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
Saturday, October 4, 2008
If Taxing the Wealthy is Unpatriotic, Who Will Palin/McCain Force to Pay the Bills?
This past week, as the financial system teetered on the verge of collapse because of the Republicans' anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-tax laissez-faire ideology, we were offered the spectacle of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin underlining the irrationality of this Republican ideology by arguing that raising taxes on the wealthy would be both unpatriotic and harmful to the nation.
According to the Republican logic of Palin and McCain, asking the wealthy to pay more taxes (as Joe Biden proposed) "is not patriotism," but is "about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse." (And McCain said the idea of asking the wealthy to pay more taxes was "dumb.")
It must be nice for those like Palin and McCain to think such things, as the Republicans continue to uphold a policy of protecting the wealthy from taxation while the middle class and poor are burdened with the explosive growth of the national bill for fighting unnecessary wars and providing gigantic trillion-dollar bail-outs to pay for the consequences of failed Republican economic policies.
In response to these revealing comments on taxation and patriotism by Palin and McCain, the corporate media needs to be shamed into asking serious questions about the Palin/McCain-Hoover vision of tax policy and government finance, since we now know these questions will be at the center of the next administration's attention:
If taxation of the wealthy is now unpatriotic, how will the Republicans propose to pay the tremendous costs of fighting their wars and bailing out the financial system that has been brought to the brink of collapse under their watch? How will the Republican ticket of Palin/McCain pay the gigantic bill for the bail-out of the entire financial system that their own failed economic and war policies have now forced us into, as a new phase of the Republican "shock doctrine" is applied to the national economy?
And we would also like to ask the corporate media when they will begin to uphold their own patriotic duty by asking the Palin/McCain Republican ticket some fundamental questions about patriotism, taxation, and basic economics (since Palin has raised this issue for discussion, and the financial health of even the corporate media depends on the maintenance of an ordered national financial system):
--If taxation of the wealthy is now unpatriotic, how do the Republicans propose to pay for their 3 trillion-dollar war in Iraq? (Answer: continue to charge the cost to the Chinese-financed national credit card for the next generation to pay back!)
--If taxation is unpatriotic, is paying for the war in Iraq also unpatriotic? If it's unpatriotic for the wealthy to pay more taxes, is it not even more unpatriotic to be placing ever greater burdens of taxation on the next generation, and on the middle and lower classes?
Republicans like Palin and McCain would like to continue to avoid any responsibility for answering questions about how they expect the nation to pay the gigantic debt-load of the failed policies the Republicans have imposed on our country. (This involves, after all, some "looking backwards," which Palin and McCain would like to avoid at all costs, for obvious reasons.) And unfortunately the corporate media often seems completely willing to allow them to continue to avoid answering questions that require some "looking backwards" in order to understand how their past beliefs and decisions would influence future policies.
According to the logic of Palin/McCain, if it is unpatriotic to ask the wealthy to pay more taxes, guess who will end up paying these gigantic expenses under another Republican administration--even as the corporate CEOs are allowed to continue to walk away with million dollar salaries for running our financial system and country into the ground!
Palin/McCain would love to continue to get away with calling taxation of the wealthy unpatriotic, even while they continue to ignore the gigantic tsunami of expenses that Republican policies have imposed on the American people.
Republicans like McCain and Palin would like to separate themselves from the Bush legacy by claiming they will now come to the rescue of the middle class they have helped to destroy, even while they would also love to continue to be seen as the ones who will protect the wealthy while the middle class and poor are burdened with the ever-growing cost of paying for the failed Republican policies of the past.
Actually, the Republicans would like to be able to get away with having no one pay for the disastrous economic policies of the past eight years, which was also Hoover's strategy after the Crash of 1929--a do-nothing strategy that drove an economy in crisis into a great economic depression:
As John Kenneth Galbraith noted in his book The Great Crash 1929,
As Galbraith summarizes, this combined commitment to tax cuts and decreasing government expenditures amounted to a fundamental rejection of the use of fiscal policy, and thus
And it was this "triumph of dogma over thought" that turned the economic crisis of 1929-30 into the decade-long great depression of the 1930s (Galbraith, pp. 182-186).
In October 2008 the American nation faces a clear choice between a Democratic candidate who at least acknowledges and understands that the policies of the past have failed, and that we need a fundamentally new approach to things (even if he cannot yet be clear about what that approach will be (even Roosevelt was not clear about what he would do until AFTER he took office in 1933), and a Republican candidate who, up until a week or so ago, was still declaring--like the Bush/Hoover administrations--that the "fundamentals of the US economy were sound," and who would solve this crisis by applying the depression-creating policies of the Hoover administration: tax cuts and decreases in government spending.
And of course the Republicans rely on the silence of the corporate media and the stupidity of half of the American public to get them into office again in the face of their continuing commitment to burdening the middle class with the bills of failed policies favoring the superwealthy.
Why are the corporate media not asking the most fundamental questions about failed Republican economic policy? These media corporations (even FOX News) should recognize that the failure of the US and global financial system will also bring about the bankruptcy of much of the corporate media structure (while their CEOs walk away with whatever remains)??!!
It is precisely the corporate media's silence and lack of critical attention to the fundamentally irrational and unsustainable approach of Republicans to taxation, regulation, and economic policy that has allowed the country to fall into this mess, and even now--as things fall apart-- the corporate media continues to ignore the many ways the Palin/McCain team would simply like to continue this same absurd economy-killing set of Hooverian policies toward national finance and taxation!
When will the corporate media begin to challenge the way Republican policy is fundamentally undermining the future of this country and of their own corporate jobs and future?!--along with the ability of the vast majority of the people of this country to live decent lives?!! When will the media begin to challenge directly the fundamental lack of patriotism in Republican policies that continue to destroy the foundations that support national finance and economy?
What is more unpatriotic than a national media that continues to pass over the ways Republican policy has destroyed our national economy during the last eight years?
And so we need to challenge and shame the corporate media into asking these critical questions by challenging those in the corporate media: If you care at all about patriotism, why aren't you asking these kinds of critical questions of the Republicans, to make clear to the American public how utterly absurd is so much of what the McCain/Palin ticket is offering to the American public?!! If Palin/McCain think that taxing the wealthy is unpatriotic even in the face of this gigantic meltdown, what principles will guide another Republican administration when they are elected?!!
At a time when the entire economy of the nation and the globe is teetering on the edge of the abyss, the U.S. media continues to be facile and stupid in the face of the destructive irrationality of ideas and policy that the Republican candidates, and often also the Democratic party (since Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and now apparently an Obama advisor, is almost just as bad as the Republicans!) continue to dish out to us.
