all, came the pounding. The financial house, Lehman Brothers, suddenly goes bankrupt, sending the stock market tanking. AIG, the giant insurance company, supposed invincible masters of the credit default swap game, is found to require $85 billion worth of federal assistance just to begin with to start covering thier bets.
That figure, faster than you can say presto, escalates to 152 billion and counting with the American tax payer assuming a 79 percent stakeholder position in one of the biggest convoluted messes that's ever been concocted.
And can anybody tell me where Washington Mutual and Countrywide Bank have gone? Washed up or washed out? And where is that ever bullish on America Merrill Lynch: pooped out, clinging to Bank of America to keep its head above water? And how's mighty City Bank: still hung up and precariously listing?
Imagine in the stock market more than $7 trillion of wealth was lost last year and, just in the past 6 months more than $2 trillion of unanticipated debt in bailout support to the financial sector has been put on the American taxpayer. Talk about structural groaning: It sends pure chills right up the spine to listen to.
Between the banking-Wall Street crisis, the regulatory oversight crisis, the rule of law, constitutional crisis the perpetual war crisis, things have gotten horribly bent out of shape. Once things have been so tweaked, the problem is it's hard to get the proper tension back again. It will take monumental effort.
Less than two weeks before the inauguration and time can't pass quickly enough.
Barack Obama, as president, you've got to find a way to fortify us again. Just the sight of you, a black man with an Islamic name, at this time in history, is, to me, a phoenix rising from the ashes. Hallelujah. Let the spirit of America soar again.
"We can do it, yes we can." That's the difference between us and the former Soviet Union.
Tim O'Leary is a longtime Homer resident and observer of the political scene.
