09-24-2008, 09:44 PM
The crisis isn't about housing.
It's about debt.
Our financial system's only sustenance is more and more debt.
It's the pieces and dice that animates the action on their huge board game.
It's the real pitchers and batters on which they play their fantasy games of metaphorical baseball.
Housing was simply the most convenient and efficient means with which to convince the masses to take on so much debt. Mainline it, if you will.
As long as the debt continues rising, and new debt can be created to cover old, there isn't a problem.
Until you reach the point at which there are not enough productive means at anyone can continue to work to pay off the debt.
Which is where we presumably are now.
BCam's plan isn't in the cards because it would subvert the game completely, and they won't let that happen. The game is about partly raiding the treasury, but it's also about making the rest of us believe that the players serve some purpose, which the rest of us would be lost without. The wizards cannot allow us to pull back the curtain to see what's really behind it, no matter what.
On a more practical note, BCam's plan would also immediately lower the inflated values of surrounding houses, and that can't be allowed to happen either as this would further expose the real vs nominal values of all shady assets derived from these loans as well -- not to mention piss off the neighbors.
It's about debt.
Our financial system's only sustenance is more and more debt.
It's the pieces and dice that animates the action on their huge board game.
It's the real pitchers and batters on which they play their fantasy games of metaphorical baseball.
Housing was simply the most convenient and efficient means with which to convince the masses to take on so much debt. Mainline it, if you will.
As long as the debt continues rising, and new debt can be created to cover old, there isn't a problem.
Until you reach the point at which there are not enough productive means at anyone can continue to work to pay off the debt.
Which is where we presumably are now.
BCam's plan isn't in the cards because it would subvert the game completely, and they won't let that happen. The game is about partly raiding the treasury, but it's also about making the rest of us believe that the players serve some purpose, which the rest of us would be lost without. The wizards cannot allow us to pull back the curtain to see what's really behind it, no matter what.
On a more practical note, BCam's plan would also immediately lower the inflated values of surrounding houses, and that can't be allowed to happen either as this would further expose the real vs nominal values of all shady assets derived from these loans as well -- not to mention piss off the neighbors.