It's too bad the overwhelming majority of the Occupy protesters have no clue about economics. If they did, they wouldn't be anywhere else but camped out in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., where the notion "too big to fail" has just been given a dose of steroids.
On Friday, when the self-congratulatory protesters were busy self-congratulating themselves, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that the United States, via the International Monetary Fund (IMF), would play a "very major" role in bailing out the European Union. In other the words, the largest debtor nation in the history of the world will be borrowing more money from the Chinese to lend to the second largest collection of debtors in the world.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president after America endured four years under the second-worst Chief Executive in the history of the republic, one of the first things he did was giving a cherished progressive nostrum the clubbing it so richly deserved. After years of being told that we must "accommodate," find "an understanding" or achieve "detente" with the collection of gangsters known as the Soviet Union, Reagan cut through all the progressive b.s.: the U.S.S.R. was an "evil empire" which needed to be defeated. Why was the Soviet Union evil? Because it was a transnational government imposing its will on sovereign nations against the wishes of those nations.
What does that make European Union? Does a bunch of transnational gangsters with better PR work? It ought to, unless you think a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussells calling the shots for sovereign nations, irrespective of the will of those nations, constitutes something else. Sure the EU constitution says they don't have the right to do that in theory, but who's kidding whom? While the EU strong-arms its individual member state leaders to approve more bank bailouts, does anyone seriously believe the majority of Europeans in even one of those countries remotely support that idea?
In a survey taken in August, which asked whether or not bailouts should be used again even if they were necessary to keep the EU intact, the no versus yes tabulations reveal the truth: in Germany, it was 59 percent no versus 20 percent yes; in France it 47-27; in the UK 65-13. As for remaining in the Union itself, both France and Germany support the idea -- even as they overwhelmingly support the idea of kicking Greece out. In other words, they like their Union, as long as they can kick the deadbeat nations out of it.
All well and good, but what if the so-called fiscal "contagion" takes hold of Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain as well? What if half of Europe is asked to bail out the other half? And what if the strikes and riots that are becoming a regular part of the Greek ethos, strikes and riots which have already manifested themselves to a disturbing degree in the aforementioned countries, ratchet themselves up?
Perhaps the saddest thing about the Occupy movement in all of its manifestations around the world is the fact that it is advocating exactly what precipitated the global crisis to begin with: parasitic socialism, in all its self-entitled, spend other people's money until we run out of it glory. They're railing against the financial elitists, even as they propose giving one-world elitist bureaucrats free reign to solve the problem?
I've got a hot flash for the American protesters: who do you think gave Timothy Geithner the green light to be Europe's bagman? Which political philosophy do you think countenances the idea of dumping trillions of borrowed dollars into the socialist sinkholes of the world, in order to preserve the moocher status quo? How is it possible to rail against the gross irresponsibility of Wall Street brokers and bankers, even as their government enablers -- or more accurately, government shakedown artists -- get a free pass?
You think it's any accident that those who have come out in support of this movement include the president, the Democrat Party, public service unions, the Communist and Nazi parties, Hollywood, and the Iranian government? You don't like the fact that the banks and Wall Street were bailed out?
Who do you think authorized them to be bailed out?
The Occupy movements embody the deadliest combination of human shortcomings: fear and anger coupled with ignorance and self-entitlement. It is epitomized by racial arsonist and professional rabble rouser Al Sharpton, who told a crowd on Saturday that "If you won't get the jobs bill done in the suite, we will get the jobs bill done in the street!" A jobs bill? More like another $447 billion boondoggle even Senate Democrats couldn't stomach. Another sop directed at the terminally gullible, who remain thoroughly convinced that someone owes them something, even as they remain blissfully immune to the reality that if everyone had that attitude, no one would have anything.
So Timmie the Bagman is headed to Europe in an inevitably futile effort to prop up the despicable combination of crony capitalists, sclerotic national governments and the very same kind of Europeans, who like their American counterparts, believe the bottomless gravy boat is a birthright. All to maintain a system of transnational elitists who, up until recently, have distracted enough little people with bread and circuses to keep them from understanding that sloth, self-entitlement and an utter lack of dignity are lousy substitutes for ambition self-reliance and integrity. All to maintain the utter bankruptcy of the socialist/Marxist philosophy embraced by the true believers and their rapidly growing legions of useful idiots.
Be careful what you wish for, comrades. You might just get it.
