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The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create
Editor's note: The online version of this story has been amended to reflect developments since the publication of the print edition.
On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of "seasoned financial veterans" that will be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one name jumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serve as chief investment officer for the massive new program.
On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment. Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he's an alum of Goldman Sachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2005 to 2007, he proudly advocated "flexibility" in regulation - a laissez-faire approach that failed to rein in the high-risk trading at the heart of the meltdown.
Bankers watching bankers, regulators who don't believe in regulating - that's all standard fare for the Bush crew. What's most striking about Jeffery's résumé, however, is an item omitted when his new job was announced: He served as executive director of Paul Bremer's infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War. Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the partisan machine that filled the Green Zone with Young Republicans, investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren't a big issue back then, because the staff's main function was to hand over stacks of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as "a free-fraud zone." During Senate hearings last year, when Jeffery was asked what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said he thought that contracts should be handed out with more "speed and flexibility" - the same philosophy he cited back when he was in charge of regulating Wall Street traders.
The Bush Administration has since reversed the Jeffery appointment, perhaps thinking better of giving a CPA alum such a central role in the Wall Street bailout. Still the original impulse underscores the many worrying parallels between the administration's approach to the financial crisis and its approach to the Iraq War. Under cover of an emergency, Treasury is rapidly turning into an economic Green Zone, overrun with private companies collecting lucrative contracts. Fittingly, one of the first to line up at the new trough was none other than the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani - yes, that Giuliani. The firm's chairman, Patrick Oxford, could scarcely conceal his glee over the prospect of cashing in on the bailout. "This one," he told reporters, "is very, very big." At least four times bigger, in fact, than the post-9/11 homeland-security bubble, from which Giuliani and his various outfits have profited so extravagantly. Even bigger, potentially, than the price tag for the Iraq War itself.
In Iraq, the contractors were tasked with reconstructing the country from the mess made by U.S. missiles. After years of corruption born of no-bid contracts and paltry oversight, many Iraqis are still waiting for the lights to come back on. Today, a new team of contractors is lining up to reconstruct the U.S. economy - reconstruct it from the mess made by the very banks, brokers and law firms that are now applying for contracts. And it's not at all clear that America can survive their assistance.
See if any of this sounds familiar: As soon as the bailout was announced, it became clear that Treasury officials would hire outsiders to perform their jobs for them - at a profit. Private companies wanting to help manage the bailout were given just two days to apply for massive, multiyear contracts. Since it was such a mad rush - after all, the entire economy was about to implode - there was no time for an open bidding process. Nor was there time to draft rigorous rules to make sure that those applying don't have serious conflicts of interest. Instead, applicants were asked to disclose their conflicts and to explain - and this is not a joke - their "philosophy in fulfilling your duty to the Treasury and the U.S. taxpayer in light of your proprietary interests and those of other clients." In other words, an open invitation to bullshit about how much they love their country and how they can be trusted to regulate themselves.
The first major contract to be awarded in the bailout was for legal advice - and the choice Treasury made was Halliburton-esque in its audacity. Six law firms were invited to bid, but four declined, either because they didn't want the contract or because they had too many conflicts of interest. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the fact that so many law firms chose not to bid "shows that the guidelines are sufficiently rigorous."
Or it may just show that the bidder who won the contract - Simpson Thacher & Bartlett - takes a more relaxed approach to conflicts than its colleagues. The law firm is a Wall Street heavy hitter, having brokered some of the biggest bank mergers in recent years. It also provided legal support to companies trading mortgage-backed securities - the "financial weapons of mass destruction," as Warren Buffett called them, that detonated the banking industry. More to the point, it was hired to provide legal services to the Treasury in its negotiations to spend $250 billion of the bailout money purchasing equity in America's banks. The first stage of the plan involves buying stakes in nine of the country's top banks. Incredibly, Simpson Thacher has represented seven of the nine: JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.
According to its contract, Simpson Thacher has agreed not to represent any of the banks "against the U.S." when they negotiate with Treasury for the equity money. However, the firm has retained the right to represent banks when they apply for other parts of the $700 billion bailout not covered by its contract. (It has promised to erect a "firewall" to stem the flow of "confidential information" to those clients.) The firm will also continue to work for the banks on a range of other lucrative deals - and that's where the problem lies. Take Lee Meyerson, Simpson Thacher's lead lawyer on the bailout negotiations, who is specifically named in the contract as "essential" to the project. As the company's hotshot attorney, Meyerson has personally represented three of the nine banks that were bailed out in the first round, in addition to many others that will surely apply for cash injections. One of the bailed-out banks is Bank of New York Mellon, whose $29 billion merger Meyerson helped negotiate. Mergers like that can bill in the millions. Is Simpson Thacher able to put aside its loyalties to its biggest clients and negotiate deals for the taxpayer that could exact real costs from those very clients?
It might be possible to set aside concerns about divided loyalties if it were clear that Simpson Thacher is helping Treasury to wrangle the best deals possible for U.S. taxpayers. But the firm's first test - the deal to give $125 billion to the nine big banks to ease the "credit crunch" that is crippling the economy - wasn't exactly reassuring. Secretary Paulson promised that the banks won't just "hoard" the money - they will quickly "deploy it" through the economy in the form of badly needed loans. There is just one hitch: Neither Paulson nor Simpson Thacher got that "deploy" part in writing - nor did they put in place any mechanism to require the banks to spend their taxpayer billions. Apparently, the part about lending the money to homeowners and small businesses was sort of implied.
"There is no obligation for banks to lend the money one way or the other," Jennifer Zuccarelli, a Treasury spokeswoman, tells Rolling Stone. "But the banks have the understanding" that the money is intended for loans. "We're not looking to control their operations."
Unfortunately, many of the banks appear to have no intention of wasting the money on loans. "At least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion," said John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Gary Crittenden, chief financial officer of Citigroup, had an even better idea: He hinted that his company would use its share of the cash - $25 billion - to buy up competitors and swell even bigger. The handout, he told analysts, "does present the possibility of taking advantage of opportunities that might otherwise be closed to us."
And the folks at Morgan Stanley? They're planning to pay themselves $10.7 billion this year, much of it in bonuses - almost exactly the amount they are receiving in the first phase of the bailout. "You can imagine the devilish grins on the faces of Morgan Stanley employees," writes Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil. "Not only did we, the taxpayers, save their company...we funded their 2008 bonus pool."
It didn't have to be this way. Five days before Paulson struck his deal with the banks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown negotiated a similar bailout - only he extracted meaningful guarantees for taxpayers: voting rights at the banks, seats on their boards, 12 percent in annual dividend payments to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses.
In sharp contrast, this is what U.S. taxpayers received: no controlling interest, no voting rights, no seats on the bank boards and just five percent in dividend payouts to the government, while shareholders continue to collect billions in dividends every quarter. What's more, golden parachutes and bonuses already promised by the banks will still be paid out to executives - all before taxpayers are paid back.
