Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:04:52 +0000 – Welcome to the New Wealth Order. It's a strange place, kind of a bizarro world, in fact, where "liberal" Democrats focus on Wall Street and ignore Main Street. In this New Wealth Order, it's not just the valuations of people's houses that are "upside down," it's national priorities that are upside down. And so the Obama administration spends its political capital--and your tax money--redistributing wealth upward. Upward to Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and Greenwich, Connecticut. Does that make sense? Of course not! Unless, of course, you are living in the bizarro New Wealth Order.
"The administration's new bank-rescue plan did push the markets back up--but it has the potential to generate returns for a fortunate few on a scale that will make the A.I.G. bonuses look like spare change."
Those last words are worth repeating: "the potential to generate returns for a fortunate few on a scale that will make the A.I.G. bonuses look like spare change." As I said, bizarro.
It's great, of course, that the stock market is back up a bit but out there in flyover country, unemployment continues to rise. Seven states now suffer double-digit unemployment.
The blunt reality is that Wall Street and Main Street are increasingly disconnected. Except when they need a bailout from Washington, the gamblers-turned-welfare-kings of Wall Street now put their focus mostly overseas, to other countries, and their markets.
Yes, it's true that when Wall Street does well, the retirement plans of ordinary folks get a boost, but corporate America has gone global: Indeed, the big publicly traded manufacturing companies--those that have survived--hire mostly overseas if they can, thereby avoiding American environmental regulations. (And that offshoring was evident long before the Green Left started talking up "cap and trade" and "carbon taxes," industry-ending policies that will put the complete and final kibosh on domestic manufacturing.) And as for the big banks and brokerages, well, they are so brazenly globalist that they are even doing multi-billion-dollar deals overseas using Uncle Sam's bailout money. That's right: Your tax dollars at work--working to create jobs worldwide.
But in the meantime, Wall Street, and the rest of the worldwide hedge-fund overclass, stands to make billions, even trillions, thanks to the the hard work of their mole--er, man--in Washington, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. As The New Yorker's Lemann observes:
"Some very, very rich people are going to get much richer, thanks to once-in-a-lifetime favorable terms provided by the federal government and unavailable to the rest of us."
Any more questions about the workings of the New Wealth Order?
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