The Ant and the Grasshopper, 2008 edition
My syndicated column today updates what used to be one of my favorite Aesop’s fables: “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” It’s been revised over the years (most famously by Jim Quinn in the 1990s), but the tale needed a new revision based on the stimuluspalooza/Mother of All Bailout frenzy of the last year. As with the shamnesty bill, even if the MOAB gets killed, I can guarantee you we’ll see more mini-MOABS.
Thrift is dead.
***
The Ant and the Grasshopper, 2008 edition
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008
With what looks like imminent passage of the Mother of All Bailouts (following on the heels of a year’s worth of government-funded rescues of private homeowners, lenders, insurers, and the automakers), Washington has turned Aesop’s famous fable about prudence and hard work on its head. The time is ripe for a revised 2008 edition of “The Ant and the Grasshopper:”
In a meadow on a hot summer’s day, a Grasshopper was chirping and carousing his time away. He watched scornfully as an Ant nearby struggled to store up large kernels of food and build a secure nest. The Ant pulled overtime shifts to pay off his loans and accumulate retirement funds for the future.
“Give it a rest,” the Grasshopper said. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? Let’s party!” The Ant demurred: “I am planning ahead for winter and you should do the same.” The Grasshopper blew off the Ant, squandered his supplies the rest of the season, and abandoned his home while on vacation (paid for by tapping every last cent of his home equity gain) instead of holding down a job.
When winter came, the Grasshopper’s pantry was empty and his shelter ruined from neglect. The Ant, weary from planting, harvesting, and stocking up for months, was dining comfortably in his nest.
Cold, hungry, jobless, facing foreclosure, and up to his two pairs of eyeballs in debt, the Grasshopper limped to the Association of Community Winged Insects for Rescue Now and demanded recourse. The office was swamped with thousands just like him. ACWIRN immediately put the Grasshopper to work registering dead ants as new voters.
Funded with tax dollars from the rest of the meadow’s residents, ACWIRN organized mass protests at the Bank of Antamerica, ambushed its top officials at their private homes, harassed their children, and demanded that the meadow’s politicians halt all foreclosures (“We must keep Grasshoppers in their houses!”) and outlaw discriminatory lending practices against starving, homeless Grasshoppers (“Well-stocked shelters are basic insect rights!”)
The banking industry capitulated; the Orthoptera Lobby secured hundreds of millions of dollars in housing earmarks and grants and counseling subsidies to support the Grasshoppers with the shadiest credit and employment histories. Antie Mae, the meadow’s government-backed home lending giant, fueled the push for increased insect homeownership in the name of biodiversity. Its executives cooked the books and headed for the hills. Katie Cricket and the Mainstream Meadow Media joined the grievance-for-profit circus, profiling Grasshopper sob stories and drumming up ratings as bewildered Ants wondered who was looking out for them.
The banks drowned in toxic debt. More Grasshoppers fell behind on their mortgage payments. Bailout mania and panic gripped the meadow.
Our little Ant, minding his own business, heard a knock on his door one late winter night a year later. It was his old, sneering Grasshopper neighbor. With ACWIRN’s presidential candidate, Barack Cicada, now in office, the Grasshopper had been hired by the meadow as a tax collector.
“I’m here to take your provisions,” the Grasshopper cackled.
But it was the Ant who had the last laugh. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he told his shiftless friend. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? I’ve spent all my savings. I’m walking away from my mortgage. Thrift is for suckers,” the Ant said as he headed out the door, leaving the Grasshopper empty-handed.
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Grasshoppers are people too.
Good analogy. Pretty soon this country will be all grasshoppers and very few ants.
Yes Grasshopper, you must reveal your inner self and learn to do little but gain much…
Ummm…your point?
BTW, Michelle, your article, in showing the relevance of this Aesop’s fable, is an excellent demonstration of how people (?grasshoppers?) have not changed in ~2500 years.