ENOUGH!!! When will the individual citizens and taxpayers who are part of the corporate media rise up against the destructive stupidity of their bosses and the policies that have been destroying our country? When will all members of the media, across the nation, get mad enough at what the Republicans are proposing to continue to do to our country, and begin to raise these fundamental questions in public, for all to hear??!!
The McCain/Palin ticket survives only because they think they can continue to get away with dishing out bullshit to the American people. When will the corporate media reveal the absurd emptiness of the Republican campaign as the bullshit it really is-- protecting the wealthiest while piling the expensive burden on generations to come of the middle class, until all but a small corporate and government elite in this country will be reduced to poverty (as in the last days of the Soviet Union)?
Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden made a clear, straight-forward and rational statement about the responsibility of ALL American citizens, including the wealthy, to take on a fair part of the burden of paying for the privilege of being a citizen of this country. Biden was making the point that the wealthy have not been asked by the Republicans or the Democrats to pay their fair share of the costs of war and failed economic policies that benefited the wealthy. (And intelligent and patriotic wealthy people like Warren Buffett would agree with Biden's point, and would favor higher rates of taxation for the wealthy.)
Paying taxes is the way we all support our country and our government. If this is unpatriotic, what does patriotism mean? And this is why we all have a stake in using our powers of citizenship to determine the character and quality of our government, since when it fails, we all end up paying the costs of this failure.
So it's high time for all people, and especially those in the corporate media, to ask the Republican candidates: if they think raising taxes on the wealthy is unpatriotic, how do they propose to pay the exploding costs of the gigantic failures of war and financial policy that their eight years of rule have imposed on the people of this country!!!?
When will the so-called "fourth estate" of the media begin to uphold its responsibility and patriotic duty by asking these basic questions of those who would have us elect them to continue to run the country into the ground by continuing the same irrational policies that have guided the Bush administration?!
If the corporate media cannot be responsible for patriotic reasons, they might at least realize they need to ask these questions for the sake of their own survival. For if there is a great crash of 2008 or 2009 (the crash of 1929 did not occur until several months after Republican Hoover took over from Republican Coolidge, on the promise of "change" that never came), employees of the corporate media will suffer right along with the rest of us.
According to the Republican logic of Palin and McCain, asking the wealthy to pay more taxes (as Joe Biden proposed) "is not patriotism," but is "about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse." (And McCain said the idea of asking the wealthy to pay more taxes was "dumb.")
It must be nice for those like Palin and McCain to think such things, as the Republicans continue to uphold a policy of protecting the wealthy from taxation while the middle class and poor are burdened with the explosive growth of the national bill for fighting unnecessary wars and providing gigantic trillion-dollar bail-outs to pay for the consequences of failed Republican economic policies.
In response to these revealing comments on taxation and patriotism by Palin and McCain, the corporate media needs to be shamed into asking serious questions about the Palin/McCain-Hoover vision of tax policy and government finance, since we now know these questions will be at the center of the next administration's attention:
If taxation of the wealthy is now unpatriotic, how will the Republicans propose to pay the tremendous costs of fighting their wars and bailing out the financial system that has been brought to the brink of collapse under their watch? How will the Republican ticket of Palin/McCain pay the gigantic bill for the bail-out of the entire financial system that their own failed economic and war policies have now forced us into, as a new phase of the Republican "shock doctrine" is applied to the national economy?
And we would also like to ask the corporate media when they will begin to uphold their own patriotic duty by asking the Palin/McCain Republican ticket some fundamental questions about patriotism, taxation, and basic economics (since Palin has raised this issue for discussion, and the financial health of even the corporate media depends on the maintenance of an ordered national financial system):
--If taxation of the wealthy is now unpatriotic, how do the Republicans propose to pay for their 3 trillion-dollar war in Iraq? (Answer: continue to charge the cost to the Chinese-financed national credit card for the next generation to pay back!)
--If taxation is unpatriotic, is paying for the war in Iraq also unpatriotic? If it's unpatriotic for the wealthy to pay more taxes, is it not even more unpatriotic to be placing ever greater burdens of taxation on the next generation, and on the middle and lower classes?
Republicans like Palin and McCain would like to continue to avoid any responsibility for answering questions about how they expect the nation to pay the gigantic debt-load of the failed policies the Republicans have imposed on our country. (This involves, after all, some "looking backwards," which Palin and McCain would like to avoid at all costs, for obvious reasons.) And unfortunately the corporate media often seems completely willing to allow them to continue to avoid answering questions that require some "looking backwards" in order to understand how their past beliefs and decisions would influence future policies.
According to the logic of Palin/McCain, if it is unpatriotic to ask the wealthy to pay more taxes, guess who will end up paying these gigantic expenses under another Republican administration--even as the corporate CEOs are allowed to continue to walk away with million dollar salaries for running our financial system and country into the ground!
Palin/McCain would love to continue to get away with calling taxation of the wealthy unpatriotic, even while they continue to ignore the gigantic tsunami of expenses that Republican policies have imposed on the American people.
Republicans like McCain and Palin would like to separate themselves from the Bush legacy by claiming they will now come to the rescue of the middle class they have helped to destroy, even while they would also love to continue to be seen as the ones who will protect the wealthy while the middle class and poor are burdened with the ever-growing cost of paying for the failed Republican policies of the past.
Actually, the Republicans would like to be able to get away with having no one pay for the disastrous economic policies of the past eight years, which was also Hoover's strategy after the Crash of 1929--a do-nothing strategy that drove an economy in crisis into a great economic depression:
As John Kenneth Galbraith noted in his book The Great Crash 1929,
"In November of 1929, Mr. Hoover announced a cut in taxes ... [while he] asked business firms to keep up their capital investment and to maintain wages ... [both measures that] were largely without effect....And, like McCain in the first debate, the Hoover policy insisted that there should be a major cut in government expenditures, to go along with the tax cuts....
As Galbraith summarizes, this combined commitment to tax cuts and decreasing government expenditures amounted to a fundamental rejection of the use of fiscal policy, and thus
"amounted precisely to a rejection of all affirmative government economic policy," and a disavowal of "all the available steps to check deflation and depression."
And it was this "triumph of dogma over thought" that turned the economic crisis of 1929-30 into the decade-long great depression of the 1930s (Galbraith, pp. 182-186).
In October 2008 the American nation faces a clear choice between a Democratic candidate who at least acknowledges and understands that the policies of the past have failed, and that we need a fundamentally new approach to things (even if he cannot yet be clear about what that approach will be (even Roosevelt was not clear about what he would do until AFTER he took office in 1933), and a Republican candidate who, up until a week or so ago, was still declaring--like the Bush/Hoover administrations--that the "fundamentals of the US economy were sound," and who would solve this crisis by applying the depression-creating policies of the Hoover administration: tax cuts and decreases in government spending.