No wonder it took just one hour for Paulson to convince all nine CEOs to accept his offer - less than seven minutes per bank. Not even the firms' own lawyers could have drafted a sweeter deal.
The day after it met with the nation's top banks, Treasury announced that it had selected the firm that would receive the juiciest contract of all: that of "master custodian." The winning company will be to the bailout what Halliburton is to the military: the contractor of contractors. It will purchase toxic debts from Wall Street, service them and auction them off in the future - a so-called "end-to-end process." The contract is for a minimum of three years.
Seventy firms applied for the gig; the winner was Bank of New York Mellon. Describing the scope of the megacontract, bank president Gerald Hassell said, "It's the ultimate outsourcing - because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury do not have the mechanics to run the entire program, and we're essentially the general contractor across the entire program. It's going to cross our entire company."
This raises an interesting point: Has the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the other way around? Is it Treasury that has been partially privatized by Wall Street, its massive rescue plan now entirely in the hands of a private bank it is directly subsidizing?
Shortly after receiving the contract, Hassell told investors that his institution is now well-positioned to profit from the market meltdown. "There's a lot of new business that's going on even in this chaotic marketplace," he said, "and so some of those things have been very positive to us." Just how positive, we don't know, because Treasury has blacked out the 10 lines of the "master custodian" contract that reveal how much Bank of New York Mellon will be paid. Though Treasury says it will release the information eventually, the secrecy goes beyond anything the Bush administration attempted in Iraq. Even Halliburton's dodgy contracts came with price tags attached.
Still, when the terms of the contract do become public, they may turn out to be surprisingly modest. Goldman Sachs has apparently offered to fulfill at least one bailout contract for free. Altruism may not be their only motivation. The real money at stake in the bailout lies not in payment for the work but in how the work is done. Think about it: If you're the one selling your debts to the government, wouldn't you also want to help decide which debts are eligible and how much they're worth? "The financial firms with assets to sell are in many instances the same firms the Treasury will rely on to value and manage the assets it is buying," The New York Times observed. "That is an invitation for these firms to set the price too high or to indulge in other mischief at the taxpayers' expense."
Bank of New York Mellon has a bad record for mischief. It is embroiled in a $22.5 billion money-laundering lawsuit in Moscow and has been forced to pay out a $14 million settlement in a related case. Though the bank's "master custodian" contract with Treasury prohibits unethical conduct, the arrangement seems rife with opportunities for abuse. According to its most recent earnings report, Bank of New York Mellon holds $1.2 billion in subprime mortgage securities. That means that in addition to the $3 billion it will receive as part of the equity program, it will also be eligible to apply for taxpayer money from the program it is being paid to administer. Neither the bank nor Treasury would comment on this direct conflict of interest.
On the same day that he allocated the first $125 billion to the banks, Secretary Paulson announced the largest federal budget deficit in U.S. history. Buried in his statement was a preview of the next phase of the financial disaster. The deficit numbers, he declared, reinforce the need to "pursue policies that promote economic growth and fiscal responsibility, and address entitlement reform." He was referring to Americans who feel entitled to receive Social Security in their old age and Medicaid when they are sick. Those programs, Paulson implied, might not be able to survive the budget crisis he is currently creating for the next administration.
This is why the stakes of the bailout are so high: Unless we get a good deal, there will be nothing left over after the banks are done feeding to pay for the meager services now provided in exchange for taxation, let alone for the more ambitious initiatives promised on the campaign trail. The spiraling cost of saving Wall Street from its bad bets is already being used as an excuse for why we can't solve our many other crises, from health care to climate change.
There is a better way to fix a broken financial system. Treasury's plan to buy up the toxic debts never made sense and should be immediately scrapped - a move that would also handily get rid of most of the crony contractors. As for purchasing equity in banks, the next round of deals - and there will be more - has to start from the premise that the banks are bankrupt and will therefore accept whatever terms we choose to impose, including real regulatory oversight. The possibilities of what could be done if a chunk of the banking system were genuinely under public control - from a moratorium on home foreclosures to mandatory investment in green community redevelopment - are limitless.
Because here is what George Bush and Henry Paulson are hoping we won't figure out: When a society no longer has enough money to pay for its most pressing needs, there are worse things than discovering you own the banks.
87 Comments so far
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Is the Government the Company, or is the Company the Government?
We will come to know how they felt in Argentina and every other nation ever sacked by US.
Thanks, Naomi Klein, for an important and timely article.
And so it goes! The crooks have been given all that is imaginable to continue to rip off the American people. The rape and pillage will continue untill there is nothing left of Treasury or the middle class. Abandon all hope! There will be no help for us from an Oh'Bumma" administration. he's been bought and paid for. He IS the most expensive whore in the history of the world as the Congress is the most expensive whore house in the world. You will pay for all these whores and you won't even get laid but you will get screwed again. And again and again...................
Alan MacDonald
This isn't just 'shock capitalism', it's nuclear bomb capitalism!
I am assuming the many cities beside New York are experiencing fiscal crises which mean painful cuts in employment, for children, the sick, the poor and for mass transit.
Is it not peculiar that that the mayors and governors NEVER link the local cuts with the giant hemorrhages of our tax money for war and speculators at the national level? They act as though God sent a swarm of locusts and Oh Well, we just have to live with it.
These crises are made by humans and can be cured by humans.
Joe
That our govt passed a bailout for the very criminals who took out the economy is proof positive IMO that the govt and corporations are colluding in a huge corruption scheme. No sane, ethical govt would've turned a blind eye to the fraud going on all these years that led to this mess. There seems to be something about "govt" and "corruption" that goes hand in hand. I belive the hand holding that's been going on is that of elected officials, and corporate lobbyists. Break that tie and we might see some ethics and common sense.
Naomi Klein must not become the Robert Fisk of the economic crisis.
I saw a video of Robert Fisk recently at Znet. He proclaimed that his collective work on the middle east had failed. Horrifying actions were still being taken, and mainstream people and news still didn't deal with these realities. That's after decades of digging out the stories and setting them forth within a deep context of history.
I feel I have a responsibility here, and I suspect many others do as well. I think there's too much reading of articles and too little acting effectively on the implications of them. I mean like 98% of the first and 2% of the last, and that may be too generous.
I may not come across too well on this but I keep hammering on it: we need to use this Obama moment to take it to another level. The movement's methods of activism have not been adequate (for example those of United for Peace and Justice at "The UFPJ Legislative Action Network"). We see this in the many questions to Noam Chomsky calling for an answer for what to do, or rather how, specifically, to do it. And yet Chomsky has not provided that answer and says, I guess, that's not his area of expertise.