Please keep on keeping on.
Pretty sure that was sarcasm.
That was lovely story Michelle, with an important moral to be learned. Now tell us about ” The Grinch That Stole Tax Dollars”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It’s interesting to me that, in real life, animals continue to store up for the winter to prepare for the shortage to come. Meanwhile, humans, being of the corrupt nature that we are, can be easily persuaded to abandon hard work and sacrifice in favor of the easy road.
Agree. I’ve always liked that story a lot.
On a somewhat OT (off-topic) note…
I was driving down the road at lunchtime yesterday and had NPR’s Talk of the Nation tuned in on the radio.
During the program (approx 1/2 into the hour), a woman called in and said something like the following – she lives in NJ and has a husband that used to work on Wall Street. She then said that many years ago when the topic of lending practices came up in the office (regarding home mortgages/financing) often his co-workers would say “don’t worry about it, the Federal Gov’t will bail us out”. So, for those looking for premeditation in this whole situation, it is there to be found – if you’re looking for it.
…Just FYI.
“Eat buckshot,” the Ant said and he lived happily everafter.
Boy, me either. I got to wake up this morning and learn my bank, WAMU crashed. I don’t even know what that means to me. This sucks more than just about anything else I have dealt with and all my really really smart financial friends are scared. Scared.
And the people that got us into this mess are the same ones saying they can get us out of it. Yeah right. As the saying goes, I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.
Can’t we contract REAL economists and not politicians to fix this? Seriously- let’s talk to Donald Trump, Bill Gates, any one of these people that know how to successfully run something. Because the politicians can’t even boil water without burning it.
If their are no ants, who will the grasshoppers tax? Who will be the bad guy then? This ant is highly bummed today.
Nice twist at the end. The grasshoppers always assume that the ants will produce something to be taken; what if the ants quit? If he’s “elected,” I hope Obama will get that rug pulled from under his feet. It would be a hard, hard fall for him.
That would be hilarious if it weren’t so true…
Ants, grasshoppers…I guess that would make Paulson & Bernanke geckos…
This story doesn’t do a thing for Michelle Cicada’s maggots..
Thanks for the smile this morning, Michelle.
Unfortunately, the “fable” is all too true. When I was growing up, my Dad used to volunteer for all the overtime that was available. His goal was to pay off our house quickly (he did) and save for our college funds. I can’t count the number of Christmases, birthdays, etc he missed.
This was during the Trudeau era in Canada (the “original” “Citizen of the World) — the vanguard of “socialized democracy” and high taxes for wealth distribution.
Anyways, my Mom sat down one night when pencil and paper and figured out that for every 20 hours/week my Dad did in overtime, after the clawbacks, higher withholding, union fees, etc, missing family events, he “netted” only $50 for working his guts out in a physically demanding job.
This is what the future holds for us if we don’t wake up and push back against all those who think life should be “subsidized”.
Nice story
And then that great shining city on a hill (in the meadow) collapsed and was never seen again.
The End.
The government is already begging people to continue paying their mortgages. With MOAB the default rate on mortgages could quickly double, and double again. Why would you continue to pay your 3 or 4 thousand dollar a month mortgage if your neighbor is getting “helped” by the government.
We are not in a crises, we are in a black hole. It will continue to eat up all assets till we too are grasshoppers.
We can only hope China is good to us.
And, one little ant huffed and puffed and complained, and even wrote a blog about it, but offered no alternatives.
So, no one listened
This is, without a doubt, one of the best articles I’ve ever read.
I generally tend to believe that the population, as a whole, isn’t smart enough to care about politics or the economy(when is American Idol coming back on?) Even the sheeple should be able to wrap their tiny little pea brains around this.
That’s not clever, its just rude.
“Barack Cicada”
ROTF!!!
And John McCricket, reassured us, saying, “Worry not, for the basic foundation of the Anthills are sound, and after all, we’re all God’s insects!” : )
A work of art!
