economic meltdown

Republicans derail talks with infighting

I want to hear a debate tonight. If McCain flew to Washington to fuck up talks about the bailout and to drag Obama into the weeds with him, he better stand up in front of me and explain himself.

If if he’s too much of a chicken to do so, then Obama should appear without him.

According to MSNBC:

Harsh Republican Party in-fighting sidetracked the Bush administration’s $700 billion plan to bail out the battered financial services industry, and it’s uncertain how many GOP lawmakers will even take part in Friday’s resumption of closed-door negotiations in Congress.

Even for a party whose president suffers dismal approval ratings, whose legislative wing lost control of Congress and whose presidential nominee trails in the polls, Thursday was a remarkably bad day for Republicans.

A White House summit meeting called principally with the purpose to seal the deal that President Bush has argued is indispensable to stabilizing frenzied markets and reassuring the nervous American public descended into arguments — mostly among Republicans.

The meeting revealed that Bush’s proposal to combat the worst financial crisis in decades had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson begged Democratic participants not to disclose how badly the meeting had gone, dropping to one knee in a teasing way before U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make his point according to witnesses.

Paulson reportedly pleaded Pelosi not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the financial rescue package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, according to a report in the New York Times, making a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, adding that “it’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

When Paulson hastily tried to revive talks in a nighttime meeting near the Senate chamber, the House’s top Republican refused to send a negotiator.

“This is the president’s own party,” said Rep. Barney Frank, a top Democratic negotiator who attended both meetings. “I don’t think a president has been repudiated so strongly by the congressional wing of his own party in a long time.”

By midnight, it was hard to tell who had suffered a worse evening, Bush or McCain. McCain, eager to shore up his image as a leader who rises above partisanship, was undercut by a fierce political squabble within his own party’s ranks.

Emphasis mine.

Continue ReadingRepublicans derail talks with infighting

I heard the news today, oh boy…

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I’ve tried numerous times to stop blogging about political matters. I’m not any sort of expert on them, and they do make me frazzled in a way that isn’t always healthy. There are lots of cool things going on in our lives that I should be talking about instead.

But like many people I know, in the last week I just can’t stop reading the papers. Lately I flip from the NYTimes.com to cnn.com to msnbc.com to abcnews.com to the huffingtonpost.com to talkingpointsmemo.com and then back again, trying to figure out what new shit is happening every day.

I think my attitude about all this is like millions of Americans. I go to work every day, do my job, come home, take care of my house & family, and pay the bills. I’m not over-extended or over my head. But now because some empty suits fucked up because they were greedy fuckers, we have to have another Great Depression and lose everything. I have to give up stuff I care about, work harder, tighten my belt and worry about my family and friends getting along and surviving.

Fuck that noise. I’d like to opt out of this new Great Depression, please. I did nothing wrong. I’m not fucking around on Wall Street. I’m not taking out loans I can’t pay back, or handing out loans I can’t get back. Why the fuck should this affect me? Let the shitheads responsible pay 700 billion dollars, or whatever made up number they’re throwing around.

Interestingly enough, the “It’s not my shit, why should I pay for it?” is the exact attitude that the Republican party has been cultivating for decades in regards to any social program whatsoever. But now they’re SHOCKED, SHOCKED I TELL YOU1!! that American citizens are having this reaction to the bailout. Welfare is welfare, whether it’s being handing to starving people or people driving BMWs to work every day. I’d much rather give $2,300 dollars to people who are starving.

You guy rang that bell, so deal with it.

Continue ReadingI heard the news today, oh boy…

Barack Obama on the Economy

Candidate Obama addresses what’s happened in the last few days. Every time I hear him speak, I think this guy is the most presidential guy I’ve seen in years.

Does Barack need to suspend the campaign and return home? Here’s an astute analysis from metafilter:

This is entirely needless. Yes, they’re both Senators, but that doesn’t put them on any sort of level at which they ought to be meeting with the sitting President as a pair on this issue. Nor should they be able to do that as candidates. And despite both being Senators, neither of them are on the Senate Banking Committee. Nor is either on on the Joint Economic Committee, from which the eventual bicameral bailout bill is expected to emerge.

