Well done. The plan you and Jan Peter cooked up with your colleagues this weekend worked a treat. Sure, it cost a bob or two, almost 250 billion euro by my account (17 billion to buy up Fortis & ABN/AMRO, 20 billion to safe guard saving accounts and now some 200 billion to make the banks lend each other money again), but it worked. The stock market recovered beautifully, with the Amsterdam stock exchange having its second best day ever yesterday.
Which brings me to the reason I’m writing you this letter. You see, it’s not just the stock market or the bankers that have lost their confidence in the Dutch economy. Yes, it’s true, even I have become gunshy due to the credit crisis. I was planning to build an extenstion to our kitchen while we were remodeling it, but these plans unfortunately already had to be dropped. I couldn’t raise the credit to do everything we wanted to do, nor did I want to run the risk of getting stuck with bad debts, especially now the interest is getting so high on them.
Therefore I would like to use your help in this crisis of confidence. Because you’ve done such a marvelous job for people who need much more than me, I’m sure you can also fulfill my modest request. What I’m asking for is almost a rounding error compared to the huge sums of money you’ve already given away to people who’ve done much less to stimulate the economy than I have done. All I need is a straight forward cash injection of 100,000 euros, plus a guarantee for another 250,000, just in case my mortgage supplier gets shirty.
Be honest: who’s more deserving of your support? The losers in the banks and credit companies who caused this crisis in the first place by wasting billions buying dodgy merkin mortgages, not to mention tens of millions on their hot shot stock brokers who told them these were good ideas? Or me and others like me, who’ve been working hard to keep the economy growing by working hard and doing our best to inject cash into the market through kitchen remodelings or by spending it on essential investments like that big plasma television screen I saw in the shopping centre the other day.
Yours sincerily,
Martin Wisse
P.S. In return for your support I’m of course more than willing to make a pledge not to ask for a salary higher than that your pal Balkenende, as you’ve also asked of all your public sector executives. Is the board in charge of your new state banks Fortis and ABN/AMRO also prepared to pledge this?