But isn’t “shiftless” a perjorative when used to describe grasshoppers?
Go check the archives before you shove your head even further up your behind frank.
Sounds like a bug bigot code word to me : )
Not a bad idea, but how many of these guys are at least partially responsible for this?
You do have to admire guys like Warren Buffet who avoided the get rich quick home morgage nightmare, like the ant. He’s stockpiled cash for many years waiting for the downturn to gobble up companies with potential and make even more money. I don’t agree with his political views, but he didn’t get to where he’s at by accident.
You’re all hating on the grasshoppers because they’re green!
/sarc
My comment got lost in the drier with my socks. I’ll post it agai
So, Let me get this straight. An ant turns into a grasshopper because he finds it easier to cheat to get ahead, right? Instead of taking Psycho meds like the moonbat grasshopper, he should take antibiotics!!! Get it, Antibiotics.
Good analogy MM!!!!
/s/
José
Great Michelle, my first laughs in days.Now back to the real world, we ants are screwed.
Go back and read some of the stories about what happened in Russia during the early collectivization drives.
Once the peasant farmers realized the Bolsheviks were coming to take everything they owned the farmers engaged in ravenous orgies of consumption of all their food stocks. They literally ate everything they had and they slaughtered all their livestock including breeding stock and then sat and waited for the Bolsheviks and the Cheka to come and try to take what no longer existed. Years of famine ensued as the new collectives never produced as much agricultural output as the old peasant farms. The Soviet Union never fed itself again after collectivization.
This is the story of the fruits of Marxism. But, Barack and now Bush, can’t seem to figure this out. But then, Bolsheviks knonw everything so why learn from history.
Come the next consensus, I’m ticking the grasshopper box.
Great fable update Michelle … loved it …
I guess I had the name of that group wrong though … I thought it was …
Association for Community Orthoptera Rescue Now = ACORN …
My thought exactly! Along with… What a jerk!
Brilliant.
Wow! Michelle Malkin shrugs!
Where’s Mitt, Savior of the Salt Lake Olympics? Is McCain consulting with him?
Mormons are the ultimate Ants. Each household living within it’s means, has a family food storage program, giving 10% and donating time to the church to support the church welfare system for those in the community that needs help. And no give aways. Even people getting help from the welfare system are expected to work in the system to give back.
And later that day, while at the local drinking hall, talking to a Disabled Vet (dam pesticide), the Ant suddenly remembered back to when he had been an Army Ant… and knew it was time for a change…
and thus was the Revolution started… to bad they picked Stalin Stinkbug to head it…
Errah and then a large Chinese made Nike funded by 70 years of T-bills squashed them both. The End
ORTHOPTERA??? Great word, I can’t pronounce it, let alone spell it… Good update to one of my favorite FABLES… All too sad is that it ALL TOO TRUE… Understand this AM there is some FALLOUT on the REPUBLICAN SIDE… One can only HOPE…
How ’bout, YOU check the archives, and bring it.
Complaints ≠ Alternatives
Harry Reid: “We are not at fault.”
Great question. I would sure like to hear his take on this mess.
Frank, you accused our beloved hostess of having no solutions. As the accuser, the burden of proof falls to you. Happy hunting!
Good GOD! Are you for real?? You just proved the entire point of this post. Frank (“I’ll sit here and complain and wait for you to do the work I should be doing”) = grasshopper.
duh!
Well done, Michelle!
WarEagle82 wrote:
True, and… it even gets better than that. In the last 10-15 years of the former Soviet Union, the cumulative output from all small, informal family garden plots outproduced ALL of the formal agricultural output from the centrally-run farm system.
… A tidbit gleaned from a course or two in the subject matter during undergrad studies.
Frank, can we please speak to your original ego? Maybe it’s not an idiot.
It looks as though the black hole formed in DC, not at CERN, like some had thought.
