A Chit Chat with Republicans About the Stimulus

A Primer About Obama's Recovery Plan85

It has become very intellectually chic to chuck pot shots at the Recovery Program of President Obama. Of course, we expected the really “trailer park” fizzle from the vacuous, foaming mouths of the neo-cons. One female host, Tammy Bruce, actually called Michelle Obama “trash” on a network interview last week.

However, once we exclude the “drug addled gas bag,” the whining “pretty little mama’s boy,” and the ultra pious, self-appointed, "stalwart defender of The Church," we are still left with some unsettling whimpers arising from unexpected quarters -- quarters we had always previously assumed to be more rational.

There are comments that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Director of the White House's National Economic Council, Larry Summers, should be fired for lack of purity and effectiveness. That would be “lack of purity” from having been a Fed Bank President during the Bush bailout in Geithner’s case and from having been a Clinton advisor in Summers’ case, that would have been before he was President of Harvard University. All these comments can be immediately discharged because they are founded on the premise that what we are doing right now is, somehow, logically similar to something we have done before. Any hope of that happy serendipity betrays a frenzied dash for the refuge of history, hardly a behavior we would expect from the brave knights we have sent to kill the dragon.

The Treasury Secretary is a frighteningly intelligent man who has been seriously cautioned by the Obama White House to try to “de-accelerate” his speech enough so it can be captured on an ordinary, modern video camera during his interviews. Naturally, neo-cons -- being allergic to leadership of any type thanks to their toxic, soul consuming cynicism -- are quite uncomfortable with a man who constantly needs to concentrate on speaking more slowly so the rest of us can possibly follow him. Neo-cons like slow drawls so Southern that most Americans either won’t listen to them or can’t understand what is said. You know, ... southern ... coach ... pastor ... You know.

But some modern liberal pundits seem to be put off because they can’t understand it either. They think that the reason they can’t understand it is because what Geithner is saying isn’t even remotely similar to anything they have heard before, the lingering, predictably desperate test of validity for those who have found themselves unable to think. The most limited, self promoted, modern progressives don’t believe that anything can be progressive now if it hasn’t already been progressive before. Those talkative folks identify themselves by providing endless explanations of exactly who was at fault for almost everything that threatens their pretend, historical, progressive "status quo."

But this post is all about having a chit chat with Republicans. There are actually a few of them still visible who are so inebriated on the Kool Aid and so head strong that they continue to claim a tiny, forgotten patch of Bush Jr.’s, medieval fear mongering “high ground.”

If you have had a creepy, out of focus feeling while talking to these Republicans and other aging reactionaries about Obama’s plan, don’t blame yourself! The person standing before you in those conversations isn’t actually saying anything. What you are hearing are talking points! The actual words being uttered in such conversations have been “piped” down to eager repeaters by their “thought masters,” repeaters who, when considered generously, have nothing else to say besides more road weary talking points about the Stimulus Package, Socialism, abortion, gun control -- well, you already know the list of topics they prefer.

On to the water cooler.

Although MeanMesa usually avoids inserted diagrams and charts, please consider this following exception. Perhaps we can spend just a minute with this National Debt record as an introduction to a few points which might “flesh out” your conversational repartees.

click to enlarge

The large block of red at the far right of the diagram is an estimate of the accumulated deficit of the Bush Jr. autocracy. Politically unpopular spending such as the war in Iraq is, of course, omitted. However, the total of the eight year deficit since the Supreme Court appointed Bush Jr. amounts to roughly three trillion dollars. What might have been a rather lack luster disaster was converted into the present calamity by two large tax cuts which directed vast windfalls to the very richest Americans, and the utterly outrageous PHARMA written Medicaid Prescription Drug Plan, designed to channel boat loads of tax money to the “pill masters” of the pharmaceutical lobbyists. The PHARMA bill was passed at 3 AM in the House. The tie vote in the Senate was broken when the Vice President Pretender voted in favor.

An often overlooked aspect of the trillions which disappeared into pockets of Bush cronies has to do with the rest of the economy, you know, the part where we live. After the extraction, that sudden, purloined flatulence among the rich and mischievous found itself stranded with nowhere to go. When we speak of financial instruments such as securitized toxic mortgages, incredibly leveraged, shadow assets on the profit and loss books of all the investment banks we are presently rescuing, and other Wall Street Casino speculative doodads, we see the “new home” all these suddenly wealthy “businessmen” found for their less than legitimate good fortune.

