The Financial Situation

Over the last few weeks we have received a great deal of criticism from the press and from disgruntled bloggers about our alleged responsibility for and response to the current financial crisis. In this post I hope to set the record straight.

There have been allegations that we, the GNU Public Dictatorship, have been interfering with the markets and trying to destabilize them in order to cause chaos that would allow us to further increase our own wealth and influence. This is patently false. We, the Board of Dictators, understand that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that we do not need to be wealthy to wield our influence, so long as the people support us. We would never interfere in the markets to make ourselves rich at your expense.

It is true that we used our influence to put Freddie and Fannie over the edge and to get the government to take them over, but that was in your best interests as it allows for more centralization of economic oversight. Now that the US government ostensibly controls them (everyone knows that we really pull the strings) they can be managed with more oversight and we can use them to help stabilize the economy.

It is also true that we helped push Lehman Brothers over the edge, but the purpose there was twofold: (1) to let a bank fail so that the government would believe the urgency of financial reform, and (2) to expose the extravagance of the golden parachutes and other compensation paid to executives of failing financial institutions.

As for our response to the crisis, we are doing everything we can to reform the financial markets so that all of you, our citizens, can enjoy the benefits of a healthy economy. We have not been hiding behind our logo contest. In fact, we suspended our logo contest for an entire weekend to get our agenda back on track after Congress so ably derailed it. Did our detractors suspend their business for so much as an hour? We don't think so (at least we never saw any evidence of it).

As for the solution that got pushed through Congress, we know it isn't a perfect one, but it is a step in the right direction. If you read the fine print in the very long act (which I'm not sure any of our congressmen actually did) you would see that the real purpose of this bill is to prepare the way for the GNU Public Dictatorship to step in and fix the economy. Unfortunately the country is currently run in such a way that it is hard for a single Board of Dictators to fix the economy, but this bill added enough provisions for us to begin our work nonetheless.

So, in short, we did not cause the financial crisis, and are doing everything possible to use it to our advantage and yours. We would never destabilize the world's markets for personal gain, and we always have you in mind. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not generous to our citizens!