"The rate will be determined by adding 26.15% to the Prime rate."

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“Too big to fail” should mean “too big to exist.”

Remember all the ancient history from high school about antitrust laws? Did any of you remember these history lessons when Paulson said that some companies are just "too big to fail"? Probably not, since the business-owned "culture" in the US assists us in forgetting this history and subsequently condemns us to repeat it.

So for the record: When they are too big to fail, enforce already existing antitrust legislation to break 'em into manageable, not-too-big-to-fail pieces.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org The country is being dragged down by monstrous businesses, all of which, we’re told, are just “too big to fail.”  As a consequence of this, the nation’s taxpayers, and their progeny born and yet unborn, are having trillions of dollars sucked away to prop up these giant rotting corporate corpses. Zombie banks, zombie automakers, zombie insurance companies, all bigger than nation states, and all on life-support. There is a simple answer to this problem. Bust them up.

Follow-up: Last night on MSNBC, Jim Cramer specifically mentioned the size and complexity of these banks as reason #1 for why they should not be de jure) nationalized. (I say de jure since the banks have already been de facto nationalized, seeing as how they are running purely on taxpayer money.) To my way of thinking, that is precisely why they need to be smashed into dozens of smaller banks.

Economic patriotism?

Do the people responsible for this rape of thought and language (not to mention of the planet and humanity) really believe the shit that comes out of their mouths? Supporting foreign workers while Americans lose their jobs, homes, and futures is patriotic?

It is particularly ironic that the same "conservatives" who are now behind the "economic patriotism" (i.e., the "fuck Americans") doctrine were the rabid supporters of WalMart's "Made in the USA" campaign of the 1980s.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said that buying abroad was “economic patriotism.”

Debts that can't be paid, won't be

This summarizes why I think Obama's "stimulus" is a sham. At best, all it will do is postpone the inevitable economic contraction.

clipped from www.counterpunch.org The U.S. economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their own way. There is too little manufacturing to make the economy more “competitive,” given its high housing costs, transportation, debt and tax overhead. The aim is to re-inflate property markets to enable owners to pay the banks, not to help the public sector break even. One would think that politicians would be willing to do the math and realize that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. But the debts are being kept on the books, continuing to extract interest to pay the creditors that have made the bad loans. The resulting debt deflation threatens to keep the economy in depression until a radical shift in policy occurs – a shift to save the “real” economy, not just the financial sector and the wealthiest 10 per cent of American families.

Christianists take note: "We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were."

While the rest of the Western world wrestles with substantive issues like global warming and economic collapse, some USAmerican Christians are still wrestling with the First Amendment and the secular nature of the US government.

When will these shitheads learn that just because an "overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians" does not mean that the US is a Christian country? The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to protect minority dissenters (like TJ the deist) from the tyranny of a Christianist majority.

clipped from news.aol.com Not everyone was happy with President Barack Obama's nod to nonbelievers and non-Christians in his inaugural address. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers." With that one line, the president "seems to be trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian," said’ Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va. "The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians, and what disturbs me is that he seems to be trying to redefine who we are.’" Jackson said he and others have no problem acknowledging that "this country is one in which everybody has the freedom to think what they want.’" Yet Obama crossed the line, in his view, in suggesting that all faiths (and none) were different roads to the same destination: "He made similar remarks in the campaign, and said, 'We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were. We are a Jewish, Hindu and non-believing nation.'"

The Bonus Army - 1932

The past won't repeat itself precisely, but...

Latin American commission: The War on (Some) Drugs is a failure

I wonder when we'll finally start basing drug policy on evidence, rather than molding evidence to fit drug policy.

clipped from online.wsj.com As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point. "The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. "We have to move from this approach to another one."