sympathy

we are living in dangerous times. we could be on the abyss. we could be witnessing the end of the capitalist system as we know it. each day there are more stories of financial disasters, shares have dropped, house prices have crashed, there is no confidence in wall street or the stock exchange. times are tough.
now we know just how tough times are because the london evening standard has told us all that london’s tycoons have lost billions in the recent credit crunch.
oh woe is me.
no seriously. take poor old lakshmi mittal. mr. mittal is a steel magnate and in these perilous times he has seen his family fortune crash to £11.82 billion. crikey he will have to start buying tescos’ own brand to make sure that £11 billion lasts. while mike ahsley, owner of newcastle united and lillywhites is down to his last £168 million. looks like mike will have to make sure he turns off some of the lights in his house to make ends meet.
as if that wasn’t bad enough it is possible that city bonuses will be down this year. it is thought that bonuses will be down by nearly 60% and only £3.5 billion will be paid out.
oh stop it; i am beginning to cry now. those poor bankers won’t be getting their big bonuses this year that is just so sad. no really it is. no doubt many in the city will be going to their cleaners to tap them up for a loan.

i know that mr. mittal is suffering because he describes money as “a curse”, and i am sure when you only have £11 billion it is hard to know just what to spend it on: football team? airplane? oh hell lets splurge we will get both.

schadenfreude. is what i am feeling. i can’t work up sympathy for a bunch of very rich people who have benefited nicely from the system. we have been told for so long that we need these super rich people because wealth trickles down.
it is nice to see that sometimes misery trickles up.
but we all know that come what may the mr. mittals and mr. ashleys of the world are not going to be turfed out of their luxury houses because they defaulted on their mortgages.
while they have done extraordinarily well they will not be asked to sacrifice any more than the rest of us.
in fact when you look at it in terms of wealth we, the people, are going to be propping up the wealthy, we are bailing them out, we are saving them from their mistakes. would it be too much to ask that all the captains of industry and commerce who have said that the free market is the only way are now choking on the irony of being saved by the state?
you would like to think that if the bail out works and the economy stabilises that lessons will have been learnt. though the chances of that are slim. you can bet that within a few days of the bail out working that the free marketeers will harping on about state interference in the smooth running of the system.

i’ll take my winnings in cold hard cash and not stocks please.