And of course the Republicans rely on the silence of the corporate media and the stupidity of half of the American public to get them into office again in the face of their continuing commitment to burdening the middle class with the bills of failed policies favoring the superwealthy.
Why are the corporate media not asking the most fundamental questions about failed Republican economic policy? These media corporations (even FOX News) should recognize that the failure of the US and global financial system will also bring about the bankruptcy of much of the corporate media structure (while their CEOs walk away with whatever remains)??!!
It is precisely the corporate media's silence and lack of critical attention to the fundamentally irrational and unsustainable approach of Republicans to taxation, regulation, and economic policy that has allowed the country to fall into this mess, and even now--as things fall apart-- the corporate media continues to ignore the many ways the Palin/McCain team would simply like to continue this same absurd economy-killing set of Hooverian policies toward national finance and taxation!
When will the corporate media begin to challenge the way Republican policy is fundamentally undermining the future of this country and of their own corporate jobs and future?!--along with the ability of the vast majority of the people of this country to live decent lives?!! When will the media begin to challenge directly the fundamental lack of patriotism in Republican policies that continue to destroy the foundations that support national finance and economy?
What is more unpatriotic than a national media that continues to pass over the ways Republican policy has destroyed our national economy during the last eight years?
And so we need to challenge and shame the corporate media into asking these critical questions by challenging those in the corporate media: If you care at all about patriotism, why aren't you asking these kinds of critical questions of the Republicans, to make clear to the American public how utterly absurd is so much of what the McCain/Palin ticket is offering to the American public?!! If Palin/McCain think that taxing the wealthy is unpatriotic even in the face of this gigantic meltdown, what principles will guide another Republican administration when they are elected?!!
At a time when the entire economy of the nation and the globe is teetering on the edge of the abyss, the U.S. media continues to be facile and stupid in the face of the destructive irrationality of ideas and policy that the Republican candidates, and often also the Democratic party (since Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and now apparently an Obama advisor, is almost just as bad as the Republicans!) continue to dish out to us.
ENOUGH!!! When will the individual citizens and taxpayers who are part of the corporate media rise up against the destructive stupidity of their bosses and the policies that have been destroying our country? When will all members of the media, across the nation, get mad enough at what the Republicans are proposing to continue to do to our country, and begin to raise these fundamental questions in public, for all to hear??!!
The McCain/Palin ticket survives only because they think they can continue to get away with dishing out bullshit to the American people. When will the corporate media reveal the absurd emptiness of the Republican campaign as the bullshit it really is-- protecting the wealthiest while piling the expensive burden on generations to come of the middle class, until all but a small corporate and government elite in this country will be reduced to poverty (as in the last days of the Soviet Union)?
Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden made a clear, straight-forward and rational statement about the responsibility of ALL American citizens, including the wealthy, to take on a fair part of the burden of paying for the privilege of being a citizen of this country. Biden was making the point that the wealthy have not been asked by the Republicans or the Democrats to pay their fair share of the costs of war and failed economic policies that benefited the wealthy. (And intelligent and patriotic wealthy people like Warren Buffett would agree with Biden's point, and would favor higher rates of taxation for the wealthy.)
Paying taxes is the way we all support our country and our government. If this is unpatriotic, what does patriotism mean? And this is why we all have a stake in using our powers of citizenship to determine the character and quality of our government, since when it fails, we all end up paying the costs of this failure.
So it's high time for all people, and especially those in the corporate media, to ask the Republican candidates: if they think raising taxes on the wealthy is unpatriotic, how do they propose to pay the exploding costs of the gigantic failures of war and financial policy that their eight years of rule have imposed on the people of this country!!!?
When will the so-called "fourth estate" of the media begin to uphold its responsibility and patriotic duty by asking these basic questions of those who would have us elect them to continue to run the country into the ground by continuing the same irrational policies that have guided the Bush administration?!
If the corporate media cannot be responsible for patriotic reasons, they might at least realize they need to ask these questions for the sake of their own survival. For if there is a great crash of 2008 or 2009 (the crash of 1929 did not occur until several months after Republican Hoover took over from Republican Coolidge, on the promise of "change" that never came), employees of the corporate media will suffer right along with the rest of us.
Failed Leadership and a Vote for the Next Great Depression
--Published on Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 at 03:40:49 PM EDT @ Daily Kos:
This afternoon both Democratic and Republican House leadership failed to guide the House to passage of a bill directed at keeping the U.S. financial/credit system from crashing. If anyone had any remaining doubts about the fundamental incompetence of both parties of the current Congress to address this Nation's urgent crisis, this absolute failure of leadership should remove all remaining doubts. The ship of state and the economy are headed toward the iceberg, and the captain does not even know how to steer.
This failure is due to the failed leadership of the White House and Congress, the continued partisanship of Pelosi and the Democratic caucus (who seemed more interested in praising each other for their development of this Bill, than they were in making sure it would pass), the ideological free market fundamentalism of many Republicans in the House, and the massive public misunderstanding of the meaning of this Bill for the immediate future of the US and global economy. And even now (3:15 pm) the Democratic House leadership (Pelosi and Frank) is making a terrible situation even worse by blaming the Republicans for this failure, without accepting their own share of the responsibility for this failure.
Those voting against this Bill, as well as much of the public, seem to be stuck in a terrible misunderstanding of the basic meaning of this Bill, reflected in the way it continues to be called a "Bailout of Wall Street," even though it is more accurately a Bill to keep the financial system from collapsing, and to keep money flowing so that paychecks, jobs, and retirement accounts don't freeze up along with the entire economy. The failure of this bill now threatens to sink "Main Street" along with Wall Street, as trust in the stability of the entire economy begins to collapse, bank failures proliferate, and even more people lose their jobs and homes.
What all those arguing against this Bill don't seem to understand is that by voting against the immediate action this Bill would have authorized, they may have voted for the beginning of the next Great Depression.
The entire global financial system is now on the brink of shutting down, and if it does, this financial meltdown may plunge the entire economy into depression.
If you don't understand this, you have not been paying attention to the financial and credit news. And if you are listening, and understand anything about how the financial crisis of 1929 quickly turned into the beginning of the Great Depression, you will understand why immediate action to keep the financial system from freezing up is necessary.
We can all complain about the unsavory aspects of this Bill as much as we want, but in the midst of an emergency--when the ship has hit an iceberg (as the US financial system and economy now have), and is sinking, the most immediate matter at hand is doing whatever is necessary, if possible, to keep the ship from sinking.
