Ali Sheikh's Blog - Posts Tagged "bailout"
A new kind of villain
(An excerpt from my debut novel Closure of the Helpdesk — A Geek Tragedy)
“America is not about you and me," Vick said. "It’s all about George and his buddies... All those big people—the rich guys, big-shot bankers, mortgage lenders, hedge-fund managers, God only knows who else—they can drive this country to the brink of complete meltdown, but they get bailed out. They all go to Washington and they get bailed out. But, seven years ago when the whole dotcom thing went belly up and we took a licking, they called it ‘capitalism at work.’ But when they fail, they scare America into coughing up a trillion dollars overnight.”
“Vick, I—”
“You know what? Next time America goes through another ‘meltdown’ or some such thing, I want to be in on that racket. Oh, why wait for it to happen? Let’s call George right now. Let’s work with George and his buddies, bring this company down and make some money!”
“Vick, you sound as if—”
“You still don’t get it, do you? It isn’t the wild wild West anymore, Sam. The villains of our time are a new creed. There are thousands and thousands of them all over the place. But we never get to face them. We never get to talk to them. We never get to question them. And yet, what they do behind closed doors affects our lives in more ways than we can possibly imagine...”
“America is not about you and me," Vick said. "It’s all about George and his buddies... All those big people—the rich guys, big-shot bankers, mortgage lenders, hedge-fund managers, God only knows who else—they can drive this country to the brink of complete meltdown, but they get bailed out. They all go to Washington and they get bailed out. But, seven years ago when the whole dotcom thing went belly up and we took a licking, they called it ‘capitalism at work.’ But when they fail, they scare America into coughing up a trillion dollars overnight.”
“Vick, I—”
“You know what? Next time America goes through another ‘meltdown’ or some such thing, I want to be in on that racket. Oh, why wait for it to happen? Let’s call George right now. Let’s work with George and his buddies, bring this company down and make some money!”
“Vick, you sound as if—”
“You still don’t get it, do you? It isn’t the wild wild West anymore, Sam. The villains of our time are a new creed. There are thousands and thousands of them all over the place. But we never get to face them. We never get to talk to them. We never get to question them. And yet, what they do behind closed doors affects our lives in more ways than we can possibly imagine...”
