The most stupid ideas in the world continue to be peddled by free market ideologues who are suggesting that the best thing we can do for the American car industry and our economy is allow the Detroit manufacturers to go bankrupt.
After the most dramatic evidence since the 1930s of the total failure of free market fundamentalist ideology—the belief that the market should be allowed to do whatever the market does on its own, without government intervention, because that will be best for the economy—it’s amazing to still see Congress and the corporate media giving credence and air time to the junk bond ideas these market fundamentalists continue to peddle in spite of overwhelming evidence of their worthlessness and the damage they have done to the American political economy.
The only response free market ideological junk-peddlers should be getting these days is sarcastic laughter, and this especially applies to those who are arguing that the best thing we can do for the US car industry and economy is to allow the Detroit companies to go bankrupt.
Free market fundamentalism has launched us well on the way to the next great Depression, and if Congress now allows market fundamentalism to determine its decision-making about the Detroit car-makers, our political leaders will be turning the United States economy onto the surest route to the next great depression. If Congress continues to allow market fundamentalism to provide its map to the economic future, even after all evidence has proven market fundamentalism to be an ideology that has done much more direct damage to our national economy than communism ever did, we will find ourselves repeating the history of the 1930s depression in the next decade.
The surest route for US policymakers to take if they want to turn the worsening recession into a depression is to allow the Detroit auto industry, just as it is entering a period of major transformation, to go bankrupt. The bankruptcy of GM would trigger the immediate loss of millions of jobs, which would in turn accelerate the current downward spiral of job loss and economic contraction into a whirlwind the end of which could not be predicted by anyone.
This is how the recession of 1929 triggered by the stock market crash was turned into the Great Depression of the 1930s: by a market fundamentalist ideology that Hoover and Congress allowed to block decisive government action to preserve existing jobs and create new jobs to keep the economy from collapsing.
After the economy had collapsed, and Roosevelt took over in 1933, it was too late for even the most dedicated focus on job creation to have more than a limited impact on resuscitating the US economy until the production speedup of World War II jolted the economy back to life.
Fortunately, this time around, we have a new President who understands and respects history, intelligence, and the importance of job creation coming into office near the beginning of the downward spiral of job loss, instead of at its end. This means that it is still possible we could avoid repeating the mistakes of the past—BUT ONLY IF political leaders pay heed to the lessons of history and act to make sure that the spiral of job loss is not allowed to grow out of control. The surest way to allow the current job loss spiral to spin quickly out of control is to allow the US auto manufacturers to fall into bankruptcy.
While Congress has been willing to allow banks and the financial industry to be bailed out, Now—when the most important remaining manufacturing industry in the country is on the verge of failure—congressional leaders are actually allowing themselves to fall back into the stupidities of market fundamentalism, and question whether they should extend help to the anchor of the entire remaining manufacturing sector in the US. Without logic or any intelligent concern for the horrible impact the bankruptcy of the Detroit car industry would have on the loss of millions of jobs in an already spiraling downward movement of job loss, congressional leaders now seem willing to allow a major source of jobs in the US economy to disappear. And this would also, by the way, convert an already suffering regional economy in the Midwest into a disaster zone.
There could not be a worse time for Congress to fall back into the stupidities of the market fundamentalism that, by “allowing the market to be the market,” has brought us to this economic crisis in the first place. If Congress now allows stupidity and ideology to continue to rule over reason, they will allow the Detroit auto industry to fail, and they will in one fell swoop project us from a recessionary spiral into a depression-producing whirlwind.
