In the first phase of the global economic meltdown, everyone discovered that their houses, investments and businesses weren’t worth as much in reality as their inflated paper values. Panic ensued when all the bubbles finally burst.
To stem the panic and minimize damage from the global recession, a second panic is now under way.
Governments worldwide have started bailing out troubled investment banks, businesses and industries. Trillions of taxpayers’ dollars are being spent on corporate welfare, much of it ending up in the pockets of previously “free-market” libertarians and anti-regulation zealots.
Of course, Ukraine is participating in this orgy of public spending, but on a smaller scale, because the government is broke. It may be just as well, as the early signs aren’t encouraging. So far, nations are pumping money into the same old decaying structures and decadent people who got the world into this mess in the first place.
The United States has admitted that it doesn’t know how hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money is actually being spent. Some of it went to banks, ostensibly to stimulate lending. Instead, money was squandered on lavish executive bonuses, acquisitions and writing off bad debt. In other words: profits are privatized, losses are socialized.
Many nations understandably want to keep workers employed. Let’s take the automobile industry, for example. If all nations bail out their automakers, how will this improve the world? We will end up with more cars, which the world hardly needs now.
Hopefully, the panic will subside and the politicians will invest in the future – by spending more on green, renewable energy, for instance – instead of continuing to pour money down rat holes in desperate attempts to revive the failed status quo.
