No doubt the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - $5.3 trillion pillars of America's mortgage market - stinks of moral hazard. The Treasury is to buy shares: the Fed has opened its window yet wider. Risks have been socialised. Any rewards will go to capitalists.
Alas, no Scandinavian discipline for Wall Street. When Norway's banks fell below critical capital levels in the early 1990s, the Storting authorised seizure. Shareholders were stiffed.
Emphasis added by me.
Yeah, how about that? Only in so-called "capitalist" America can the "risk-takers" have the government they work daily to discredit and dismantle knit them a nice safety net to spare them from risk. And then they wonder why they're hated! Their wealth is illegitimate!
It hasn't been earned. It's been guaranteed!
Lastly:
If we are lucky, America will start to stabilise before Asia goes down. Should our leaders mismanage affairs, almost every part of the global system will go down together. Then we are in trouble.
Tick ... tick ... tick.
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