Ok, one more time: I recommend starting with Roger Fisher's "Beyond Machiavelli," but since it's not a group approach (not real organizing), get Shel Trapp's online booklets Basic's of Organizing and Dynamics of Organizing. Each local group should read ALL of Fisher's books (including those out of print) and put his worksheets on computer and fill them out on their congresspersons and put it into action. Oops that's too much reading again. Read "Beyond Machiavelli and get the workbook "Getting Ready to Negotiate" and go to work using the worksheets. And check out "Dear Israelis Dear Arabs," Fisher's extensive example of what, specifically, to do. Then write your own version of it based upon your actions with your congressperson (make a binder of your "yesable propositions" to your congressperson and your senator. Above all, learn what to do to "Get Past No," (book by William Ury) because they always say no up front. And learn what to do about "dirty tricks" etc., they will use them (see later sections of Fisher's "Getting to Yes").
We must support Robert Fisk, and Naomi Klein. They can't save the day just by writing about it, just ask Fisk. We must make it happen. If no one else in your group will do it, someone must rise up to take the lead or start a new group or, with Fisher, learn "how to lead when you're not in charge." If you can't negotiate a solution to this crisis of effectiveness with your progressive group, how do you expect to affect government. Learn how to really do it, and then do it. I've blogged more on this at Znet.
Brad Wilson:you managed to get wit into your message (about reading a lot). I have one suggestion: the introduction to Howard Zinn's "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" is a start on "how to" and the whole memoir of his life is a handbook to organizing. It's my favorite book, the 2003 edition from Beacon Press.
I agree that the bailout was a horrible idea. It seems to be a fait accompli? Is there anyone to stop it? Please contact your congresspeople.
If it goes forward, there are some proposals to mitigate the travesty:
1. Trickle it out bit by bit.
2. Demand a share of the good stuff like partners' accounts as well as the toxic paper.
3. Publish a clear statement of the the rules and conditions of these payouts. How are they to be used? How are they to be repaid?
4. Then we need some controls. One thing we can do is to angrily demand a daily accounting from our representatives. There can be no shrugs later about what happened to the billions. We, the taxpayer, should get an accounting summary of what has happened so far, and then a daily accounting from now on. (As they say, if you can't measure it you can't manage it.) If the money is not accounted for, then we need investigations and charges of theft to be brought. If it is accounted for, we can see if it is being used as intended, whatever that is.
Joe
The real "bailout" crimes go way beyond just following the money.
And it's not just the bailout.
The entire oversight and audit function has failed. Check out this article.
True. It has taken a while to develop the lax morality and specific skills required to support this level of corruption. As the article shows, these ugly vultures were spawned and fed in the nests of defense contractors.
Joe
Perhaps some links? A web page to make the idea operational? You have learned a great insight from "how to lead when you're not in charge"?
Not exactly McCain's secret plan to get Bin Lauden but a "follow me here" link might help.
In my view, Obama and the Democrats pushed the bailout bill for two key reasons:
1. They believed that there was an imminent credit freeze that would have "tipped" the entire economy immediately into a crisis and
2. They believed that destabilizing the political climate with Obama in the lead was a risky political strategy. The "politically safe" approach was to just go along with Bush, McCain and Paulson and not rock the boat.
Realizing I'm in the overwhelming minority here, I think that some form of bailout was needed. It's not clear to me that a "bottom up" approach without at least some bank bailouts would have worked. Still, the bailout as passed was total garbage. The Democrats failed not because they bailed out the fat cat criminals who created the mess in the first place; they failed because they should have demanded a strong jobs stimulus as part of the package. I'm afraid there wasn't much incentive to play hardball with the election just around the corner. Bottom line: the Democrats totally blew it.
This business of stimulus packages needs a little more description. As the world's largest debtor nation, what exactly is being used to stimulate anything? If the US really wanted to stimulate the economy, they would make massive spending cuts in military spending and pump some of that money into the economy and some of it into paying down the debt. It goes without saying that we have to immediately shut down two wars and more than 760 military bases that do nothing but drain money out of the US and pump it into foreign economies. Also, let's put an end to the other budget-busting costs of empire. We can start with the insane operations the DEA is running to overthrow the Morales government, i.e. the democratically-elected Morales government, in Bolivia.
Shutting down imperialist operations overseas and turning the "offense" budget into a real "defense" budget could free up an easy $700 billion. That would go a long, long way to stimulating the economy.
If we keep paying for empire, helping Big Oil and Big Defense at huge cost to the taxpayers, America will soon go bankrupt while the big corporate boys continue to realize record profits. Our $1.1 trillion military budget and our foreign policy are helping them a lot and not helping us at all. We need to stop being conned with all this "soft on defense" nonsense and start getting tough on corporate welfare and corporate empire. If we don't, they win; we lose.
Do I think there's a chance in hell Obama or the Democratic Party will go down this path? You can't be serious. It's the only way to get out of the mess we're in but they just won't do it. They're still afraid of being labeled the "McGovern wing" of the party. What a bunch of losers.
.Just so you don't think yourself alone and isolated..
Of course we had to do something, our entire financial house of cards was in danger of imminent collapse, and not just within our own borders. We might have been facing a world wide depression.
I do, however, think there are ways to stem this slide and there are methods that bring only succor to the wealthy, even those who caused the damn crisis. Guess which method I think our govt is using?
A source as suspect as ( scary music please) Milton Friedman once posited that money spent on defense does not return to the economy as does monies spent on infrastructure and similar items...This was, of course, prior to his falling under the spell of that evil seductress Ayn Rand.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Sioux Rose
WELSH Terrier: Excellent analysis, although your last paragraph need not be etched in stone. Necessity is the mother of invention, and Obama may be compelled to close at least some bases particularly if the Asian governments decide it's time to stop financing US debt.
"your last paragraph need not be etched in stone" ...
You're right, Sioux Rose ... and incredibly timely too ...
Check out this Page One story from today's Boston Globe.
To really bring about change and to really start healing the wounds, we need to start dismantling the empire and the empire mentality that condones it. This would be real change.
What we're still seeing from "all of them" is technical twists and tweaks to the same broken model. I see no indication in either word or deed that there is an acceptance of fundamental, deep-to-the-core change. Stimulus this, bailout that is just more bandaging on a dying patient. It's not that we shouldn't do these things; it's that even if they work, we've eased the symptoms but haven't cured the disease.
This doesn't mean everything must happen overnight. It doesn't mean that it's all bad and useless and that nothing can be retained. It doesn't mean we should have a zero defense budget or pretend there isn't evil in the world. It doesn't mean that we throw all market structures out the window.
In every nook and cranny of what the US does and what we do as individuals, we have built processes that are not just inequitable, they are unsustainable. It would take heroes to stand up real straight and to shock us with the truths we need to hear. Radical changes that will demand huge, destabilizing sacrifices are not going to be politically popular. These are long-term investments. The truth is, we have no choice. Could Obama someday awaken and see the way? Perhaps. He's shown nothing of it so far. Nothing!
Our consciousness has been poisoned with "manifest destiny." There was always more land and more resources. It didn't matter how much garbage we dumped into the oceans or pumped into the air. Those receptacles for human waste were infinite. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise.
