100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 dollar bank bailouts – your government thinks you are stupid

Death - A new beginning

It can not possibly have escaped anyone's attention that our economic model just collapsed. And I don't mean ran into a little difficulty. Collapsed. Died. Proved itself unviable. Doesn't work. Drowned in a sea of greed and corruption. Collapsed. Dead as the Dodo. No one is admitting it - but that is what just happened. And the world's governments seem intent on resurrecting it. Bigger, better, stronger, more regulated, more government controlled, yet exactly the same. Safer for you and I. Better? How stupid does my government think I am? Pretty bloody stupid apparently. No one asked me if it was OK for them to spend what was left of my government pension on making sure the directors of the merchant banks got to make another few million quid out of this debacle.

While the British government pours untold billions of pounds into bailing out the banks and makes haste to re-write the monopoly laws to allow bigger banks, 80 Barclays bank employees jet off to Italy for a £500,000 corporate trip to Lake Como. It sure sucks to be broke. I wish I was that broke.

I am not even sure I added enough zeros to the amount of money being thrown at the "problem." I wonder if any one does know the actual amount. The US is throwing another 700 billion on top of the un-known amount they have already thrown at Fannie and Freddie; the Russian government has just thrown nearly 200 billion at their state owned banking system; Dubai is throwing another un-known amount at their banks to keep property prices going up rather than correcting along with the rest of the world. All the other European countries are busy propping up their banks and merging them into bigger, better versions.Goodness knows what is happening in China.

Why? The whole point of a free market is to allow it to set it's own prices based on supply and demand. The banks screwed up, shot themselves in the foot - and created a situation where they have lent out thousands of times more money than they had and when the time came to settle up - none of them had the funds.

Good grief! If I had done that, I would be sitting in prison right this minute waiting to see how long I got to spend behind bars.

Listen to Gordon Brown telling us that "This is not a time for conventional thinking or out-dated dogma," and then going on to explain how they are going to do their best to prop up the conventional system and make certain the out-dated dogma that has just failed is allowed to continue.

Me? I would let the banks collapse, pay off individual savers and allow the market to correct itself. Perhaps then we will see some sensible prices for fuel and food.

I just have one question - where is all this money coming from exactly? We didn't have it last week. Yet all of a sudden there is 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 dollars/pounds/rubles/dirhams/bottle tops in the kitty?

Is it any wonder the stock exchanges are still dropping in "value" ? Who even knows if this is even enough money to deal with the problem - Or even if there is enough money to deal with it?. Just printing some more is certainly not going to do it. Watch this space. I predict a new world currency somewhen in the not too long term. Glass beads sounds good to me.

But rather than get all bent out of shape over something I have no control over, here's a nice cartoon to cheer every one up

Credit for Banksta