Exactly Lan. Frank = shiftless moronic grasshopper, displaying the attitude that has ruined this country. Frank, you were as a55 last time I tangled with you, and you still are. I have no more time for you.
This ant has better things to do, than search for needles in haystacks…Particularly, needles that may, or may not exist.
This ant, wants a solution, that keeps his ant-hill from losing any more equity.
This ant, wants a solution that keeps his 401K from losing value.
*wiping off monitor & pouring new cup of coffee*
Don’t bother, I’m sure its a jerk too.
Most likely, you will become a customer of Chase bank, since JP Morgan Chase bought WaMu.
Jen, I heard on the news that WaMu was immediately bought by Chase. The only thing that will change for you will be to whom you make out your mortgage check. However, since the gov’t. didn’t bail out WaMu, their CEO will not get the golden parachute, which is good for all of us.
I’m a WAMU customer as well. I called this morning to check my direct deposit and they already had a message about being backed by the strength of JPMorgan. They plan to close 10% of the branches, but that’s the only change we should see. Even people over the $100k FDIC account insurance limit are still fine.
I like war stories personally…
I think the amphibious ants of the Marine variety should have combined arms and kicked the crickets out of the grasshoppers and all those who supported King Cicada.
Sorry, plymouthacclaim. We must have crossed posts in cyberspace!!
Ahhhh, said the antsalterego.
The Thundering Sound of Silence.
It happens.I’m a slow typer, so I’m on the short end of that stick more often than not.
Those guys give to demoicrats all the time
I’ve got to tell ya, like you all I’m sure, I too travel all the political news articles, you know the ones that diss McCain/Palin, and glorify the One. I mean, those are really the only ones you’ll find on the MSM sites anyway. There’s one thing I’ve found – what really brings me down is, not so much the article itself, but when I read the comments. And it seems like ALL the time, the comments left by ant-McCain/Palin persons are just so absolutely hate-filled junk; nothing of substance. And I think, these people can vote. These people’s vote count as much as mine. Yikes. But another thing I’ve noticed too – the comments left by pro-McCain/Palin are, for one, usually well-written, and two, they’re funny. They are sharp, witty, funny responses that usually, if they’re not responding directly to the article, are putting the troll back in his place- on the dung heap.
Oddly, in real life, not a metaphor!, we have a mini-drought in Cincinnati, and there are grasshoppers all over the place, as well as crickets and moths. I’ve never seen so many grasshoppers.
Katie is now a Community Organizer?
Way to go MM!!
I’ll go along with ant, eat up all my reserves, walk-out of my abode, and then come back to pester the grasshopper asking for handouts.
Errah, there were 535 dung beetles that watched over the meadow living high on the hog in a nearby stump that weren’t affected at all by the ant and the grasshopper’s plight.
Ant-las Shrugged.
A great analogy, Michelle. Ants are beneficial insects, whereas grasshoppers are pests.
I suppose that makes Reid & Pelosi, what? Reid=mosquito (because he looks like one) and Pelosi must be a Pillbug.
I would love to add: Barbara Boxelder bug.
I crack myself up.
Frank, not speaking for our host as she is plenty capable, but my understanding of her point of view is personal responsibility. That means no bailouts for bad practices. I have heard the experts, on both sides, saying these companies have value albeit diminished. That means they will eventually be bought out at a low price and life will go on. Those buying the failed institutions will have gotten a bargain and make money.
As for your 401k, it is a long-term investment that will eventually re-coup some or all losses. They are not get-rich-quick vehicles. Same with houses; If you stay in them and not try to move evry 3 years, it will grow equity.
Just my $.02
Not to extend this into the realm of squick, but since we’re talking insects, not human beings:
Don’t ants attack and eat grasshoppers?
Also, many conservatives believe if you fund something, you get more of it. Same logic applies to bailouts. You have noticed how after the bailout talk first started the number of targets increased?
True (sigh).
