(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
The latest in a long string of screw ups, the economic decline towards Hooverism, is not being blamed on George W. Bush for some reason.
Harlold Meyerson at the Post says: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Herbert Hoover, we should recall, had a program for dealing with the Depression. It consisted of lending to banks but opposing fiscal stimulus or direct aid to individuals. Which is why Hank Paulson’s frenzied endeavors to prop up the banking sector and Bush’s dogged resistance to assisting anybody else amount to pure neo-Hooverism.
As the 1930s began, Hoover believed that the coordinated actions of the private sector could save the beleaguered economy. It soon became apparent that the only action that private-sector businesses could agree upon was closing down factories and offices and throwing people out of work. Under immense pressure to do something, in late 1931 Hoover asked Congress to establish the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to provide funds to banks it deemed creditworthy.
Does this sound familiar? A “commander”, inept or otherwise, forcefully closing his eyes so he won’t see the locomotive juggernaut of failed economic policies and how they affect us little people not included in his “base”.
As breadlines lengthened, he [Hoover] vetoed a bill appropriating funds for public works on the grounds that it was inflationary and contained pork-barrel spending. Bankers would be saved; everyone else was effectively damned.
History repeating itself? Isn’t this administration focusing its efforts on the lending institutions and ignoring the homeowners unable to pay off their mortgages? Do they still think it’s going ‘trickle down’ after 28 years of proof that the only thing that trickles down is warm and wet and unwelcome.
Why is there no finger of blame pointed directly at the commander guy? The self proclaimed Decider has decided, myopically again, to help the base at the expense of the majority.
I like Meyerson’s ability to elevate Hoover over Bush intellectually by pointing out that Bush should know better because he has more history to have learned from, had he bothered to pay attention:
In a sense, Bush’s inactivity is even less excusable than Hoover’s. Unlike Hoover, Bush could learn from the successes of New Deal and World War II-era programs to revive the economy. Keynes’s general theory of how to defeat depressions wasn’t around when Hoover was president, but it’s been with us now for 72 years. What’s more, virtually every reputable conservative economist, from Martin Feldstein on down, now supports a government stimulus program. But Bush, drawing on no known body of economic thought, remains opposed. (So does Republican House leader John Boehner, who seems determined to elevate stupidity to a party principle.) And with each passing day, the economic hole out of which we will have to climb grows deeper.
Meyerson says it’s because of Bush Fatigue. It’s simply too much. After the 9-11 fuckup, the Iraq fuckup, the New Orleans fuckup, the torture fuckup, the treason fuckup, the wiretapping fuckup, the endless and relentless fuckups of the last 8 years beginning with having been elected by the Damn Conservative Supreme Court now the guy is going out having stood idly by as a worldwide economic fuckup of disastrous proportions unfolds all around him.
And it is just too much, we’ve turned to looking forward to some adults being in charge, and we’re going to let this one pass for ol’ Georgie.
I’m told Rush and Hannity et al are now using the term “Obama Recession”.
Probably because no one is talking about the “Bush Worldwide Economic Collapse” of 2008. Will the Hannity’s and Limbaugh’s get away with blaming this on Obama?
Propaganda works, just ask Scott McLellan.
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the longest 49 days of my life, and the last 49 days really sucked for me personally.
The official economy exists as a plaything of the elites, by which they might make even more wealth. This was true in 1932 as now. Whether the elites are to continue playtime through seas of poverty or through official “capitalism” channeled through an “American middle class” really makes no difference to them.
The reason why I once called this “late, late capitalism” in an earlier diary should now become readily apparent. We might to all appearances have a “capitalist system” right now, but this is only for show. The real foundation of the elites’ continued rule in this era is their continued mooching off of dollar hegemony: the ability of the US government to write an endless stream of checks and have the rest of the world cover for the US Dollar’s value.