September is the Crisis Anniversary month for the world. Two events that shook the world this decade happened in September, both in New York. Both changed the world in political and economic terms and both had created more uncertainties and destabilised the world.
The 9/11 World Trade Center attacks by Al Qaeda instigated a massive retaliation by US in Iraq and Afganisthan, the effects of which are being felt even today and will continue in future. The US has spent trillions to avenge the 9/11 attack and has sacrificed many of its citizens in both wars. Iraq has been scarred forever and the US has put countless Iraqi citizens out of their homes and even out of their lives.
These wars have generated their own scandals, Abu Graib, Gitmo, torture, water-boarding (such an innocuous word sounding like a sport akin to snow-boarding), rendition (sounds biblical but very dangerous in practice) and similar exotic practices/phrases. The US is trying to slowly wind down from Iraq, but at the same time increasing the involvment in Afganisthan, much against the wishes of its own citizens. There seems to be no exit strategy from war abroad.
Similar is the story with the other Anniversary, 9/15, the day the financial chiefs let Lehman Brothers collapse, bringing on a Tsunami in the money world, which swept aside and destroyed the wealth of countless individuals and organisations.
It has been proved by the latest revealings in many financial magazines that the top-players in USA at that time did everything with a selfish interest to save their own firms and even some of them were brow-beaten into the scheme, with the Bush Administration having no clue as to what was happening or was going to happen.
It was Paulson all the way designing and implementing the recovery at a very rapid pace to save Goldman and his cronies. The world will continue to pay the price for this for many more years.
'Too Big to Fail' and 'Too Smart to be thrown out' have entered the Capitalistic vocabulary and are once again the underpinnings of the recovery/rebuilding.
And the ultimate 'Too big to fail' is the US itself and the whole world is sustaining what is unsustainable for long. So watch out for a similar scenario happening sometime in next few years. The Bankers are consolidating with the help of public money ready to unleash the next catastrophe on the world. It could come in the form of commerical property collapse, more securitisation may be of carbon/emissions trading, insurance scams (what with Obama feeding the insurance companies with his own Grand Plan), dollar crisis, inflation, and many such unforeseen events. The cost of picking up the pieces then will be more severe.
The exit strategy from this so-called stimulus is still not being thought of.
Two events from which the US and the World are trying to exit without much more damage, but the prognosis is not very good at the moment.
I am not being excessively gloomy, in the face of the nascent recovery and the 'green shoots' that is out there. I am just looking at the countless individuals/instititutions that lost wealth in the collapse as against the very few, bankers and stock holders, who are now benefitting from the small recovery that is happening now. The collapse was broadbased but the present recovey is too narrow to help those who lost everything in the collapse.
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