經濟廣角:年經濟救助的後見之明

The big bailout of ‘08, or hindsight is blind
Sometimes you just don’t know what to think.

On the one hand, there’s Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, which takes an outraged look at the havoc that the financial crisis has caused on your basic, working (or now non-working) American citizen. Yeah, I know, a lot of you folks would drop Mr. Moore off a mountain made of his own money if you had the chance. But the guy can make a case.

His point is that our economic system is controlled by idiots, con-men and selfish, greedy SOBs who don’t give a damn about us and run the system for their own benefit. I don’t think you have to be a flag-waving leftie like Mr. Moore to agree with that one. I think a lot of Glenn Beck people would sign on to that premise.

The fat man in the hat is also righteously peeved that the Government bailed out all those big banks and insurance companies that nearly brought us all down. And again, there’s a fair chunk of right-thinking America that’s hopping mad about that, too. So maybe Moore’s anti-capitalist screed is actually an interesting nexus at the point where right and left converge in hatred of the system that rewards failure and lets the bad guys run the next iteration of the machine. Nobody ever lost money at this point underestimating the anger of the American people.

And of course we all have plenty to be angry about. We could spend the next decade yelling at, prosecuting and punishing the moral morons and stupid geniuses who gave us our recession.

But then there’s James B. Stewart’s exhaustive, exhausting look at the “Eight Days” that shook the world back in September of 2008, in the September 21st, 2009, issue of The New Yorker. It’s a tick-tock about the week that the guys who run global capitalism bumbled their way toward the decision to go socialist for a while and bail out the system that pays for their limos.

What you see is how close we all came to losing pretty much everything — our collective life savings, our homes, the insurance that protects us from disaster (subject to acts of God and any other consideration they can think of to avoid paying you). We get a worm’s-eye view of familiar figures like Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, Bank of America’s Ken Lewis, Lehman’s clueless Dick Fuld, pre-bonus John Thain of Merrill, the gang from AIG, thrashing around trying to figure out how to prevent the entire mess from going down the drain it was circling.

If you haven’t looked it up, you should. If it shows nothing else, it demonstrates how in a crisis the false divisions that separate one global behemoth from another, and private enterprise from Government, dissolve, leaving a management team all working for the same big corporation. You know it. You work for it too.

So that’s where I’m stuck, another year older and deeper in debt, as the old song goes. On the one hand, you’ve got to hate the fact that the miscreants wriggled off the hook, and that in many ways — just like after the fall of Communism in eastern Europe — the same creeps who screwed things up are back running the store, the new boss same as the old boss. All those big bailouts make a lot of people want to scream, and truly, there are so many things to despise about Wall Street. On the other hand, where would we be if the so-called free-marketplace had been allowed to go down, to be righteously allowed to fail? Every single person now reading this, and even those losers who aren’t, would be up the creek.

I don’t know where I come out. I’m confused. So I guess I’ll just handle that like everybody else these days. I’ll get mad! Ah, that feels better!

有時候真的不知道該如何想。

從一方面來說，邁克爾•摩爾（Michael Moore）的新片《資本主義：一個愛情故事》用一種憤激的眼光來看待這場經濟危機給美國公民(無論是有工作的還是失業的)帶來的大浩劫。 是的，我知道，如果有機會，你們中的很多人都會想把摩爾從他積累的金山上扔下來，但是這傢伙有自己的論證。

他認爲現今操縱經濟體系的人是一羣自私而又貪婪的白癡和騙子。他們不管我們的死活，只爲自己的利益來操縱一切。我不認爲如果你同意他的看法，就說明你和他一樣是個極端狂熱的左翼分子。我覺得支持格倫•貝克（Glenn Beck）的人都會同意他的說法。

這個戴帽子的胖子同樣義正言辭地對政府的行爲表示憤怒，指責政府給大銀行和保險公司提供的救助金險些讓我們大衆垮掉。再者，還是有很多腦筋正常的美國民衆對此暴跳如雷。也許摩爾反資本主義的長篇大論其實是一個左、右翼人士思想的整合，表達他們對於整個體系的憎惡，痛恨整個體系帶來的失敗，並且讓很多壞蛋繼續操縱下一輪的運作。沒有人會因爲低估美國人民的憤怒情緒而遭受損失。

當然我們有充分的理由感到憤怒。我們在未來十年裏會不斷聲討，檢舉懲罰那些帶給我們這場蕭條的那些愚蠢的“天才”和泯滅良知的笨蛋。

但是詹姆斯•斯圖亞特（James B. Stewart）又在2009年9月21日的《紐約客》雜誌中，發表他對2008年9月震驚世界的“八天”冗長無聊的見解。大約就是在那一週，操縱經濟體系的那些人開始慢慢地的使用社會主義的方法，給支付他們豪華轎車的經濟系統以援助。

你將看到我們是如何接近失去幾乎所有一切的——我們畢生的積蓄、我們的房子、我們用以抵禦災難的保險（像是天災和其他能免賠保險的事故）。我們仰視那些熟悉的角色：保爾森（Paulson）、伯南克（Bernanke）、蓋特納（Geithner）、美國銀行的肯•劉易斯（Ken Lewis），雷曼無能的迪克•富爾德（Dick Fuld），美林的約翰•塞恩（John Thain）還有美國國際集團的那夥人，他們在拼命地尋找防止一切向更可怕境地發展的辦法。

如果你沒有觀察過他們，那麼你真應該看看。即使沒看到別的，至少也可以看到在這次經濟危機中，將各大全球化的企業、私人企業與政府分開的錯誤分割被取消，只留下一個管理團隊爲同一個大公司工作。你知道這是什麼公司，你也在爲其工作。

這就是我的痛處，就像那首老歌裏唱的那樣，我又老了一歲，而且負債更多。一方面，你必定會憎恨的事實是，那些混蛋還是會以各種方式掙脫枷鎖捲土重來——就像東歐劇變之後一樣——把一切搞糟的那羣人回來了，經營着商店，老闆還是以前的老闆。所有的救助計劃都會讓許多人難以忍受，華爾街確實有太多地方讓人瞧不起了。但另一方面，如果不救助這個所謂的自由市場，任由其垮掉，順其自然地垮掉，我們又會如何呢？正在讀這篇文章，甚至還有那些沒在讀的失敗者們，都必將處於窘迫的困境。

我不知道自己該怎麼辦了，我很困惑。我想目前我可能會和其他所有人一樣去對待這一切，我要發脾氣了！啊！這樣感覺好多了！