Hanks a million!

National Review, Oct 20, 2008 by Christopher Buckley

EVERY now and then, America just strips herself naked and wiggles her cute derriere at you in all its glory. This happened the other night whilst I was chopping garlic in the kitchen. I was watching Henry Paulson--a.k.a. "King Henry" (Newsweek) or, as he was known on the playing fields of Dartmouth, "The Hammer"-- manfully explaining to Tom Brokaw why he needs to give AIG $85 gazillion of my and your dollars.

In the next instant, on came Robert Wagner--the actor, not the deceased mayor of New York--in his star role as spokesman for a company that sells "reverse" mortgages, namely, you give them your house, and they give you a nice little monthly allowance. What if you live too long? Well, as Mr. Wagner said with a big, shiny grin, operators are standing by to answer "all your questions!"

At this point, having chopped off my thumb, I was able to contemplate, while stanching the wound in cold water, that I had just been afforded an epiphanic glimpse into our next mortgage crisis: 90year--old boomers in wheelchairs being heaved into the street by Mr. Wagner's operators. Is this a great country or what?

My favorite part of these bailouts is when they--that is, the best and brightest minds in government--explain with beetling brows that it would be far worse if they didn't bail out the failing entity du jour. It is too important to allow to fail. The ripple effects would be--devastating.

As my dear old dad used to say, "If you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, the bank has a problem." How right he was. Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour. England hath need of thee ...

What do you know--this morning's paper has a big front--page story about how dozens of Wall Street firms are clamoring to be included in the bailout. And why shouldn't they? They may not actually be failing as a result of having bought up and securitized (my favorite neologism) rotten mortgages, but why should that stop them banging the tin cup? What about us? We want some of that! It's almost enough to make you want to vote for Joe Biden, Restless Mouth Syndrome candidate, who announced the other day that paying taxes is a form of "patriotism." But really, it's hard these days to know whom to be angriest at.

The lending institutions who sold the stinky mortgages in the first place? As one of the founders of this magazine, Willi Schlamm, said so memorably, "The trouble with capitalism is capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism."

Or at the numskull American public who bought the mortgages? Gee, this is great! No money down and the value of the house will just keep going up and up? Hey--hey! Whaddya mean you're "foreclosing" on me? But don't hold your breath waiting for Obama or McCain to say, "You know, really, some Americans are just dumber than a mud box."

Should we be most angry at the Wall Street firms that bought up the mortgages and turned them into securities and packaged them into what Warren Buffett, apparently the only actually "wise" wise man in America, described back in 2003 as "financial weapons of mass destruction"? (Buffett, for the record, is an Obama supporter. But then Obama did appoint to his vice--presidential selection committee Jim Johnson, the man who led Fannie Mae into the Valley of Derivatives in the first place.)

Surely it's okay to be angry at Richard Fuld, former head of Lehman Brothers, whose compensation the year before he presided over the firm's demise amounted to the gross domestic product of a midsized African country. But then McCain's titular campaign chairman, Carly Fiorina, drove the stock of Hewlett--Packard down by half and walked away with a $42 million golden parachute. Asked about this, Old Grouchypants said, "I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don't know the details of her compensation package." He couldn't have been in a good mood since it had just been revealed that his campaign manager had raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Fannie and Freddie advocacy group. Details, schmetails! Country first!

Or should we be most angry at Old Reliable, the U.S. Congress, which, in return for bazillions in campaign contributions, refused to a) step in and enforce existing regulations or b) enact new regulations? Personally, I'm always willing to give Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi a good boot in the shins, but there are plenty of Republicans in the Congress, too, who declined to intervene when Wall Street began devising these FWMDs that are so complicated, apparently, that even a mind like Paul Krugman can't understand them.

Well, I'm confused. Is this what St. Ronald Reagan meant by "the magic of the marketplace"? Or is this Adam Smith's invisible hand, goosing the body politic in the you--know--where?

Either way, I've decided that I'm in favor of bailouts. Especially bailouts for authors whose books tank.

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke announced today that they would buy up the stock of Buckley's unsold novel for $700 gajillion.