Guardians of the Status Quo

I’m not sure what to make of the happy talk I hear from the mainstream media about the American economy, but when pundits of every stripe unanimously crow that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us, and that the housing market is poised for a dramatic rebound, I get nervous and then suspicious. What are the masters of the status quo up to now?

In the Men’s Lounge of a posh Connecticut country club, a pack of blue-blooded moguls are sipping scotch and laughing their asses off about how easy it was to turn their gambling losses into gold, courtesy of the American taxpayer. “Is this the greatest country in the world or what? When I make a pile of dough I get to keep it, and when I lose a pile I just transfer the losses to the little people and walk away scot-free. Boo-yaa!” Better still in the eyes of the moguls, there was no messy democratic process to go through in order to socialize their losses; the great, fat, lazy and stupid masses had no say in the matter at all; their easily bought and sold elected representatives made sure of that. Nope, John and Jane Q. Public didn’t have an opportunity to cast a vote or make their voice heard regarding the Wall Street bailout; all they get is the bill.

To this day the Treasury department can’t account for much of the dough it lavished on the criminals, incompetents and liars who drove the economy over the cliff. Ten million here, twenty-five million there, fifty million to the fat man standing by the door, but nobody knows what the fat man did with his share of the loot; for all the government knows he stuffed his mattress with the money or had himself a helluva weekend in Antigua.

And now the forces behind the status quo are telling us that everything is looking rosy and that happy days are dead ahead. For proof all we need do is look at the stock market. If you believe CNBC, things are turning so ducky that we should shift our focus from stimulus to good old-fashioned fiscal austerity. Notwithstanding that it was Dick Cheney himself who boasted a few years back that “deficits don’t matter,” Republicans have seized on the debt issue like a barracuda on a flounder and are blaming Obama for plunging the nation into the abyss. Sorry, GW Bush and Cheney managed that all by themselves.

Of wages and working people we hear next to nothing. The same goes for homes lost to foreclosure, people up to their necks in credit card or medical debt or families who cannot afford decent food or clothing. The misery is hidden inside the media euphoria and cheerleading over the recent up-tick in the stock market. As long as the crisis is over for the investor class who gives a shit if the masses are hurting? Who gives a shit if California goes bankrupt? The stock market is showing signs of life, and part-time real estate agents all over the country insist that the housing bust is a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, those of us who work for wages get no relief. The cost of gasoline is rising again; Iraq and Afghanistan are sinkholes for our tax dollars; Congress is corrupt and deaf to the plight of everyone except large campaign donors; a rational proposal for a single-payer health care system was swept off the negotiating table before talks even began.

Same old, same old. The high hopes many of us had on Inauguration Day are long gone, crushed by the guardians of the status quo.