Economy is not on its greatest shape that made people panicked that it might be the end of the world. But I think what we need is a very deep understanding about the involved aspects such as the government and its actions towards the issue and also those industries related to our economy such as the stock markets who definitely have a direct connection with this financial crisis we are experiencing. A person like Jim Cramer who told something about what really is going on at the stock market really terrified me for those person like him who have a clearer view of the economy can really manipulate our economy that will result to a such horrible scene. Now that Jon Stewart went after Jim Cramer would somehow make us understand what really is behind that issue. Being ignorant and worst complicit is such a hard accusation. And that the issue also about certain firms that had taken too much debt because of their short-term practices until the global economy collapse. That makes Jon Stewart an American icon.

Pt 2

Every time the Dems screw progressives (which, if you look at public opinion on the major ISSUES, includes most of us), and things get worse and worse, I keep thinking, "Maybe next time we'll have figured it out." But, nope, we chicken out again and then, whenever the "electable" Dems fail to mount anything resembling even a credible opposition, let alone a decent program, bitch about NADER not forming a third party! Third party of whom? All you folks who claim progressive positions and aspirations but won't vote for the guy who embodies them for no other reason than that the MSM has drummed into your head "He can't win!" Give me a break! Is there ANY progressive out there you would vote for if the MSM said "(S)he can't win"? Conversely, is there ANY jackass out there you would eliminate even though the MSM had declared him/her one of the 2 "electable" candidates? All the folks who decry the MSM as a bunch of spinmeisters, seem, nevertheless, to grant it great credibility when it comes to determining who's "electable", never mind failing to question whether "electability" is a better criterion than who has the best ideas.

I weep for the progressive agenda as too many of us who promote it oratorically sabotage it electorally. Sorry folks, but we deserve the government we put and keep in office. Vote for what you want, not for what somebody else, with their corporate agenda, has told you is the best you can get. Face it, for all the reasons that we are well aware of, NO real progressive will EVER have the mantle of "electability" bestowed on him/her by the MSM and, what is really frosting my cookies these days is that far too many of our so-called progressive media and gurus have fallen in line with this "thinking", or rather lack thereof. Good Heavens! Betrayed by our own "spokespeople"!

If you detect a note of exasperation in this post which, I am sure, will be criticized as being less than courteous or tolerant, it is because I have been seeing this unfold, predictably, for too long and am seeing it in the process of happening again. This political scene is like the movie "Groundhog Day" - I just don't know how far along in the movie we are - how many more repetitions do we need before we get it right? And, perhaps more importantly, will we have a chance to "get it right" before time runs out and we won't be able to get anything at all? I express my exasperation because I want you to share it for the simple reason that I understand that, too often, "reasoned discourse" of the kind that is promoted here, and, rightfully, valued, is, sadly, too often not enough to convince us that, faced with "insurmountable" odds, we must, nonetheless, fight the good fight. Reason, or at least what passes for it, is, apparently, not enough to overcome the "unelectable" label, once it has been attached, and yet that is precisely what must be overcome if we are to make any real progress. How "reasonable" was the American Revolution? Were they fools to freeze their hemorrhoids off at Valley Forge? What if they had quit because they "didn't have a chance of winning"? Why are we not ashamed of ourselves for being such unworthy heirs?

If, as they say, you are not angry at the political establishment of BOTH "major" parties, then it is because you are either dead or not paying attention. And if you ARE angry and want something better, not just "less bad", then, for pete's sake, VOTE for it, regardless of "the odds". If you really like Obama, or McCain and think that either has the best ideas for how to progress, that's fine and we can argue that, but, frankly, I am driven to distraction, as you can tell, by those who won't vote for a candidate whose analysis and ideas they agree are the best because (s)he is - "unelectable".

Nader is on the ballot in 45 states, which have enough electoral votes to produce a Pres. Do you want what he stands for or not? If you do, you will NOT get it with either McCain OR Obama as is increasingly clear.

(PS - this post is NOT directed at sanda, who, for all I know, may agree with me - or not. The "you" and "we" I keep using are generic. I posted this stuff here because the question sanda included - "It didn't in 2000, did it?" - prompted me to answer, and once I got started, the rest "came of itself", as it were.)

sanda writes "Third party candidates push the party/parties for change, but it does not appear that the way it does so is by having folks vote for them. It didn't in 2000, did it?"

The reasons it didn't in 2000 are that

a) not enough people pulled third party levers

b) the Dems successfully placed the "spoiler" label on Nader so that his ideas, positions, etc. were not even considered.