What might have been expected as “risks” associated with such a move were gleefully buried under the cover of a dysfunctional Justice Department, a conveniently blind Security Exchange Commission (Remember Madoff? Enron?), ruthless gangs of well paid Federal Appointees and an overly protective Executive (Autocrat) who had already hit his management high point bankrupting professional ball teams and oil companies his father gave him.

The Independent Senator from Vermont noted this unusual development:
Not everyone has had a hard time during the Bush years: “The top 400 richest Americans have seen their personal wealth increase by $630,000,000,000 - $630 BILLION - since George W. Bush was appointed President by the Supreme Court in 2000.” (Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sept. 18, 2008)

The point? When this much of the economy’s liquid money was effectively removed, it caused a bit of a shortage. After that initial insult to the economy, when the reckless schemes which had absorbed all these dollars fell apart, it created even more of a shortage. The spending which normally fuels the US economy ground to a halt. No one had any money, and no one could borrow any.

Yes, of course, all these “genius investors” immediately started bellowing for a bail out from the Bush Jr. -- Paulson crime family, but they were able to loot only a paltry $350 billion before their sponsoring syndicate was run out of Washington. That left them hungry for more. Their eyes, naturally, turned greedily toward the Obama Stimulus Plan. If that legislation could be converted to even more tax cuts, then looted as it straggled through the Congress, they could be made whole by the tax payers, a veritable wet dream for any self-respecting neo-con.

The Obama plan replaces all that “missing” spending with Federal spending. It is clear that such a bold move is probably the only chance still on the table to avoid a repeat of the World Wide Great Depression of the FDR days. The amount of spending in that spending bill is, unhappily, astronomical. That would make it roughly the same size as the take that Bush Jr.’s fellow looters snatched during the eight years when frenzied high crimes were the constant currency of the day. The economy was supposed to tank after the Bush crime family was safely back in Texas, just in time to blame Obama for everything, but, as is usually the case for everything Bush Jr. dreamed up, it exploded prematurely.

When your Republican starts off with complaints about too much spending and out of control deficits, show him the chart. Agree with him -- in a condescending way -- that it really is too much spending and that the deficit it will cause really is too high. Tell him -- compassionately -- that we have already paid off the neo-con extortionists once while they were gang raping us the first time, but that we are willing to pay again to save the country.

Then walk away.

For a comprehensive explanation of the contents of the 2009 Stimulus Bill,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009
and for an overview of the President's 2010 Budget, submitted to Congres in 2009,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/

“How Far Must the Dow Plunge Before Confidence Is Restored?

Spending too much time "ducking" the old things? Spending not enough time dreaming about the new things?

These days hold only cold comfort for the timid.

The newspaper headline titling this post betrays what may be an unexamined paradox. The sensation of "confidence" is an allegedly rational one which may be insinuated by past history, but probably not the past history being cited in the discussions of this moment. Likewise, the "restore" idea is visiting every area of pain in the present economy. There are the dreamy desires of those who would like the declining value (market price?) of their real estate "restored" to the figures of a year or two ago. There are those who feel that economic recovery implies that the stocks they purchased in the past might be "restored" not only to their previous trading values, but also in their vivacity and mobility with respect to potential profits or losses demarcated in the "numbers and the systems of the past."

Folks who are entertaining this expectation for the "recovery" are not founding their ideas on circumstances which enjoy much of a chance to materialize in reality.

The less lofty have ambitions for a stable floor to the decline where, although the numerical "prices" of monetary assets would be defined by lower numerical values, the relative values would become, once more, as promising as they had been before. Perhaps even the wage earners are gradually becoming adjusted to the idea that their "restored" wages, although not bearing the same figures as on the old paychecks, might have a "restored" purchasing power or offer an investment opportunity equivalent to the ones on those old stubs.

The economic pedestrian has only a slightly more realistic view of the possibilities at hand. He, at least, has the common sense necessary to envision an economic solution which is not the "restoration" of his previous conditions, but something of a hybrid, located between full "recovery" or "restoration" and some intermediate state where his comfort level is comparable to what it was before.

