It’s All Your Fault
21.03.09
Khuk Khak, Thailand – I’ve been trying to make sense of this financial mess the whole wide world is in, except who? Canada and Turkey and a handful of other ok countries, looking up and asking, ‘What’s the problem?’
(In a poker game, they’d be standing pat while everyone else was either folding or taking cards, just paying attention).
People in the ok countries still have a job, a house, and a bank on solid footing. Tokyo, England, everywhere else, another story. I’ve concluded it’s your fault, you poor working stiff sucker.
Yes. You. If you had kept that job, you could have made the payments, easy. You WERE making the payments. But see, losing the job spawned a whole interconnected web of things into action, and now the whole business has boomeranged back around to kick you in the ass.
Lost the job, lost the payment, lost the house, lost the wife, lost the kids, lost the car and the cat, lost your self-esteem, lost your razor, toothpaste and shampoo, next you’re sleeping under a bridge with all your belongings in a shopping cart. Cardboard sign declares your state and pleads your case. Don’t say it don’t happen. How close did you come?
One night under the bridge with a few other desperados - sun came up the next morning, knocking the frost off the cardboard, and I was thinking, “I can do better than THIS shit!”
Guy at the Main Street bank said, ‘What?’
Guy at Lehman Brothers said, ‘What?’
People over at Fannie May, Freddie Mac said, ‘What?’
Royal Bank of Scotland, “Whaddaya saying, Lad?”
I’m tellin’ ye I’ve lost my job, Patty. All I’ve got is all these notes, and all these toxic assets.*
Whole house a cards come a tumblin’ down, wouldn’tchaknowit, right when your dreams were reaching maturity. All that stuff in your shopping cart.
And you were thinking all that stuff must be worth something, same thing the Chinese are thinking…I mean, how could all that cash you put into somewhere, and just all of a sudden, pftttttttt? Gone.
Manny used to say when things get too complex, that’s the time to back off and let somebody else do the thinking.
It’s hard to pinpoint who to be mad at, with the bubble house, the lazy credit, the AIGEEs, the Americans, the Wall street, the Fed, the bankers, Mr. Made Off, that Other Guy, the toxic ass, the bailout, the hedge fund, those other guys, the plan, the one-armed man, the Chinese, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, the second gunman on the grassy knoll, or all that shit in your shopping cart.
You could go out back and get mad at…at…at your lawn. You know, rrrrealllly let it out. Give it hell. Get even!
It’s all your fault.
You say all this shit happened before you lost your job? You didn’t lose your job? Well, holy smokes, that makes it even more complex.
It's still all your fault.
Ok, it’s gone. I’m over the shock, disbelief, acceptance, and grief. Now I just want to know, if it’s going to take trillions to get everything back on track, then where did all that money go?
The guy was looking around, in his desk, under his desk, all over, then he tells the other guy, “I don’t know. It was just here. It was here yesterday. It was just here a minute ago. Now it’s gone.”
-end
*you know what ‘asset’ stands for, don’t you?
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