If progressives had the same "courage of their convictions" as the right wing does, we would have a progressive Dem candidate. The Dem leadership knows that to adopt truly progressive positions would be to kiss their corporate funders goodbye. As long as they are confident that they can keep the votes of their erstwhile base no matter what they do, they don't have to go progressive. The way to keep those votes is to a) engage in the politics of fear (e.g. "think of the Supreme Court!") b) totally smear any progressive opposition, e.g Nader, as "spoiler". Put a and b together and, Voila! you have the TINA syndrome I keep hearing over and over again.

If the Dems were as concerned about answering to their base as the Reps are about theirs, Kucinich would be the VP candidate. But the Dems have calculated that, when all is said and done, their base does indeed seem to be a bunch of "whiners" who, after complaining about things on sites such as this, will, nonetheless, pull the Dem lever in November, if they vote at all. This dynamic has been "working" for the Dem party for well over a decade; the corporate Dems,, even if they don't win the big enchilada, nevertheless keep control of the party and all the perks that go along with it.

Nothing of significance will change until progressives refuse to go along any more. We don't have to "win" this election, all we have to do is vote in numbers significant enough so that we cannot be marginalized any more. When the Dems did their big Nader smear in '00, they waited to see if it would work in '04, and must have breathed an enormous sigh of relief when the Nader numbers grew smaller instead of bigger. If too many of us hadn't chickened out (marching in NY in '03, then voting for pro war Kerry in '04?!), the Dems would have either amped up their attacks on Nader (we see the residual here, often enough) or come up with a better candidate (I have never seen a serious claim that Obama is "anti-corporate"). If we chicken out again, as too many of us will probably do, we will have lost another opportunity, as we did in '96 (post NAFTA), '00 (post Seattle) and '04 (post war). So here we are post FISA, bailout, Trade, you name it, all of which are screwing us royally and all of which are promoted by both parties - and once again we are being scared into voting Dem. Good Grief! We progressives may have our hearts in the right place, but apparently we are an easily frightened lot and as soon as the party line goes in gear, we lose our courage and our convictions and fall into lock step again.

Anybody have any idea how many Americans who are registered to vote, are registered as either a democrat, a republican, an Independent a Green, a Libertarian etc?

I guess if the American people favor one party or another en masse, it kinda diminishes with the theory that you can run under another ticket and have any hope on Sams Hill to win.

I was just thinking the other day that politics has gained a certain pseudo marriage with religion. They both seem to represent a system of belief that should be separated from administration. It seems that today we have the catholics(Republicans) and the (protestants) Democrats of old battling it out for representation of a totally corrupted church(government)

People should not be voting on such personal and biased beliefs. They should vote on which candidate can serve all of America.

I just read that "Bush administration wants hundreds of billions, new powers ASAP to attack financial crisis".

HELLS NO.

Please tell your friends to call all of your legislators and tell them they better not authorize anything. This is Shock Doctrine: Let things fall apart and then do an "emergency" transfer of billions with no regulations to the super wealthy under the guise of saving the economy.

HELLS NO. Let the bastards go under. Confiscate their property under RICO.

If there is economic rescue to be done, use the money for directly helping those who are being thrown out of work or are losing their homes.

If we give them more taxpayer money they will continue in their ways and dig us into a deeper hole. I would rather give money to the wino on the corner than to these guys.

Joe

Pt II:

Without the foreigners to lend us sufficient operating money, and with a tax policy straight out of the 1880s Gilded Age during war-time no less, the U.S. government is overdue for a revenue crisis that will be TRAUMATIC to 98% of Americans. Our national priorities have been backwards for 28 years. They are about to be redefined perforce and there is not thing one any politician, image consultant, banker or network news hack can do about it at this late date except spew increasingly obvious nonsense.

The domestic U.S. economy no longer manufactures any big ticket export items in large numbers besides weapons and weapons systems. Under Duhhbya we don't even create enough service wage jobs for all the people entering the economy. Our winner-take-all laissez-faire ruling class has hogged the soaring profits from the multiplier effect on worker productivity created by the computerization of the workplace that took place in the 1990s. All the national wealth is now over-concentrated at the top of the class structure. Wages for 60% of workers have been relatively stagnant for over ten years. Secure pensions and jobs are a thing of the past. Unemployment is rising with inflation and both will soon soar.

Because of all of the above, our real economy now is dangerously dependent upon maintaining a certain level of consumer spending. As credit tightens for strapped consumers whose middle-class industrial jobs are gone with the "free trade" wind, inflation sinks its teeth, the dollar falls, unemployment climbs, more banks and other financial institutions implode and a new Resolution Trust Corporation tries to swallow the un-swallowable--consumer spending will constrict along with the already depressive economy into what may quickly become a vicious cycle. There will be a lack of adequate income for consumers on one hand, and a lack of adequate revenue to repay government debt (and continue to operate the government AND pay for multiple wars that still have no end in sight) on the other. First will come increasingly histrionic Republican attempts to destroy Social Security and what's left of the Welfare State. Then the U.S. may be forced to withdraw from some or all of Bush's wars prematurely with endgames as botched, bloody and potentially costly as Bush's occupations.

