Dispatch from Iceland: "Everybody is very tired — watching your country suffer like this is almost like watching someone you love become ill, it’s like suffering from a broken heart. Most of our tycoons seem to have left the country, and the government is under police protection — a first — but it doesn’t seem like people are angry or aggressive. We are stunned, very surprised, that this expansion adventure that made a few people very rich but didn’t really affect the general public, has turned out this disastrous."
Sounds insightful, poignant, etc, but this Icelandic journalist derives wise and unwise conclusions alike. Yes, community is good, and "greed, arrogance and materialism" should be "replaced by care and gratitude."
But before we all light a candle and warble Solidarity Forever, consider this: we are witnessing some very disturbing power grabs unseen within the western world for many decades. These overreaching expansions of the state are being designed by the very same crew of central/investment banker pollyannas who helped get us into this mess-- and then, unbelievably, told us a scant six months ago that everything was under control.
Contrary to the clamor for socialism heard now round the world, the nationalization of banking sectors for anything more than a brief spell is bad news. Is it likely that that central bankers who kept rates artificially low and credit unsustainably abundant will not make still more foolish mistakes with the extraordinary increase in financial assets that they have just now taken under their control?
We have too many, not too few, carpetbaggers battening on the federal government. The fed's de facto creation of national champion banks in this country is only going to compound the rot in DC.
Socialism is fine for children, the sick, and the elderly. But healthy adults under 70 need markets and market discipline. We need more protection and targeted state intervention for the former and less for the latter.
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