Likewise, the critics and cynics (uh, that would be the hillbillies, Senate bigots and other free market criminals) seize on the predictable, codependent opportunity of establishing that true "recovery" or "restoration" can be nothing less than a sterile return to the artificial successes previously derived from the avarice of the recent past. They would, foolishly, like to establish that vision as the only possible outcome which might legitimatize Obama's desperate efforts ideologically. The public opinion attraction to that insistent approach is waning rapidly, most likely, as was the tragic case with "confidence," another victim of “common sense” on the main street.

My advice? Quit dreaming of the past. Quit trying to measure the possibilities and challenges of the near future by the currency of the past. All those “restorations” require more than a duplicated economic flow of factors and equations. Frankly, they all depend on more than a resurgence of familiar numbers on the Wall Street trading boards. They also, in a way as subtle as the “elephant in the living room,” also depend upon the resurrection of all sorts of imaginary asset values, labor rates, real estate ambitions and even international trade relations. There is no part of the economic stimulus plan which can re-materialize these old, opium dreams. They cannot be “restored,” because they were never material in the first place.

We can join the wailing of the Wall Streeters and the bankers and the quiet, arrogant ultra-rich with their effected accents if we like, but all the old deceptions of this crowd have evaporated just as concretely as the sale price of the duplex next door. All the illicit advantages they promoted as “sharp business practices” for the last dozen decades have been exposed now. Worse, their dreams of the precise value of such deceptions have also been smashed. They sold them to us once, and that worked out well for them. But now, those balloons have popped -- perhaps largely in the very faces of these “pretend Captains of Industry.”

No one can still reasonably hope that those “balloons” of theirs can be “restored.” Further, citizens of both the United States and the rest of the world where their extractive schemes have reached, seem to have a new, much more informed style of awareness of exactly what had been done before. The hordes of what had previously been “easy marks” have now entered a period of renewed understanding of what the responsibility of “self-interest” actually means. An understanding which excludes the necessity of supporting these parasites in the style and luxury of the past.

Obama gets this. One wonders how many familiars of the old White House have appeared once again with “offers he can’t refuse.” One wonders what was on their deflated faces when he did, in fact, refuse.

Without the hordes of the sleeping, the mistaken certainties of the past are beginning to rot on the vine. Mistaken certainties? The sanctity of the free market as the ultimate director of the economy. The acceptability of the well (and not so well) disguised, noncompetitive subterfuge, whether a no bid contract for billions or some doo-dad added to a House bill at the last minute making new profits an automatic reality for some crony.

But wait. No matter how refreshing it might be, a modern correction of these sorts of things amounts to little more than a tweeking to the system. Such a development might turn out to be the final result of this economic melt-down, but there are others -- developments which can hardly be defined as a “tweeking.” In any event, it looks constantly less likely to be a mere “restoration.”

The economy is not experiencing a little difficulty, it is evaporating before our very eyes. We have heard fifteen thousand reasons why this is happening, but what seems the most logical conclusion at this point is that no one has either any complete or rational explanation of precisely why this is happening or how far down it will go. All the old reasons are approaching a region of logical discontinuity far too similar to what might be encountered on a classic Riemann Equation’s first surface. We have probably left explanations or their possible comfort somewhere behind us.

The classical parameters which used to drive everything have ceased functioning. What was successful “tweeking” in the past system no longer produces any effect at all.

So, where does it go?

It “goes” through the discontinuity, and we go with it. The hilarious threats of creeping Socialism or nationalization or Fascism or vacant promises of capitalism or free marketism or a “restored” hegemony are all now parked in the "used car lot" history of the past, in our memories, in our dreams. That old currency fills the entire stage, constructs all the sets and writes all the play. We can make no new play which requires parts other than those old familiar ones. Our imagination has beached itself on the remnants of our fears.

The choices for the face of the future system will not be variations of the faces of the past. What has begun as an economic aberration has become an ideological meat grinder, and its product may well arrive without so much as a reasoned hint or even a wild speculation from the past.

The “new thing” approaches.

