I know most of you have probably been following the news and are aware of the gloomy conditions on Wall Street, well, that is unless you’re one my students from a class I teach at the local campus, the majority of whom had no idea to what I was referring when I mentioned the topic the other night. (Ah, but wouldn’t it be nice to be as blissfully oblivious to dire times as the young?)

So, in case you’re one of my students, let me briefly fill you in regarding conditions on Wall Street: The Stock Market is in deep doo-doo.

More precisely, according to an article by David Boder (2008) in Thursday’s The Advocate (my newspaper of choice), the current situation on Wall Street is “the greatest crisis to confront the American economic system in three-quarters of a century” (p. 7B). And that, by the way, in case you’re a student, is a reference to when the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and initiated an era that became known as The Great Depression.

Of course, one has to wonder why today’s stock market is in such a dismal state of affairs? Well, although I am far from being an expert on the stock market or the economy or anything else, I do read the newspaper; as I result, I have gathered there are several factors contributing to this current dilemma, including Bush’s Folly in the Middle East and the outrageous price of fuel. The main factor, however, is apparently the housing bust and credit crisis, a crisis that resulted from banks allowing just about anyone to obtain a loan as long as the person was capable of making an “X” on the bottom line and regardless of the person’s ability to repay said loan.

So, thanks to the American banking system’s largess, politicians are now scrambling around on Capitol Hill as they desperately search for a solution to this mess; and the solution that’s currently on the table is for Uncle Sam to step in and bail out all the banks that extended loans to people who could not repay those loans yet obtained those loans anyway. And what will be the cost of this bailout? (There’s always a price tag, isn’t there?) Well, the estimated cost will be $700 billion, which means that Congress will have to raise the ceiling for the national debt from today’s mere $10.6 trillion to an all-time-high of $11.3 trillion, which, by the way, means a cost of “$37,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States” (Advocate, 2008, p. 6B). Yes, that’s right, we, the American taxpayers, are the ones who will ultimately pay for all those toxic loans the banks granted to people so they could buy houses, cars, and other big-ticket items they could not afford. Moreover, although we, the American taxpayers, will be left footing the bill, those same banks’ allowed CEOs to pocket millions of dollars in salaries, bonuses, and perks.

In fact, according to an article in Friday’s Advocate, by Associated Press business writers Rachel Beck and Ellen Simon, many of those CEOs jumped ship well before all this mess hit the proverbial fan—like rats abandoning a sinking ship—and took outrageously munificent severance packages with them as they plunged overboard (Advocate, 2008). For example, “Stanley O’Neal walked away from Merrill Lynch with a package worth about $66 million. Less than a year later, the storied investment house was forced into takeover by Bank of America” (Advocate, 2008, p. 6A). Now I ask you, dear reader, where else but in corporate America could someone be paid—and generously so—for leading a company into bankruptcy?

By the way, speaking of bankruptcy, did you know the national debt was but a mere $5.7 trillion when George W. Bush waltzed into the Oval Office almost eight years ago? Yet, after two wars and “an era of allegedly conservative, fiscally responsible Republican domination,” that debt now stands at $9.7 trillion (Advocate, 2008, p. 6B). And if that figure isn’t scary enough, it “might rise another $1 trillion before Bush steps down on Jan. 20” (Advocate, 2008, p. 6B).

And what does the Bush Presidency have to do with rats abandoning a sinking ship? Well, just think about it. George is getting ready to leave office, isn’t he? And when he does, won’t he retire to his ranch in Crawford, where he’ll clear brush and write his memoirs for what will more than likely be a seven-figure advance? And exactly what is our illustrious President leaving behind in the wake of his retirement? What he is leaving behind, dear reader, is a “staggering, long-term debt, perhaps in excess of $11 trillion, that will tie the hands of the next president and Congress, to say nothing of imposing a crushing burden on taxpayers” for a long, long time to come (Advocate, 2008, p. 6B). And if that’s not abandoning a sinking ship, I don’t know what is. Then again, don’t worry, be happy, for the House is lobbying for a second stimulus package for us, the American taxpayers; and when we receive those generous checks, perhaps we’ll either be able to buy groceries for another week or else fill up our cars’ fuel tanks, although I seriously doubt, given the state of America’s economy, that we’ll be able to do both. 

Beck, R. & Simon, E. (2008) Fleeing CEOs got millions. Associated Press. The Advocate. Baton Rouge, La. Friday, September 26, 2008. p. 6A.

Boder, D. (2008) Congress must act soon on market solution. Washington Post Writers Group. The Advocate. Baton Rouge, La. Thursday, September 25, 2008. p. 7B.

Our Views. The Advocate. Baton Rouge, La. Thursday, September 25, 2008; p. 6B.