So we must all ask and challenge our congressional leaders and the corporate media with the following question: Will they allow the stupidity of failed market ideology to rule and bring our common future to ruin, or will they laugh these stupidly shouting ideologues out of the park, and create the quiet and open space needed for thoughtful ideas and innovation to rescue us from the disastrous stupidities of the past? The choice is ours, as well as theirs. Let’s get to work—in laughing, thinking, and acting, for the sake of our common future.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Time for Supine Congress to Stand Up & Halt the Looting of the National Treasury by the Bush Administration
Bush & Co. can still do great damage to our nation's economy and seriously cripple its potential for recovery under an Obama administration, as Naomi Klein has argued this weekend (at the Miami Book Fair) in her excellent discussion (broadcast on BookTV) of the way the Bush administration is using the "shock" of the current financial crisis and the "bailout" to continue to loot our nation's Treasury, as their parting gift to the nation.
While President Bush is lamely attempting to use this weekend's G20 summit to warn against any major efforts at reform of the financial system, and to cover up his culpability for administering the bad policies that delivered us into this crisis, the people of the US and the rest of the world have pulled back the curtain to reveal his administration as the bad wizard that has been using the ideology of the free market to manipulate the world's political economy for the interests of the most powerful and wealthy.
And now that the world-embracing confidence game has been revealed, the Bush administration is trying to make sure--as it is forced to turn over the reigns of power--that those who next come into power will be as crippled and limited as possible in their efforts to repair the harm done by the past years of maladministration and ill-gotten gain.
Unless Congress under Pelosi and Reid IMMEDIATELY converts the next few weeks of the "lame duck" session of Congress into an EMERGENCY session dedicated to taking swift and decisive action to STOP the corrupt Bush administration's looting of our nation's economy, through a misuse of its crisis financial authority at the end of its term that parallels the misuse of its war authority at the beginning of its term, the potential an Obama administration might have for repairing the damage will quickly disappear in the next few weeks, evern before Obama enters office.
If the Obama administration is to have any ability to repair the financial and political damage of the last decades of disastrous policy, a supine Democratic-led Congress must learn how to stand up NOW to prevent any additional looting of the national Treasury by requiring that any additional Treasury funds provided to 'bail out' the bad decisions of corporations and executives be tied to strict standards of accountability and oversight, including requirements similar to those of Britain that require banks using such funds to provide loans to the citizens whose tax dollars are bailing them out.
The policy of the lame-duck Congress, if it wishes to preserve any potential for an Obama administration to repair the harms of the past, should be direct and simple, and loud and clear:
If the banks do not wish to provide loans to citizens, then the banks should not be eligible for tax-payer-funded bailouts! Britain understood this, and wrote such a requirement into the law that provided Treasury funds to British banks, but the Bush administration, which seeks to protect the privileges of unrestrained power to continue to rob tax-payers in order to make the wealthy wealthier, prefers to preach the virtues of unfettered capitalism to the G20 so it can continue to protect a corrupt financial system that robs the needy for the profit of the rich and powerful. This is how the Bush administration understands freedom and the market, and has terribly corrupted the meaning of both.
If Congress does not immediately act to stop even more harm from being done in the waning days of this corrupt administration, then this "lame duck" Democratic Congress will be guilty not only of complicity with the bad policies of the last two years, but will be responsible for selling out the Obama administration before it even takes office.
Let's hope that in the next few days Pelosi, Reid, and the entire Democratic Congress will learn the lessons of this election and pay heed to the demands of the American people for change NOW. If Pelosi, Reid, and Congress fail to act even now to put an immediate halt to the criminal corruption of the political process that continues to allow tax-payer dollars to be used to bail out the rich and powerful, without accountability or appropriate oversight, then Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the Congress will be as guilty as the Bush administration for the national disaster that stems from this failure to act decisively and clearly to bring the terrible abuses of the Bush administration to an end, for once and for all.
As Klein has written in her most recent article in The Nation:
Either the Congress and Obama must begin to fulfill their constitutional oversight responsibilities NOW, or Obama's acceptance of the promise to "protect and defend" the Constitution on Inauguration day on January 20, 2009 may end up being as hollow as it is unachievable.
