Earlier today, a man named Joe Stack crashed his plane into an IRS building out of frustration with the federal government. In a long letter which he posted, full of misspellings and grammatical errors, he makes an interesting point:
I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”.
I don’t want to see bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows, but I do think that individuals should bear the consequences of their actions. Mr. Stack correctly identifies that the bankers and businessmen who failed to steer their companies on a sound financial course have been spared the crash that should have come, with the exception of Lehman Brothers. Instead, their institutions have been propped up at the expense of virtually everyone else. The bill for supporting these insolvent institutions is only just beginning to come due.
Allowing Lehman to fail was, contrary to the conventional wisdom, about the only thing the federal government has done right during the downturn. Of course, there’s considerable evidence that Lehman was allowed to fail, not because of a commitment to the principles of the free market, but because Lehman was a competitor of Goldman Sachs, and Goldman Sachs has friends in high places.
One cannot simultaneously advocate bailouts and condemn Wall Street bonuses – at least not with any logical consistency. A choice has to be made. One option is to allow the free market to work, which automatically balances the high-flying profits of financial institutions with the severe penalties of failure. The other option is to let the bankers and lawyers who are running the country scare you into saving them from their mistakes for your own good.
I can sympathize with Mr. Stack’s outrage. In fact, it’s surprising to me that more people aren’t outraged. While I don’t recommend crashing planes into buildings, I do think a lot of people should be taking a much more critical look at the candidates the two major parties are putting before you.
Mr. Stack closes his letter with this:
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Unfortunately, the delusion that we are living under capitalism is quite common. If capitalism includes a free market, the United States hasn’t practiced it in a meaningful way in some time.
Filed under: Economics, News, Philosophy, Politics