An emergency bill to keep the financial system functioning through November cannot be expected to solve all the problems that have been created by eight years of total governmental mismanagement by the Bush administration. This bill was simply intended to keep the ship from sinking, so that we would have time to begin working on the more needed repairs of restoring proper regulation and addressing the underlying economic issues that have put most Americans at risk.
I can only think that those voting and arguing against this Bill either don't understand it, or don't care whether many of us end up losing our paychecks, our savings, and our jobs. If the financial system stops functioning, we're all at risk, not just Wall Street. This is why the Financial Crisis of 1929 turned into the Great Depression.
This historic tragicomedy of failed political leadership and folly (in both parties), along with deep public misunderstanding and fundamental distrust, continues to grow, as the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 continues to play itself out....
This afternoon both Democratic and Republican House leadership failed to guide the House to passage of a bill directed at keeping the U.S. financial/credit system from crashing. If anyone had any remaining doubts about the fundamental incompetence of both parties of the current Congress to address this Nation's urgent crisis, this absolute failure of leadership should remove all remaining doubts. The ship of state and the economy are headed toward the iceberg, and the captain does not even know how to steer.
This failure is due to the failed leadership of the White House and Congress, the continued partisanship of Pelosi and the Democratic caucus (who seemed more interested in praising each other for their development of this Bill, than they were in making sure it would pass), the ideological free market fundamentalism of many Republicans in the House, and the massive public misunderstanding of the meaning of this Bill for the immediate future of the US and global economy. And even now (3:15 pm) the Democratic House leadership (Pelosi and Frank) is making a terrible situation even worse by blaming the Republicans for this failure, without accepting their own share of the responsibility for this failure.
Those voting against this Bill, as well as much of the public, seem to be stuck in a terrible misunderstanding of the basic meaning of this Bill, reflected in the way it continues to be called a "Bailout of Wall Street," even though it is more accurately a Bill to keep the financial system from collapsing, and to keep money flowing so that paychecks, jobs, and retirement accounts don't freeze up along with the entire economy. The failure of this bill now threatens to sink "Main Street" along with Wall Street, as trust in the stability of the entire economy begins to collapse, bank failures proliferate, and even more people lose their jobs and homes.
What all those arguing against this Bill don't seem to understand is that by voting against the immediate action this Bill would have authorized, they may have voted for the beginning of the next Great Depression.
The entire global financial system is now on the brink of shutting down, and if it does, this financial meltdown may plunge the entire economy into depression.
If you don't understand this, you have not been paying attention to the financial and credit news. And if you are listening, and understand anything about how the financial crisis of 1929 quickly turned into the beginning of the Great Depression, you will understand why immediate action to keep the financial system from freezing up is necessary.
We can all complain about the unsavory aspects of this Bill as much as we want, but in the midst of an emergency--when the ship has hit an iceberg (as the US financial system and economy now have), and is sinking, the most immediate matter at hand is doing whatever is necessary, if possible, to keep the ship from sinking.
An emergency bill to keep the financial system functioning through November cannot be expected to solve all the problems that have been created by eight years of total governmental mismanagement by the Bush administration. This bill was simply intended to keep the ship from sinking, so that we would have time to begin working on the more needed repairs of restoring proper regulation and addressing the underlying economic issues that have put most Americans at risk.
I can only think that those voting and arguing against this Bill either don't understand it, or don't care whether many of us end up losing our paychecks, our savings, and our jobs. If the financial system stops functioning, we're all at risk, not just Wall Street. This is why the Financial Crisis of 1929 turned into the Great Depression.
This historic tragicomedy of failed political leadership and folly (in both parties), along with deep public misunderstanding and fundamental distrust, continues to grow, as the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 continues to play itself out....
Friday, September 26, 2008
House Republicans Leading Us Over the Abyss into the Great Crash of 2008
Politicians and talking heads in the corporate media repeatedly refer to the current crisis as the "greatest crisis since the Great Depression." This puts the cart before the horse, and confuses both history and understanding of the current crisis.
Before there was a Great Depression, there was the great financial crisis and crash of 1929, which delivered us into the Great Depression. The Great Depression was not a financial crisis. The Great Depression was the economic fallout that resulted from the failed efforts at dealing with the financial crisis that precipitated the great crash of 1929 and the continuing economic turmoil of the years that followed, which lasted until 1933 when Roosevelt replaced Hoover as President and overthrew the destructive ideology of free market fundamentalism with a more rational approach to economics and government action.
For most of his administration, Bush and his Republican party have channeled many of the failed economic policies of the Coolidge administration. Now Bush seems to be channeling Hoover by accepting the need for some kind of government intervention while failing to provide any clear and forceful leadership to his own obstructionist Party, which remains stuck in the ignorant policies of the Coolidge era and the totalizing ideology of free market fundamentalism.
In the absence of failed presidential leadership, Republican Senator Shelby and the House Republicans (now possibly aided and abetted by John McCain) are championing the very ideology of do-nothing free market fundamentalism that led us into this current crisis. And by doing so, they are leading us full steam ahead, like the Titanic, into the iceberg of a repetition of the very mistakes of inaction that drove the United States into the Great Crash of 1929.
So instead of simply repeating ad nauseum the stupid and misleading mantra that we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the media and bloggers need to be discussing these historical lessons and educating the public and our politicians (and especially the House Republicans) about the errors of economic understanding and failures of governmental policy that delivered the US and the world into the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed from this financial collapse.
No matter how much economists have emphasized that we cannot fall into such a crash today because economists understand how to avoid making the same mistakes, the best and brightest of economists cannot prevent the politics of fear and ignorance from taking charge of events in Washington in ways that prevent those who understand the historical causes of the 1929 crash and the Great Depression from acting. After all, hasn't most of the Bush administration been about rejecting all evidence of good science and historical understanding in order to obstruct governmental action on climate change and other pressing problems in favor of Republican ideology and governmental inaction?! This current crisis therefore seems to be the perfect culmination of where Bush administration policies have been leading us for the last eight years.
However smart Bernanke and Paulson may be, they cannot prevent the nation, guided by ignorance and fear, from rejecting all historical wisdom and repeating the tragic errors of the past, including those of 1929. This repetition is what now seems to be happening as the rescue plan of Paulson/Bush is being stabbed to death by House Republicans who believe that the "free market" should be allowed to magically solve the problem by itself.
But it was precisely a religious belief in the free market and doing nothing that allowed the financial crisis of 1929 to turn into the Great Crash of October and November 1929, and the Great Depression that followed.
Thus we now appear to be on a ship of state called the Titanic, without any coherent Congressional or presidential leadership, heading full steam into an iceberg called free market fundamentalism, which will most surely sink us all if it is not forcefully rejected and pushed out of the way by clear leadership and rational economic policy.
