Infantilized by the rhetoric of crisis

clipped from www.counterpunch.org It’s been a nagging concern of mine, watching the sweeping changes enacted by the Bush administration, that new government powers are put into place in the name of a crisis without a murmur of what it means for the future of this country, one whose leaders after all can stake political legitimacy on precedent. So without a doubt we should be asking, very pragmatically, what this bailout means as a function of the (at best) quixotic tax calculations that we will someday have to pay. But we shouldn’t let our very justified fears of a tax bill prevent us from asking why, once again, the American people is being infantilized by crisis rhetoric, patted on the head by CNN specials about minimizing our individual risks, and assured that even if we don’t know what is actually going on in our economy, we can comfort ourselves that, at least, the guys fixing it like baseball.

Prison time, not bailouts, for those who got us into this economic mess

clipped from www.counterpunch.org Paulson is in charge now, and the coronation is set for sometime early next week. He rose to power in a stealthily-executed Banksters’ Coup in which he, and his coterie of dodgy friends, declared martial law on the US economy while elevating himself to supreme leader. The banksters own this country, always have; only now they've decided to strip away the curtain and reveal the ghoulish visage of the puppet-master. It ain't pretty. The transformation from a free market to an economy run by men whose judgment and credibility is already greatly in doubt; does not auger well for the markets or the country. The conversation should be shifted from conceding more authority to hucksters in pin-stripes to indictments for securities fraud. Even the most economically-challenged nation ought to be able to afford a few sets of leg-irons and a couple hundred jail cells. That's all it will take. Don't let the prospect of a national crisis trick you into giving up your liberty, America.

Prediction: The 2010s will be like the 1930s

I think he's right, with the added bonuses of global warming and peak oil to contend with. Far less room for dawdling and error indeed.

clipped from www.consumertrap.com I predict the forthcoming “market rescue” will produce the same results as last time: Wall Street may be temporarily quasi-stabilized, but to no lasting effect. This will be because, despite overclass myopia, the disease is deeper and wider than Wall Street. It has to do with the normal workings of what Noam Chomsky calls the unmentionable five-letter word: c-l-a-s-s. When the rich player has taken all the chips, and when another round of IOUs no longer holds credibility, poker games must end. Likewise, when the overclass has flogged and hogged its way through its last viable lending scheme, its own self-seeking behavior confronts it (and all of us) at last. All in all, I think the evidence strongly suggests that the 2010s will be a lot like the 1930s all over again, but with way bigger stakes and far less room for dawdling and error.

A sane response to the banking crisis

Good words, Senator Sanders. Glad to have a socialist in the Congress. What must we, the regular people in the US, do to get this proposal taken seriously?

Or are we doomed to watch our "elected" government steal all this money from us and from our children and grandchildren and use it to line the pockets of Wall Street bankers?

clipped from www.commondreams.org Let us be clear. If the economy is on the edge of collapse we need to act. But rescuing the economy does not mean we have to just give away $700 billion of taxpayer money to the banks. Any proposal must protect middle income and working families from bearing the burden of this bailout. Second, in addition to protecting the average American from being saddled with the cost, any serious proposal has to include reforms so that we end the type of behavior that led to this crisis in the first place. Third, we need to address the needs of working families in this country who are today facing very difficult times. If we can bail out Wall Street, we need to respond with equal vigor to their plight. Finally, we need to protect ourselves from being at the mercy of giant companies that are "too big to fail," that is, companies who are so large that their failure would cause systemic harm to the economy. The future of our country is at stake.

Update: Listen to Senator Sanders discuss our options on Democracy Now!

The beginning of the end for the dollar as the world's reserve currency?

If so, we really are in deep shit from what little I know.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk But as investors scrambled to make sense of last week’s events, already one conclusion was all but irrefutable – the US dollar will have to take another major fall. Might the dollar now be vulnerable to a run? In the longer term, might this signal the beginning of the end for the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency? The biggest question, however, is whether the reserve managers in central banks in China and elsewhere will treat this as a justification for selling off some of their massive mountain of dollar-denominated investments. If this were to happen, it could cause a catastrophic drop in the US currency, potentially compromising its status as the world’s reserve currency.

Economic meltdown: Bin Laden victorious?

I've long wondered if Bin Laden didn't understand our hubris far better than most of us USAmericans, and so played the USAmerican public and politicians much like he did those in the USSR. He and his mujahedeen assisted in the USSR's suicide, and I fear perhaps they has done the same for us, all with the unwitting assistance of the kleptocrat neocons.

clipped from www.vetvoice.com In November 2004, UBL outlined what victory would look like and how it would be achieved. "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," And then what became very prophetic; "All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," While we engaged in  the "Global War on Terror" (checkers), they were engaged in economic warfare of the highest order (chess). Check mate, game over. Now that the game is over it is time to ask the politicians what they think of UBL's prophetic message in November 2004.

Terror and security: More theatre than substance

Of course, it isn't surprising in the least that USAmericans are given the appearance of security rather than the real thing. After generations of eating "processed American cheese food product" and calling it cheese, we USAmericans simply can't tell the difference between reality and artifice any longer.

Hence McCain's polling numbers.

clipped from www.boingboing.net It's like there's not a huge improvement in actual security, but there's a large step up in the amount of acting, and theater, happening. I didn't expect the postponements, delays, we can't dismiss this now because the media is paying too much attention. That just seemed totally, totally backwards, right? That should not be the focus of the justice system. I happened to wear the wrong shirt on the wrong day to the wrong place and all of a sudden, here's two years of dealing with this, and I should make an apology for the over-reaction of a bunch of other people who heard that I was doing something wrong and didn't make their decisions based on facts. Now I'm being punished for something they've admitted was not a charge they could pursue. I believed that police were nice, friendly folks before last September. And my opinion has changed drastically in that respect.