We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation worse.Allow me to highlight the pertinent information for you:
The reality is that if you live on Wall Street and you're in the credit markets the world couldn't be worse. If you're a farmer and you're getting $25 for your wheat, you're having a great time. If you're a CEO and you've got a balance sheet that's bullet-proof, you're in a great position. This whole thing is way out of control, way out of hand.
The reality is that if you live on Wall Street and you're in the credit markets the world couldn't be worse.
Those would be the same credit markets, mind you, that gorged themselves on derivatives backed by subprime mortgages. You remember, those subprime mortgages with the usurous back-loaded interest rate hikes that banks doled out to people who couldn't possibly afford them. Those subprime mortgages that those same people are now defaulting on en masse. Now, those people, many first-time home owners, are being foreclosed upon in staggering numbers, their credit destroyed, and the neighborhoods they lived in declining into despair.
Now, I am no Marxist - a great many people who took out subprime mortgages were not as responsible in judging their financial situation as they should have been, and nor did they exercise sufficient caution or scrutiny regarding the terms of the mortgages themselves. While I support government efforts to educate people about home financing, including options for refinancing, and attempts to pressure lenders into renegotiating loans along more favorable (i.e. realistic) terms, these steps should not be interpreted as absolving people of responsibility for their financial affairs.
Yet it is beyond ludicrous to suggest that for those who "live on Wall Street", or rather those who work on Wall Street and live in Manhattan co-ops or posh suburbs where there are no foreclosures, "the world couldn't be worse." Oh, I guess it sucks to blow billions of dollars on an idiotic bet. (It's worth noting that Goldman Sachs, widely considered one of the world's smartest securities firms, has been largely unaffected by the subprime crisis.) However, I note with disdain the number of CEOs who have been felled as a result of their poor judgment and wafted out of their corner offices on platinum parachutes. Though their honor might be stained (which I doubt), surely they will never feel anything resembling economic pressure again. Meanwhile, they need only cast a glance northward to the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx to see what their profiteering has wrought in a place where "the world couldn't be worse."
As for Mr. Zell, who seems oblivious to the fact that the nation is sliding into a recession, I would suggest that the Democrats, unlike the present occupant of the White House, are simply telling it like it is. Oh, I forgot, if "you're a farmer and you're getting $25 for your wheat" or "a CEO and you've got a balance sheet that's bullet-proof," you're doing just fine. Problem is, most Americans aren't.
