Bailout Blues

I hate to say it, but all of this Bailout talk that has been going on over the last two or three months can probably, to a large extent, be summed up with one descriptive word-payoff. I know that's simplistic and doesn't begin to tell the whole story, and that might not have even been the original intent. However, it seems to me that as more and more people begin to line up at the trough to feed from the slop, its obvious that a lot of people want in on the game, and its hard to blame them.

It's almost like the people that are leaving power set this up as a way of rewarding jobs well done, and the incoming power elites are going along with it as a means of purchasing and in some cases keeping their loyalty.

There are some legitimate problems, without a doubt, and there would no doubt be real chaos if this were not done, but there probably will be anyway. This is just prolonging the agony, though you can make the case that it might cushion the initial shock somewhat.

I've been thinking for a long time now, the more intertwined the world economy becomes, the more people are going to be affected when-not if, but when-it crashes and burns.

It's time for the US to return to the days of bi-lateral trade and defense treaties. The recent chaos screams that to anybody with ears to hear. I am not-repeat not-promoting isolationism. I do not propose that we build a two hundred foot tall electric fence around the entirety of the United States borders and never let anybody in or out. I do not suggest we never trade with anyone, or that we never enter into mutual defense pacts. But the current situation is untenable, simply because it is unmanageable. Where is the accountability? Multinational bureaucracies are a necessity to oversee multilateral trade and defense treaties, yet they are a government and a law unto themselves. It's time to pull the plug.

It would be better if we could just phase out gradually the way we phased in, but I don't think that will work. I wonder if its really too late to do anything but just set back and watch as the world either enters into a period of repressive multinational bureaucratic tinkering with national sovereignty, or the world collapses and falls back into a period of Dark Ages tribalism. I don't think there's any easy answers.

Maybe we're already in the Dark Ages and have been for some time. Did the people that lived in Greece between the Mycenaean and Classical periods really have it that bad, from their perspective? It's a lot easier to judge things from the outside looking in?

Put another way, have we really had it all that good? You tend to adjust your outlook to meet the demands of any current situation. Is there's any kind of Renaissance in our future comparable to that which followed in the Europe of the Middle Ages, or with the Classical Greeks? I hate to say it, but by the time it gets here all of us here now will probably be dust.