Congressional Ways and Means and Appropriations Committee Chairpersons will scream in anguish and plead for help from the world's banks who will first scoff at our regressive tax policies. Either the super-rich and their tenders in the upper-middle class will submit to late 1940s (immediate post-WWII) levels of taxation, or we will be unable to sustain our annual $500 Billion dollar defense budgets, Medicare or any other large expenditure of note. A lot of deeply indoctrinated Republicans who are not rich are about to gain a new and very personal perspective on economics. Hopefully, neo-conservatism will be swept away along with the DLC.

Kruschev said, "Sell the capitalists enough rope and they will hang themselves with it." Former KGB man Putin and the old Maoists in the Chinese government must barely be able to keep from bursting out laughing when dealing with Team Bush these days. Older Brits who remember the fall of their empire (and they were much better at it than we ever will be) must be averting their eyes from us in shame.

The current economic crisis has roots that go back to the first real efforts in the late 1970s and 1980s by the right-wing think tanks, large domestic and international banks--including the World Bank and IMF, certain multinationals and their bought politicians, etc., to push for economic "free trade" globalism--GATT, NAFTA and WTO. This economic push was simultaneous with the spread of Milton Friedman's anti-regulatory mindset which has, for over four decades, infected too many U.S. Fed Chairmen and Secretaries of the Treasury.

Neo-liberal right-wing DLC Democrats like Robert Rubin, Joe Biden , Joe Liebermann and dinosaur Republicans like Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, Thomas Bliley, Alan Greenspan and others were key in deregulating the banking and finance industry in the late 1990s. This deregulation is the main cause of the present financial crisis.

The Republican drafted Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was signed into law by neo-liberal, "free trade," DLC Democrat Bill Clinton. It effectively repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that served as a post-Depression firewall against the merger of stockbrokers, commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies.

Not giddy enough with that economic betrayal of the American people, Senator Phil Gramm shoved the Commodity Futures Modernization Act through Congress mere hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. This Act legalized mortgage swaps that distanced the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector(s).

Commercial banks, investment banks, stockbrokers, hedge funds, international banks, foreign banks, etc., all piled on to get into the debt "swap" business--using a bewildering and proliferating number of "securitization" and "debt instruments." The originators of bad loans were often separated by numerous transactions and degrees of legal responsibility from the ultimate collectors or "owners" of mortgages that were often traded in huge blocs of serial numbered mortgages using Enron-style, Arthur Anderson pseudo-accounting and off balance sheets operations.

To quote Mike Whitney (http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09152008.html):

"Securitization has failed. The cuts to the Fed's Funds rate have failed. The auction facilities -- TAF, PDCF, and TSLF -- have all failed. The off-balance sheets operations, the debt-pyramiding asset-inflation, the Enron-style accounting, the SIVs, the CP, MBS, CDOs, have failed. The subprimes, the piggybacks, the option-ARMs, the Alt-As have all failed. Structured finance has failed. The system doesn't work; won't work; can't work. It's built on the misguided assumption that capitalism can thrive without capital; that one dollar can be infinitely magnified by complex debt-instruments and mega-leveraging to generate real wealth and keep the wheels of finance and industry humming along. It can't be done. The system is under-water."

Friedman devotee, Alan Greenspan, at the Federal Reserve catalyzed this process into fiscal suicide by repeatedly lowering interest rates--an unprecedented 17 times in a row. Artificially cheap loans. This predictably, nay, inevitably incited dubious loan originators into providing unsustainable volumes of lending to questionable borrowers. And it also incited larger scale "debt swappers" to sell and launder this straw debt to any suckers--domestic or international--they could hook. This is where our deregulated domestic financial institutions took advantage of the "free trade" push for deregulation of international banking and "more open markets." Part of the hook was to encourage suckers to sell this bad debt further on down the line around the world to more suckers. More distance from loan origination to loan collector or guarantor. Remember Orwell? War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength? Add: Debt is Profit.

A Titanic global web of bad debt and various market instruments that were traded as bets on how that inherently unsustainable debt (and the rate of new lending based on the initial Fed-rates-abetted deregulatory pyramid scheme) would perform over time soon blossomed and then grew monstrous. Who cared if a questionable borrower was not qualified or if the appraisal of some property value was inflated, so long as the debt was "swapped" away, or insured by suckers down the transaction line, before some future foreclosure? All the bankrollers and their legislative backers planned to bail long before the housing bubble burst. Phil "Americans are Whiners" Gramm is now filthy rich and unaccountable. I wonder how much of his personal wealth is tied to this bad debt and at what level of the game...

