Everyone, almost, is in a complete Rage at what is happening, and has been allowed to happen by not only soft regulation but the ease on any regulation in the Banking Industry, Morgage Industry, Wall Street, and in a Rage you should be.
But want a better picture of the who got us here any why, leave your computer and go to the nearest mirror and take a Good Hard Long Look at the reflection coming back, Yep Folks, it’s most of you, and the rest of the shit hasn’t yet hit the fan, but it’s quickly coming!
Remember the clowns you hire to represent you in Washington, and local and state, are your clowns, you pay them.
On the pedestal that supports the Statue of Liberty, is the poem, “The New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus. The poem concludes with these lines:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
No more. The United States of America is no longer quite the beacon it once was to the immigrants of the world.
The number of immigrants coming to the United States slowed substantially in 2007, with the nation’s foreign-born population growing by only 511,000, compared with about a million a year since 2000, according to Census figures released today.
One of my co-workers was very happy Bear Stearns got bailed out. She is nearing retirement and cares ferociously about her pension. She is not a wingnut nor a Republican. She will care more about what happens to her pension than whether or not a bill gives the Secretary of the Treasury power to rival that of Louie the XVI, or whichever Louie had a whole lot of power (I’m a blogger, damn it, not a French historian!).
Me? Well I’m a blogger, as referenced above, and a member of the Democratic base. My passion for the issues I care about is as strong as my co-worker’s passion for her hard earned pension. I’m not going to judge her badly, we just feel passionately about different things.
By using Hank Paulson and his crew’s “plan” (and I use the term ironically) as the starting point for any fix of our economy, the Democratic base has, once again, lost. Period. See, I’m used to that, it ain’t the first time.
A foray into when the UNHOLY TRINITY comes back to bite the most indoctrinated, shocked nation in which it has ever been unleashed right in the ass.
As I often am wont to do, I went back to source material when troubled by this * new economic crisis. (* Which of course is neither new, nor could not have easily been predicted by previous models)
I am re-reading “The Shock Doctrine”. I loathe bogging down into economics, but her work is accessible. Normally understanding economics is about as easy for me as swallowing a VW and passing it sorted into its component parts in bags.
Bill Maher had Naomi Klein on this week past. We catch him on the Sunday Morning rerun * religiously. (* She says with full intended irony, being of the same mind that religious people are idiots for the most part)
“They moved the disaster from Wall Street to Main Street…”
I’d almost change my orientation to do this woman she gets it so very well.
“This is socialism for the Rich”
No Shit.
Andrew Sullivan I wanted to bitch-slap. He said exactly what I predicted the neo-cons would say: “Its the poor peoples faults for taking on loans…”
Not the cunning bastards who tricked us into taking loans they swore wouldn’t bubble from 8% to 18%, as they now have. Not the speculators driving up prices on oil. Its the STUPID poor people.
I wouldn’t do him if he was the last diseased prick on Earth and I drank a gallon of Spanish Fly in a post-battery Earth and both my hands were cut off.
i imagine the word “reality”, when used, implies some baseline in agreement or objective consensus. or perhaps some kind of truth in being.
but lately, it seems reality has taken a sharp right turn into the absurd. i think, ladies and gentlemen, that while pink may be the new black, absurdity is the new reality.
it’s not just that Hank Paulson wants to push through a plan in which he can make decisions unchecked and unchallenged. or that our army crossed into Pakistan and started shooting or that politicians fly to natural disaster sites, lying about aid. it’s not just a war with Iraq based on lies. or the lie of medicare and tax cuts. seriously, there was a time when i could click off all the outrages. but i’m buried in them now. and i can’t seem to excavate them all.
but maybe you get my drift. it’s the entire fucking package. i keep thinking that, as each new lie enforces absurdity in the great collective reality, there will be a tipping point. when people will take to the streets. or demand a recall of Congress. will this story be absurd enough to get people in the streets?
now that. that is absurd, no? why would one of the largest segments of the American population, its baby boomers, not have its wealth stabilized as the first priority of any kind of bail out? why? in what universe does that make sense? in what economy should that be allowed as reality?
perhaps it is absurd to even ask: BUT then who gets the fucking bailout money???????????????????
There is another way to solve the banking problem on Wall Street and that is to abolish money as debt. Here is a movie, Money as Debt, from Canadian animator Paul Grignon from 2006. The film is 47 minutes long. Please give it a view.
The film has been around in a shorter form since at least 2002. I think it is important to at least view before we sign $700 billion over to the Wall Street and international banks.
While I have been offline there seems to have been a new form of government invented? One where our “leaders” (who used to be known as representatives) decide that We The People are now some sort of lending institution, lending money to bad lenders who badly lent money to bad lenders to buy bad loans….or something like that? Does this mean that We The People now own the housing industry? Or just the part of it that loans money to people who can’t pay us back? Billions of dollars seem to be going …..somewhere, and as far as I can make out, all I get in return for loaning somebody billions of dollars is ….trillions and trillions of dollars of liability? That can’t be right, can it? I am confused.
Since this is supposed to be my government, as one of We The People, I just found out that I owe someone 11.3 trillion dollars. I don’t recall borrowing 11.3 trillion dollars. As I look around me, I don’t see any new shiny toys or anything, no new car or new house, but apparently I bought something, because I am deeper in debt than I was a month ago. Somehow. Because someone somewhere says so. So that someone else doesn’t lose money?
Hmmm, does this mean I now own a bunch of houses? Just like John McCain?
I just read over at the Orange a recommended diary by Larry Madill entitled ACTION REQUIRED: Executive Power Grab in Banking Bail Out Bill. Another diary, also on the rec list, by New deal democrat gives the entire text of the Wall Street Bail Out Act.
Larry Madill quotes Adam Davidson in his NPR blog Planet Money in his analysis of this bill, where he concludes that this is yet another giant power grab by the Executive Branch. Seems this crew of crooks and their quislings don’t know how to propose legislation that doesn’t make bad matters even worse.
The money quote (no pun intended) from the proposed Act:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
To which Davidson responds:
Whoa.
So, for the next three months, and then an additional six months after that, the Treasury Secretary can do anything he deems appropriate without anybody anywhere looking it over.
America has been stolen from us by our own filthy rich. My grasp of the dismal science of economics is simple and unsophisticated but I’ve spent far too much time among thieves not to know theft when I see it. In what is by far the biggest robbery in history, the ‘haves and have mores’ have taken not only all that we have, but all that we’ll ever have. They have stolen the very future from our children and grandchildren. If we continue to take it lying down, we deserve what we get.
This diary will muse upon the events of the last week or so, with especial reference to recent DKos diaries which I’ve been reading, putting them in the context of the real conditions in which we live… the end result will be to characterize the political economy of the present as “late, late capitalism” while reflecting upon DailyKos.com as a site of lively discussion about current events.
don’t get me wrong. i’m happiest when he’s not around. but i gotta ask: just where the fuck has George W. Bush been? As the United States of America, under his watch, teeters on the brink of a depression greater than the Great Depression, Bush reveals himself not only as incredibly unqualified to be president, but as a coward.
This won’t be the longest or most detailed essay I have ever written because like John McCain and the Republican Party I know nothing at all about economics.
I do know numbers and recognize milestones however and I would be remiss if I let this one pass without remark-
On January 19th 2001, the last trading day before W took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,587.59.
Today, September 17th 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,609.66
That’s a gain of 22.07 points over the 2,798 days (7 years, 7 months, and 29 days) he has been in office.
On the pedestal that supports the Statue of Liberty, is the poem, “The New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus. The poem concludes with these lines:
