Wall Street vs. Sesame Street

High Flying Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Threatens Big Bird with Extinction.

Ex-vulture Capitalist Ruffles Feathers by Hatching Secret Plan Targeting Big Bird.

Deputy EPA director Burt McMuppet issued an emergency executive order protecting all fowl wildlife 8ft tall or taller, a ruling seemingly crafted to protect the PBS’s Big Bird, but which legal experts claim may be extended several NBA players with large wingspans as well.  The surprise ruling immediately attracted the ire of conservative lawmakers and pundits who have declared an open season on the outsized symbol of Sesame Street.  Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money and rumored to be the front runner for the job as Treasury Secretary in a Romney administration, sums up the conservative mindset well when he insists that characters like Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch are not wealth creators like those on Wall Street.  “Big Bird is entitled to feather his nest like everyone else,” Cramer squawked, “but he’s not a job or wealth creator like the vulture capitalists at Bain,” a reference to the hedge fund Romney ran before entering politics.   “You can’t expect the wealth creators on Wall Street to pay higher taxes just to subsidize the characters on Sesame Street.  After all, bailing out irresponsible deadbeat Muppets can only lead to moral hazard.”

The liberal economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman disagrees:   “PBS is paying Big Bird chickenfeed.  Oscar is living in a garbage can for Pete’s sake!  No wonder he’s grouchy.  You can’t have a thriving Sesame Street without asking those who pull the financial strings on Wall Street to pay a little more.  If income inequality continues to grow, the Muppets will occupy Sesame Street.”

President Obama belatedly came to Big Bird’s defense today.  Speaking at a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, the Commander-in-Chief insisted: “I grew up with Big Bird.  Big Bird is a friend of mine.  I call on Governor Romney to keep his Mitts off Big Bird.”  However, Governor Romney, basking in the glow of his debate performance against the President, reiterated his commitment to go after Big Bird.  “I’m a job creator,” Romney insisted, “and I’m not going to borrow money from China to subsidize Sesame Street.  If Big Bird wants to build his retirement nest egg, then he should go out and get a job in the private sector.  I mean teaching kids math and their ABC’s is strictly for the birds.  Our society needs to disproportionally reward the risk-takers and speculators who create the fundamentals of a sustainable economy.”

Sphere: Related Content

Top Ten Reasons Bush is NOT to Blame for America’s Economic Meltdown

10). “It was that major league a-hole, Dick Cheney, who absolutely, positively assured me “Deficits don’t matter.”” – G.W.B

9). “Wall Street got drunk, drove into a ditch, and totaled America’s economic engine. And for that, you blame the bartender? I don’t think so.” – Barbara Bush

8). “I think it’s fair to say that George Jr. is not responsible for anything.” -- George H.W. Bush on truth serum

7). “Bush is already responsible for the debacle in Iraq, Katrina, global warming, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. Blaming him for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression as well would seem to me to be too much for any one individual to bear.” – Dr. Phil

6). “We are in a crisis mode here, but it would be a mistake . . . and we can’t blink on this . . . because we couldn’t see Russia from our backyard if we did . . . but it would a mistake to blame the current economic meltdown on either global warming or the Bush Doctrine.” -- Governor Sarah Palin

5). “Taxpayers will come out ahead on this fifty or sixty years from now on account of the fact that my administration led the way in burying the Death Tax.” -- Dubya

4). “Capitalism is nothing more than socialism for the rich. The current crisis is simply the inevitability of historical forces engaged in a dialectical process that seeks to reconcile opposing ideologies on a higher plane. President Bush is merely a cog in a predestined historical process through which tragedy and farce are synthesized” -- Groucho Marx

3). Bush has super-duper secret plan to wager $700 billion of bailout money in on-line poker competition against China, North Korea, and Iran. The president is absolutely 100% certain that he’ll win enough money to save the economy.

2). “Where there is crisis, there is opportunity.” – Chinese fortune cookie Bush got at the Beijing Olympics.

1). 53 million Americans voted for a bozo like Bush, a candidate who peddled his economic snake oil with slogans like, “It’s your money, you paid for it.” If you voted for our nincompoop-in chief, then I think it’s fair to say this joke is at your expense.

Sphere: Related Content

It's Your Money, You Paid for It: How the Bush Administration Bankrupted America

Once upon a time -- eight years ago to be precise -- the Bush administration rudely proclaimed that the American economic and political model was the universal blueprint for all humankind. Today, the Bush administration is standing in the rubble of its own hubris.

The meltdown of America’s financial system is a seminal event. The era of America’s financial and geopolitical hegemony is coming to an end. The debacle in Iraq, the bungled federal response to Katrina, and now the virtual collapse of America’s economic order has exposed the moral emptiness that was at the core of the Republican Party’s governing philosophy.

The Bush administration has accomplished the impossible; it has turned a Superpower into Banana Republic. It has managed to reverse and undermine the nation’s economic fortunes by burying America under a mountain of debt. Trillions of dollars have been committed to Iraq -- and the now the looming Wall Street bailout – but the dividends from these “investments” are dubious indeed.

