Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I hate Mondays

The financial crisis in the US takes a suicide dive. This is serious. If the US financial system doesn't get this cash injection. Its like withdrawing much needed blood from a patient. But rather than issuing the order, the doctors are busy squabbling over how the patient got there.

Some quotes:

Bush: “If money isn’t loosened, this sucker could go down.”

Moderate Republicans were furious at their fellow party politicians criticizing them “immature brats who have put ideology before country”.

“We’re at a point in our nation’s history when they need to grow up. If McCain can’t get the House Republican leadership to give him 100 votes to do something that the Presdent wants, the treasury secretary wants, the Fed chairman wants, then he doesn’t have a set of nuts that’s worth a damn.”

Pat Buchanan, the former Republican presidential candidate, claimed that the crash of 2008 will usher in a more sober and much diminished America, branding the credit crisis “a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself. The party’s over. What we are witnessing today is how empires end.”

Well, maybe, but Pat also believes in some damn ridiculous stuff too.

Are we seeing a decline in the US? Well, hasn't it been happening for the last 40 years ever since the last great oil crisis in the 1970s? The US was literally brought to its knees by OPEC, a bunch of Arab (nations), who refused to sell it oil. Seeing the US fascination with SUVs and monster trucks, I don't think they've learnt anything AT ALL from that experience. Today, the American economy is driven by consumerism. How the heck can you run a economy by citizens buying foreign goods on their credit cards?

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