The Fed did their part in all this for political, economic and neo-conservative "national security" reasons not all of which were directly related to the mortgage market. The inflated housing market created the politically useful pretense of a legitimate "growth economy" that, in fact, wasn't producing true middle-class economic growth and hadn't since the end of the techno-bubble in 2000. This pretense was critical to maintain in an increasingly false economy with historically unprecedented tax cuts for the super-rich during war-time featuring multiple, open-ended war expenditures. By 2002 Team Bush, our true ruling Oligarchs and their members in Congress were relying more and more on loans from creditor nations not just for federal government operating money but war financing as well.

And here's the end of the gang plank: China, our biggest creditor, holds about a fifth of its currency reserves in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt. The U.S. has now been revealed as a straw economy with a plunging dollar that will fall with the value attached to those Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac assets by Treasury Secretary Paulsen and the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when they were nationalized. This means the pressure is on China to cut the portion of its currency reserves that it holds in dollars. Other foreign investors and central banks are under the same pressure to limit their purchases of US Treasury bills and securities.

Sorry for th double post,but I just have more to say on this..

Are any us really surprised buy this?
They know that the average man as no real power and can in the end do nothing about it..

All those profits that were made over the last 8 years will not be given back to the taxpayer.The huge multi-million bonuses paid many on Wallstreet will not be paid back.

People are losing their homes all over this country as result of their greed..

What the government is doing is keeping the well to do,well to do at our expense..

This is the purpose of government.

The truth is becoming evident: you cannot stop the collapse of a pyramid that is rotting at the foundation by making repairs at the top. The whole 'solution' to stemming the financial collapse was a** backward from the beginning. If very early on homeowners were provided an alternative to foreclosure, either by an orderly sale of their homes, or refinancing with and extended mortgage (even 40 or 50 years, if necessary), the banks could have kept some money coming in on whatever property they held; having the owner pay SOMETHING while remaining in the home clearly would have been preferable to letting the home foreclose and rot on the lot.

That is the very FOUNDATION of the problem, which now is being realized. If the problem had been addressed sensibly on this level from the get go, any 'bailout' required would have been far less than it will be now. Regardless of who we believe was 'morally' responsible, the foundation of the problem must be fixed and/or stabilized.

The blame game at this point does not get anyone anywhere. Sensible regulation should and will no doubt be enacted, but the fire at the bottom must be put out first. New regulation can be thrashed out later. Painting the temple at the top of the pyramid simply will not work. Stabilizing mortgages at the bottom, even now, can prevent further collapse--at least where the mortgage bomb is concerned. That will help the economy in many other respects as well. Having a sturdy foundation benefits all levels of the pyramid. Those running things have so far been too stupid or foolish to admit it. On the other hand, homeowners must not be given 'free' mortgages, but to be able to continue to pay what they were paying before the increase, until other terms can be worked out, or their home sold.

This is all common sense, really, because the 'asset' (especially a home asset) is only valuable if it is taken care of.

NEW YORK - Wall Street extended a huge rally Friday as investors stormed back
into the market, relieved that the government plans to kiss it and make it well.
Egad! WE need the WPA and they offer the RTC.

An economic analyst says by buying out investment giants, the USA had transformed into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America).

"This transformation of the USA into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized) continues today with the nationalization of AIG,” Nouriel Roubini said.

Hearing Obama, Mccain, Palin and Biden being interviewed on the financial crisis is like seeing a pack of deer in the highlights that can pontificate while they get run over.

The media spent more time up to last week talking about Palin's lipstick and pregnant kid than on the tidal wave many saw from 100 miles out.

And when the MSM tries to explain the current financial crisis to the people they act like their talking to 7th graders.
It's pathetic.

I'm afraid the progressives have lost, you can vote, you can shout, you can scream it won't make make a blind bit of difference, the depression is coming, the poor will get poorer and the rich will legislate themselves immunity to poverty as well as enshrine their rights to get richer.

The change will happen when people start fighting in the streets (as the increasingly desperate poor will do) the anti terrorism laws will be put into full effect, private Blackwater esq security companies will employ mercenaries to "restore order", up until someone has a very public Marie Antoinette moment at which point enough people will probably think enough is enough and decide they having nothing left to lose by fighting.

Meanwhile in another country that has accidently become the worlds superpower, a lobbiest will whisper quite words and hand bundles of cash to the nations politicians stating that the world could be made an oh so much better place if corporations where given free reign.

With the nationalization of corporate risk/debt, the precedent has been set. Now let us nationalize those aspects of our system that are absolutely essential to the welfare of the nation and if we are to be the nation that we claim to be or strive for. These would be the healthcare (or lack thereof), energy, water and sanitation, transportation, education, etc. (the basic infrastructure of a civilized society). These should be Public Utilities (as they have been at various times in our history).

