I tend to almost agree. The bail-out plan in the US is nothing short of stupidity. Capitalism works because the weak businesses are culled. Socialism works because it spreads (or re-allocates) societies resources more equally, at least they are two of the key strengths of those respective systems according to proponents of those systems.
The bail out fails to achieve a capitalistic goal of weeding out the weak, whilst it also fails on the socialistic front. What i find interesting is about a year ago, there was a fair amount of 'chatter' on various news channels, journals etc about the very, very, very high proportion of non-performing and bad loans being carried by Chinese banks, at a much higher level than what triggered the Japanese banking crisis and yet we hear very little about it.
Forget weeding the west off using debt to fuel growth, it's a disease that has spread around the world - Japan in the late 80's and early 90's, now USA, China also (maybe?) but one thing i will say for Europe: despite all their dithering around, at least they got it (in my opinion) right: protect depositors savings, let the weak banks fall.
In the long run that will only help. What REALLY scares me: i don't see any concrete steps being taken to prevent this type of over-hyped lending happening again, either in Singapore on yet-to-be-built-and-priced-condo's or in America for 'sub-prime' mortgages. When will people learn?
We can not continue to cut interest rates, its like feeding heroin to an addict. Its time to go "cold turkey" to sort the banks out and our own finances; we must RAISE INTEREST RATES.
This will squeeze inflation out of the economy.
