Taking a break from more and more guitar practice I decided to weigh in on the current banking “crisis”.

In case you’ve missed it, people with lots of money are trying to scare people without money. They are claiming nothing short of societal collapse and that if Americans don’t give the rich who screwed everything up close to 850 billion dollars then we’re going to have another Great Depression!

Now, I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know if there’s going to be bad things happening. I’ll wager most likely someone’s screwed, but probably only the major banks that fucked everything up for us in the first place. I do not enjoy the thought of bailing these asswipes out without something in return. I also despise the fact that they’re trying to convince “Main Street” that it will prevent another depression.

However, I have an idea that may make this a fair trade.

I’ll Trade Your Golden Parachute For Some Surgery

Just in case everyone forgot what capitalism is all about, it’s about trade by contract. It is not about fucking corporations. It’s about me giving you money, which binds you into a contract to give me a service. Any time I don’t get something in return (even a single penny) it’s called an unconscionable contract and lacks consideration.

My problem with any bailout is that I’m not getting anything in return. I mean, I’d trade my tax money for bailing out a few banks if maybe I saw some CEOs get put to the guillotine. I am actually not joking about that. I think the quickest way to get the bailout approved is to drag the leadership of every bank in the country into a large stadium and begin beheading them on national TV. Then threaten to stop the beheadings if every American doesn’t donate fifteen-thousand dollars by Monday.

Well, beheadings are a little old fashioned, but what about a fair trade?

Why don’t we trade the bankers tons of money for socialized medicine?

It’s fucking brilliant because it trades one form of socialism for another form. They get corporate socialism in the form of bank holdings being purchased and we get free medical care for every American forever. I mean, they’re being bailed out forever, so that’s only fair.

This may seem radical, but it’s actually not too far fetched. Take a look at what we could be buying:

• AIG is a huge insurance company that could run the insurance.
• Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are loan providers that can provide loans for hospitals, housing, clinics, etc.
• Any banks doomed to die like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley become the Sovereign Wealth Fund Of The United States and work completely to reduce the American tax burden and fund health care.

The goal of the bailout would then change from saving a bunch of rich assholes who fucked up the economy, to turning these rich assholes into socialists. What we’d get is a fully functional sovereign wealth fund that exists to power an autonomous arm of the government providing health insurance for free.

There’s one final catch to this plan which makes it brilliant: Doctors and hospitals still stay private corporations that take loans rather than partake of the socialized system. This is essential because in countries where both the insurance and the care are socialized, the government has too much control over who gets treated and how. By having the two sides at odds, we’ll have a competitive system that should function more smoothly.

But Free Medicine For Kids Isn’t Capitalist!

Neither is buying bad assets from failed entrepreneurs. You didn’t see the government running out to buy failed tech startups when we went into the shitter in 2000. Incidentally, all of that was caused by these same bankers running massive pump-and-dump schemes using shitty technology companies. Yet, you didn’t see them running around begging to save these start-ups. They just let them die and took it on the chin from Elliot Spitzer.

Which brings up another thing I haven’t heard anyone mention: Who actually owns these assets we’ll be buying at above market value? Homeowners you say? Really? The “homeowners” who “own” their homes because they got a loan from a bank under shady circumstances? Those homeowners?

Nope, really the banks do. That’s the part that’s so funny. Congress and everyone is running around saying that we’ll be buying “distressed assets” as if we’ll be handing out free houses to the poor or saving some kid from losing his favorite spider man wallpaper. No such thing is going on. We’re handing a shit load of money to rich banks so they don’t have to do their jobs.

Their jobs? Yes, what’s really happening is the wealthy banks don’t want to go through the usual bankruptcy process. Our bankruptcy laws were created because of the Great Depression for just this very situation. When people take out too much credit, they have to negotiate with their creditors to save some kind of value and build more favorable terms, or to wash the debt away. The risk to the borrower is they can’t get credit again for many years, but that’s how it should be.

Instead, banks want to have their cake and eat it with extra peanut butter. They want the poor and middle classes to pay for the property with taxes, and they want to take that property from the people who are currently living there. Our government won’t buy these homes and give them to the people. They will pay for them and then hand them back to the banks to sell again at the new market rate.

Go Ahead, Just Give Me Health Care

Back when Bear Stearns ate it I knew something was up. The weekend prior to Bear’s demise I was in late working and there were about 60 people dressed in business clothes running around in a panic. One week later, the company died horribly.

I also predicted that other banks would die too. Then they started to die. Then I found out that the SEC gave Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley special exemptions on their dept-to-capital ratios.

I now predict that the “assets” we’ll buy up are only the ones owned by these five extinct or soon to be extinct companies. The impact will probably not extend much farther than these five.

Yes, you see, our friends in the SEC gave a bunch of companies who had a history of fucking over the economy many times in the past even less limitations on their actions. These companies then went ape shit and built up such massive debt that it crushed them into the center of the earth.

This involves the government and legislators so that means they owe me twice over.

If I bail any companies out, I get health care.

It’s that simple. Any bank that partakes of the giant fund becomes part of the Sovereign Wealth fund. I’ve already paid for AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae, so they’re part of it as well. AIG runs the insurance, the others make money so I pay less taxes. It’s a simple solution.

Libertarians Can Suck My Dick

I’ve always hated Libertarians because they have a distorted idiotic idea of economics. Their view of economics comes from living in a world where there is a solid rule of law already. In our world, we’ve got a government that does set limits on what companies can do because companies are fucking stupid and they fuck over the customers. In true capitalism you can’t have economics without a rule of law to act as the advocate of the customer.

Libertarians seem to think that companies could run things better. It’s interesting that any dumbfuck who thinks this hasn’t worked for a giant company before. Fuck, for any company. Most companies can barely shit in their toilets, let alone run the fucking government.

Let’s put this into perspective: I bought some MP3s from Amazon to study for class, and then I bought some Led Zeplin albums. Amazon’s entire only purpose is to send me content. They are the masters of it. Yet, these dumbfucks screwed up my download midway, marked my download as completed, and then refused to refund my money or give me the rest of the download.

Yes, I want fucking Amazon running the government. They can’t give me $30 of fucking .mp3 files, but they’re going to do shit like process taxes. You realize the IRS processes every American’s taxes, the taxes of all corporations, and manages to fucking audit people accurately enough that we are deathly afraid of them? Most companies can’t even figure out how to collect 20 bucks from a single guy.

The SEC has finally given me even better ammunition against Libertarians. By not enforcing rules against these banks they demonstrated that without a strong rule of law watching out for the consumers, corporatists (not capitalists) will fuck themselves and everyone else in a greed fueled myopic frenzy for money. With the rules in place watching out for the population,and a strong enforcement arm, we get well run companies despite themselves.

In the future, if a Libertarian or a false Republican tries to tell me that I can’t have health care because it’s not capitalist, I’m gonna kick them in the fucking face and stomp their eyes out.