When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified that he was not going to sit by and let the economy collapse completely, he was referring to the collapse of his world, the aerie regions of high finance and international banking.

With elite financial institutions apparently now flush enough to hand out millions in bonuses, perhaps Paulson, Bernanke, and Geitner have succeeded somewhat in rescuing that small world, but, thus far, that success has not even begun to trickle down to a public struggling with job loss, inflation, underemployment, shrinking credit, and foreclosure. Perhaps lost in the stratospheric haze of default derivative swaps, golden parachutes, retention bonuses, leverage limits, sub-prime loans, toxic assets and deregulation is the realization that in a consumer/service economy people have to not only want things, but they have to be able to purchase them. Or, in a more human level, caring needs to extend beyond one’s small circle.

ROBERT PORATH
Boulder

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