, in particular Lt. Milo Minderbinder and his M & M Enterprise? For those of you who haven't read Catch-22 or disremember, Minderbinder was a U.S. Army Mess Officer in Italy during World War II. Much like our current crop, he was an entrepreneur without a conscience; he would do anything to make money. As CEO of M & M, he contracted with the Germans to have his squadron bomb its own air base. Minderbinder was subsequently charged with treason, for which he was exonerated by demonstrating how capitalistically profitable the venture was.
As for Standard and Poor, isn't their pronouncement tantamount to an attack on the U.S. Treasury? Isn't this treason? Isn't this biting the hand that feeds you? What authority has S & P to evaluate U.S. Treasury bonds in the first place? What impertinence? That's like a child rating his mother's brownies.
Furthermore, doesn't S & P bear a heavy burden of responsibility for the current economic mess we're in? Seems I remember S & P was instrumental in propping up the house of cards called "collateralized debt obligations," with their mindless, misbegotten AAA ratings? So long as they were paid, S & P was happy to endorse these stacks of bound-to-fail mortgages. Maybe, just maybe if we weren't in this Great Recession, our governments (local, state, and federal) would have the resources to take care of their current obligations.
And maybe, S & P should back off, sit down and shut up!
Want to know more about S & P's role in the Great Recession? Read All the Devils are Here
and/or The Big Short
. Better yet, read Catch-22
.≈ ≈ ≈
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