Again, to quote Naomi Klein, who wrote before the election:
While President Bush is lamely attempting to use this weekend's G20 summit to warn against any major efforts at reform of the financial system, and to cover up his culpability for administering the bad policies that delivered us into this crisis, the people of the US and the rest of the world have pulled back the curtain to reveal his administration as the bad wizard that has been using the ideology of the free market to manipulate the world's political economy for the interests of the most powerful and wealthy.
And now that the world-embracing confidence game has been revealed, the Bush administration is trying to make sure--as it is forced to turn over the reigns of power--that those who next come into power will be as crippled and limited as possible in their efforts to repair the harm done by the past years of maladministration and ill-gotten gain.
Unless Congress under Pelosi and Reid IMMEDIATELY converts the next few weeks of the "lame duck" session of Congress into an EMERGENCY session dedicated to taking swift and decisive action to STOP the corrupt Bush administration's looting of our nation's economy, through a misuse of its crisis financial authority at the end of its term that parallels the misuse of its war authority at the beginning of its term, the potential an Obama administration might have for repairing the damage will quickly disappear in the next few weeks, evern before Obama enters office.
If the Obama administration is to have any ability to repair the financial and political damage of the last decades of disastrous policy, a supine Democratic-led Congress must learn how to stand up NOW to prevent any additional looting of the national Treasury by requiring that any additional Treasury funds provided to 'bail out' the bad decisions of corporations and executives be tied to strict standards of accountability and oversight, including requirements similar to those of Britain that require banks using such funds to provide loans to the citizens whose tax dollars are bailing them out.
The policy of the lame-duck Congress, if it wishes to preserve any potential for an Obama administration to repair the harms of the past, should be direct and simple, and loud and clear:
If the banks do not wish to provide loans to citizens, then the banks should not be eligible for tax-payer-funded bailouts! Britain understood this, and wrote such a requirement into the law that provided Treasury funds to British banks, but the Bush administration, which seeks to protect the privileges of unrestrained power to continue to rob tax-payers in order to make the wealthy wealthier, prefers to preach the virtues of unfettered capitalism to the G20 so it can continue to protect a corrupt financial system that robs the needy for the profit of the rich and powerful. This is how the Bush administration understands freedom and the market, and has terribly corrupted the meaning of both.
If Congress does not immediately act to stop even more harm from being done in the waning days of this corrupt administration, then this "lame duck" Democratic Congress will be guilty not only of complicity with the bad policies of the last two years, but will be responsible for selling out the Obama administration before it even takes office.
Let's hope that in the next few days Pelosi, Reid, and the entire Democratic Congress will learn the lessons of this election and pay heed to the demands of the American people for change NOW. If Pelosi, Reid, and Congress fail to act even now to put an immediate halt to the criminal corruption of the political process that continues to allow tax-payer dollars to be used to bail out the rich and powerful, without accountability or appropriate oversight, then Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the Congress will be as guilty as the Bush administration for the national disaster that stems from this failure to act decisively and clearly to bring the terrible abuses of the Bush administration to an end, for once and for all.
As Klein has written in her most recent article in The Nation:
Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.For both the Democratic Party and the incoming Obama administration, as well as the country, silence and supine inaction in the face of the continuing outrages of the Bush administration against both the nation's political economy and Constitution are no longer an option.
Either the Congress and Obama must begin to fulfill their constitutional oversight responsibilities NOW, or Obama's acceptance of the promise to "protect and defend" the Constitution on Inauguration day on January 20, 2009 may end up being as hollow as it is unachievable.
Again, to quote Naomi Klein, who wrote before the election:
This duplicity is a political opportunity. Whoever wins the election on November 4 will have enormous moral authority. It should be used to call for a freeze on the dispersal of bailout funds—not after the inauguration, but right away. All deals should be renegotiated immediately, this time with the public getting the guarantees.Also see Naomi Klein's articles:
It is risky, of course, to interrupt the bailout process. The market won’t like it. Nothing could be riskier, however, than allowing the Bush gang their parting gift to big business—the gift that will keep on taking.
The Bailout Profiteers
The Bailout: Bush's Final Pillage
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