There will be memorials today at the sites of all the terrorist homicidal crashes. But the elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge--today or any day--is whether the terrorists were successful in their mission. We like to think they failed--that the steel and the resolve of the American people got us back up off the ground ask quickly as the twin towers in New York went down.
To answer the question of who really won you have to look at the terrorists' targets that day:
- The World Trade Center in New York, a symbol of America's financial muscle
- The Pentagon, emblematic of American military power
- The White House, the residence of the most powerful man on earth
- The Capitol, a symbol of freedom to the world
But what about our financial system? True, in the last nine years we've had periods of unprecedented economic growth. But we've also had the worst recession in 30 years. If you connect the dots from 9-11, this is what you have:
- A central bank, the Fed, that flooded the market with cheap money and artificially low interest rates after 9-11 to prevent an economic collapse
- Two rounds of tax cuts that pumped even more money into the consumer markets to restore confidence in the American economy after 9-11
- A grandstanding Congress that got into the mortgage business and created a Fun House of low interest loans, no down payment loans, liar loans, and ultimately the sale of billions of dollars in real estate in deals that made no sense
- An explosion in a complicated mortgage-backed securities market fueled ultimately by the Fed's cheap money policy and Congress' meddling in the mortgage market
- An economic wild fire fueled initially by the collapse of the mortgage backed securities market but fed by the winds of panic that sucked all the liquidity out of the markets
- Not one but two ill-advised "stimulus" plans, not to mention bank and auto industry takeovers that converted precious but dwindling liquidity into government assets through the tax system
- A punishing recession caused by lack of liquidity and confidence
- A timid and cautious private sector, blamed for the collapse by the government, whose Keynesian approach to the crisis further diminished consumer and business confidence
- A crisis in confidence, credit and credibility that has lead to 10% of the American work force without jobs
So maybe we didn't win after all.
Just thought you might like to know.