The Great Depression II: Depression Harder

       Things are tough all over right now.  Even as I write this post, the global financial markets are in a constant state of fluctuation, and the future of our national and global economy could be described as shaky at best.  No one has felt this turmoil more than me, I can tell you that.  In the last month, I have lost my job, my car, and my house.  I basically have nothing to my name anymore, and I have been reduced to a homeless ghost that wanders the countryside, ignored by an uncaring world and only surfacing on occasion at the local public library to steal books to burn for warmth and write the odd blog post.  So remember when you were whining about how little I was updating my blog last month?  Yeah, thanks for your sensitivity, asshole.

       I feel that I have been taken advantage of by a corrupt system, and when I see on the front pages of discarded newspapers, which I use as blankets to cover myself when I attempt to sleep on park benches throughout the city, that the government is preparing to spend $700 billion in order to bail out the predatory banks that are responsible for this whole mess, I have to ask, “What about me?”

       The little guys across this country are the ones who are really feeling the hurt here.  We are the ones who have lost our homes, our vehicles, our plasma TVs, our silky Armani suits, and our sweet wakeboarding boats.  We are the ones who were taken advantage of by the banks when we asked for the money and they actually gave it to us.  What were they thinking?  How could they take advantage of us like that?

       Look, I can’t be blamed for not being able to pay my mortgage payment, or my car payment, or my boat payment, or the mortgage payment on that condo in Florida I bought, or my payments on the Harley, or the payments on my various credit cards.  This is not my fault.  I mean, I dropped out of high school at the age of fifteen because I hated the homework.  Do you really expect me to understand the complex mathematics of variable interest rates?  I work part time at a Chuck E. Cheese pizza parlor cleaning the spit wads off of the animatronic characters for $6.50 an hour.  Did you really expect me to be able to pay for that diamond-studded television remote that I just had to have?

       But that’s the problem.  I kept asking for the money, and the banks kept saying, “Sure!  Here ya go!  It’s every American’s constitutionally protected right to go into massive amounts of debt in order to live way beyond their means!   To whom do we make out the check?”

       And that, my friends, is why none of this is my fault.  Think about it.  If I grew up with parents who never, ever said “no” to me even once in my life, would it really be my fault if I didn’t understand that there might be consequences to my actions?  Well, that’s what the banks have done to me, so this is all their fault.  Don’t bail them out!  Bail me out!  Come on, I’ll pay you back, government.  I’m good for it, I swear!  Gimme, gimme gimme!