Good News, Rape is Legal!

Well...something like it at least. I know this stupid fucking bank bailout stress test crap is confusing and boring, but I'm going to try and make it fun for everyone. How? By comparing it to rape and the Irish Travelers, of course. It's only comparable to rape in that a person makes you do something against your will. Normally, the consequences of trying to fight are worse than just giving up. Ok...it's sort of familiar. Maybe not every rape, just date rape. It's like you're getting pressured to have sex with Bill, the drunken frat boy. If you don't do it, you'll get the reputation of being a prude and Bill will probably beat the shit out of you. So you give in to Bill because he's stronger than you and the consequences of not doing it are worse than fighting. Hypothetically. (Fuck you, Bill.)

A better example is that of the Irish Travelers. You might remember the dumb show about them starring Minnie Driver and her fantastically large jaw. They go around running scams on stupid people by scaring the shit out of them and convincing them that they need help or their children will probably die. A great scam is one in which the Travelers go to someone's house and inspect it for termites. Wouldn't you know it, there are billions of termites underneath the house and they need to be removed or you're likely to wake up on the bottom floor of the house with shingles on your head. Of course the homeowner believes them, and they're certainly not interested in star gazing from their kitchen floor, so they pay the Travelers to rid them of the infestation. As it happens, there really were no termites anywhere near the house and you've just been had by someone I imagine looking like an overweight, unkempt version of Brad Pitt in Snatch. They scared the shit out of you, gave you the worst news possible and left you with no other choice than to do whatever the experts tell you to do to save your shit.

The stress test looks at the financial situation of each individual bank, and then sees what would happen to the bank if a financial apocalypse happened. Specifically, 10.3% unemployment, a 22% decrease in home prices and and overall downturn in economic growth of 3.3%. They don't know if that will happen, they're just looking at the worst possible scenario. If a bank fails the test, they have to take the money. If they don't want it, fuck them they get it anyway. If they'd like to pay it back, not going to be easy. The government is saying to banks, 'We are going to do a test of your institution and see whether or not your institution will be viable if the worst possibly thing happened to the economy. Who made the test? Nevermind it. We're just going to give your bank a little test, and if you fail it we'll give you money! Hooray for you! No, no, you're not understanding. You have to take it. All your competitors are taking it, you'll be in a really shitty position if they get money and you don't. Sure you can pay it back, as long as you can prove to us that the FDIC will loan you money again and as long as you go along with these rules we've set in place about employee compensation and bonuses! Everyone wins!'

This is fucking insanity. It makes my brain hurt. How in the sweet fuck can the government tell businesses that they absolutely have to take the money they're being offered, and that they aren't allowed to pay it back until the government says so? The banks can do nothing other than take it. The government gets pissed when you don't do what they want you to. 'We're going to do a test so see if you need money. Even if you don't want or need money, we're going to pressure you to take it anyhow, and we're the government. You've heard of a little organization called the IRS right? Say, don't you have quite a few tax credits? That's what we thought. Now, about that money we were so generously offering you...'

It's not really surprising that the government are being bullies, it's just surprising that they're not trying to hide it a little bit.

I'm going to finish working and get ready to go to a baseball game. It's going to be the cutest thing in the world! I'm a fan of the away team, my boyfriend's a fan of the home team, so we're going to be wearing the paraphenalia of opposing teams! Isn't that ironic? I fucking hate myself because I didn't make one word of that up.