Republicans and Democrats turn into socialists! The losses of the corrupt banking institutions are now socialized with taxpayer money, however the profits to remain private. Welfare for the rich!

Thus, in the course of two weeks, the Federal government has doled out hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money in bailouts and loans for failing financial institutions. It has carried out the unprecedented nationalization of the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) with what is widely seen as a down payment of $85 billion. The firm holds nearly half a trillion dollars worth of questionable credit derivatives on its books.

Not a single vote was taken in either house of the US Congress on these measures, much less by the American people. Rather, the bailouts of Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, like the takeover of AIG, have all been negotiated behind closed doors between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street executives.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that congressional leaders were hastily informed of the deal to bail out AIG only after it had been struck.

“Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed concern yesterday that they have had no control over when and how federal money has been used to curb the panic on Wall Street,” the Post reported. “While many have been convinced that the moves so far have been necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, they said they felt confined to the sidelines as power to make momentous decisions has been concentrated in very few hands.”

The impotence of Congress and the Democratic Party was expressed most nakedly by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat of Nevada), who declared Wednesday that in the face of the unfolding financial catastrophe, the Senate would go ahead with its planned pre-election recess. There was no point in staying in Washington as “No one knows what to do at the moment,” he said. The Democratic leadership indicated that it would probably not reconvene until January, unless summoned by Paulson, Bernanke and Wall Street.
read more: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/obam-s19.shtml

The first step to solving this crisis is abolishing the federal reserve and ending fractional reserve lending. Then, if these actions don't do it themselves, its breaking these large banking institutions into a million pieces. Banking should be a local operation and should be kept simple.

All these booms and busts are engineered by the large banking institutions and their main tool is the federal reserve... which is not a government agency, its a privately owned corporation whose shareholders are not disclosed. We are just told they are owned by the areas banks. Well... the bankers are in charge of the institution that controls the money supply?

You have try and look at this through a different paradigm... nothing is being lost here except for the savings of middle class americans who were responsible and saved their money for retirement. For the big boys, power is just being consolidated into JP Morgan Chase (from Bear) Bank of America (getting country wide and merrill on the cheap) and the federal reserve (fannie, freddie, and AIG).

This whole thing has infuriated me so much that I can't coordinate my thoughts. When it comes to MONETARY POLICY... I think the libertarians are right. We need to abolish the central bank and restablish a fixed money supply. That's one of the few things I agree with them about... but I think its the most important issue and its an issue that NO ONE is talking about, or just oversimplifying.

ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE! They control the money supply. It's a fiat currency... and if you doubt me just look a dollar bill, it says federal reserve note on top... no US treasury note. Progressives need to analyze their stance with respect to monetary policy and really examine the macro effects here.

For example I keep reading about "our tax money" being spent on bailouts. I got news for ya, it aint your tax money. The fed just prints it out of thin air. That doesn't mean its free, actually just the opposite. What happens is the money supply is increased, therefore creating inflation, which means the money you have is not lost, its just worth less. That's the fallout from this and thats what we won't feel for a while, but inflation is going to be horrible and deliberate inflating of the currency to consolidate the banking system is more of an injustice to working familys than ANYTHING.

I wish progressives would read more on this issue because it's so fascinating... so amazingly simple and disgusting that the blatant injustice just jumps out at you. Plus between abolishing the Fed, ending agressive foreign policy, and enforcing domestic liberties like privecy... you have three issues to unite with the libertarians on. With a coalition of progressives and libertarians that focus on just those three issues then splinter after the objectives are met you might actually have a viable third party.

Also keep this in mind people. Since the begining of the industrial revolution up until the middle of the 20th century, prices for goods and services went DOWN. Our entire lives, we've seen prices go up, generally about 3% a year. And this inflation is talked of like gravity or the sun coming up, it just happens. Well that's total BS! That's bankers using the federal reserve to profit of the devaluation of our currency. When you increase the money supply, the inflation doesn't immediately take effect. It takes time for that money to work it's way through the system and, eventually bid up prices. But when that money is first spent after being created, it has the value of the currency at that day. That means they make huge profits off free money and we end up paying for it by having our hard earned money devalued. Inflation is a scam, PLAIN AND SIMPLE!!!

