Email of the Day:
We Are ALL one Banana Peel Away.
I posted this also at Democracy Cell Project and Richard Bell has weighed in:
It is hard to know what to do under the nasty circumstances we find ourselves in. On the one hand, the argument that we should just stand aside and let the economy crater is a brutal argument. Millions of people are already losing their homes, jobs, and health insurance, and things may get worse. But that's the hard-core "let the market decide" approach that the House Republicans adopted the other day.
I'm convinced that it is possible, given the right circumstances, to use govt spending to stimulate a sour economy. But it's not at all clear to me whether Obama's stimulus is big enough, or whether any stimulus could be big enough, given each day's new revelations of the fiscal madness which our country's leaders have allowed to happen. I'd like to see the whole kit and kaboddle kicked out of their offices and high paying jobs, stripped of all of their wealth and worldy goods. The fact that the Wall Street crowd went ahead and awarded themselves billions of dollars in bonuses after last year boggers the imagination. These people are incapable of learning even under the most extreme conditions.
The problem here is that almost the entire decision-making structure of our society, indeed of the entire world decision-making apparatus, is complicit in the economic disaster we now face. The bankers, the insurance companies, the financial advisors, the economic professors and the universities who employ them, the accountants, every federal and state legislator, all of the elected executives at the federal and state level, the relevant cabinet officers....
There are hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated that they are completely unfit for public service, or for any kind of work at all, who ought to all be fired and sentenced to work, if they work at all, at minimum wage jobs for the rest of their miserable lives. But it's not going to happen. That's the conventional wisdom. We're going to let all of these jerks stay in place, keep giving themselves bonuses, and never ever even offering an apology for having fucked up the world so completely.
The student of history must interrupt here: there are times when the conventional wisdom is wrong. Not because the people who create the conventional wisdom in order to protect their privileged positions in society decide that they've been mistaken. No, because the masses of people find it in themselves to defy CW and throw the bums out, nonviolently or violently. It is axiomatic that "no one," that is no one in the ruling class, ever anticipates or predicts such uprising. How could they? The entire society is structured to prevent such things from happening, from the soft power of commercials and propaganda to the iron fist of the police and the military.
I have no more of a crystal ball about what's going to happen than you do. The Obama stimulus package may be enough to pull us out of the precipitous slide we're in now. But if not, then we're entering territory we have been in before, most recently in the first years of the Depression, but about which our schools tell us little. I saw a film snippet the other day of the U.S. Army being unleashed on the "bonus marchers" who had come to Washington in 1932 looking for help. A young army officer named Eisenhower led the assault, which involved terrorizing the bonus marcher's encampment along DC's Anacostia River, and burning down or otherwise destroying the structures the marchers had built. Are you feeling at all angry?
Matthew Carnicelli said:
An excerpt from my new piece, inspired by the times, and absolutely on topic:
"It is in the interest of the American people that we implement economic policies that reward those who create jobs for Americans who sincerely want to work, in exchange for a living wage. Workers pay taxes, pay mortgages, support families, and pull their own weight. Given our free market system, every True Blue American Company can be thought of as providing an invaluable service – and hence is deserving of our gratitude, as best expressed in the form of transformative tax legislation. In contrast, multi-nationals and US-based 'Benedict Arnold' firms that place the interests of management and investors ahead of its American workforce must be seen as acting rationally, perhaps even sensibly, given our currrent flawed collective assumptions – but decidedly not in the best interests of the United States of America, and especially so at a moment when this entire economy is imploding before our eyes. They must be seen as the amoral actors they are, actors who can hardly be trusted with the awesome task of defending America's economic future.
"Finally, the ethical remedy to this emerging crisis strikes me as not one of enhanced personal virtue, as suggested by many conservatives – although rejection of get-rich-quick schemes, mindless prosperity consciousness, pie-in-the-sky aspirations, not to mention media lionization of the most ruthless and reckless among us, would certainly be a good thing. The appropriate ethical remedy in my mind requires the introduction of bold, game-changing economic policies that encourage collective virtue – namely, the creation and sustenance of secure, highly skilled, highly paid jobs right here in America. Americans have proved themselves willing to work as hard as any people on earth. We would never be content to become the lackeys of a would-be corporate or investor elite in the international oligarchic world that the neo-conservatives ultimately envisioned. We would almost certainly launch a second American Revolution before that came to pass – especially amidst the emerging tone of the times. So instead of standing by, and watching the nation we love descend into financial ruin, foreign dependence, social upheaval, and potentially even a second American Revolution, why not instead simply declare independence – but this time, economic independence?"
http://www.hpleft.com/020109.html
Posted by: DiAnne | February 01, 2009 at 09:03 AM
I think Andy said the most part and I certainly agree.I think these financial wizards of terrorism should be strung up.
Posted by: jim | February 01, 2009 at 04:34 PM