As Senators, they have only three roles in this crisis: 1) to vote on the eventual bill, and 2) to negotiate with their networks within the Senate on the content of the bill, and 3) to speak publicly in support of their vision for the bill. Only one of those roles (1) requires presence in Washington, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to be happening Friday night. Congress was scheduled to end its session Friday – they may have to go into special session, in which case Friday evening won’t be when things get resolved anyway (that would be insanely optimistic!) The other two Senatorial functions can be fulfilled – indeed, perhaps best are fulfilled – by communicating from the road, privately and to the public and the press.

I am not sure I respect the judgement of a candidate who is so ready to go into panic mode over a crisis that he doesn’t really even have much power to direct at this moment. We’re six weeks away from electing one of these two men President. I think that the debates are actually a much more important way for them to spend their time than meddling in a process which is already well under way and doesn’t require special Candidate Magic to move forward. It will be easy for them to fulfill their rather limited (at this moment) Senatorial responsibilities while still campaigning, as sitting Congresspeople usually do. The choice of who will be leading us through the aftermath of this crisis over the next 4-8 years is a bit more important to me than watching them showboat right now. Put in your two cents, stay out of the way, vote when you’re called to, and stay accountable to the American people whose votes you’re asking for. Anything else looks like grandstanding and evasion. No other way to read it.

Continue ReadingBarack Obama on the Economy

Rachel Maddow on the Bailout

My favorite part of this is the Bush quote “now is not the time to be partisan. We need to come together…”

I disagree. I think this is a GREAT time to be partisan. The best possible time, actually. The Republicans FUCKED UP. There’s just no other way to see this. The fuck-ups don’t get to make decisions now. You’re done.

Someone somewhere made the analogy about the Iraq War rebuilding efforts — if someone breaks into your house, loots and steals all your stuff and kills your pets, you sure don’t want THEM to be the ones to try to help you sort everything out and help you get back on your feet afterwards.

The same holds true of this economic crisis.

Continue ReadingRachel Maddow on the Bailout

Clinton on the Administration’s Proposal to Restore Stability to U.S. Financial Markets

Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Administration’s Proposal to Restore Stability to U.S. Financial Markets
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made the following statement on the administration’s proposal to restore stability to U.S. financial markets.

“When the American people, facing a foreclosure crisis and struggling economy, turned to this administration for help, the answer was no. Now, the administration is turning to the American people for help, to rescue the credit markets and take on hundreds of billions in debt and financial obligations as a consequence of that same foreclosure crisis. The truth is, Main Street came to Washington and got little. Now Washington is coming to Main Street and asking for a lot. The American people deserve to know that this isn’t a blank check. While the need to address the current crisis is clear, I will only support steps that will prevent a widening crisis, tackle the worst kinds of abuse tolerated for too long by the Bush Administration, and address the root problems at work.

The proposed intervention outlined today by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would be a watershed moment for our economy. I believe that such an intervention demands that we fundamentally alter the priorities and policies of our nation under the Bush Administration that allowed this crisis to take place and escalate. Corporations that will benefit must be held accountable not only to large shareholders but also to the American people. And American taxpayers deserve to know that their money will not allow for a continuation of the status quo: short term profit at the expense of long term viability; obscene bonuses and golden parachutes regardless of performance; reckless risk taking that have placed the markets in so much jeopardy; rewards for those who foreclose on middle class families and sell mortgages designed to fail to turn a profit; and outsourcing of good jobs to serve short term stock prices instead of America’s long term economic health. The prevailing dynamic of corporate America, where the sole priority was the dividend, the inflated bonus and the quarterly earnings report, must give way to a new respect for the long term prosperity of the American worker and the well being of the middle class.

After eight years of failed policies – and two years of an absentee administration – our only option left may be an unprecedented government intervention into the private markets. The markets must be stabilized to stave off wider turmoil. Nevertheless, the urgency of this crisis does not mean that we should offer a blank check to financial institutions or the privileged few. Nor can we simply allow the administration to use the taxpayers like a ‘reset button.’ We cannot allow Wall Street to act without oversight by a vigilant SEC and administration – and without regard for the American people, who will now have paid twice: in falling prey to a widening credit crisis, and in paying the bill to hopefully bring it to an end.

