Democracy for Vancouver

My inlaws were very careful with their money during their working years; they did all the right things. And they have lived very comfortably since L.’s retirement about 8 years ago. They have been lucky enough to be able to live off the interest on their investments, at least until last year, when they dipped into principal for the first time thanks to the Bush market.

And yesterday, according to my M.I.L., they “lost more money than most people have.”

Again, they are lucky enough to have that principal if they need it; but they are both healthy 70-year-olds: they are active, they travel, and they are up to heroic feats of framing and drywalling whenever one of their grown kids finishes a basement or remodels a bathroom. They need this money to last at least another ten years, and their wish to live off the interest so their grandkids could go to college on the principal may be dead.

This is the direct result of Bush’s deregulation frenzy, sure. But the tipping point was Henry Paulson’s hair-on-fire, we’re-all-gonna-die demand for $700 billion with no strings attached last week.

Obviously, Paulson had at least a month to pull this thing together, and time enough during the past two weeks to be followed around by the 60 Minutes camera crew; he seemed perfectly calm. But he has ginned up such a frenzy, and driven down the confidence of the market so far, that even if his initial plan was the last greedy money grab of the Bush Administration rather than a true emergency, he has turned it in to one.

Remember always: BushCo is not incompetent. They do these things on purpose.

And I will not forgive them for making my inlaws miserable and fearful for their kids’ and their grandkids’ jobs and futures at a time when they should be reaping the rewards of a lifetime of enormously hard work.