Imagine, for instance, if the United States has spent the trillions it is now spending to buy off Sunni insurgents, and buy out predatory financiers, had been invested in providing universal healthcare, shoring up our infrastructure, and developing alternative sources of energy. We might be well on the road to greater economic competitiveness and energy independence. Instead, we are stuck in a ditch of the Bush administration’s making.

We are mortgaging America’s future to pay for policies that at best simply mitigate the failures and misjudgments of the Bush administration. The Surge has succeeded in lowering violence in Iraq, but growing anarchy in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda has regrouped, is canceling out the increasing stability in Iraq. Put simply, Bush’s simplistic assumption that defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq would deflate the jihadists is nothing more than wishful thinking. Likewise, Bush’s certainty that changing the regime in Iraq would necessarily serve as a catalyst for transforming the Middle East for the better appears more quixotic than ever. In other words, Don Quixote seems like a realist in comparison to Bush.

Invading Iraq has not enhanced America’s strategic position anymore than Bush’s tax cuts enhanced America’s financial health. Indeed, in some sense U.S. troops are hostages in Iraq, and U.S. taxpayers are financing a $10 billion ransom every month to keep the country from exploding. After all, just think what will happen if we stop doling out $300 a month to each member of the Sons of Iraq. The former Sunni insurgents will once again be shooting at U.S troops, but this time with American supplied weaponry.

Bush’s free market fundamentalism has led to a dead end too. Supply side economics, deregulation, and faith that markets are all wise and self-correcting are ideas that now belong in the ash heap of history.

The United States is in the process of finding out what it means to be hostage to foreign lenders. Dick Cheney, who once said we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq, also insisted that deficits don’t matter. They matter now, however, big time. After all, the federal government either has to borrow the money to finance the roughly trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout or it will have to raise taxes. Needless to say, given America’s already over extended state of indebtedness foreign creditors are certain to insist on higher rates of interest, which will certainly crimp economic growth. The declining strength of the dollar too, will increase the cost commodities like gas and food, thus we are likely facing a period of stagflation – slower economic growth and rising inflation.

Until now, the U.S. has had the luxury of denominating debt in dollars, which is another way of saying that so long as the dollar was the world’s reserve currency the costs of indebtedness were in some sense borne by creditors. With the dollar falling to a nine year low against the euro, however, the U.S. can no longer devalue its debt by simply printing more money.

All this means that average Americans are entering a period of wealth destruction where the value of their assets are eroded by inflation, the declining dollar, negative income growth, higher interest rates, higher state and municipal taxes, and cuts in government services. I can think of no better slogan to sum up this mess than the one Bush used to justify borrowing trillions to finance his tax cut scheme: “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

Sphere: Related Content

Panic in the Street -- The Wall Street Meltdown

Wall Street is melting faster than the polar icecaps. Savings and retirement accounts are evaporating faster than an ice cube in a microwave. America’s wealth is being siphoned off quicker than a keg of beer at a frat house. George W. Bush’s party is almost over, but the national hangover is just beginning.

As George Soros observed, we are entering one of the intensive periods of wealth destruction since the Great Depression. The value of the dollar is plummeting, inflation is rising, economic growth is stagnating, unemployment is increasing, and the stock market is tumbling.

History will probably blame all this on George W. Bush, but in fairness he’s only part of the problem. Besides, Forty-three will have to shoulder responsibility for the Iraq debacle, the bungled response to Katrina, the torture and abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the failure to recognize and respond to the challenge of global warming, and the unraveling of the Republican Party. There’s only so much blame one person can handle.

Still, the unfolding financial catastrophe represents the complete discrediting of the economic philosophy of conservative Republicans like Bush. Supply side economics (the notion that tax cuts are self-financing) and Laissez-faire economics (the idea that markets are self-regulating and self-correcting) are as officially defunct as Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.

Everyone likes tax cuts and rebate checks. But if you cut taxes and fail to cut spending you increase the deficit, which amounts to a tax increase on future generations. Rebate checks are nice too, but there are only two ways the government can afford to send you money: 1) borrow or 2) raise taxes. If you think about it, George W. Bush really made sense when he justified his tax cut plan by saying, “It’s your money, you paid for it.”

George W. Bush has presided over the weakest economic and jobs growth rates in decades. To put things in perspective, Bill Clinton presided over an economy that created over 20 million new jobs while George Bush’s administration as presided over just 5 million jobs created. Of course, Clinton’s exceptional jobs creation numbers were achieved while he raised taxes and balanced the budget. Bush, on the other hand, inherited a budget surplus and managed to turn it into the largest deficit in history.

Thanks to the Bush administration, America now owes a trillion or two (or three) to pay for the Iraq War. America is on the hook for a couple of trillion from assuming the obligations of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. And let’s not forget the expense of Bush’s Medicare package, a corporate welfare boondoggle that should cost taxpayers another trillion or two. Hey, a trillion here and a trillion there. Pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

The myth of the free markets has obscured a predatory form of crony-capitalism where government insiders steer corporate benefactors to the public trough. Enron was just the canary in the coalmine. George W. Bush has cannibalized America with his socialism for the rich policies.

Sphere: Related Content