With the rebellion of the House Republicans against the Paulson plan, the parallels between our current crisis and the crisis of 1929 preceding the Great Crash are increasingly chilling (and all should brush up on this history through a reading of John Kenneth Galbraith's concise and brilliant The Great Crash 1929):
1. Throughout the 1920s, the Coolidge Administration encouraged economic policies of free market fundamentalism and "irrational exuberance" that encouraged all kinds of market speculation, amazingly similar to the last eight years of the Bush administration.
As Galbraith notes, "the Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable" (109).
"Confidence did not disintegrate at once.... Through September and into October [1929], although the trend of the market was generally down, good days came with the bad" (Galbraith 92).
During the weeks immediately before the Crash, there were frequent pronouncements of continued confidence in the market, such as this one by Charles E. Mitchell, a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (and a leading cheerleader of free market fundamentalism), on October 15, 1929: "The markets generally are now in a healthy condition . . . values have a sound basis in the general prosperity of our country."
And on October 22, 2 days before the beginning of the market Crash on Black Thursday, Mitchell said that market conditions were "fundamentally sound," and concluded that the whole situation "would correct itself if left alone." Even after the first big market dive on Black Thursday, Mitchell continued to utter positive words that emphasized the "fundamental soundness" of the market, stating that the "fundamentals were unimpaired" (104-105). (Perhaps John McCain and the House Republicans have been channeling Charles Mitchell!)
"The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen" for an entire month, until the market had lost 50% of its value by mid-November (Galbraith 108, 135).
But somehow the historical reality of the Crash that came before the Great Depression, and helped to precipitate it, seems to be getting ignored by politicians and the media. Is this because they don't want to admit openly the similarities between the days before the crash of 1929, and our current crisis? Or is it simply because they don't understand the basic facts of this history? Is fear or ignorance governing this silence about parallels between 2008 and 1929? I suspect it is a combination of both.
But whether our politicians in DC and our corporate media are ignoring these lessons out of ignorance or fear, it is clear that public lack of understanding, as it exerts influence on politicians in Washington, is now greatly aggravating the dangers of the current crisis. To help avoid the collapse of the financial system that will surely come if free market fundamentalism is allowed to interfere with clear action, the best thing we can all do is to educate each other and demand that the media and the politicians begin to discuss and understand the dangerous parallels between our current financial crisis and the crisis of 1929.
If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, we must emphasize to all the one clear lesson taught by the tragic failures of leadership in 1929: FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM--the belief that the free market will solve a financial crisis if it is just allowed to do its thing--WILL LEAD US INTO THE ABYSS of economic collapse and a new great depression.
If the free market fundamentalism of the House Republicans is allowed to rule the day in Washington, and prevent clear action, prepare yourselves to be standing in soup lines by next year....
And lest anyone think the tragic consequences of free market fundamentalism during the crisis of 1929 are not important enough to understand today, remember that it took the United States market economy 25 years to fully recover from the Crash of 1929. Although the new policies of the Roosevelt administration and eventually World War II helped to lift the United States out of the Great Depression, it was not until 1954 that the Dow Jones recovered the level it had reached before the crash of 1929.
(And in light of Warren Buffett's recent investment in Goldman Sachs, I should note that Chapter 3 of Galbraith's book is titled "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust." Let us all hope Warren Buffett's attempt to shore up Goldman Sachs on Wednesday was not part of a repetition of the history of the past. At least we know that Buffett is NOT a free market fundamentalist, and even supports higher rates of taxation for the wealthy.)
Addendum
Galbraith (177-186) provides an excellent summary of the five characteristics of the "fundamentally unsound" economy of 1929 that made it possible for the Great Crash to lead the world into the Great Depression:
For a few days Bernanke and Paulson--who are at least able to think and are not controlled by dogma, and have actual expertise in economic matters--seemed to be in charge of dealing with the financial crisis. But now all the stupidities of Republican politics and ideology--which brought us to this crisis--have torpedoed the proposals of the few thinkers in the administration. And we are now once again witnessing the "triumph of dogma over thought."
This should be no surprise. The current crisis is the perfect culmination of all that the Bush administration has been leading us toward. Now the only question is: Will rationality and sanity be able to reassert itself in ways that save us from repeating the mistakes of 1929, or will the dogma of free market fundamentalism prevail, and sink us all?
Before there was a Great Depression, there was the great financial crisis and crash of 1929, which delivered us into the Great Depression. The Great Depression was not a financial crisis. The Great Depression was the economic fallout that resulted from the failed efforts at dealing with the financial crisis that precipitated the great crash of 1929 and the continuing economic turmoil of the years that followed, which lasted until 1933 when Roosevelt replaced Hoover as President and overthrew the destructive ideology of free market fundamentalism with a more rational approach to economics and government action.
For most of his administration, Bush and his Republican party have channeled many of the failed economic policies of the Coolidge administration. Now Bush seems to be channeling Hoover by accepting the need for some kind of government intervention while failing to provide any clear and forceful leadership to his own obstructionist Party, which remains stuck in the ignorant policies of the Coolidge era and the totalizing ideology of free market fundamentalism.
In the absence of failed presidential leadership, Republican Senator Shelby and the House Republicans (now possibly aided and abetted by John McCain) are championing the very ideology of do-nothing free market fundamentalism that led us into this current crisis. And by doing so, they are leading us full steam ahead, like the Titanic, into the iceberg of a repetition of the very mistakes of inaction that drove the United States into the Great Crash of 1929.
So instead of simply repeating ad nauseum the stupid and misleading mantra that we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the media and bloggers need to be discussing these historical lessons and educating the public and our politicians (and especially the House Republicans) about the errors of economic understanding and failures of governmental policy that delivered the US and the world into the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed from this financial collapse.
No matter how much economists have emphasized that we cannot fall into such a crash today because economists understand how to avoid making the same mistakes, the best and brightest of economists cannot prevent the politics of fear and ignorance from taking charge of events in Washington in ways that prevent those who understand the historical causes of the 1929 crash and the Great Depression from acting. After all, hasn't most of the Bush administration been about rejecting all evidence of good science and historical understanding in order to obstruct governmental action on climate change and other pressing problems in favor of Republican ideology and governmental inaction?! This current crisis therefore seems to be the perfect culmination of where Bush administration policies have been leading us for the last eight years.
However smart Bernanke and Paulson may be, they cannot prevent the nation, guided by ignorance and fear, from rejecting all historical wisdom and repeating the tragic errors of the past, including those of 1929. This repetition is what now seems to be happening as the rescue plan of Paulson/Bush is being stabbed to death by House Republicans who believe that the "free market" should be allowed to magically solve the problem by itself.
