Kenmore Undressed

Hi, Meet Crybaby (American) Capitalism

Have you ever lost your job and had a hard time paying your credit card bills, or got behind on your mortgage, or had medical bills or your spouse left you with a mountain of debt? Have you ever listened to people talk about “those folks” who should take personal responsibility for paying their debts! If so, then you need to meet Crybaby Capitalism. He has a solution to your financial problems. See if this works for you next time you need help:

Hi, I’m Crybaby Capitalism. You’ve been hearing a lot about me over the last several months. Things have been going really well for me the last 30 years. I’ve been able to make a LOT of money by wrapping up debt in security instruments (that no one, not even the smartest analysts can figure out) and selling them to greedy investors. After all, everyone knows that GREED IS GOOD. Wasn’t that the famous line in the film “Wall Street?” It didn’t matter that the paper we were pushing wasn’t worth as much as we said it was. It didn’t matter that what we were doing was borderline fraud. After all, no one was really looking that carefully, especially Uncle Sam, who has been demasculated by years of deregulatory legislation by both political parties.

Now that a lot of my friends: Banks, Security Companies and large corporations have gone bankrupt, they aren’t happy!!! They don’t think it’s FAIR that they lost money. After all, they were all practicing FREE MARKET ECONOMICS. Milton Friedman said that no regulation is a good thing. Keep the bureaucrats out of business. It’s all about supply and demand. It’s all about efficiency. It’s all about a rising tide lifting all boats. It’s all about creating wealth that will TRICKLE DOWN from the wealthy to the rest of you poor dumb losers.

But look, how can you ignore my friends:

This is AIG.

This is Lehman Brothers.

This is my other friend WALL STREET.

BUT WAIT, we found a solution to losing so much money. We just cried loudly enough that THE GOVERNMENT is bailing us out. It was so nice for President Bush to announce today that the taxpayers will be contributing billions and billions of dollars to help us out. We promise to pay you back!!! Really!