Oct 01 2008
One of the things we will have to include in post-capitalist environmental design is a new system of money. This diary is a preliminary investigation of this, continuing from the last diary on post-capitalist economic design. Here I will discuss in brief the fate of the US dollar, the idea of the “time dollar” as explained by the founders of the Echo Park Time Bank, and the ideas of Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen’s The Politics of Money.
(Crossposted on Big Orange)
Sep 29 2008
And that’s a pleasant way to describe the bailout in the works by the corrupt politicians of the United States, these narcissistic, craven sellouts, who couldn’t bring themselves to stop their own country from invading another and killing 100,000s and displacing millions more, who couldn’t stop their military interrogators and gestapo-like spies from torturing thousands. These moral zeros are about to send something just under a trillion dollars to the scions of finance capital. These latter have lived high off the hog, raking in millions, and in some cases billions of dollars, off a pyramid credit scheme, leaving us — the suckers — to pay up for a generation or more when their con finally went spectacularly bust, unraveling into a wilderness of economic “instruments” and “derivatives” so convoluted and intertwined that no one could ever untangle it.
Sep 24 2008
Original article, by Rob Sewell, via Socialist Appeal (UK):
“I like thieves. Some of my best friends are thieves. Why, just last week we had the president of the bank over for dinner.” W.C. Fields.
Sep 23 2008
Original article, an editorial subheaded Whether or not Henry Paulson’s rescue scheme works, one thing is already crystal clear: The capitalist system has failed spectacularly, via socialistworker.org:
THE BUSH administration’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is demanding the financial equivalent of martial law–$700 billion and a blank check to rescue the Wall Street system from the catastrophe caused by the blind greed of the super-rich parasites who run it.
Sep 22 2008
Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell…, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it. — Lenin, State and Revolution
The cascade of financial failures on Wall Street — the sure result of a decade or more of unregulated, unrestrained capitalist speculation — has shaken the world capitalist system with a sudden, shuddering spasm of fear. But with fear comes opportunity, and the ruling elite now sees an opportunity to cast off the shackles of messy public oversight and control entirely.
If one were looking for the utmost in financial irresponsibility, allowing the system to implode/explode, paving the way for socialist revolution (or failing that, a fall into post-Roman-Empire-like darkness), then you’d put Bush and his cronies, like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in charge of a supposed “bailout” plan for Wall Street. That’s because the Bush-Paulson plan, by turning over unrestricted control of nearly a trillion dollars of a running tab, while handing the gargantuan bill over to an already deficit-weary taxpayer, will totally eviscerate the public sector of the economy, and pave the way for the complete impoverishment of the wide spectrum of the society. (Naomi Klein has described this process accurately in her widely-read book, The Shock Doctrine.)
Sep 21 2008
Original article, by Doug Page, via dissidentvoice.org:
The powerful culture wide taboo against discussing or analyzing the dynamics of our market economy will lead to the fall of our democratic civilization. UCLA Professor Jared Diamond studied four civilizations that perished and three that survived. The civilizations of Greenland Norsemen, Mesa Verde Native Americans, Central American Mayans and Easter Island perished. The Norse settlement in Greenland perished after 400 years partly because Norsemen could not overcome their taboo against eating seal meat and fish.1 Diamond listed two choices that those societies which adjusted and survived made while those that failed did not:
Willingness to reconsider and change core values
Long term planningNote: The original article has hyperlinked end notes.
Sep 20 2008
Original article, by Niklas Albin Svensson , vial Socialist Appeal (UK):
Yesterday John McDonnell MP explained why US imperialism is so concerned about developments in Bolivia and Venezuela: “What the US is terrified of is the prospect that socialism will catch light all across the Americas, so of course it has to go on the attack. But it is exactly for this moment that solidarity campaigns exist.” He explained that, “what is happening is not a personal attack on Morales or Chavez but an attack on the seeds of socialism that they are spreading.”
Sep 19 2008
Just when you thought things could not get worse, we face the specter of the rise of National Socialism in the United States. Because moneyed interests now control the US government, they intend to use the US Treasury as an insurance fund for their financial losses. This will be done to “protect” taxpayers, but it is basically the last stage of the looting of the American economy.
We now face the worst of both ugly worlds: the greed of a rapacious plutocracy coupled with the inefficiency and unaccountability of faceless government bureacracy. Politicians and propagandists will be quick to explain why the princes of commerce need to continue to be paid their astronomical salaries, while the taxpayers make good their losses.
This ridiculous denoument to our decaying society will end when foreign lenders effectively take control of our economy and restore rationality to our business affairs. What a sad end to a once great nation.
Sep 19 2008
Original article, an editorial subheaded The neoliberal dogmas that have dominated for more than 25 years are discredited, but they need to be replaced by more than proposals for re-regulating the banks, via socialisworker.org:
THE WORLD financial system is in the grip of the most severe crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s–and there’s worse to come, not only for the banks and speculators of Wall Street, but far beyond, in every part of the U.S., and around the globe.
Sep 19 2008
Original article by Corey D. B. Walker and sub-headed The Deepening Crisis via counterpunch.com:
“The West is living through an economic and social crisis so unprecedented in its tempo, so complex in its effects, that there are many who do not know that it is taking place.”
Michael Harrington, The Next Left (1987)
Sep 18 2008
The patient is terminal. Second and third opinions from specialists all confirmed that any effort to prolong its life even past November 3 would be in vain.
Key members of the family gathered last night privately (very, very privately) to make the hard choices. Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson had been making all of the key decisions about the patient’s care up until now, but for this last step, they felt it was appropriate to have everyone on the record:
Attending the meeting on the Capitol Hill were Democratic Senate leaders that included Charles E. Schumer of New York, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota A contingent of Republicans was led by Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and included Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.
House leaders included John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader; Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama; and Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts. Members of the leaders’ staffs were asked to leave the meeting shortly after it began.
Sep 17 2008
Original article by Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:
The end of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the largest Wall Street investment banks, one week after the government takeover of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, marks a new stage in the convulsive crisis of American capitalism.