I will be examining the administration’s proposal very closely to ensure that we do not approve a policy that may stabilize the markets in the short term without addressing the root problems facing middle class families or the kinds of reckless gambling that was permitted for far too long by the administration. The Bush Administration may have changed its tune once the crisis facing Main Street hit Wall Street. But we need to be sure that the American taxpayers – asked to shoulder yet more risk and responsibility – have a voice.”

Yeah. What she said.

Continue ReadingClinton on the Administration’s Proposal to Restore Stability to U.S. Financial Markets

It’s a class war, stupid

If you only read one article about the 2008 election, make it this one – Matt Taibbi’s “It’s a Class War, Stupid” in Rolling Stone this month.

Taibbi’s article about the looming economic depression (yeah, you read that right – I didn’t say recession, I said depression) is spot on… and the mainstream media is playing Nero while Rome burns, talking about candidate’s wives dresses while people are beginning a show slide towards homelessness and starvation.

Okay, now, hold that thought. While we’re unable to find $5 billion for this simple program, and Sanders had to fight and claw to get even $250 million that was eventually slashed, here’s something else that’s going on. According to a recent report by the GAO, the Department of Defense has already “marked for disposal” hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spare parts — and not old spare parts, but new ones that are still on order! In fact, the GAO report claims that over half of the spare parts currently on order for the Air Force — some $235 million worth, or about the same amount Sanders unsuccessfully tried to get for the community health care program last year — are already marked for disposal! Our government is buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Defense Department crap just to throw it away!

“They’re planning on throwing this stuff away and it hasn’t even come in yet,” says Sanders.

According to the report, we’re spending over $30 million a year, and employing over 1,400 people, just to warehouse all the defense equipment we don’t need. For instance — we already have thousands of unneeded aircraft blades, but 7,460 on the way, at a cost of $2 million, which will join those already earmarked for the waste pile.

This is why you need to pay careful attention when you hear about John McCain claiming that he’s going to “look at entitlement program” waste as a means of solving the budget crisis, or when you tune into the debate about the “death tax.” We are in the midst of a political movement to concentrate private wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time placing more and more of the burden for public expenditures on working people. If that sounds like half-baked Marxian analysis… well, shit, what can I say? That’s what’s happening. Repealing the estate tax (the proposal to phase it out by the year 2010 would save the Walton family alone $30 billion) and targeting “entitlement” programs for cuts while continually funneling an ever-expanding treasure trove of military appropriations down the befouled anus of pointless war profiteering, government waste and North Virginia McMansions — this is all part of a conversation we should be having about who gets what share of the national pie. But we’re not going to have that conversation, because we’re going to spend this fall mesmerized by the typical media-generated distractions, yammering about whether or not Michelle Obama’s voice is too annoying, about flag lapel pins, about Jeremiah Wright and other such idiotic bullshit.

…

Our economic reality is as brutal as it is for a simple reason: whether we like it or not, we are in the midst of revolutionary economic changes. In the kind of breathtakingly ironic development that only real life can imagine, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed global capitalism to get into the political unfreedom business, turning China and the various impoverished dictatorships and semi-dictatorships of the third world into the sweatshop of the earth. This development has cut the balls out of American civil society by forcing the export abroad of our manufacturing economy, leaving us with a service/managerial economy that simply cannot support the vast, healthy middle class our government used to work very hard to both foster and protect. The Democratic party that was once the impetus behind much of these changes, that argued so eloquently in the New Deal era that our society would be richer and more powerful overall if the spoils were split up enough to create a strong base of middle class consumers — that party panicked in the years since Nixon and elected to pay for its continued relevance with corporate money. As a result the entire debate between the two major political parties in our country has devolved into an argument over just how quickly to dismantle the few remaining benefits of American middle-class existence — immediately, if you ask the Republicans, and only slightly less than immediately, if you ask the Democrats.

The Republicans wanted to take Social Security, the signature policy underpinning of the middle class, and put it into private accounts — which is a fancy way of saying that they wanted to take a huge bundle of American taxpayer cash and invest it in the very companies, the IBMs and Boeings and GMs and so on, that are exporting our jobs abroad. They want the American middle class to finance its very own impoverishment! The Democrats say no, let’s keep Social Security more or less as is, and let that impoverishment happen organically.

Continue ReadingIt’s a class war, stupid