Same As It Ever Was

For Rent, For Sale, Closed, Going Out of Business Sale, Not Hiring. Empty buildings, hollowed-out futures, dim prospects, how can you save a bank when its depositors have no money?

This is a one-trillion-dollar bailout, not a fix. It won’t stop one more home from going into foreclosure. Nor will it stop the slide in home prices. It won’t stop the slide in the savings rate or the default rate on car loans and credit cards. The problems at the top are caused by the problems at the bottom. Exported jobs, falling wages, collapsing industries and crippled unions. Until the problems at the bottom are addressed there is no rescue for the top.

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." (John F. Kennedy)

True, they have tried but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-servers. They have no vision, and "when there is no vision, the people perish." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

"During the past year you have carried the credit system of the nation safely through a most difficult crisis. In this success you have demonstrated not alone the soundness of the credit system, but also the capacity of the bankers in emergency." (Herbert Hoover) 1930

Same as it ever was.

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