But it was precisely a religious belief in the free market and doing nothing that allowed the financial crisis of 1929 to turn into the Great Crash of October and November 1929, and the Great Depression that followed.
Thus we now appear to be on a ship of state called the Titanic, without any coherent Congressional or presidential leadership, heading full steam into an iceberg called free market fundamentalism, which will most surely sink us all if it is not forcefully rejected and pushed out of the way by clear leadership and rational economic policy.
With the rebellion of the House Republicans against the Paulson plan, the parallels between our current crisis and the crisis of 1929 preceding the Great Crash are increasingly chilling (and all should brush up on this history through a reading of John Kenneth Galbraith's concise and brilliant The Great Crash 1929):
1. Throughout the 1920s, the Coolidge Administration encouraged economic policies of free market fundamentalism and "irrational exuberance" that encouraged all kinds of market speculation, amazingly similar to the last eight years of the Bush administration.
As Galbraith notes, "the Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable" (109).
"Confidence did not disintegrate at once.... Through September and into October [1929], although the trend of the market was generally down, good days came with the bad" (Galbraith 92).
During the weeks immediately before the Crash, there were frequent pronouncements of continued confidence in the market, such as this one by Charles E. Mitchell, a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (and a leading cheerleader of free market fundamentalism), on October 15, 1929: "The markets generally are now in a healthy condition . . . values have a sound basis in the general prosperity of our country."
And on October 22, 2 days before the beginning of the market Crash on Black Thursday, Mitchell said that market conditions were "fundamentally sound," and concluded that the whole situation "would correct itself if left alone." Even after the first big market dive on Black Thursday, Mitchell continued to utter positive words that emphasized the "fundamental soundness" of the market, stating that the "fundamentals were unimpaired" (104-105). (Perhaps John McCain and the House Republicans have been channeling Charles Mitchell!)
"The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen" for an entire month, until the market had lost 50% of its value by mid-November (Galbraith 108, 135).
But somehow the historical reality of the Crash that came before the Great Depression, and helped to precipitate it, seems to be getting ignored by politicians and the media. Is this because they don't want to admit openly the similarities between the days before the crash of 1929, and our current crisis? Or is it simply because they don't understand the basic facts of this history? Is fear or ignorance governing this silence about parallels between 2008 and 1929? I suspect it is a combination of both.
But whether our politicians in DC and our corporate media are ignoring these lessons out of ignorance or fear, it is clear that public lack of understanding, as it exerts influence on politicians in Washington, is now greatly aggravating the dangers of the current crisis. To help avoid the collapse of the financial system that will surely come if free market fundamentalism is allowed to interfere with clear action, the best thing we can all do is to educate each other and demand that the media and the politicians begin to discuss and understand the dangerous parallels between our current financial crisis and the crisis of 1929.
If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, we must emphasize to all the one clear lesson taught by the tragic failures of leadership in 1929: FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM--the belief that the free market will solve a financial crisis if it is just allowed to do its thing--WILL LEAD US INTO THE ABYSS of economic collapse and a new great depression.
If the free market fundamentalism of the House Republicans is allowed to rule the day in Washington, and prevent clear action, prepare yourselves to be standing in soup lines by next year....
And lest anyone think the tragic consequences of free market fundamentalism during the crisis of 1929 are not important enough to understand today, remember that it took the United States market economy 25 years to fully recover from the Crash of 1929. Although the new policies of the Roosevelt administration and eventually World War II helped to lift the United States out of the Great Depression, it was not until 1954 that the Dow Jones recovered the level it had reached before the crash of 1929.
(And in light of Warren Buffett's recent investment in Goldman Sachs, I should note that Chapter 3 of Galbraith's book is titled "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust." Let us all hope Warren Buffett's attempt to shore up Goldman Sachs on Wednesday was not part of a repetition of the history of the past. At least we know that Buffett is NOT a free market fundamentalist, and even supports higher rates of taxation for the wealthy.)
Addendum
Galbraith (177-186) provides an excellent summary of the five characteristics of the "fundamentally unsound" economy of 1929 that made it possible for the Great Crash to lead the world into the Great Depression:
1. The bad distribution of income.As Galbraith laconically summarizes this state of affairs, "there seems little question that in 1929 ... the economy was fundamentally unsound." And in the face of this fundamental unsoundness of the entire system, it was the "triumph of dogma over thought" that pushed this unsound system into collapse.
2. The bad corporate structure.
3. The bad banking structure.
4. The dubious state of the foreign balance.
5. The poor state of economic intelligence.
For a few days Bernanke and Paulson--who are at least able to think and are not controlled by dogma, and have actual expertise in economic matters--seemed to be in charge of dealing with the financial crisis. But now all the stupidities of Republican politics and ideology--which brought us to this crisis--have torpedoed the proposals of the few thinkers in the administration. And we are now once again witnessing the "triumph of dogma over thought."
This should be no surprise. The current crisis is the perfect culmination of all that the Bush administration has been leading us toward. Now the only question is: Will rationality and sanity be able to reassert itself in ways that save us from repeating the mistakes of 1929, or will the dogma of free market fundamentalism prevail, and sink us all?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
John McCain: Savior of the Nation, or Trojan Horse?
We seem to be watching a Shakespearean tragedy of world-historic proportions playing itself out in this historical moment. Within this tragedy, which now seems to be catapulting us all into financial disaster and economic depression, McCain seems to have chosen to play the absurdist role of a comic actor within the larger tragic drama. But while Shakespeare's comic characters do not usually play a major role in the overarching tragic drama, McCain seems to have chosen to place himself and his sidekick Palin at the center of this emerging disaster.
We must therefore ask: Does McCain fully comprehend the role he has chosen to play? Does McCain understand that in choosing to place himself in the midst of the debate over the financial crisis in Washington, he has chosen his personal political interests over the interests of the country that he has repeatedly said he would place first?
As our nation and the world pivots on the edge of an abyss that could make the financial panic and market crash of 1929 look pale in comparison, we are being forced to witness the spectacle of John McCain's pretensions to being the savior of the nation, while he aids and abets the splinter group of House Republicans that seems determined to have us repeat the mistakes of free market ideological totalitarianism that brought us the Great Crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression. the religious mantra of this ideological crowd is "the free market, limited government, and financial discipline" uber alles.
Under the guise of heading to Washington to save the nation from disaster, instead of continuing his political campaign and appearing on David Letterman's show last night, McCain (in no particular rush, and after taking time to do a full round of media interviews to announce he was 'suspending' his political campaign in order to take up the role of savior of the nation) arrived in Washington today -- to do what exactly? Did McCain rush to the White House with a commitment to helping Democrats and Republicans come to a common ground of agreement on a rescue plan? Did McCain meet with Obama to discuss how they could work together to help their two parties resolve this national crisis?