And, the new manifest destiny is technology. Don't sacrifice anything. Don't cut back on driving and pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. Technology will save us. That's all fine IF we had the technology today. We don't. When we have magic cars that don't pollute, then we'll talk. For now, I call for mandatory, severe reductions in auto use.
The article I linked to talks about scaling back weapons systems by continuing to fight the war on terror. The war on terror is best fought by ending imperialism and not by deploying more forces. Obama doesn't get that. Therein lies the rub.
The financial crisis can only be addressed by ending imperialism and not by tweaking the financial levers. Obama doesn't get that either. Therein lies another rub.
Everything that's been done and everything that will be done is rubbing us the wrong way.
There's an old zen saying: if you don't have room in your living room for an elephant, don't make friends with the elephant trainer. Mr. Obama appears to be staffing his team with elephant trainers. Here's today's friendly tip for Mr. Obama: Make Chalmers Johnson the new Secretary of Defense. If you don't change the thinkers, you won't change the thoughts.
Nationalize Banking & Finance And Who'll Run Them
"Us."
"Based on?"
"Yes we can."
"And then what sort of world?"
"It'll be up to us."
Wow,Herbert R.and Arde,you guys and I should be on the same debate team.I was just saying the same stuff at a small party of blueish purple cake eaters.ya make me pause and proud.I guess i ain't alone . peace in and out j.a.h.
Nasty Bubbles
Sure a nasty smell can move you
but can a bubble improve ya
lucre bubbles drifting on the dream
lucre bubbles transparent so they seem
maybe you have dreamt the dream
maybe you will find the drift
and won’t be sold short shrift
on the bubble fortune buoys
Is this that perfect bubble storm?
Do money changers look forlorn?
Will the trough of froth swell under the perfect crest?
and whose nest will get flooded less?
Say this bubble may need a little prick
So bend over this won’t hurt a lick!
Ah.....We licked another bubble
crack open the champagne
float another campaign
happy bubbles brave and free
bubble bounding lucre bubbles
drifting from sea to sea to sea
Obama never was the change, but at best the best opportunity for change. How can it be that Naomi Klein or at least Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman are not front and center in Obama's plans. And who will start the campaign from within the Obama campaign organization, or as a petition outside it or both to make that so!
Come on people now is not the finish line it is only the starting gun.
"How can it be that Naomi Klein or at least Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman are not front and center in Obama's plans. And who will start the campaign from within the Obama campaign organization,"
Simple, Naomi Klein and Paul Krugman are not a part of the Wall Street/Banking establishment that funded Obama's campaign. Obama surrounds himself with corporate America power brokers, or hadn't you noticed?
I did indeed notice many aspects that were not the insight of Nader or the plans of Kucinich, but I also know that they(1) would never have been elected even if nominated (2 or perhaps 1a)Did not stand on the shoulders of a massive organized ground effort that had a lot more in common than just getting Obama elected, and might well eventually drive Obama into places he had not originally intended, just as happened to FDR. The problem for us now is how to make that operational.
The thing is, it never matters who thinks they have control because we the people will always have the control. As long as we have a choice, we control the market.
The control we always have is in our support of what we buy. Our money and how we spend it controls everything. It is "the market", it is "the silent majority". The problem is in teaching people in how this really works, and getting them to collectively control the market.
Let us take one of the biggest markets in the US, the auto industry. Ten years ago, it was popular to buy the biggest SUV available. Why? It costs the most money, and reeked of luxury. Now, many of the smaller hybrid autos are actually on back order, and in some cases years out!
In the mean time some of the American Auto manufactures are holding their hands out asking to be fed from trough, just like the banks. Why are the US auto Manufacturers hurting? They refused to build the automobiles that the world was wanting.
While gas prices were over $3 per gallon in the US, the Washington DOT showed a significant drop in traffic in the area where I live. Why? Many people started to look at how much money they were dumping down the drain just trying to get to work each day.
My point to make here is that although there was no collective goal by the masses to affect or even control the market, it was being done. Oil supplies which we were told were scarce became well supplied. The supply was so great at one point, that OPEC began to cut oil production; even though oil prices were artificially high.
Additionally, the auto market has been affected. While our big US manufacturers talked about hybrids, electrics and more efficient autos; the foreign Auto Manufacturers were way ahead and have been selling them on the market.
How much news via MSM do we see about this?
The auto industry which used to be a big part of the overall US job market has slowly been farmed out over seas. So while the jobs in the US are being blamed on a sluggish market, it is actually because these manufactures decided not to give the market what it needed. As they farmed out jobs overseas to keep the doors open, it has reached a point where they can no longer keep the doors open even by doing this. The result is that the last of the US Auto jobs are going away.
Although you may not agree with many of my conclusions, one thing I hope you see is that we the people have been forced to change the market. This change is only now slowly being recognized by our MSM.
But I ask, what if we all collectively stopped driving our cars until gas prices dropped to where we felt they needed to be? I mean this is something that truly could be done, if we wanted to.
Imagine what gas prices would be right now if we as Americans had the slightest bit of restraint? We would not really need to stop driving our cars, just stop driving them unless we absolutely had to. We could ride public transportation, car pool, find work closer to home or any other means of "protest".
So why this long post about something completely off topic to this post? Well we now have our Banking fiasco. This issue is something that we can do something about as a market. If you have funds in any of these huge profiteering banks, you have a choice who you do business with. So make the right choice!
I realize this is only as good as people are aware of it, so spread the word.......
the thing is, these predators really believe that they are doing the right thing, because they believe in their system and their system requires the antics which Klein so well describes. but people have all kinds of weird beliefs. Ms. Palin for example believes that the earth is 6,000 years old, and Alan Greenspan believes that the latest financial collapse was unforseeable. But these beliefs are all a form of religous delusion, to which the creatures have a perfect right, until they attempt to impose the nonsense on the rest of mankind.
."the thing is, these predators really believe that they are doing the right thing, because they believe in their system and their system requires the antics which Klein so well describes."
This is quite true. I have sat in rooms with these wealthy banker and financial types ( sorry for being born into such an environ)and their world view is one of arrogance, their opinion is that they deserve their vast wealth and those who are poor somehow deserve to be so.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Why do you think it's called a "capitalist system"? That's because the capitalist class controls it all. This very same class creates an "economic crisis". It can make this crisis as large as it wants, until it has convinced the people that something has to be done. Of course, since it controls everything, "what is to be done" is what they want to do.
This "economic crisis" like any capitalist economic crisis is only a crisis for the working class. The power elites won't suffer at all. They're already far to wealthy to feel the impact of any sort of cutbacks to their incomes. Even if they had to give up 14 of their 17 homes, they'll still be living in comfort beyond our wildest dreams.
The ONLY way to end any future capitalist crisis is to do away with the capitalist class. The ONLY way the people of this world will see their economic wellbeing increase is to do away with the capitalist class and in so doing, do away with the capitalist system.
Of course Marx explained this many many years ago. The problem is, that the capitalist class that controls it all, has done all it could do to keep this a secret from those it exploits.
