COLUMN: Time to Get Ready to Paddle

By Tobin Barnes
Something flushed the toilet, and now we’re all white-water rafting down the big dark tube.

Yeah, that’s what it feels like.

Especially for those who closely follow the news. It’s like watching an episodic horror show with daily cliffhangers. And you and me are the victims trying to evade some unseen slasher.

But what was that “something” that flipped the toilet handle in the first place? What sent us into this swirling maelstrom?

Maybe only a select few in the upper reaches of the Fed and Treasury know. After all, they’re the ones privy to all the arcane economic data. But maybe they don’t either.

That could be the really scary thing about this freak show. Could be they’re only guessing and hoping.

And then there’s Congress. They only seem to know what the Fed and Treasury tell them. They’re guessing and hoping big time. Their political lives depend upon making the right votes. But who among us gives a horse’s patoot about their careers. Silly us, we’d like to think they’re doing the right thing, not the electable thing.

In those bailout (rescue?) negotiations of the last couple weeks, many members of Congress have swayed to and fro with the fickle breeze of their constituencies. Uh huh, the irregular pulse of the masses.

Now that’s some really solid criteria to hang your hat on. What does the average constituent know about rewiring high-level economic policy, especially when he knows little or nothing of the details?

Zippo, my friend.

As the late, great George Carlin said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

Sure it gripes everybody’s heinie thinking about those $75-million bonuses on Wall Street and its to-heck-with-everybody-else-as-long-as-I-get-my-bundle attitude. Who wants to give them hundreds of billions of dollars?

But how does that well-founded outrage keep us out of another Great Depression?

I’ve heard some say that what we need is a massive financial crisis like the one the country barely survived in the 1930’s. Clean out the sludge.

No thanks.

That was a twelve-year global nightmare of poverty and misery that was a direct cause of World War II in which tens of millions lost their lives.

No thanks, again.

But don’t get me wrong. Though the average guy in the street is no economic engineer trained in financial fine tuning, all us average Joe’s did see this mess coming, didn’t we?

We knew that the soaring home prices were ridiculous, especially amidst stagnant wages. We knew that those easy credit terms for McMansions were chickens just itching to come home to roost. We knew that credit card debt of eight to nine thousand per household was just plain stupid. We knew that spending like drunken oil sheiks would have to come to a screeching halt sooner or later.

Now didn’t we?

Yeah, it’s not rocket science. Even the average guy who’s George Carlin stupid could see it coming.

But, on the other hand, it just might take rocket science to sort it all out.

Unfortunately, that’s not an encouraging thought.

Supposedly, Wall Street, Congress, the Fed, the Treasury and the think tanks are filled with economic rocket scientists. This stuff is right in their wheelhouse. And they have further expert staffs numbering in the thousands ready to do their bidding.
So where were they the last decade or so? Were they incompetent or plain-old criminal?

Or were they just asleep at the switch?

Are they awake now? Someone check.

Hello.

Is anybody there?