Procrastinet

My New Bloghero: Bill Ritter (I KNOW! Who knew?!)

filed under: Idle Chatter

Bill Ritter, for those of you not in NYC, is the host of the 11 o'clock ABC local news. I don't watch local news if I can possibly avoid it, so I can't really talk about him as an anchor. I had lumped him, if I thought of him at all, into the Local News Doofus dustbin of my mind.

Then, somehow, I ended up following a link to his blog, "Behind the News with Bill Ritter," which apparently he writes daily about the themes that will be explored that night.

I ended up at this story, which isn't extraordinary except in its lucid level-headedness. Specifically, it combats the schadenfreude that most are feeling as Wall Street gets its "comeuppance," with a practical take on how financial money feeds New York City:

So go ahead -- laugh at them, mock their work-all-the-time schedules -- but the hard truth is that Wall Streeters keep so many of the rest of us employed. They eat in restaurants, take their expensive clothes to dry cleaners, go to movies, tip service workers, hire town car drivers - in short, they spend their money. And if they don't have money -- like the thousands who have been laid off, and the thousands more who are likely to lose their jobs -- then they won't dole out the cash. That's the trickle down, and it will have a horrible effect on all those who depend on investment banker types to make their livings.

It also affects everyone else. The taxes generated by these people are a huge and disproportionate percentage of government revenue, and without that money, services will be cut, and government payrolls slashed. Talk about a snowballing situation.

Having said all that, what's emerging from this upheaval on Wall Street is disturbing to say the least. These huge investment firms seem to have leveraged themselves out of business. Billions in debt that can't be repaid, and interest payments that are drowning their cash flow. If we operated our family budgets like this we'd be on the streets.

He went on to note that Obama is suing to stop voters from being removed from the registration rolls in Michigan if they're foreclosed on (!!!) and that there was anti-Obama push-polling to Jewish voters in Florida.

Last night he was at it again, less level-headed but just as lucid, railing against my personal favorite meme that HAS TO get into every single head out there - that the Bush/McCain approach to finance is to privatize profit and socialize loss:

And the folks leading this charge to bail out the big boys are the same folks who have been leading the charge to keep government out of business and out of the board room. Those who believe in "laissez faire" economics, in which the government tries to let the market dictate what happens -- free from government interference -- have suddenly become true believers in government action.

What will rile people, especially now that the country is either teetering or is mired in a recession -- depending on your definition -- is that nowhere have we seen the flip side of this taxpayer bailout of corporations that make bad decisions. And by flip side I mean a sharing of the profits.

Oh, that would be socialism, cry the critics.

But isn't that what we have here, anyway?

We're socializing the losses of these not-very-smart investment giants.

These are the same brilliant titans of industry who would never consider anything but capitalizing the profits. Talk about a security net.

I'm adding a local news anchor to my blogroll. Who would EVER have thunk it.

Posted by rjt at September 18, 2008 12:20 PM