"Corporate Marxism," Indeed
I gather that little Prince Petulant has been forced in the last few days to face the economic disaster he has been largely responsible for and will doubtless have always associated with his autocracy. "Face" in this case brings to mind wild contrast with sticking puppy's nose in the wet spot on the carpet. The latter involves a learning experience by a creature presumably with an interest in becoming socialized. The former scenario, based on all recorded history with this patient, is lacking in any hopeful qualities at all. The total inability of this guy to either by his own devices attend to making a success of something, or lacking energy or skills for that, hire staff to make it happen, is truly astonishing. The sorry sadsack is doing the biggest public flop in all of the admittedly short history of our wild democratic experiment.
Poster dday tipped me off to great plainspeaking column by Dionne at the Post:
E.J. Dionne finally says it:
This is so overdue. We've essentially in the Bush era set up a kind of corporate Marxism, where risk is socialized, but where wealth is privatized. And the middle class, in this case homeowners, are the only ones who ever feel any pain.
Ben Bernanke believes that he can save the economy by managing and financing the ultimate downfall of these financial institutions. Which is fine to a point, because the alternative is a massive meltdown of the entire system. But let's call it exactly what it is. And let's no longer allow the other side to say things like "let the market make its own decisions," because they only believe that when they're not affected. This is a selective bailout, and it's government intervention into the markets to save them. Because they currently are non-functional and unregulated. It doesn't have to be this way, but under a laissez-faire system it's inevitable.
Can't wait for some Wall Street honcho or BushCo official to go on about welfare queens or big government programs...
Some tweaking of that line about the middle class being the only ones to suffer is needed, since it is obviously all of the non-elite classes that have been repeatedly victimized by these elitist robber-barons. But I also want to reinforce the point that our country is being eaten alive by absolute pandering to corporations, something that is getting far too little attention in the political soap-opera. Sorry little shrub is only the most pathetically subservient to these Inc./LLC blood-suckers, who today are the recipients of astonishing subsidies and bailouts using our tax dollars, while actual people are left to dodder and rot on the street corners. Bill Clinton was shameful in his obeisance to corporations in preference to living beings. GHWB and that nasty unfunny Hollywood clown ditto. But this pathetic little bedwetter has really gone guinness on this topic.
Froomkin today also apparently found this a compelling issue, as he headed his column "Bush's Financial Katrina":
As the storm clouds gathered, was President Bush once again asleep at the wheel?
A consistent theme in today's political and economic coverage is that Bush's failure to recognize the severity of the ongoing financial crisis and act accordingly is reminiscent of his disastrously slow and inept response to Hurricane Katrina.
Maura Reynolds and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times: "In some ways it was a throwaway line, the kind of praise a boss tosses out casually. But as the economy teetered Monday, President Bush's words to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson struck many as discordant and disengaged.
"'I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,' Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House. 'You've shown the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation.'
"Actually, many analysts and critics said, by focusing on Paulson's working hours instead of on the fear gripping Main Street and Wall Street, the president seemed to show just the opposite -- that he has failed to grasp the gravity of the country's economic crisis.
"'He has no idea what's going on. Even by his standards, he's wrong,' said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who said he had been trying to get the president to pay more attention to the economy for more than a year.
"Bush's 'working over the weekend' line also suggested a comparison to another disaster in which he was accused of acting too slowly: Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, the president was ridiculed for praising FEMA Director Michael D. Brown for doing 'a heck of a job' -- even as thousands remained stranded in floodwaters in New Orleans."
What's the equivalent of the broken levees this time around? "[S]ome economists and lawmakers said that the administration had too strongly resisted efforts to regulate either the mortgage industry or Wall Street's new mortgage-backed securities out of a misplaced faith in free markets," Reynolds and Hook write.
"Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said he had been trying to get the administration to tighten the rules for mortgage lenders for more than a year -- to little avail.
"'They could have done a lot of things over the last year, in my view, to make a difference and refused to do so,' Dodd said. 'They are lagging in terms of their response to all of this. Had steps been taken over the last year, we could have avoided a lot of this.'"
Matt Spetalnick writes for Reuters: "Not since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005 has Bush faced so much criticism of a too-little, too-late government response in a national time of need."
