Tag: Economic Crisis

Yes, comrades, we need to talk about crises again, the term recession simply does not explain what is really going on! Just in case you might not have noticed or perhaps the mainstream media where you live ignored it, the obvious has happened and the end of the so-called recession has disappeared into the fantasy novel. Once again there is a slowdown in growth and the financial markets are not particularly happy. This time, Germany and China are showing signs of slowdown. Globalisation has not ended the potential towards crises in the capitalist economic system; in fact, the greater interconnectedness of the world economy has exacerbated the situation and ensured that the contagion spreads.  

For those who believe the fantasies of neoliberal economics, the shock of these latest failures of neoliberalism must come as a surprise. But for those of us that have been warning of the stupidity of squeezing wages and destroying work conditions, rising inequality in income and wealth, the dangers of export-led growth when wage incomes are being squeezed meaning that unless governments become the sole purchasers of goods and services that are being produced (and they are not) that obviously there comes a point when working people cannot purchase goods and services as their incomes are too low, wiping out of savings  has happened and personal indebtedness leads to default and bankruptcy. Neither of these things helps to maintain capitalist growth, accumulation and profitability in the long run; forget that, it hasn’t even lasted in the short run.

I will be giving a run through on what is going on and why our lives feel as though we are living through the Shock Doctrine (which we are) then address the proposals of dealing with persistent unemployment under capitalism from the Left on which there is significant disagreement.

  Sometimes a person or organization becomes so powerful and Evil that they appear cartoonish.

  It might seem impossible to find a similar character outside of a James Bond movie. After all, who really wants to take over the world and has a plan to do it, right?

  So attributing truly Evil intentions to a public organization, and voicing those concerns, automatically puts one into the land of tinfoil-hat, konspiracy lunatics.

  And yet there is an ongoing theft taking place in global finance on such a scale that is threatening the concept of democracy itself, and Goldman Sachs has their fingerprints all over the crime scene.

  At what point do we suspend our disbelief and embrace reality? These guys really are Evil.

“We are doing God’s work.”

 – Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs

  The Independent had a great graphic recently that displayed the New Reality in Europe.

  As the financial crisis has deepened in Europe, Goldman Sachs has taken over the halls of power.

Geithner’s in the basement,

Mixing up the medicine,

I’m on the pavement,

Thinking about the government.

Bankers in trench coats,

Every one’s a Madoff,

Say they got toxic debts,

Wanna get ’em paid off . . .

The banking system is rubble.  The economy’s imploding.  How did it come to this?   Why didn’t our “representatives” in Washington D.C. see this crisis coming?  Because they were too busy kissing Wall Street’s ass and K Street’s ass and Bush’s ass and the ass of every CEO in sight, that’s why they didn’t see this coming.      

We saw it coming.  We’re progressives.  We don’t need a fucking weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

We told America a hard rain’s gonna fall.  But America wouldn’t listen.

We saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

We saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,

We saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin,

We saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin,

We saw a white ladder all covered with water,

We saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,

We saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

Sirens ring, shots ring out,

A stranger cries, he screams out loud.

He’s scared.  He has reason to be.  This economy was Dead on Arrival when Obama took office, and no matter how many tubes he sticks into it, it’s going to stay dead.  We need a new economy, a new economy based on worker’s rights, on economic justice, we need an economy that rewards the middle class for its contributions, an economy that cannot be exploited by Wall Street criminals and corporate magnates who don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves.  

And the same black line that was drawn on you,

Was drawn on me

That black line of consequences is getting blacker, it’s getting longer, it’s tightening around the necks of unemployed Americans like a noose.  More job losses, more home foreclosures, more evictions.  The consequences of Wall Street greed, the consequences of corporate media deceit, the consequences of Beltway arrogance and conceit, the arrogance and conceit of America’s political ruling class, America’s corporate masters, America’s war industry tycoons and oil barons and criminal bankers.   That black line of consequences has drawn me in, it’s drawn you in, it’s drawn everyone in . . .

Everyone gets everything he wants.   I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.  It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.  

Your mission is to proceed up the Wasilla River, pick up the trail of returned designer clothes, follow it and learn what you can along the way.  When you find Sarah Palin, infiltrate her team by whatever means available and terminate her political future.

Terminate her political future???

She’s up there in Alaska operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any rational human conduct.  She’s still in office commanding the Alaska National Guard, she’s stark raving mad, but she’s going to run for president in 2012 anyway.

I mentioned the turkey beheading incident and suggested that Palin’s been terminating her political future at a pretty good clip all by herself, so why send me up there?  But they wouldn’t take no for an answer.    

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet.  Palin was out there somewhere, still ranting about Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, still raving about liberal media treachery, descending into madness hundreds of Bridge to Nowhere miles from here.

I looked out the window.  Juneau . . . shit, I’m still only in Juneau.  I braced myself for the harrowing journey ahead, a journey that would snake through Alaska like a frozen circuit cable–plugged straight into . . .

In Growing Anger in the Heartland, David Sirota writes:

A few months ago I appeared on Fox News and was told by “anchor” (hereby “cartoon character”) Greg Jarrett that “historians agree” that the New Deal exacerbated the Great Depression.  It was a statement so factually inaccurate that it approached insanity.  

Approached insanity?   Countless Friedman Units of full moons have come and gone since Republicans and their propagandists in the corporate media approached insanity.  They approached it long ago.  They went past it like it was standing still and have plunged into uncharted realms of lunacy so surreal and distant from human experience that psychologists can’t even begin to describe what the fuck is going on inside their thick skulls.

Sirota discussed Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero’s recent interview on FOX and observed that Bernero:

represents the boiling anger that’s roiling the country, and made a point that needs to be hammered over and over and over again over the din of Fox News cartoon characters–how can anyone with a straight face demand blue-collar workers take huge pay and benefit cuts at a time those workers’ tax dollars are subsidizing bonuses on Wall Street?  Part of the answer is that we live in a country whose ruling class is deeply insane.  Hardly a day goes by when you don’t see sociopathy packaged as Serious Opinion.

A typical example of this is Chase CEO John Dimon, who derided homeowners who are getting foreclosed on and declared “we should teach the American people, you’re supposed to meet your obligations, not run from them.”

I feel obligated to tell that highly paid hypocrite to shut the fuck up.  I also feel obligated to update him on the economic catastrophe he and his CEO friends on Wall Street are responsible for . . .  

Apparently our brains have “a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times.” This does not bode well for advancing the interests of reason and science in the continuing economic crisis — especially if you believe, as I do, that what we’re seeing now is just the beginning.

Born Believers: How Your Brain Creates God

http://www.newscientist.com/ar…

WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that  human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure  up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of  this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

See also:

The Credit Crunch Could Be A Boon For Irrational Belief

http://www.newscientist.com/ar…