Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Recent news reports suggest that many influential people, including Federal Reserve officials, bank regulators, and, possibly, members of the incoming Obama administration, have become devotees of a new kind of voodoo: the belief that by performing elaborate financial rituals we can keep dead banks walking."

The Babbits of Bumble Creek never tire of telling Uncle that he better not get into the "pickin' winners from losers" business -- and yet he keeps doing it, though he wants to believe, or wants us to believe, that he's not doin' it Hizz-seff.

Hence the zombies: Uncle will rebuild the credit conduits by working through allegedly animatronic Wall Street middlemen.

But... what if the animatronics are actually the pokes operating from inside the beltway and not the boardrooms of Wall Street?

Note this take by one James Surowiecki:

"I think that as the “nationalize now” meme has taken hold in the blogosphere, people are talking about nationalization “awfully casually" -- I think people are skeptical of it for two big reasons:

1) -- the general principle that private enterprise is typically better at efficiently allocating resources than government;

2) the idea of the state literally determining which companies and individuals do or don’t get credit is, even to a non-libertarian, at least a little troubling."

Obviously, "efficiency allocating resources" -- right now -- must mean "stop allocating resources" -- eh? Yeah, go ahead, send us the 2 trillion in cash and 12 trillion in guarantees, but stop the music -- stop the system -- stop production -- time out -- you 15 million more jobblers, go sit in 15 million little corners somewhere, anywhere -- and wait till we get our balls back.

And damned if, despite the efficiency of idleness now, Uncle still wants his good hi-fi zombies to lend lend lend -- and he'll be damned if they won't.

Obigma's raiders won't N-word the big banks, even if the economy keeps sliding away into the drink like our calving icecaps. There'll be no red thread runnin' through here -- there will be no commanding-heights strategy 'round this White House.

The new powers that be will not choose winners from new beginnings. They won't rebuild the financial world out of shiny new creatures. These veteran magistrates, like some gaggle of tender old sluts, will keep on sticking with the losers -- as long as they're big enough.