Shut up amid the cackle.

MCDONALDS AND SUCH...

I have been reading up....there is so much to talk about! The apocalypse officially known as the wall street crash...Raj Thackeray's arrest...I guess the world just needs to stop running. It is going all wrong again.

The Apocalypse.
Wall Street died a month ago. (Yes, I have to say it like it was a person). It began with ominous sounding crashes of big things like Lehman Bros. Now if Wall Street were a collection of furniture, Lehman was a glass topped dining table. (Ouch!). Naturally, the crash was heard till the Far East. In the words of a friend, nearly 7000 people suddenly stopped going to office in India alone. (Make that a HUGE glass topped table. Or better still, a glass Chandelier. Or maybe a glass roof).

By the next day, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were nervous and fidgeting around for takers. None-other-than Warren Buffet himself became the knight-in-shining-armour for Goldman and invested something lke $% billion in them. Hallelujah! Morgan was left out in the cold. Sigh.

Henry Paulson, then, decided that nothing less than 700 billion dollars would be needed to save Wall Street from becoming rubble of broken glass. That, by the way, is a sum larger than the entire debt lent by the International Monetary Fund since its inception. (Investment bankers sure know how to spend, or rather, to borrow and lend. Wow, that rhymes).

Wall Street has paid over 3 billion dollars in salary to its executives over the past few years. Paulson wants to save that over the widespread anger of the public, which I admit, is natural. After all, when the common man has to take double mortgages to spend, how can a few yuppies wearing tailored suits walk away with the kind of money that ensures they never need double mortgages? Completely justified I say. Now everyone will need double mortgages. Amen to equality. That was one of the ideals of free America, I guess.

The bill has been accepted. But with that tiny asterisk which says "CONDITIONS APPLY" in tinier words. The sum is slashed. Wall Street executives are not going to take fat bonuses home. And the public shall have no more double mortgage debt on their heads, because it is all going to be written off by Paulson.

They are free to take riskier loans, which, I think, shall happen fairly soon knowing America's instant gratification economy. The first ones shall be the bankers whose offices are only empty glass buildings now.

In the name of McDonalds, may Lord save the world.

posted by Anupama. @ 6:40 pm