on money (in the abstract)

[alice wellintown]

But the public can't deny it is complicit in the risk taking, the
excessive exuberance, the pyramids and ponzies, the bubbles and
schemes; it was, after all, where the public put their pension
dollars, their tax deferred dollars, their Line of Credit Dollars,
their HELOC dolloars, and all the other dollars they took from those
mortgages they gave to banks. And the banks got beat by the people.
The banks got their asses kicked. People were talking real estate and
stocks and commodiities. Folks were in up to their eyeballs and
breathing through a straws laced with white powder and fine print. It
was a good party. Ask any cab driver, any waiter, any carpenter,
fireman, teacher, small businesswoman, bank executive, go-g dancer,
immigrant undocumented, engineer, landscaper, shoe shine,
telemarketer, computer programmar, wall street trader, ....anyone on
the streets. It was good times. And Clinton was the man. Bush and 9-11
came and all got rather frightening rahter fast, but people had sold
their young, their kids, their futures, their souls.

Ain't thjis the lesson of two of them recent Pynchon books? The wall
streeters attracted the most ambitious and brightest, the most
innovative and creative people; the colleges pumped them into the
street and the folks who leveraged their houses to pay the tuitions to
get the kids into those coveted positions did so knowing that they
were taking a big chance. It was like the battle royal, first chapter
of IM. The sharks had the poor lads where they wanted them. Come to
college, learn to play the game. Make the big bones. The Chinese, no
strangers to gambling, floodeded america with dragon dollars, and they
knew that they were putting safe money at risk, lower risk, they
assumed, than domestic gambles, but still safer. They got their asses
kicked too.

The little man and so little and the bailouts are for everyone just
like welfare.