Plastic Coffee Cups

It just got really cold, it's about to start raining

We've had some really beautiful weather here in NOLA recently - 70s, not too humid, bugs haven't come out yet, a little breezy, sunny a lot of the time. But then we'll have spells of three or four days in a row where it just rains and rains, which is bad when I have to bike everywhere. But alas, alas - first world problem.

In other, non-weather news, I've been reading a lot of really infuriating articles recently, and having impassioned discussions about how fucked up things are right now.

Exhibit A • Exhibit B • And most tragically, Exhibit C

But easily the most infuriating thing that I've read was this article from 1999, directly tracing the roots of this whole goddamned economic mess to one piece of legislation back, championed by actual human dildo Phil Gramm.

Wait wait - sorry, that's offensive to dildoes. Phil Gramm is actually rotted feces from space aliens, sent here to deregulate the financial sector in the name of a dead president whose asinine policies didn't actually work.

So, this article shows how one piece of legislation, in 1999, undid all the lessons we learned from the last financial collapse (you might of heard of that collapse, in Steinbeck novels, or if you're from Oklahoma). "The original idea behind [the] Glass-Steagall [Act of 1933] was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression."

Imagine that! And, what's this about a "speculative stock frenzy" thing? Surely no one, especially the government, would be silly enough to gamble away things like, say, peoples' life insurance based on the assumption that real estate prices and the stock market had no place to go but up, forever. Right?

Ah, crap.

What do you have to say for yourself, talking-space-alien-rotten-fecal-matter-turned-senator Phil Gramm? Got some pre-Bush freedom rhetoric to throw in, for good measure? "Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer."

Well played, sir. So surely, everyone in the Senate was in agreement on this, Freedom For Bankers Us, and no one had the foresight to see this would actually happen...?

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Fuck!

Then, everyone's favorite non-Clinton-or-evil-robot-replacement-Clinton senatrix from New York, Chuck Schumer, just had to weigh in with some spineless liberal crap. "If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world." DEAR GOD NOT SHANGHAI, THEY'RE EH-RABS....ER, COMMUNISS!

Okay, Preznint Clinton, time to weigh in. Put an end to this stupidity. Let's hear it! "The White House has estimated the legislation could save consumers as much as $18 billion a year as new financial conglomerates gain economies of scale and cut costs." Oh, that's good, we can put that $18 billion a year towards the $787 BILLION WE HAD TO SHELL OUT TO SAVE THESE FUCKERS.

I am done with this now. I have to go treat my ulcer.

posted by Werd @ 11:58 AM