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The legacy left by Wall Street will now be borne by Main Street as US lawmakers signed off on a staggering $700 billion (Dh.2.56 trillion) bailout blueprint to resuscitate some of America's top financial institutions.
Dubbed the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the aftershocks are being felt all over the world and the burden will have to be borne by the American taxpayers: the result of the insatiable greed of those very institutions they had banked, or invested, coupled with the apathy and lack of vision of President George W. Bush and his advisers in the White House to foresee the problem. One by one the giants fell: Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and then American International Group (AIG).
It is no irony that the bailout is being seen as Bush's parting gift to the American people - a little something to remember him and his eight years of incompetence.
America is in recession. A country which took pride in the strength of the dollar has now been borrowing left, right and centre to keep its assets afloat. It was the classic price to pay for greed and arrogance. A few survivors call it payback. The retribution for showing absolutely no fear at all, as Wall Street didn't care about either regulation or risk. As a consequence the life savings of millions have not just disappeared, they now have to bear the brunt of a billion dollar bailout right down to paying for a shrewd CEO's million dollar exit clause.
The writing is on the wall. American society is poorer than it was perceived to be. American credibility in commerce has taken a beating as investors from London to Dubai are now surveying the damage. It is the US that had stored the weapons of financial mass destruction.
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