By Nick Bond
It’s a viral video I can’t get all the way through.
No matter how hard I try, there is just a point in the clip where it just becomes too disgusting and sickening for me to deal with. The hedonism and grotesqueness of it is so over the top that it could bring the most steely stomached man to his knees. The video I am referring to is, of course, that of CNBC on-air business editor Rick Santelli essentially starting a separatist movement on the trading floor of the Chicago stock exchange.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love capitalism. But the brand of capitalism that Santelli subscribes to is the type of thing that makes this son of a working mother want to join a commune.
For those that didn’t have the displeasure of listening to the ignorant blowhard pontificate on the direction he believes the country is heading, let’s start from the beginning.
He started off ridiculously enough, postulating that by creating the housing bailout and stimulus package “the government is promoting bad behavior…. You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology-how about this, president and new administration? Why don’t you put up a Web site to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?”.
I know that it all may seem righteous enough.
If you’re an idiot.
A colossal idiot who literally has no clue what you talking about.
The stimulus package and the housing bailout is an example of the government promoting bad behavior?
Really?
You mean it is not the rampant deregulation of financial markets that lead to all of this turmoil? It was the selfish behavior of a bunch of the same type of men on the trading floor (who, at the point, were applauding this idiot) that are the reason people are losing their homes. Yes, it’s obviously more complicated and intricate than simply blaming those who used monetized mortgage trading of dangerous loans given by banks to make as much money as possible to do so for themselves, but I feel like I might be somewhere in the vicinity of the truth with that statement.
Those “losers” that Santelli described are often working families and immigrants who, with the thought of the American dream in their hearts, attempted to purchase homes to live in. The jackass with the extra bathroom is not who will benefit the most from these policies, but rather those that have fallen on hard times as a result of a selfish few, the same selfish few that rallied behind Santelli as he continued on his idiotic rant. Even though Santelli talking about fiscal responsibility in the context of a trading floor filled with these miscreants should carry about as much weight as the pope coming out in support of Coppernican astrophysics., he continued.
In his infinite wisdom, he compared our economy to that of Cuba, so eloquently pointing out that, “you know, Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy. They moved from the individual to the collective. Now, they’re driving ’54 Chevy, maybe the last great car to come out of Detroit.”
So, apparently, because we are now using tax dollars to help heal an ailing economy, made sick by those Santelli chose to surround himself with, we have now become a communist country. What made it even better was that he somehow magically managed to desecrate not only the idea of caring about your community but also kicking a severely crippled auto industry while it’s down.
Nice work, Santelli, you should be proud.
It is exactly this type of rhetoric and me-first behavior that got us into this mess, and it’s going to take an effort, by the same collective that Santelli dreads so much, to get us out of it. It is at a time like this where we must reach out our hands to our fellow man and look to each other for help in the face of great crisis, but if people like Santelli have their way, it won’t be matter if we drink or carry the water, because at that point, we will be in over our head.
Nick Bond is a senior political science student and managing editor of The Chronicle. You may e-mail him at nbond1@pride.hofstra.edu.