as a depiction of the Laffer Curve (math majors: please don't kill yourselves), we now get some more economizing and fiscalitude from the Wall Street Journal. Today, financial geniuses at the WSJ have seen fit to explain to us plebes what caused the current credit crisis and exploding economy (not to mention amazing alliteration).
Here you go, read the whole thing. It's cool, I'll wait.
Dum de dum, doot doot dee doo. .....Back? Yeah, don't worry if these words are exciting and new for a few minutes. That's just the language center of your brain consciously forgetting the English language to protect itself from further harm.
People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.
Other, less stupid people wonder if a nation dumb enough to have a major financial newspaper that prints an article like this should be surprised when it's economy explodes.
One had better explain that.
Oh, do tell.
The path to 50% wealth reductions and the death of Wall Street was paved with good intentions,
...if you think Ayn Rand was a font of moral wisdom...
notably the notion that all should own a house, even if that required giving away the house to untutored borrowers with low-to-no-interest loans.
Because as we all know, the only people with the power to wreck our economy are poor people, with their innovative "lack of money" approach to controlling the world's money supplies. Nevermind the fact that Community Reinvestment Act loans are defaulting at a lower rate than traditional mortgages. That would get in the way of blaming poor people for simultaneously having no money and taking all of our money.
"Little or nothing that has occurred through this crisis discredits the system of free-market capitalism."
Minus, of course, the complete economic implosion caused by unfettered and unregulated capitalism at the highest economic levels. Beyond that, though, little or nothing, like the man says. But Merry Christmas! Yay, now our economy is saved!
"In this instance, the system has been badly used -- by mere people."
Yes. Mere people. Those salt of the earth, everyday, working class, multi-million- and billionaire investment bankers. No one could have seen this coming, no one could have predicted, etc. & etc.
"It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people."
And, statistically, overwhelmingly these "just people" are going to be Christians, not atheists. I don't recommend holding your breath while waiting for the author to reconcile these facts, nor while waiting for him to explain how a holiday greeting will reverse whatever imaginary trend he's going on about.
Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.
The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines.
So true. It's not as if, for example, Mortgage Fraud was most likely to occur in the Southeast and Midwest, bastions of American Christianity. Oh, wait, it's exactly like that. But saying Merry Christmas will totally fix that. Somehow. Merry Christmas!
So, which is scarier: The War on Christmas exploding our economy, or that people take the Wall Street Journal seriously?
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