Now, this right here is the kind of banking we can git behind. The Redneck Bank, "where bankin’s funner!” is paying some of the rootinest-tootinist rates in the whole gosh dern U.S. of A. .Okay, actually the Redneck Bank offers a 5.25 percent rate on their FDIC-insured checking accounts, about what other online banks offer. But, with those other banks you don't get you're very own Redneck Bank debit card with a braying horse head on it. Yes, this is real.
The incendiary Camille Paglia is back in Salon, thank goodness, excoriating the Obama administration's "smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes." They may have been "shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries," but now seem like "dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship."
Ka-boom. She makes especial point of a subject that was little noted in the US, but caused a great ruckus in Great Britain; Obama's serially boorish mishandling of the state visit by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Hey, weren't the Obama people supposed to be good at the ceremonial stuff?
Thomas Friedman, without so much as an "Oh, by the way, I have absolutely no expertise in this subject," serves up a healthy dose of panic in the New York Times today. Unless Obama does much more to "fix" the financial sector, he says, we are all doomed. Yup. Doomed.
"The problem with this crisis is that A.I.G., Citigroup and General Motors — and your neighbor’s subprime mortgage — are not Dogfood.com, " Friedman writes. "You let the market clear them away, and we could all be wiped out with them."
We will be wiped out. All of us. The end of Citigroup, GM and A.I.G, means the end of the United States, the collapse of civilization itself and indeed the end of the human species. But don't panic
The Grinder has no economic expertise. We feel lucky if our bank balance stays in the black. But we do know that the Panic of 2008 was just that, a panic. Hence, the name. We also feel sure that, just as human beings managed to exist before Citigroup, we could somehow find a way to endure without it.
Financial panics for countries, basically, work like panic attacks do for people. When you are having one, it seems like the world will end. But when it's over, you realize you were never in any serious danger, and the self-created anxiety was the worst part.
Economies, generally, grow while going through booms and busts along the way. At least, they always have. Left alone, no bailouts, no stimulus, no government intervention, this economy too will bounce back.
Friedman and his ilk (oh yeah, "ilk") are talking about a bunch of fiscal Xanax. They want an end to the financial crises now. Immediately. Today, if not sooner. They want some combination of tax dollars and financial chicanery to immediately recreate boom conditions. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the kind of thinking that got us in this mess.
There is an old saying that shortcuts sometimes turn out to be the long way around. Friedman's ideas, like "doubling the economic stimulus" are the sort of shortcut that goes through a mean, crazy neighbor's backyard. And he has dogs.
