I am a bad person
posted by Nate Oman
I have a guilty secret, one that reveals what a truly perverse soul I am: I have been enjoying the financial meltdown.
Not at any deep existential level, you understand. People losing their homes is rough, I am not thrilled when investors take billions in losses, and the prospects of the federal government stepping in with $700 billion buy of other people’s bad debts makes me a bit sick. Rather, what I am talking about is the fun of watching the whole thing. After months (and months and months and months and months) of largely vacuous political debate and even more vacuous punditry about the vacuousness, there is something refreshing, even exhilarating, about opening up the newspaper and reading about something real. Sad and in many ways horrific, to be sure, but also exciting, fast moving, and undeniably substantive. Unlike what Pallin might or might not have done to this or that Alaska state trooper, this is something that I can convince myself actually matters.
September 22, 2008 at 8:00 am
Posted in: Uncategorized
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Responses (5)
Deven - September 22, 2008 at 11:27 am
And yet there may be more guilt: similarly vacuous discussions about things that matter.
Jack S. - September 22, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I’m right with you Nate. Perhaps why I wish they would let the “free market” do it’s work. It’s not about punishment, it’s about letting the natural forces do their thing (though I’d like to point out that I hope New Orleans and Galveston get help they need…is that a double standard?)
dave hoffman - September 22, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Nate
Wait a week. The coverage on this will surely turn as frivolous and groan-inducing as political coverage, once people get over the shock.
Kaimi - September 22, 2008 at 4:01 pm
You heard it here first: A Fannie Lynch board member has a daughter who’s pregnant inside of wedlock. Also, a Lehman Mac officer was photographed in a stars-and-stripes bikini, while holding an underwriting agreement and cackling maniacally.
Jon Garfunkel - September 22, 2008 at 9:56 pm
As Timothy Noah writes in Slate, no one enjoys a financial scandal like Washington: “On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.”
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