No. Rather than offering substantive assistance to a contentious meeting at the White House, where McCain could have played a constructive role by helping to lasso resistant Republicans into quick agreement on a comprehensive plan for fending off the increasing danger of a complete meltdown of the capitalist market similar to that of 1929, McCain (who has admitted his lack of economic understanding) seems to have come to Washington to aid and abet the reactionary Republican rebellion of the economically ignorant and outraged against the Bush-Paulson rescue plan.
Perhaps McCain, in the face of his declining poll numbers, recognizes that he is in the most difficult of political positions--a position that would actually require him, per his own oft-repeated words, to choose "country first" over his personal self-interest, by championing a cause that would put him at odds with a Republican base that has suddenly discovered it is the victim of a class war it has long ago stopped fighting. These Republicans, as part of a bitter awakening, are finally mad as hell, and are rising up en masse against the very plutocratic rule and policies they have twice voted into the White House.
But now, as all their political chickens are coming home to roost, these Republicans and Bush Independents have suddenly realized that they may be forced to pay the tremendous financial costs of the disastrous Republican financial, economic, and war policies that they have supported for the past eight years. Rather than accepting painful responsibility for the expense of the failed policies they supported with their votes, these folks have apparently chosen to raise a national tantrum of opposition to the one plan that might possibly save them and the nation from the ultimate consequences of these failed policies: Market Crash and Economic Depression.
Ironically, it was the Bush-Paulson plan that attempted to come to grips with, and accept some responsibility for, addressing the disastrous consequences of the failed "free market, limited government" ideology. But for those still in the grip of this totalizing ideology, who believe they possess the ultimate Truth--in defiance of the reality collapsing around them, defending this ideology to the bitter end is all that matters. For these mad Republicans, the hard truths of history learned through the experience of the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression, are of no value. And now the entire nation and world may be forced to bear the crushing costs of the ultimate failure of this ideology.
We can perhaps understand the anger and frustration of working and middle class Republicans who have suddenly realized they've been betrayed and sold down the river by a Party they believed to represent their interests. Perhaps McCain has realized all too clearly that if he chooses to work with Obama and the Democrats to champion a quick constructive deal, he will place himself at odds with the swelling Republican groundswell of people who have finally recognized that Republican plutocratic policy has sold them down the river for profit? And now this mad public is demanding its pound of flesh, and is seeking revenge on the capitalists of Wall Street who betrayed them, even if this means bringing on the next Great Depression.
And many of these very same Republicans apparently continue to hope that the Republican Party--in the person of the wealthy McCain (with at least seven houses and 13 cars)--will somehow magically change the color of its stripes, and transform itself into a party of the common working people.
While the war in Iraq and the failures after Katrina were not enough to reveal the dangers of reliance on Republican ideology and politics, apparently this financial crisis has finally been enough to raise the long-suppressed class war within the Republican Party to the surface. But unfortunately the price of this twisted discovery of class war and rejectionism in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the days of the Crash of 1929, may well be . . . the Great Crash of 2008, and a twenty-first century Great Depression.
But in the end it can hardly be surprising that our country would be brought to the brink of financial and economic collapse at the very end of an Administration that has done everything possible to undermine the financial and political stability of the nation. Is it any great surprise that the past eight years of misguided economic policies, systematic doublethink, governmental corruption, and war and terrorism-obsessed politics that have characterized the Bush administration, have brought us to the edge of this abyss?
There seems to be some kind of ironic world-historic justice working behind the scenes to direct this tragicomic drama. Onn Wednesday night we watched a President who shamelessly took us into a major and unending war on the basis of distortions and lies, and who is now broadly distrusted and even despised as the person who could not save the people of New Orleans or lead the nation in reconstructing the city after Katrina, stand up before the nation and beg it to trust that he could rescue the nation from a financial disaster that he had largely helped to create. And Thursday we witnessed his own Republican party spurn his appeal, and thus prove President Bush's utter powerlessness in the face of this crisis.
The pitiful irony of Bush's speech was only underlined by the fact that he could not bring himself to admit any responsibility for bringing on this crisis. Instead, he seemed to be displacing responsibility onto an abstract historical development, and onto the individuals and banks who took advantage of the kinds of cheap loans that his administration's policies had encouraged. Not only did he refuse to admit any responsibility for bringing the country to this extremity, but even more absurdly and tragically, Bush attempted to continue to defend the very principles of the anti-regulatory vision of the free market that has brought us to the edge of the complete collapse of the global financial and economic system, as if this collapse is simply some terrible accident of history having nothing to do with the failures of this ideology and the policies spawned by his Administration.
And now, the ultimate humiliation and ironic justice has been handed Bush as his own Party members have rejected his plan for solving the crisis by throwing the very free market ideology he championed back in his face. And with the seeming encouragement of John McCain, this totalitarian strain of the Republican party seems to be winning the battle in Washington, and may scuttle the entire Bush-Paulson plan.
As a result of this class war and rebellion from with the Republican Party, we are now beginning to face the increasingly real possibility that the capitalist financial and economic system will be pushed over the edge of the abyss by members of a Republican party that rejects the rescue plan of its own President, in the delusional belief that the same free market/ anti-regulatory ideology that has delivered us into this crisis will somehow magically rescue us from having to pay the consequences of this many years of failed policy
While major economists (including John K Galbraith) have argued that we should never have to suffer through the experience of another Great Depression because we have the technical knowledge and governmental institutions that allow us to intervene to prevent such a crisis.
But this assumes human beings will collectively act on and apply the economic knowledge we have when necessary to prevent such an eventuality. But if politicians reject this knowledge, in favor of free market fundamentalism, they will be choosing to go the way of the folks who brought us the Great Crash of 1929 by constantly repeating to themselves in the days before this crash: If we just allow the free market to work things out, all will be fine.
So, if you believe in the Free Market, and fresh grapes--
"Don't worry, be happy....."
And prepare for the Great Crash of 2008 by reading JK Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929.
We must therefore ask: Does McCain fully comprehend the role he has chosen to play? Does McCain understand that in choosing to place himself in the midst of the debate over the financial crisis in Washington, he has chosen his personal political interests over the interests of the country that he has repeatedly said he would place first?
As our nation and the world pivots on the edge of an abyss that could make the financial panic and market crash of 1929 look pale in comparison, we are being forced to witness the spectacle of John McCain's pretensions to being the savior of the nation, while he aids and abets the splinter group of House Republicans that seems determined to have us repeat the mistakes of free market ideological totalitarianism that brought us the Great Crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression. the religious mantra of this ideological crowd is "the free market, limited government, and financial discipline" uber alles.
