So investment bank Bear Stearns has gone belly up, and the FBI is looking into the mortgage lending practices of Countrywide and others. As a financial analyst quoted in a Bloomberg article this morning put it:

One reason banks are losing money is the repeal nine years ago of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking after excessive risk- taking contributed to the Great Depression, Eveillard said.

Well, duh.

And, hey, maybe having the meat inspectors work for the meat packing companies wasn’t such a great idea, and perhaps privatising government — and thereby eliminating the checks inherent in a civil service system — was not such a great idea, either. Mercenary armies? Bad idea (see a fellow by the name of Machiavelli on this one). I remember when the Pete Wilson administration in California eliminated Great-Depression era laws capping interest rates and the amount of air that could be in a loaf of bread. Who in their right minds would do these things? Laissez-faire, trickle down? Wait, didn’t we settle these questions several depressions, and several reform movements ago?

And while we’re at it, how about raising fleet fuel standards for automobiles, and beginning planning for the post-oil era? Maybe an end to suburbanization, a resumption of urban planning, and a reconstruction of our rail network might also be in order. Enforcement of the Sherman anti-trust act, a withdrawal from Iraq — I mean, good gods, the US polity in its collective judgment appears to be thoroughly short-sighted and ignorant. Wave that flag in jingoistic fervor all you want (uber-nationalism? Anybody here remember the fine example set by those nationalists par excellence, the Nazis? Didn’t nationalism go out of style with the British Empire, or at least with the demise of demagogues extraordinaire, Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević?), but the earth will not grow a caramel nougat center of oil, nor will real estate speculation and gambling ever make a sound economy.

Excuse my cynicism at the cravenness and stupidity I see around me, all covered with a gloss of contented self-assurance (’We’re rich, therefore we must be God’s annointed’). It can’t last, you know; it’s just not the way of world. It’s time to wake up.

One can probably gather why I’ve just about given up saying anything about the antics of my fellow citizens. Truly, they are a people who appear to be busily eating their seed corn. I mean, for the love of Gaia, did our president actually try to justify torture? Again?

I think I’ll just shut up now.

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