Spetalnick writes that Bush's "penchant for understatement in the face of what some on Wall Street see as the worst threat to the world financial system since the Great Depression has again underscored questions about his ability to lead through a major crisis.
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Poster dday tipped me off to great plainspeaking column by Dionne at the Post:
E.J. Dionne finally says it:
Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's
portfolios.
So they have stopped investing. The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.
Enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. Good God, you don't expect these people to trade in their BMWs for Saturns, do you?
This is so overdue. We've essentially in the Bush era set up a kind of corporate Marxism, where risk is socialized, but where wealth is privatized. And the middle class, in this case homeowners, are the only ones who ever feel any pain.
Ben Bernanke believes that he can save the economy by managing and financing the ultimate downfall of these financial institutions. Which is fine to a point, because the alternative is a massive meltdown of the entire system. But let's call it exactly what it is. And let's no longer allow the other side to say things like "let the market make its own decisions," because they only believe that when they're not affected. This is a selective bailout, and it's government intervention into the markets to save them. Because they currently are non-functional and unregulated. It doesn't have to be this way, but under a laissez-faire system it's inevitable.
Can't wait for some Wall Street honcho or BushCo official to go on about welfare queens or big government programs...
Some tweaking of that line about the middle class being the only ones to suffer is needed, since it is obviously all of the non-elite classes that have been repeatedly victimized by these elitist robber-barons. But I also want to reinforce the point that our country is being eaten alive by absolute pandering to corporations, something that is getting far too little attention in the political soap-opera. Sorry little shrub is only the most pathetically subservient to these Inc./LLC blood-suckers, who today are the recipients of astonishing subsidies and bailouts using our tax dollars, while actual people are left to dodder and rot on the street corners. Bill Clinton was shameful in his obeisance to corporations in preference to living beings. GHWB and that nasty unfunny Hollywood clown ditto. But this pathetic little bedwetter has really gone guinness on this topic.
Froomkin today also apparently found this a compelling issue, as he headed his column "Bush's Financial Katrina":
As the storm clouds gathered, was President Bush once again asleep at the wheel?
A consistent theme in today's political and economic coverage is that Bush's failure to recognize the severity of the ongoing financial crisis and act accordingly is reminiscent of his disastrously slow and inept response to Hurricane Katrina.
Maura Reynolds and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times: "In some ways it was a throwaway line, the kind of praise a boss tosses out casually. But as the economy teetered Monday, President Bush's words to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson struck many as discordant and disengaged.
"'I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,' Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House. 'You've shown the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation.'
"Actually, many analysts and critics said, by focusing on Paulson's working hours instead of on the fear gripping Main Street and Wall Street, the president seemed to show just the opposite -- that he has failed to grasp the gravity of the country's economic crisis.
"'He has no idea what's going on. Even by his standards, he's wrong,' said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who said he had been trying to get the president to pay more attention to the economy for more than a year.
"Bush's 'working over the weekend' line also suggested a comparison to another disaster in which he was accused of acting too slowly: Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, the president was ridiculed for praising FEMA Director Michael D. Brown for doing 'a heck of a job' -- even as thousands remained stranded in floodwaters in New Orleans."
What's the equivalent of the broken levees this time around? "[S]ome economists and lawmakers said that the administration had too strongly resisted efforts to regulate either the mortgage industry or Wall Street's new mortgage-backed securities out of a misplaced faith in free markets," Reynolds and Hook write.
"Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said he had been trying to get the administration to tighten the rules for mortgage lenders for more than a year -- to little avail.
"'They could have done a lot of things over the last year, in my view, to make a difference and refused to do so,' Dodd said. 'They are lagging in terms of their response to all of this. Had steps been taken over the last year, we could have avoided a lot of this.'"
Matt Spetalnick writes for Reuters: "Not since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005 has Bush faced so much criticism of a too-little, too-late government response in a national time of need."
Spetalnick writes that Bush's "penchant for understatement in the face of what some on Wall Street see as the worst threat to the world financial system since the Great Depression has again underscored questions about his ability to lead through a major crisis.
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:33 PM
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