We may as well all quit our jobs and surrender to Uncle Sam by going on welfare and foodstamps. The Democrats are making sure that’s where we end up anyway, so why continue to fight?
This bailout is their perfect chance to be all things to everybody – as long as we all vote Democrat.
Hard work and achievement will be devalued under the Democrats’ plan, and the right to succeed or fail will be replaced by marginalization. Uncle Sam will see to it that no one fails; of course the trade-off is that success will no longer be possible but hey, at least we’ll all be bland ne’r-do-wells together.
Man, this has me depressed!
Wighttrash, Pelosi has to be a dung bettle.
We are currently running at about $50 billion a month in foreclusures/serious mortgage defaults. Of that figure, 40% of that problem comes from one state – California. http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/09/23/mortgage-defaults-already-at-50bb-per-month700bb-wont-go-too-far/
I saw the lending frenzy in California first hand. Property values were so high there that lenders had to come up with novel programs for loans. Option ARMS, negative amoritization loans (where the principal balance actually INCREASES over time), interest only loans, etc. While Congress is trying to tell us this is a problem arising from predatory lenders making dastardly subprime loans, it is not those subprime loans that are causing the biggest problems.
The theory in California was that values would always go up, and based on that people were willing to make loans up to 100% of the home’s value. And getting into an adjustable rate loans was not an issue, since many borrowers just rolled over to another ARM before the loan was set to set to adjust.
We have ONE state that is dragging down the rest of the Country. And the two biggest lenders in California, Countrywide and WAMU, are now gone. Incredible.
How very appropriate, as the financial crisis deepens:
In what is by far the largest bank failure in U.S. history, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc. late Thursday and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co
we get fairy tales from the conservative.
Personally, I liked it better when Malkin’s rallying cry was “Suck It Up”, but now I’m thinking that it should be changed to “Let Them Eat Cake”.
speakeasy–no no! Even scarabs are beneficial!!
I would consider Pelosi helpful if she took my dung away…
She’s both useless and stupid.
Thanks for the inspiration MM!!
I about to book my trip to Tahiti this afternoon, followed up with a Carribean crusie after I get back.
And I’m not going to fill out the paperwork for a new mortgage loan this weekend either.
::Whew:: I feel better about myself now. Well, I’m off to go tan!! TTYL!
Since critical thinking seems to be too much for your insect brain I’ll put the moral of Michelle’s story into little words so even you can understand it.
“Don’t give tax dollars to the stupid, lazy grasshopper.”
See? The answer was right there in front of you. You just had to work for it.
I sit here, reading through the comments, and one thing strikes me about those attacking our gracious hostess and her column.
They all seem to thick to understand a fable! Get a grip.
I was typing while you were posting, Ralph Gizzip. What you said!
30pcs: my sentiments exactly.
This should be standard reading on Capitol Hill today.
Spot on, Michelle.
How about ” Bake your own damn cake and if you burn it don’t blame anyone but yourself.”
How’s that?
On September 26th, 2008 at 10:37 am, 30 pcs of silver said:
It’s ok, 30 pcs, we win in the end.
Think of it like you’re watching your favorite sports team playing their biggest rival.
If your watching it live, and the other team keeps scoring, you’re nervous…hoping your team will pull it out and win, but the more the other team scores, the more fearful and depressed you get.
Now, imagine that you are watching a recording of the game, and you already know that your team wins in the game. Now, the more the other team scores, the more excited you get, because you know the comeback is going to be AWESOME to watch!
We already know the end of the story.
We win.
Get excited about the comeback!
Looks like you’re right b-cat.
My wife was all worried about our financial future the other day. We have always followed an extremely conservative finacial strategy, prepaying the mortgage, saving-saving-saving, IRAs, TSPs, etc, and whe was concerned that with this crisis, we would not be OK.
