The Good Samaritan

Political? No question. "Punish winners on the downside?" Most definitely. But why split hairs? Punish winners, period. By then, the whole mortgage market had been polluted. Pretty paper printed, with no value behind it. All those freebee mortgages simply were never going to get paid. They should have been trashed and written off as welfare expense immediately.

Instead, all those young geniuses from university economics departments were recruited to obfuscate the fact; to design paper, in effect; with the intent of prolonging the fiction that these securities held any semblance of value. All the while, everyone was fully aware that 'value' was the only essential ingredient that was missing. They then proceeded to contrive a path so complex, no one could trace it back precisely - certainly not to the government's meddling in the system that had effectively sucked all the value out of the mortgage market in the first place.

Once the ploy had been exposed - when investors demanded their money - the system collapsed. Now the race is on to assign blame. The effort to maintain the fiction of ‘valuable’ securities no longer wins applause. These (securities) were then labeled 'toxic' [a misnomer - nothing toxic about them; 'toxic' implies they were imbued with some secret (value) ingredient when, in fact, they were simply ‘valueless’ as they had always been and would always be].

A similar fate can be expected to befall the dollar as the national debt rises so high that no amount of taxes – even generations out - can suffice to offset it. Reminds of the mob that, after having stripped the victim (value) of his valuables, fits him with cement shoes and pushes him off the bridge. The Good Samaritan sees what's happening, jumps in the water and tries to save the victim - but fails. The Good Samaritan is blamed for the victim’s demise - while the mob continues to operate as before.