Ohh yeah the libertarians might have an issue about the income tax too. Turns out that all of our income tax doesn't actually get used to pay for a single government service, project, or salary... hell it doesn't even pay for bombs to drop on brown people. It actually goes towards paying off government debt. But who owns all this debt? Sure China and the other tigers own alot, but the investment banks and federal reserve own most of it. You see, even though THE CONSTITUTION says congress is "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;" it does not actually print dollars. It prints treasury bills and bonds... which are basically dollars except at interest. The government issues some piece of paper it says is worth a dollar plus interest after so many years and then... gets a dollar. Think about this, there is now a dollar the government can use and eventually where are they going to get more dollars to pay off that debt... because that debt is actually larger than the amount of dollars floating around out there. Well gee... lets just issue more treasury bills and bonds to the fed! And the cycle goes on and on. Even with a surplus budget (which liberals love to shower clinton with praise about) our debt will still increase. And back to our income tax, well that's where it goes. Personally I feel that taxes are necessary and should be progressive, but they should actually pay for something. Check out The Grace Commission Report that Regean killed real fast after he read it.

PLEASE RESEARCH THIS ISSUE! I RECCOMEND READING THE CASE AGAINST THE FED BY MURRAY ROTHBARD AND GOOGLING "THE MONEY MASTERS" WHICH IS AN EXCELLENT DOCUMENTARY!

I listen to Amy Goodman every morning, she's awesome. Excellent article, highlighting how Dems are really no better than Pugs in many ways.

Today I heard one of Obama's economic advisers on Pacifica Radio and he sounded just like Obama. He waffled and tried to be at once for the bailout and against it. He said Obama wouldn't second guess the Fed but when asked if Obama agreed with bailing out AIG he said Obama would have done things differently. Typical vagueness and avoidance of taking stands whenever possible. Prior to the collapse what was Obama saying about deregulation? For that matter wasn't McCain a champion of the deregulation policies that have brought on this fiasco? Dweedle Dee meets Dweele Dum.

Richard Mellor

Ms Goodman writes: "The people who vote for them, and whose taxes are being handed over to these failed financiers, need to show their outrage and demand that their leaders truly put "country first" and bring about "change.""

This is where it all ends for liberal bourgeois thinkers like Ms Goodman. A lot of what she writes none of us can disagree with but what is completely missing in her world view is the role of the working class. The idea of an independent mass workers party does not enter the picture for Ms Goodman.

What does she think will occur if outrage begins and takes to the streets, workplace occupations, wildcat strikes, homeless protests etc.? What will happen is that this movement will tend to throw up its own political representatives. The liberals will try to divert this movement as they always do to the Democratic Party. This party will not serve our interests. It is a bug business party.

But Ms Goodman does not see the working class as a force that can lead, as a force for change. I can only imagine that she sees it as this mass that empties on to the streets hopefully and forces what she mistakenly refers to as "their leaders"to act, to act against their own self interest in a party that belongs to them by introducing measures that serve working people.

In the real world this mistaken perspective is what leads people like Ms Goodman to end up betraying workers and actually attacking us and working to destroy the very movement that she claims will bring positive change.

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/unionguy510

Marx was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt about that...Old Marx was as dead as a doornail...
... He saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change - not a knocker, but Marx's face.
Marx's face...the hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.
"Humbug!" he mumbled. "Marx is dead."
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry. Then shook his dreadful locks, and grinned most heartily.
"I have returned with a message!" the ghost of Marx grinned even more heartily.
"What is the message? He ventured, stepping back, fearing to hear.
"The message is...I told you so!"

He covered his ears and crouched in realization.
" The horror! The horror!" He cried.

And then, if you're a Republican and the persons kicked out of
the house are black, you quickly send a non-forwardable letter
from the Registrar's office, and it comes back, and you say,
"Heh, Heh, Heh," and the black people never can vote, and you
say, "Oh, we Republicans are so irreverent, such mavericks:
I just love us so much!"

Actually, though, Republicans, you're nothing more than scumbags.
That goes for the good people, too. Through association with
scumbags you have become scumbags yourselves.

Interesting article here:

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/its_the_derivatives.php

"Derivatives are financial instruments that have no intrinsic value but derive their value from something else. Basically, they are just bets. You can "hedge your bet" that something you own will go up by placing a side bet that it will go down. "Hedge funds" hedge bets in the derivatives market. Bets can be placed on anything, from the price of tea in China to the movements of specific markets.

"The point everyone misses," wrote economist Robert Chapman a decade ago, "is that buying derivatives is not investing. It is gambling, insurance and high stakes bookmaking. Derivatives create nothing."1 They not only create nothing, but they serve to enrich non-producers at the expense of the people who do create real goods and services.

In congressional hearings in the early 1990s, derivatives trading was challenged as being an illegal form of gambling. But the practice was legitimized by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who not only lent legal and regulatory support to the trade but actively promoted derivatives as a way to improve "risk management." Partly, this was to boost the flagging profits of the banks; and at the larger banks and dealers, it worked. But the cost was an increase in risk to the financial system as a whole.2

Since then, derivative trades have grown exponentially, until now they are larger than the entire global economy. The Bank for International Settlements recently reported that total derivatives trades exceeded one quadrillion dollars – that’s 1,000 trillion dollars.3 How is that figure even possible? The gross domestic product of all the countries in the world is only about 60 trillion dollars. The answer is that gamblers can bet as much as they want. They can bet money they don’t have, and that is where the huge increase in risk comes in. "

So this is whats really going on behind the smoke and mirrors, Derivatives were designed as the ultimate financial weapon of mass destruction. The purpose being financial terrorism to eliminate the USD as a reserve currency and replace it with a new currency controlled by the IMF/World bank (carbon credits and carbon tax). Sir Bubbles did not get knighted for nothing.