Marx's notions are a... 'secret'!!???
Getting rid of capitalism has....uh...been tried. It was called...communism. Ever hear about that? Or is that in your opinion another well-kept secret.
Of course, communism was based on solid ideals and there were some solid successes in most communist countries--cradle to grave health services, etc. But the horrors and day-to-day weaknesses that also went along with the good side were inevitable.
And I'll let you in on another secret as to why those horrors are eventually going to appear (I'm talking here about the deeds of Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Chausescu, and other monsters).
Here's the secret: DICTATORSHIP
So...no thanks.
Gee that means that all those Corporations in Argentina that are owned and run by the workers who vote their supervisors and up to top management must not be communist, or they are communist but a dictatorship? Or perhaps the two concepts are not actually directly related. Or perhaps the unsocialized famous dictators you point out were as Communist as they were Democratic (as they claimed and put as part of their name).
Perhaps instead all folk who are not criminal minded should work together to see to it that there is accountability in all use of power over others. That is the kind of Socialism (as in socialized dog)that everyone could get behind.
I did not know Marx was a secret, but even if he is as you say, how are you going to do away with the Capitalist Class?
The devil is in the details.
Joe
Clearly stated, and obvious to any disinterested observer.
For Bu$h the inferior 'conflict of interest' is not being able to line the pockets of all of the wealthy with the labor of the poor and not being able to squeeze more out of the employed homeless.
If I get free government healthcare and an assurance that I can drive to work and heat my home despite the impending oil peak, then I don't really care how rich men plunder. Sorta sad, but true.
I do care if rich men plunder the government so bad, I can't live my life anymore.
This latest $trillion bailout went too far, and needs oversight backed up by criminal trials. The American infrastructure needs that money, not rich old white guys getting richer. Obama's rationalization in passing the bailout was he'd fix it later. I didn't buy into that, but if he does fix it I'll be much happy with my choice in voting for him.
It is people like you who are really rich, but not everyone can heat a home. Not everyone has a home.
Does Obama read Naomi Klein?
Not only doesn´t he read Naomi Klein, he does not know Jeffrey Williamson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Harvard.....
In an article in "El Pais" dated October 12, 2008. Professor Williamson said " Creo que el secratario del tesoro no es muy buen economista y no es tan fiable como el presidente de la Reserva Federal." (I believe that the Secretary of Treasury is not a very good economist and is not as trustworthy as the President of the Federal Reserve.)
Henry Paulson was not to be trusted nor should anyone from Wall Street or connected to Wall Street.
If I am President Elect, I bring in a "Blue Ribbon Panel" of economic experts like Williamson and Stiglitz and assign the tasks of investigating to the GAO before one more dime is spent.....I ask for Paulson´s immediate resignation because of "Conflicts of Interest".
Can you imagine a bank receiving 7.7 billion dollars and turning around and buying another bank for 5.8 billion??????
What a sin! Better than privatizing Social Security !!!!!
Wall Street calls it a "Win, Win situation!" All their money is already in "Off Shore Accounts" "a la Enron"......No need to blow up a building now to destroy the evidence, nothing is illegal for "The Power Elite".
The smoke and mirrors has another aspect. The globalization IMF/WB branch of activity is still behind massive infrastructure projects worldwide. Monoculture, mining, petrol and irrigation of millions of hectares sucking rivers dry compounded with hydroelectric dams that have nearly zero social and ecological conscience and generate massive unemployment, urban overpopulation, loss of diversity, etc... the list goes on.
What is top heavy is the transnational industrial/financial model seeing itself as god. cultivating the 'player' wannabes and drawing on the arms industry to toy with the chaos.
I have the feeling people are starting to see through the corporate story of "globization" and it may start to recede. Look at the trade currents, almost all countries are trading nationally.
Chris Floyd has a spendid idea (Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, Nov. 5):
When Obama and the Democrat majority do something - you know like saber rattling, giving away your money to giant corporations, attacking other countries - ask yourselves:
"WHAT IF BUSH DID IT? What if this was Bush Policy? What would you be saying about it?
Of course, we'll need an open, intelligent mind to do this. Are we up to it?
What if they do something Bush clearly wouldn't have done. Will your mind still be open then?
Are you open to the possibility of change?
The Federal Treasury has been privatized and we need to take it back.
Consider these revealing questions from Klein's Rolling Stone article "The Bailout Profiteers": "Has the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the other way around? Is it [the] Treasury that has been partially privatized by Wall Street, its massive rescue plan now entirely in the hands of a private bank it is directly subsidizing?" The secrecy of the bailout contract, the outsourcing of bailout administration, the lack of regulatory oversight and the open-endedness of the contract tell us it is the latter.
This is not the beginning of the privatization of the Treasury, however, though it has the potential of hastening the completion of it. The foundation of Treasury privatization is the Federal Reserve Act. The private control of the money supply and of monetary policy which that Act established should be understood as the proximate cause of this financial crisis. Therefore that Act should be repealed. With the Treasury reclaiming its constitutionally guaranteed authority to create interest-free money (rather than paying interest to borrow it from the private Federal Reserve) the affordability of our desired policy changes increases dramatically. We should all be asking "Why are we paying private bankers billions of dollars to create money and loan it to us when we could be creating it for ourselves for free?"
Stopping the bailout profiteers, who are really just the new generation of federal banking profiteers, is just a matter of reclaiming government authority over money creation and monetary policy. This requires repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and nationalization or elimination of the Federal Reserve Banking system. Our hopes for democracy depend upon it.
I agree Jim,
Naomi says "The possibilities of what could be done if a chunk of the banking system were genuinely under public control - from a moratorium on home foreclosures to mandatory investment in green community redevelopment - are limitless."
It is not limitless if the Treasury can't pay the interest on the growing debt which is a few years away at the present exponential rocketing of National debt.... The banks know this and that is why the panic is so deep and Hank Paulson looks lost.
Naomi has a better analysis than most and is smarter than me but I can't see creating more debt just to bailout the banks who follow the rules of the usurious ponzi Federal Reserve. But a chunk of the bad banks debt does not stop the controlling bank, The Fed, from robbing us of our own money, in fact it just encourages more of the same..
All Bailouts add to our Debt thus making borrowing harder than ever.
It is just simple math and eventually the people will have to take ownership of our own monetary policy.
a New Deal has to Deal with the FED.... Just simple math!
War is expensive and Peace is priceless.
.Our GNP is about eleven trillion, our payments about 40 percent of that, which many economists think is fine. Facts are better than unsupported opinion.
I do agree that the profiteering on this bailout is both inevitable and awful. Why then did Obama support it so completely?
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I'm not sure he wasn't stampeded into it, much like many others. Sort of like an ambush. But we all make mistakes and this was one.