I told her that we are ants. We’ve been working hard all Summer, and putting stuff away, now we are all set for the Winter, and wouldn’t we feel silly if Winter never came. The grasshoppers may suffer, but it is a great day to be an ant!
And now you come along with this column, harshing my buzz. Thanks a lot Michelle…
JP Morgan Chase got a sweetheart deal on Bear Sterns. They got all of Bear Sterns’ assets for a firesale price, and the US taxpayers (97% of the taxes being paid by 50% of the population) got stuck with Bear Sterns’ bad debt.
Now JP Morgan Chase just bought WaMu.
Michelle, please investigate the connections between JP Morgan Chase, the Federal Reserve, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson.
Something stinks at JP Morgan Chase. (And Goldman Sachs, too)
You crack me up too, wight. I needed that laugh to start my day.
Classic, Michelle, absolutely classic.
And very, very true. Spot on.
What insect names shall we give to Malcolm X and “Rev” Jeremiah Wright? Oh, and Oprah?
It’s not as if the ants weren’t warned, in 1999.
Where were the bloggers and the media THEN?
It’s not as if the ants weren’t warned again by President Bush, in 2002.
Where were the bloggers and the media THEN?
It’s not as if the ants weren’t warned again, by McCain in 2006.
Where were the bloggers and the media THEN?
The ants were warned, time and time again.
Yet, the Media, AND the bloggers, didn’t let out anything more than a whimper.
Where were you, when we needed you?
You’re a day late and a Dollar short, to be complaining NOW.
Nancy Pelosi – Dung Beetle
Harry Reid – Mosquito
I’m loving it !!
I have a personal rule to NEVER respond to trolls, but I got to say to Frank, YOU ARE AN IGGIT !!
Barack Cicada is like “Jimminy Cricket” except that he twists the Christian “conscience” into the deception of “Social Justice”…
A Politics of “Conscience” where he preaches about bringing the Ant “Empire to its knees.”
December 1993
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n25_v45/ai_14779796?tag=untagged
We have a media that has turned completely corrupt. The truth is that this was almost all caused by the Democrats, & their socialist programs. But they are not going to report that.
It’s up to the alternative media, & it’s up to us to make the alternative media the Mainstream Media. Until then, we’re screwed, because most of the sheeple think that the economy is better off in the Democrats hands. It’s an evil backward lie..
So the ants knew grasshoppers were going to be useless and lazy.. so therefore it’s the ants fault. Typical liberal thinking.
For the conservative spenders among us, credit isn’t such a big deal. Slow and steady wins the race. Until the race organizers decide on their own to pick winners and losers. The politicians are so used to easily available credit. Maybe they can’t imagine a country where people hunker down and make do with what they have. Maybe that’s too horrible for them. Sometimes living with what you’ve done is too painful. For conservatives, it’s actually pretty easy to do. It’s good enough. We’ll tough it out. We’ll live with what we did, whatever that was. We don’t want to live with what others did.
Nobody is going to learn their lesson from this. Nobody.
On an interesting note: Joe Biden, along with several other Congress Critters, has requested 51.3 million dollars in earmarks. It’s nice to see all the piggies still dining at the trough.
I find it appalling that the Clinton administration was able to enact a law that requires lenders to give out loans based on color rather than financial stability. I’m confused. How is that not racial discrimination?
This ant is pretty p.o.’d that he had to pay 28% of his hard earned money today so that the grasshopper could continue living irresponsibly. Makes him want to round up the colony and go find the grasshopper.
There are 2 ways to have money; earn it or steal it. Thanks congress for stealing more.
That’s interesting, because it goes back even farther than I realized.
It’s astounding, this has flown barely under the radar this long.
If bloggers, and the Media, had spent as much time beating the drums then as they are now, we could very well have avoided this mess.
Precisely. If this was a child who was acting irresponsibly, they would be disciplined. If it was my child, I sure wouldn’t be extending them any more credit till they paid back what they owe. I’m just a mean mom, I guess.