When that happens, the US might start looking like Zimbabwe since we will no longer be able to raise money to fund our expenditures and pay off our debt. We will need to borrow carbon credits from the IMF who will do so, but with conditions, such as privatizing social securrity, eliminating medicare, selling off some of our military assets to the UN, etc.

Frankly, our assets are already being sold off now.

BTW, IMF will audit the Fed in 2009. I do not think the toxic waste being now held by the Fed as assets will pass the test.

If nothing else these occurrences show how "capitalism" is merely a fantastical idea - as social creatures we can only function in socialism, regardless of what name is placed on the activity, or how corrupt that activity may become.

From now on the use of "capitalism" or "marketplace" as the driving or corrective factor for economics should be viewed as sign posts that their users are indulging in fantastical thinking, disconnected from organic humanity, and a threat to the human endeavor of happiness and pleasure on Earth.

All for one and one for all, it's all it's ever been and ever will be...regardless of how it's applied.

could it be that this financial meltdown is a "shock wave" to push the electorate to mccains camp? when in doubt go with the old wrinkly war monger for saftey and security.

The other thing is:

Yes this obviously inevitable financial meltdown is finally underway, and yes the power elites will strive mightily to hold onto (and increase) their share of power as the aftershocks play out in the economic system...

A larger system, the living Earth, destabilized by industrialism and overpopulation, is heading toward an equally obviously inevitable meltdown. When that hits in earnest, the power elites will strive mightily to hold onto (and increase) their share of power (already laying their plans, Google the CIA and Pentagon reports on global warming and global security in the 21st century).

Take care of yourselves, take care of your neighbors, take care of the living Earth around you. Do not buy anything that you do not actually need. Build skills and daily practices that improve your ability to take care of yourselves, your neighbors, and the living Earth around you.

Nice to see Amy deservedly lather it on both the Repocrats and the Demublicans.

So, socialising the losses on Wall Street and related industries is OK. But socialising medical care is not? If the taxpayers are going to foot the bill on losses made by private corporations and wheeler-dealer speculators, then taxpayers can foot the bill for every American to have the security of accessible medical care.

A related right on article on counterpunch:

http://counterpunch.org/walker09182008.html

"While the 2008 presidential election has justifiably received a great deal of attention and has been the subject of a substantial amount of political commentary, it should not be the case that progressives remain silent in light on the tremendous crisis engulfing capitalism in our moment.

Nor should progressive analysis of the current economic crisis be framed by a cult of personality critique that places full blame on the rogue Bush-Cheney regime.

If progressivism is to mean something more than just a euphemism for center-left Democrats or more than the latest Democratic branding strategy in light of the decades long conservative assault on the term liberal, then progressives must articulate a substantive critique of what John Bellamy Foster terms “monopoly finance capital.”

However, if progressives ignore the deep and systemic crisis of capitalism that, at best, marginalizes the lives, dreams, and hopes of the majority of American citizens, progressivism in the 21st century will not only be impoverished, but will also be part of the problem and not the solution to the general crisis of democracy in America. "

http://almusawwir.org/resistance/

What happened to "Snow Wolf" and "Truth Teller"? I guess they couldn't stand the irony of all that they badmouthed. Corporate socialism is certainly a strong phrase to attack the monied elites. By the way, anyone remember CAFTA? Yeah, the major extension to NAFTA.

Hey if they can self regulate, can't they save themselves? How much did all of their CEO's make in the last 10 years? They should all chip in before we start borrowing more money from China to bail their collective asses out. What's gonna happen when China and the rest come to collect?

The funniest part of all this is Osama Bin Ladin said he was going to watch this country bankrupt itself. I wonder if he is still alive to see this. He must have one heck of a hard one over this!

The total governmental (taxpayer) commitment made to the Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, AIG collective as of today amounts to over a thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

Don't ever let any Republican, Neo-con, Fox news, hate radio, corporate media hack or other "conservative" sing the glories of the "free market". The "free market" was always a scam.

tax and spend never cost as much as deficit spending and these bailouts have,

and arguably, tax and spend has risen more tides and floated more boats.