Thomas More:
He wasn't "stampeded" into it, he actively supported it to the point of personally contacting members of the Black Congress. Caucus and encouraging them to change their votes from NO (Mon.) to YES (Fri.) If you want to know why just check out who the biggest donors to his campaign were and see who he is surrounding himself with as economic advisors. His choice for Treas. Sec. will be interesting.
I hope that his vote on this bailout is not forgotten and he will have to answer for it as others had to answer for their pro-war votes in '02; the parallels are indeed striking
Yep....Goldman Sachs and The University I believe were the top two. I suspect Volker possibly.
If this is his only mistake this year I'll be happy. Still waiting for cabinet appointments. And remember, the money hasn't been disbursed yet...there is hope. Oops, there come GM and Ford.....
His only mistake! Thomas, this was just the latest, but perhaps most egregious, in a fairly long line of "mistakes". There is a pattern here, in case you hadn't noticed. We can't afford any more of his "mistakes".
In fact, so I understand, while we were busily congratulating ourselves on how wonderful we are for having elected him, a great deal of money has been disbursed. That is what makes his, and the others', vote so disastrous. He voted to give money to a regime that he knew would spend it lickety-split. His Wall Street friends will get all the cash and he can blame it on Bush.
Sorry, but as much as the Dems were equally responsible for the war, they, himself included, are equally responsible for this unprecedented looting of the Treasury. If someone ever has the guts to really lay this out, I do believe his friends, including his probable choice for Tres. Sec., if not he himself, as well as Rep. bigwigs, will make Teapot-Dome look like a tea party.
Darn, don't hold back....if you don't like him, just speak up! (LOL)
I didn't decide to vote for the guy till the last few weeks so I won't be defending anything he said or did before. I'll just continue to wait and see what he does when it counts. And I'll throw in an occasional, give the guy time to prove himself, one way or the other.
You and others could be right, then again, maybe not. We will see.
Our Payments to what?
"Many economists" think what is fine? Our debt is more than 11 trillon...If that is fine with you, maybe it was fine with Obama too.
Obama is not president yet, so he can do nothing about it until next year.
As he said we have only one president at a time and it is obvious you just don't like him no matter what any economist says because You see things not as they are but as you are.
.You are rapidly becoming a worthless source of posting. Is that what you had in mind, Glover? Try and keep your absurd and stupidly off course remarks in check, they have no value in the debating process. The GNP is our income dumbshit not our debt, our payment on the debt is forty percent of that figure. Have an adult with an actual brain sit you down and figure out your gross income and all your expenses for the year and see if you come in at about forty percent of gross, I doubt you even come close , perhaps 70-80 percent if you are very frugal.
When every damn criticism of your own personal reality brings forth insult and stupidity perhaps it is time for you to reevaluate yourself and not the politics of others.
Of course a reasonable person might take a half hour with a decent search engine and discover that he knows less than he thought he did, try it, and you might stop this slide into clowndom.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
ardee, I learned about GNP in College.
All I was saying is that if as you say "some econmists think that is OK", I don't think it is OK.
that is my point.
Here are the real numbers for everyone to see, no it is not OK and thanks for reminding me to check the facts.
I learned the liabilites (hidden debt) makes it much worse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
As of June 2008, the gross U.S. external debt was over $13 trillion,[10] the most external debt of all countries in the world.[11] The 2007 estimate of the United States public debt was 65% of GDP.[12] As of October 1, 2008, the total U.S. federal debt exceeded $10 trillion[13], about $31,700 per capita. Including unfunded Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, and similar promised obligations, the government liabilities rise to a total of $59.1 trillion, or $516,348 per household.[citation needed][14]
Your anger and name calling will get you nowhere and your tag at the end of every post makes you sound like you are the only one who sees things as they are.... Do you think that is part of your anger?
.My anger stems from your attacks upon posts that contained no insult. I respond in kind to folks like you. Speak to my posts and we will dialogue just fine. When you call any criticism of the plans and appointments of our new President_Elect "hatred of him" I think you ignorant and biased.
As to the debt, we are repaying that debt using forty percent of our yearly income, as I noted. Economists seem to find this acceptable.Of course we owe far too much, of course we spend like drunken sailors on things we should curtail and fail to have enough left to spend on what we need. However, and it is important to remember, we are not out of our depth in our ability to pay down this debt. Remember, Clinton balanced our budget in less than eight years, and our debt was damn high then too.
As to the Nin quote as my sig line, well, I guess it might mean anything to anyone, I like what it means to me, and your reaction to it is similar to your reaction to other things, wrongheaded and childish.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Ok you don't like my posts.
You see things as you are and that is fine.
You also peaked my interest in Anais Nin.
Which is childish of course, but she said other interesting things as well::
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
"This diary is my kief, hashish, and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice."
"...for no one has ever loved an adventurous woman as they have loved adventurous men."
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."
"How wrong is it for women to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than set out to create it herself."
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."
"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."
----------
So Cheer up, things could be worse.
".Ok you don't like my posts."
Still not getting it! What I don't like is your insistence that, because I criticize the words or deeds of Barack Obama you say I "hate him". That is unecessary and says volumes about you and little about my intent or my politics. It also allows you rather easy avoidance to some basic facts you should really be considering when placing allegiances.
I exchange ideas and ideals with several on this forum, some of whom do not share my politics, some who are my polar opposites in fact. But we stick to the facts in the posts and keep the assumptions to a minimum, especially stupid ones.
I have persisted in this dialogue because, unlike some others in this forum, I find you worth the effort. I have never tried to maintain an exchange with the execrable 'translucent' or the really dumb 'outofcontrolZ' for example. They got nothing!
Nin is an interesting and complicated person, her diaries, both the early expurgated one and the unexpurgated version published after her death in which she revealed some really sordid stuff about affairs with her father and Henry Miller shocked her fans and shook those who regarded her as a feminist icon. I still do.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Well, I don't get it because I am not insisting that you hate Obama... I am glad you don't.
And I am glad you are not calling me Names again and I agree Anais is a very interesting Person.
Peace
.Your very first response to me contained exactly those words, exactly! "because you hate him".
Dont do it again please and we will dialogue just fine.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Peace to both you guys.
Thank You.
The best way to solve the economic problem is to stop all funding for the war on terror. With the troops home and being effectively taken care of, the country can begin to heal and recover from the past eight years. All the money saved is passed on to middle class homeowners and small businesses who are in danger of losing their livelihoods. America needs to strengthen its backbone, not its ego. The American middle class built and shoulders what is America today. The losing of homes, businesses, and pensions is what needs to be fixed first. Money poured into the top is coming from the pockets of an already hard hit middle class. The government has allowed and even legalized corporate America to collect from the middle class to pay for their mismanagement and criminal actions. Without a healthy stable middle class to support its economic needs, American corporations are outsourcing and privatizing to cut losses. Pumping more money into corporations or creating and funding more government agencies will only continue to add to the burden of the middle class. America is broke. In both senses of the word. We got too top heavy and we took a tumble. The head was wearing a helmet but the backbone was unprotected. America has a broken back and no medical coverage. But the head still doesn’t understand that the backbone came before the head.
