With unemployment approaching 8%, the world financial system in danger of collapse from an overload of debt, and economists like Nouriel Roubini (the man known as Dr. Doom who correctly called the housing market and U.S. economic collapse when most other economists and analysts were still making a living as "permabulls") claiming the recessionary downturn could easily slide into a long and painful depression, right wing Ayn Randites like the Wall Street Journal op-ed writers, FOX News bobbleheads and "scholars" at wingnut thinktanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute have a solution for how to fix economic Armageddon.Make those lazy, good-for-nothing public employees pay for their own health care and give up their pensions for oh so valuable 401(k) accounts!
You see, the housing bubble and subsequent housing market collapse wasn't caused by greedy bankers at Citigroup, Countrywide, Bank of America and other financial institutions who lent out money to anybody with a pulse so that the greedy real estate industry could inflate the prices of homes way above what Americans could actually afford given that real incomes for 95% of the country have declined during the Bush years.
No, the housing buble and subsequent collapse was created by lazy, good-for-nothing public employees who make less money in the public sector but supplement that income with a health care and pension package.
And you see, the financial crisis that threatens to destroy some of the largest financial institutions in the world wasn't created by crooked bankers, hedge fund managers/education reformers and other Masters of the Universe on Wall Street who overleveraged themselves and their funds 40 to 1 on insane amounts of risk all the while knowing that buddies like Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and George W. Bush would make sure there was a golden parachute for them (currently known as a TARP) that would make sure the only people on the hook for the mess would be their stockholders, clients and U.S. taxpayers..
Nope - it was caused by lazy, good-for-nothing public employees with health care and a pension.
Who knew? Certainly not me - a good-for-nothing, lazy public employee who works in a school with few working computers (even fewer of which are hooked up to working printers), elevators that are always broken (but to be fair, walking up 9 flights of stairs a day has helped keep me trim and svelte - thanks Mayor Bloomberg!!!) and a heating system with two settings - off and HOT AS F#$%ING HELL!!!!
Lucky for us that "scholars" such as Nicole Gelinas at the wingnut welfare office known as the Manhattan Institute know better:
Ms. Gelinas says that the city cannot expect to rely on Wall Street bouncing back, given Washington’s move to curtail bonuses and impose tougher oversight. So what is needed, she says, is a long-term change in mentality. And she says that it is incumbent upon the city and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whom she has criticized in the past as lacking fiscal discipline, to persuade everyone — residents, city workers and businesses — that they must seriously scale back on their lifestyles and their expectations.
...
As a result, the city needs to tighten its belt in the right places — for instance, tackling the rising costs of pensions and health benefits for city employees — without hurting critical services like mass transit and police.
You see, public employees make too much money and expect too many benefits - you know, like health care and the retirement plan they've paid into - and they need to be disabused of these notions right now.
It's not as if public employees like cops, fire fighters or teachers actually do anything worthwhile for society and let's face it, any idiot can do these jobs.
It's not like being a "scholar" at a wingnut institute funded by right-wing interests who gets every prognostication about the economy wrong or a financial CEO who loses hundreds of billions of dollars a year then applies for hundreds of billions of TARP money so that he can hand out bonuses to himself and his cronies and/or redecorate his office for a $1 million+.
No, those kinds of jobs take talent and skill.
So thank god Ms. Gelinas is here to set us straight about who is too blame for this mess and just how we can fix it.
Give out bonuses to Wall Streets even if you have to do it with federal bailout money (it's good for the NYC economy!!!) and curtail all those yummy, yummy giveaways to those lazy, good-for-nothing public employees.
As CNBC economic "expert" Jim Cramer (you know, the guy who has been calling a housing bottom for over a year and thought sub-prime mortgage house Countrywide was a "buy" just a few months before it went belly-up) might said - BOOYAH!!!
Posts
