TANSTAAFL

There's a lot being written of the present economic crisis. Frankly, if it weren't for Alex Rollin and his Facebook updates (he hasn't blogged on his site), I wouldn't have thought as much about it. It seems surreal, especially from my own context.

After getting the turbo gaskets replaced on the Mazda B2500 Turbodiesel, I ended up visiting an Uncle who - true to form - was watching the BBC because he has a tendency to know when to turn on Aunt Beeb. He and I sat there and watched the $700 million bailout bill pushed by George W. Bush fail, and he asked me what I thought. I basically said that I didn't know what to think. The word 'socialist' kept getting used in conjunction with the bill, and I honestly don't think that the Bill itself was socialist as much as it was a Third World answer to a First World problem. My gut told me that the response to the bill, demonstrated by the vote which turned it away (228 nay, 205 yeah as I recall), was a democratic surge of socialism itself. 'The meek shall inherit the earth', but who wants a blue marble so deeply in debt?

The tongues of Aunt Beeb's analysts danced across the screen, discussing why the bill failed. They spread their net and found a few folk who had a few interesting things to say. One man said that (paraphrased), 'everyone wanted the bill but no one wanted to vote for it'. In essence, everyone wanted to get rid of this debt but no one wanted to bail out the people who created the problem in the first place.

There was a part of me very happy to see the Bill turned away. It isn't for the taxpayers to shoulder the burden of bad investment; corporations and the rich have a tendency to do all that they can to avoid paying taxes in the first place... so why should tax dollars help them? It may not be a nice thing to think but it certainly seems fair. There are a lot of people who are considered smart who devolved the markets by their actions. My next thought was that maybe the public and, by extension, society, should redefine what 'smart' means in terms of fiscal responsibility and risk mitigation.

I left it at that. None of this was going to magically create the 14 inch round file and bur bit required by my Uncle's employees to strip down a motor, so I went off to take care of that. Plus I had to make the rounds on the land if only to be seen, to show that I was around. I snuck in a milkshake in Haagen Daaz, amazed at how much a small chocolate milkshake costs. I think, I can make these at home. I read a copy of the Harvard Business Review, prepping for an article I've been gestating on for about a week.

Sitting there, planning out planting more corn, some citrus trees to plant and knowing I need to clear some more land so I can get started on the cassava. Some surveyors desperately need my boot placed where they carry a split, it seems, since communicating with them has been a lot like talking through a straw. But with the present crisis, what should I be planning on? A friend, a financial advisor who did some work in Panama, told me to buy gold since 2005. Unfortunately, that takes money. I have to look at the world's economy to plan my own personal strategy, and that isn't an easy thing. Especially in the midst of a financial crisis. The Harvard Business Review has a good pre-article on these unregulated investments and their impact on the global economy. The thought of corn and financial instruments collide in my head over an inflated chocolate milkshake.

Robert Heinlen comes to mind.

TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Don't they teach that to the folks who swish around their short financial skirts? And then another Heinlen quote springs to mind:

First, what is it you want us to pay taxes for? Tell me what I get and perhaps I'll buy it.

The American public did not want to buy the debt, which demonstrates a level of intelligence of American society which was not demonstrated prior to the events of yesterday, as best outlined in this CDO Powerpoint Subprime Primer:

So, allegedly smart people bought bad debts but the American Public decided yesterday that they didn't want the bad debts. Who is it that is smart again? If people in funny hats want to talk about smart mobs, they may actually have something to talk about here. Of course, some of the people who were allegedly smart may have worn funny hats in the first place - your mileage may vary.

But now the question is - who gets stuck with the bill? The sad reality is that, despite the stance of the American public, the American public will get stuck with the bill because of poor regulation in a global market. No, I have that wrong because regulation is supposed to keep people from doing stupid things, and the trouble is not a lack of regulation but people doing stupid things. So how do we keep people from doing stupid and perhaps immoral things?

While the War on Terror started under the premise that Osama bin Laden brought down the Twin Towers, the cancer that has created the present problem is not Al Quaeda influenced and doesn't originate from a country, occupied or not, within the Middle East. And while I don't have numbers or any other form of statistics, I lay odds that the damage done by irresponsibility in dealing with financial instruments has done at least as much damage as the Twin Towers falling. It hasn't cost lives, maybe, but what it has cost is quality of life not only for Americans but for anyone who trades with the United States. In this, Cuba must be quite happy. And while broken bodies make great news bytes for media houses, the real news is that people are going to be paying for the idiocy of others for generations to come.

TANSTAAFL.

But it isn't just the people who gave the loans, sold the loans and re-sold the loans. What on Earth were the people who took the mortgages and loans thinking? Money for nothing?

TANSTAAFL.

But if these people reasonably expected to get something for nothing, doesn't that say something about a society cluttered with enough pieces of plastic to keep Cher looking good for another 3,000 years? What gives?

TANSTAAFL.