blogging it real

The company that used to pay John Key's salary, before you and I started picking up the bill, is all but bust.

I haven't quite been able to find the right words to characterize the crisis, and the ongoing absurdity of National doing the old "massive tax cuts for all, and more social spending in your favourite areas", but luckily others have done so for me.

First, Blake on PA_system offers some insight into the US situation:

The USA has been borrowing to consume [ed- and wage an entirely 'voluntary' war]. Nobody has loaned the USA money to build factories, to build infrastructure. They have nothing to show for the trillions of dollars the world has loaned them except empty houses, plasma TVs, SUVS.They have blown the money on consumption and this is the problem. Ultimately the solution for the rest of the world is to stop lending them money, let the dollar collapse, let the US economy implode, and the rest of the world just try and go about its business.

There is relevance to the NZ election campaign, as Steve, also on PA_System points out:

National is promising tax cuts even though they are predicated on the formerly prosperous environment applying PRIOR to the implosion of the property bubble, the consequent finance company crashes and the recession now underway.

And a private correspondent offered this measured but nevertheless incisive analysis:

The credit crisis is quite similar to many other financial crises in that it was caused by greed and speculation, and that it was perpetrated by professionals and corporations who knew better but were blinded by the prospect of enrichment. The fact that Wall St's great investment houses have fallen is due process as far as I'm concerned.

I hope we can now say that John Key's "real world experience" casts him firmly as part of the problem rather than as a solution to our problems.

Labels: idiots, john key, national, taxes