Now that the Fed has introduced a temporary reduction in interest rates, and my selfish fear has subsided, I’ve become obsessed with the debt-ridden or bankrupt souls that we now know to call sub-primes, because loans they take out are risky or sub-prime. And the more I read about sub-primes, the sorrier I feel for them and the more it seems that our financial system relies on treating them like livestock – to be fattened up, encouraged to consume, then sacrificed when the time is right.
Poor sub-primes, sitting in their sub-prime trailers, watching sub-prime, prime time TV. All the Fed has to do is lower interest rates, as Alan Greenspan did in 2001, and they’re everybody’s favourite target: “Borrow, borrow” say the banks, “buy, buy” say the vendors of spin dryers and wide-screen TVs – and so, brainwashed by ads, crazed with sugar, the sub-primes consume like crazy, racking up vast debts.
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