Hoa binh
I am extremely happy to report to you that we are not broke yet. The debt collector is at the door though, but if we are broke the rest of the world is in debtors prison.
Your comments on the middle class and what we should be doing are excellent.
Hoa binh
Thomas More November 9th, 2008 7:35 pm
"I am extremely happy to report to you that we are not broke yet."
You will see how broke we really are soon. The budget deficit alone next year is now expected to be at least 1.2 trillion. We are already 10 trillion in debt and Paul Krugman, in an interview yesterday was advocating spending another trillion in economic stimulus, not to create prosperity but just to limit the damage created by the current economic crisis. The 700 billion that was just allocated? It is already being acknowledged as a bust. The 150 billion that was spent to send out 600 dollar checks to everybody earlier in the year? Down the drain spent buying Chinese goods and stimulating their economy but not our own.
Someone mentioned an 11 trillion dollar economy. Don't think so with an economy that is hemorrhaging jobs, nearly a quarter million last month alone, and is based 70% on consumer spending. The auto industry, which with its suppliers employs two million, is closing plants and laying people off as fast as they can because they are on the verge of bankruptcy. GM says they may not have enough operating money to keep the doors open until the end of the year.
Lobo Gris
Our economy is better positioned to restart than any others I see and economically we are better off than most of the rest.
No mistake its going to be a rough ride and its going to hurt when the economic downturn really starts.
Jobs for American workers are what we need. I agree with you both about the futility of passing out money like that, or to banks either.
We need industry, manufacturing, jobs that have a multiplier effect. Stop rewarding companies that move jobs to low wage countries. Stimulus? Make it worthwhile for small business to go to work. Quit opening our market to countries that don't reciprocate with fair trade deals. Give tax breaks for solar panel retrofits, etc. Take care of Americans first, not corporate America.
Thomas More November 10th, 2008 12:55 pm
"We need industry, manufacturing, jobs that have a multiplier effect. Stop rewarding companies that move jobs to low wage countries. Stimulus? Make it worthwhile for small business to go to work. Quit opening our market to countries that don't reciprocate with fair trade deals. Give tax breaks for solar panel retrofits, etc. Take care of Americans first, not corporate America."
I definitely agree with the above. As for whether we are better positioned to restart than other countries, I think that is questionable.
Lobo Gris
.For you and Thomas also:
I am somewhat of a globalist, frankly. I believe that this little blue ball will continue to welcome human life only if we all figure out how to work in concert to protect it so it continues to nurture us. I believe that, in the future of course, a world govt will be a necessity. I do understand that this is not a popular view nor is my opinion that the loss of jobs this nation has experienced is due to the beginnings of a re-balancing of the wealth of this planet.
For most of our time on this planet we have seen a situation wherein some lead lives of grand luxury and most do not. The third world was exploited most cruelly in order to maintain an artificial level of life. Even the poorest in the west lead lives beyond the abilities of those in much of the world. Now we see an emergence of this third world into the industrial revolution. Granted, our corporations are using cheap labor and little regard for environmental or safety concerns in places where ten cent an hour jobs are golden. In short I believe that manufacturing jobs simply aren't coming back here.
This nation has moved beyond manufacture to a service oriented economy. We sell technology and know how now, not widgets. The hardships to our people is not one I take lightly but , rather than try to overcome cheap wages, no unions and the rest of what the third world offers we should begin to think about how to convert our economy to its new orientation. Education of our work force to find places in the emerging technological industries that govt money must seed is the way...Look, Im a hard lefty ( just ask Thomas) but , if I owned a factory and was offered a way to treble my profits I'd certainly find it rather attractive, wouldnt you?
Talking about penalizing off-shored industry with tariffs and the like is certainly a conversation worth having, as is disallowing govt contracts to firms not based here. But I believe the best conversation about this economy must begin with the understanding that our mills and factories just ain't coming back. Further, once unions find their new niche among these newly industrialized nations, once environmental groups take root there as well we will really see some fur flying. But thats the stuff of another conversation...
So, let the criticisms commence.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
That is a globalist view and I don't believe its critical to disagree as to timing. I'd agree with your one world view, but its far in the future.
"Look, Im a hard lefty ( just ask Thomas)"
I don't believe you are hard left, you don't hate America and you don't want to destroy it, nor do you blame every evil in the world on her. Radical yes, hard left...I don't think so.
"This nation has moved beyond manufacture to a service oriented economy."
Its a popular view, I don't believe it. Any country that doesn't manufacture cannot maintain its self.
"But I believe the best conversation about this economy must begin with the understanding that our mills and factories just ain't coming back."
That is also said a lot, but I don't believe that either. Change the trade laws, the trade agreements to favor it and it will stop. Tax their overseas profits weither they bring them home or not.
"if I owned a factory and was offered a way to treble my profits I'd certainly find it rather attractive, wouldnt you?"
Absolutely. But that has been happening because we allow our corporations to do it and still market here as if they are US entities. If your factory is overseas, then your product is an import, no matter the ownership.
"Talking about penalizing off-shored industry with tariffs and the like is certainly a conversation worth having, as is disallowing govt contracts to firms not based here."
You bet your sweet Bippy it is. Start treating these folks as foreign companies. Take care of American workers first. That is the one thing McCain had right, America first.
That wasn't too critical was it!
.Wait a hold it!
Torquemada :
I don't believe you are hard left, you don't hate America and you don't want to destroy it, nor do you blame every evil in the world on her. Radical yes, hard left...I don't think so.
A pilloried radical:
This is simply a myth promoted by the right. Lefties love this nation every bit as much as do you guys. There is stridency on both sides of course, please be fair Cardinal T.
"It is an inaccuracy to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common decency and common honesty. This makes me forever ineligible for any political office." HLMencken
Heres one from one of those godless, hating lefties:
"While there is a lower class, I am in it;
While there is a criminal element, I am of it;
and while there is a soul in prison I am not free."
Eugene V. Debs
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Sorry, the hard left that I am talking about would destroy America tomorrow if given the chance. Its no myth. I have met these folks.
Sorry, you aren't one of them.
Not believing in God has nothing to do with the left as well you know.
So...that makes you a rational radical! HA! Who else would quote
Milton Friedman?
.So...that makes you a rational radical! HA! Who else would quote
Milton Friedman?
Errr, perhaps his nephew????
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais NinSo...
Milton didn't have a nephew, everyone knows he was born by sponteaneous combustion or at best by rubbing two dollar bills together.
.Actually those checks to the working class caused a significant, albeit temporary, bump in our economic slide. It illustrated rather well the lie of Bush and Reagan "trickle down" nonsense. Money dispersed among the wealthy disappears while the same amount given back to the middle and working classes finds its way immediately to the economy..
