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http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/ kipling_if.htm

The next time you are tempted to think Government is a blessing instead of a curse, the next time you look to government to take your side on any given issue, remember this:


Subject: Fwd: [GATA] Joe Nocera: U.S. govt. has little idea of what it's doing


This front business page NYT article is excellent, and about 90% correct. It describes the present circumstances well. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/20nocera.html?_r=2&8dpc&o& oref=slogin

1. Pilot Paulson is flying blind. No one has good numbers.

2. Sweep aside all the Central Planning equations and noise and at bottom Economics is about human Psychology - Trust, Confidence, Expectations, Reliability, Honesty and Integrity

3. At this stage Pilot Paulson's "Plan" is an idea of a plan. They will be burning the lights over at the Treasury and the FED this weekend.

4. Pilot Paulson's idea draws on the old Dawes Plan, the Young Plan and similar "isolate the problem and put it on a shelf approaches." Take the worthless obligations and extend them long term. Freeze the problem without forcing immediate write-offs. Some of these plans go 100 years which in theory gives time to inflate them away. The key to understanding Paulson is the he talks about removing illiquid assets from the banks' books, and issuing bonds that must be held to maturity. He is not talking about mortgages. He is talking about taking off the books all those toxic credit derivatives, only some of which arise from the mortgage market.

5. Pilot Paulson has a vision of a crash landing. Think of this as the US becomes the Garbage Dumpster of Choice Plan. He wants to limit the damage and avoid, if possible, the loss of the Government's ability to borrow. To do this Paulson proposes limiting the size of the Dumpster by extending the government buyout invitation only to US commercial and investment banks. He also wants to avoid a new bureacracy, i.e., an RTC reincarnation. At least the attempt to limit the size of the dumpster will fail because our creditors will object. After all if you think the US screwed you, committed fraud, and wants to leave you holding the bag, "unhappy" hardly describes your state of mind. Paulson cannot control how they react. Back to Psychology _ "Where is the Love?"

6. The Democrats are going to rubber stamp this, just as they do the war budgets. There may be some window dressing to send the illusory message that "we care about people," but rubber stamp they will. They will rubber stamp because they too have no idea of what else to do.

So, if our leaders are just as much in the dark as are you and I, why follow them? Why give anyone the power to screw up your life when you are equally capable of doing so? If you err that affects you and your family and your community. If these guys err that affects you, and me and all of us worldwide.No one deserves that much power over you or over me.



For those of you who are liberal arts majors here's an article by Margaret Atwood that puts our dilemma in a larger context. I give the article overall a B, perhaps because it is an adaption from her new book Payback, but the ideas of a story line, of scripts, the implications of the etymology of the word "mortgage" and some historical examples are very very good.
http://wsj.com/article/SB122186623794958779.html?mod=article-outset- box