Under the guise of heading to Washington to save the nation from disaster, instead of continuing his political campaign and appearing on David Letterman's show last night, McCain (in no particular rush, and after taking time to do a full round of media interviews to announce he was 'suspending' his political campaign in order to take up the role of savior of the nation) arrived in Washington today -- to do what exactly? Did McCain rush to the White House with a commitment to helping Democrats and Republicans come to a common ground of agreement on a rescue plan? Did McCain meet with Obama to discuss how they could work together to help their two parties resolve this national crisis?
No. Rather than offering substantive assistance to a contentious meeting at the White House, where McCain could have played a constructive role by helping to lasso resistant Republicans into quick agreement on a comprehensive plan for fending off the increasing danger of a complete meltdown of the capitalist market similar to that of 1929, McCain (who has admitted his lack of economic understanding) seems to have come to Washington to aid and abet the reactionary Republican rebellion of the economically ignorant and outraged against the Bush-Paulson rescue plan.
Perhaps McCain, in the face of his declining poll numbers, recognizes that he is in the most difficult of political positions--a position that would actually require him, per his own oft-repeated words, to choose "country first" over his personal self-interest, by championing a cause that would put him at odds with a Republican base that has suddenly discovered it is the victim of a class war it has long ago stopped fighting. These Republicans, as part of a bitter awakening, are finally mad as hell, and are rising up en masse against the very plutocratic rule and policies they have twice voted into the White House.
But now, as all their political chickens are coming home to roost, these Republicans and Bush Independents have suddenly realized that they may be forced to pay the tremendous financial costs of the disastrous Republican financial, economic, and war policies that they have supported for the past eight years. Rather than accepting painful responsibility for the expense of the failed policies they supported with their votes, these folks have apparently chosen to raise a national tantrum of opposition to the one plan that might possibly save them and the nation from the ultimate consequences of these failed policies: Market Crash and Economic Depression.
Ironically, it was the Bush-Paulson plan that attempted to come to grips with, and accept some responsibility for, addressing the disastrous consequences of the failed "free market, limited government" ideology. But for those still in the grip of this totalizing ideology, who believe they possess the ultimate Truth--in defiance of the reality collapsing around them, defending this ideology to the bitter end is all that matters. For these mad Republicans, the hard truths of history learned through the experience of the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression, are of no value. And now the entire nation and world may be forced to bear the crushing costs of the ultimate failure of this ideology.
We can perhaps understand the anger and frustration of working and middle class Republicans who have suddenly realized they've been betrayed and sold down the river by a Party they believed to represent their interests. Perhaps McCain has realized all too clearly that if he chooses to work with Obama and the Democrats to champion a quick constructive deal, he will place himself at odds with the swelling Republican groundswell of people who have finally recognized that Republican plutocratic policy has sold them down the river for profit? And now this mad public is demanding its pound of flesh, and is seeking revenge on the capitalists of Wall Street who betrayed them, even if this means bringing on the next Great Depression.
And many of these very same Republicans apparently continue to hope that the Republican Party--in the person of the wealthy McCain (with at least seven houses and 13 cars)--will somehow magically change the color of its stripes, and transform itself into a party of the common working people.
While the war in Iraq and the failures after Katrina were not enough to reveal the dangers of reliance on Republican ideology and politics, apparently this financial crisis has finally been enough to raise the long-suppressed class war within the Republican Party to the surface. But unfortunately the price of this twisted discovery of class war and rejectionism in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the days of the Crash of 1929, may well be . . . the Great Crash of 2008, and a twenty-first century Great Depression.
But in the end it can hardly be surprising that our country would be brought to the brink of financial and economic collapse at the very end of an Administration that has done everything possible to undermine the financial and political stability of the nation. Is it any great surprise that the past eight years of misguided economic policies, systematic doublethink, governmental corruption, and war and terrorism-obsessed politics that have characterized the Bush administration, have brought us to the edge of this abyss?
There seems to be some kind of ironic world-historic justice working behind the scenes to direct this tragicomic drama. Onn Wednesday night we watched a President who shamelessly took us into a major and unending war on the basis of distortions and lies, and who is now broadly distrusted and even despised as the person who could not save the people of New Orleans or lead the nation in reconstructing the city after Katrina, stand up before the nation and beg it to trust that he could rescue the nation from a financial disaster that he had largely helped to create. And Thursday we witnessed his own Republican party spurn his appeal, and thus prove President Bush's utter powerlessness in the face of this crisis.
The pitiful irony of Bush's speech was only underlined by the fact that he could not bring himself to admit any responsibility for bringing on this crisis. Instead, he seemed to be displacing responsibility onto an abstract historical development, and onto the individuals and banks who took advantage of the kinds of cheap loans that his administration's policies had encouraged. Not only did he refuse to admit any responsibility for bringing the country to this extremity, but even more absurdly and tragically, Bush attempted to continue to defend the very principles of the anti-regulatory vision of the free market that has brought us to the edge of the complete collapse of the global financial and economic system, as if this collapse is simply some terrible accident of history having nothing to do with the failures of this ideology and the policies spawned by his Administration.
And now, the ultimate humiliation and ironic justice has been handed Bush as his own Party members have rejected his plan for solving the crisis by throwing the very free market ideology he championed back in his face. And with the seeming encouragement of John McCain, this totalitarian strain of the Republican party seems to be winning the battle in Washington, and may scuttle the entire Bush-Paulson plan.
As a result of this class war and rebellion from with the Republican Party, we are now beginning to face the increasingly real possibility that the capitalist financial and economic system will be pushed over the edge of the abyss by members of a Republican party that rejects the rescue plan of its own President, in the delusional belief that the same free market/ anti-regulatory ideology that has delivered us into this crisis will somehow magically rescue us from having to pay the consequences of this many years of failed policy
While major economists (including John K Galbraith) have argued that we should never have to suffer through the experience of another Great Depression because we have the technical knowledge and governmental institutions that allow us to intervene to prevent such a crisis.
But this assumes human beings will collectively act on and apply the economic knowledge we have when necessary to prevent such an eventuality. But if politicians reject this knowledge, in favor of free market fundamentalism, they will be choosing to go the way of the folks who brought us the Great Crash of 1929 by constantly repeating to themselves in the days before this crash: If we just allow the free market to work things out, all will be fine.
So, if you believe in the Free Market, and fresh grapes--
"Don't worry, be happy....."
And prepare for the Great Crash of 2008 by reading JK Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929.
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