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
ardee November 10th, 2008 6:29 am
"Actually those checks to the working class caused a significant, albeit temporary, bump in our economic slide"
You're right, there was a temporary bump, but it didn't kick start the economy because there was no multiplier effect. It didn't get people called back from layoffs or get increased production in factories which in turn would have created more spending because the money went to China and other overseas low wage unregulated areas of the world where most goods are made now.
Lobo Gris
and stop the inane war on drugs, as well!
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
I often mused about just buying off the neocons. If we could say "Look, it is obvious you don't give a shit about this country or the planet, for that matter. Rather than start another war or blow up some more buildings or drown another city, how much would it take to just make you guys go away?"
I have a feeling it's something like $700 billion...
It is obscene. What is worse is the reaction of the press and the Public. They might voice indignation for a while, but nothing will change.
It is all about perception. The strategy seems to be to throw something totally off the wall out there such as "hey lets give 800 billion dollars of taxpayer money to the richest Americans" to the smoke and mirrors debate about how worong it is and how unfair it is.
Then come back with a revised and tougher plan. A plan that still gives all that money to the richest Americans....but with mean nothing "restrictions" to prove how diligent they are with tax payer money.
Suddenly the taxpayer is happy. Americans suffer from a collective Attention deficit disorder.
Exactly!
And as far as our ADD is concerned, it's even worse because now we don't even have the money for the drugs to treat it! I suppose the drug companies will be the next ones lining up for a bailout ...
Aquifer November 9th, 2008 8:40 pm
"And as far as our ADD is concerned, it's even worse because now we don't even have the money for the drugs to treat it! I suppose the drug companies will be the next ones lining up for a bailout ..."
I don't know about them asking for a bailout but Pfizer, one of the big pharmas announced the other day that they are moving their operation out of the U.S.
Lobo Gris
Just as an aside, gains on stock sales of corporations not based in the US should not receive capital gains tax "discounts."
In fact, we should reduce capital gains tax discounts based on the percentage of US employees versus non-US employees. If a company employs 75% of its employees outside the US, investors in this company would lose 75% of their capital gains discount.
While we're at it, capital gains should not be taxed at rates lower than earned income.
I hate to burst the "change" bubble here, but Obama is doing the same thing Bush did. He is surrounding himself with professionals in their trade who believe that the idea of "conflict of interest" is the best way to resolve any issue.
The next thing they are doing, is simply expanding the current model of operation. Instead of just the military industrial complex and oil making out like bandits, the medical, insurance and other not so well represented companies need time at the feeding trough.
Why not use common sense. When the Pentagon can tell the nation year after year it has no idea what happened with TRILLIONS of dollars of money, when Banks can rape, loot and pillage, and then be given more money as a punishment, "we have a serious problem Houston"!
Common sense says that if there is a problem you identify the problem, then find ways to resolve them. How did house prices get artificially inflated, then deflated. How does a bank loan money to a home owner, then sell that loan to another financial institution in a way that we cannot determine if it is a good loan or a bad one. What kinds of regulation allowed this to happen, and how do we fix it.
Instead we have a solution of, lets take 700 Billion dollars in money we do not have, borrow that from the Federal Reserve which is not a federal bank but a private bank owned and operated for profit by the very folks that are telling us how to resolve the issue by borrowing the money. We as tax payers will then pay interest on this 700 Billion dollars which will be pocketed by the folks that created the mess to begin with. Oh and the money we borrowed, goes to the same people who created the mess.
The sad thing is that this was even proposed, worse that its actually being allowed to happen, and the worst yet is that every nation on the face of the earth is sitting around calling Americans the most stupid people on earth as we sit around watching Fox news, American Idol, and eating the crap our so called leaders are cramming down our throats.
"Instead we have a solution of, lets take 700 Billion dollars in money we do not have, borrow that from the Federal Reserve which is not a federal bank but a private bank owned and operated for profit by the very folks that are telling us how to resolve the issue by borrowing the money. We as tax payers will then pay interest on this 700 Billion dollars which will be pocketed by the folks that created the mess to begin with. Oh and the money we borrowed, goes to the same people who created the mess."
Spot on comment. And yet, we are not hanging the bastards from the nearest lamp posts. Privately, they MUST be laughing their asses off at us. There are 300 million of US and a few thousand of THEM. Yet we let them continue to rape us.
-- EKATON --
Yes, that paragraph is well worth quoting.
The bailout was passed and made possible by democrats.
And Obama twisted arms so people would vote for the bail out.
.Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
It seems to me that this stuff is too easily being dismissed as "typical Bush administration policies and practices", and folks are unexcited because here comes the new sheriff, riding over the horizon on his hypoallergenic steed....
Well, what if this isnt Bush but is endemic to the govt? What if our new sheriff makes no attempt to alter this boondoggle and enormous giveaway and free access to our Treasury? I seem to remember Senator Obama rushing back to Washington to help speed this through the Senate. I noted, in his first press conference Friday, that he stood before a gaggle of familiar faces, Wall Street hands all....
Where is our Greek Chorus when needed, where is the much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands?
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Obama must move beyond traditional class politics, starting with the economy.
No more bail outs for the crooks, corporate thieves and the Democratic party rejected the majority which was opposed to the Bail out. Pelosi, Obama, and the democrats threw away 800 Billion dollars, they suddenly found, that could pay for Health care, single payer system and job stimulus along the lines of FDR minus the global war to save capitalism.
Obama then must prosecute these swindlers, and also set up a special prosecutor for both war criminals, corporate criminals as the two went hand in hand to produce our corporate fascist economic system. He cannot keep putting in right wing hacks like Rahm Emanuel, Dennis Ross, his Middle east advisor, Colin Powell the LIAR who took us into war, all part of the problem, he needs to get rid of these class elites and put in people like Michael Ratner who will go after these crooks, war criminal, by giving him the job of Attorney General.
Reading what you have said makes me question your credulity. Don't you get it? Mr. Obama is one of the same group. He has just appointed some of the same group of shysters who helped bring us this problem. He is and has been one of them.
Why are you so willfully ignorant?
Thank you for your informative article Naomi. You are truly a great American. “Pro” your point is well taken however we must go beyond the current crisis and plan ahead.
Barrrack hopefully already is planning our healthcare program for all Americans. So we should utilize this economic crisis to build, train , and supply our future health care needs. We should be building clinics expanding our funding of our medical universities to train more doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
Rather than dumping hundreds of billions into the failed auto industry, invest in funding for building the necessary health care equipment so all our hospital and medical clinic have the newest and best equipment. Once the economies of scale kick-in we could supply the world with inexpensive healthcare equipment. I’m no machinist but running a CNC machine is basically the same whether you are building a car door or a medical equipment cart. There would be many high tech computer programing and computer chip manufacturing jobs. There would be good high paying union jobs and the workers would need no retraining.
All Americans would be happier because we could see the way to a brighter future, the future we voted for…change..
Naomi Klein is a Canadian albeit the daughter of an American who moved to Canada to resist the draft.
It interesting that amongst our most politically active up here in Canada, are the war resisters and or their Children. Leastways that my impression.