The republican credo -

preach self-promotion, avoid personal accountability
regulate people, deregulate business
promote war, demote social benefits
socialize debt, privatize profit

keep 2 sets of books
control the discussion
say one thing, do another
take today, forget tomorrow
if its good, take credit
if its bad, blame others
and always remember,
if its for the good of all it must be liberal
and if it's liberal its gotta be bad

Dow Surges 400 on Report of Entity for Bad Debt- AP

"Wall Street surged higher Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points after a report that the federal government is considering creation of a repository for banks' bad debt."

And all it will cost We-The-People is our life's savings and our first born children...the oily-garchs are dancing in their money bins and we are drowning in an ocean of 'trickle down' debt...heckuva job!

Good to see Amy's work getting top billing. This is one woman I would like to see running the country. Put her with Cindy Sheehan in the White House and CODE PINK for their cabinet. They would turn Wall Street into a parking lot.
Hoa binh

"The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver's seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate." -- Amy Goodman

Instead of McSame insincerely calling for the firing of any one official, the Demos should scream and holler for openness and transparency at this juncture, and for a seat at this table, because this too, is a manipulation of shock to reorder the world according to the interests of the very wealthy and powerful.

Thank you, Amy Goodman, for your intelligible analysis, and for circulating candid comments from people with real insider knowledge of the system like Nomi Prins (rather than just the usual experts and suspects who pontificate in the business and financial press about Wall Street's cycles and the mysterious, invisible hand of the marketplace that eventually will slip a dime under your pillow, too, if you will only believe, trust the system, and stay the course).

I confess I'm still quite mystified by the interlocking root causes of this current unpleasantness. In essence, it seems to reinforce once more the truth of a comment I've heard more than one woman express during various stages of my lifetime, in a wholly non-financial context: size really does matter.

Enron and Lehman Brothers apparently are not too big to fail, but AIG, Fannie Mae, and Bear Stearns are too big, like the savings & loan companies were too big a decade or so ago. Only the little guys, and the ordinary, middle sized guys seem to fit all the way underneath the bus.

As Barack Obama quipped in a stump speech somewhere in some battle ground state on Monday, what we're witnessing is certainly not prosperity trickling down, but rather the spectacle of pain trickling up. But why now, (as I'm sure John McCain must be thinking), why right now, right at this very, very particular moment?

Inelegant as it is, here's my theory:

After eight straight years of having the fox guarding the hen house at DOJ, the SEC, the FTC, the IRS, and throughout the federal regulatory bureaucracy, some of the biggest of the big high rollers took a glance at the calendar and at the latest poll results, and concluded that there's only about a four month window of opportunity left to take the money and run.

I sincerely hope there's a lot more to it than that - and as Amy notes, there certainly is.

Maybe more tweaking of the interconnected global capital markets, currency value fluctuations, petrodollar politics, and other arcane cosmic economic influences beyond my comprehension can be deciphered by the pros, and tinkered with in the nick of time to keep the big boat afloat.

But I'm not about to bet my little ranch.

Bill from Saginaw

Had Nader's advice been heeded, not only would the current financial meltdown been prevented, 9-11 would have been prevented.

During the 1980's Nader admonished the US Gov. to mandate secure cockpit doors in commercial aircraft. The Ray-gun administration was on a mission from god to minimize corporate regulation and maximize corporate profits and determined that mandating secure cockpit doors would negatively impact aerospace industry profits.

This worked out well for the neocons when 9-11 gave them a license to steal...and kill...

Someone with more knowledge of our economic system answer this for me - why are these companies allowed to get so big that if they fail it takes everybody down? Are there no regulations against size of these companies? I realize its the American way to grow, grow, grow, but it looks like there's a limit.

Actually capitalism DOESN'T depend n population growth. Japan, Western Europe and Korea have all showed signifigant growth in both real and economic terms over the last several years despite declining populations in all of those countries. However 'Corporatism' may depend on population growth only because the corporation must eternally pay dividends to shareholders. The samll business on the other hand only needs to survive to thrive.
Amy brings up an excellent point about nationalizing finance companies. The taxpayer must walk away from bailing out any corporation according to the Milton Friedman-neo-liberal school of unchecked, deregualted open markets. But instead these same corporations who made the mess in the first place, now demand corporate welfare to bail them out. Let them sink and use the money to help the victims instead.
Obama and McCain can't hide their corporate fealty in situations like this simply because the real solutions are contrary to all the rhetoric they preach. Wall Street has traditionally been a playground for a very few extremely wealthy elite who have only recently sucked in the general public to get involved in the markets. The urgency to kick out our corporate sycophants has never been greater as our current members of Congress and the White House will actually promise the corporate gangsters a reprieve by using public funds to bail them out. This will also be used as an excuse to dismantle social security, medicare and other social programs (it's been done before!) with the MSM leading the way.
Any bailout of these companies by the public sector is tantamount to treason!