It won’t be all bad, either, but these last few months before its arrival will be terrifying -- especially for those who were able to prosper in the false world of the false values of the past. Still, we must prepare ourselves for a new system. It arrives just as the widower's new wife. The recipes and the bedroom, although quite satisfying, can never "restore" what has passed before. We have no firm ideas about what the new system will require of us or what new opportunities it may present, of course, but we do know one thing. We prepare ourselves by watching for its arrival with hope, not dread.

Adjusting our ideas of “necessity” and “comfort” might help a little. Experimenting with values which have evolved beyond imposed scarcity and insatiable greed and impossible security is probably a good idea, even if such a discipline hasn’t ever been reasonable in the past. We must clear our road weary slate of ancient false priorities, thrash out the cobwebs and steel ourselves for a new day.

As humans, we are now stranded with the frightening necessity of charting our way forward. We find the press of events has cast us not as survivors, but as designers.

The “new thing” approaches.

A Visitor to MeanMesa! Enjoy!

A quick note of introduction from MeanMesa: The following is an absolutely delightful comment posted on Thom Hartmann's web by my respected friend "antifascist." That avatar is highly suitable once one gets to know him. He provides a link to the website of the material's initial origin and its author.

It is included here because it is simply too thought provoking to just abandon, leaving it where I encountered it.

“Facts Are Stupid Things” (http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2009/02/facts_are_stupi.html)
badattitudes.com
February 21, 2009

The title above is a quote from Ronald Reagan at the 1988 Republican National Convention. He was trying to access a John Adams quote, “Facts are stubborn things,” but something more appropriate to the man and the occasion popped out.

The essay below is from my neighbor Jim, more of whose stuff can be seen here (at the site in the link).

Compare and contrast:

1980 may seem kind of arbitrary as the jump off for the end of empire, but the economics bear it out. Under Reagan, government disbursements and revenues, as a share of GDP, jumped a full six percentage points. More, if you include his unfunded moral hygiene mandates.

All the Republicans talked Rand, Friedman, inter alia, but they acted like straightforward right wing military Keynesians. Military Keynesianism is of course nothing new in the US. But prior to 1980 there was a dominant Bismarckian consensus (have I dropped enough names yet?) that it had to be matched by social spending, otherwise the exercise of hard power would eventually become financially unsustainable.

You cannot extract surplus value — i.e. have capitalism — in great heaping bushel baskets unless you have a government willing to exercise single payer monopsony power over basic human needs, basic scientific research and renewable sources of the energy needed to drive all this. Lo and behold, the exercise of hard power is now done on credit, with only the threat of mutually assured destruction holding our creditors at bay.

I suppose one could point to a cultural shift in the eighties, as there certainly was one, but I prefer a bit more systemic determinism.

The political economy of capitalism is easiest to manage through psychological terrorism. It’s a cheap and effective way of outsourcing the quotidian enforcement of corporate feudalism to vigilante moral panic artists. There’s no shortage of people willing to enforce for free. Hell, they’ll even pay for the dubious privilege.

People become inured to this, querulous and rebellious, and the terrorism has to be stepped up. Red scares have to be coupled with ethnic scares, drug scares, satanic child care scares and so forth. Going against that, as Carter did in an achingly minuscule way, is a positive step for capitalism and a negative step for capitalists. Their enforcement costs look to climb. People who aren’t constantly depressed and frightened get a little feisty.

Under Reagan, the “clever” work-around was burgeoning unfunded mandates to make the states take on domestic psychological terrorism, and yanking the social safety net away, while the central government threw surplus value to the cretinous capitalists, hand over fist. It’s been down hill ever since.

I can’t see why anyone would want to be president after Bush. It’s not a sane thing to do. I thought, and still think, that the Democrats would have been better off throwing the election. McCain would probably not have lasted four years and right wing military Keynesianism would have been discredited for a good long time. Getting stuck with cradling the appalling, ghoulish offspring that are roving mindlessly over a dying empire would have ruined him, and the most cretinous of the cretinous capitalists.

The Democrats could have trotted out old social democratic wine in new bottles and enjoyed thirty or forty years of crowing from the top of the DC shit hill. So it goes, I guess. And my goodness, doesn’t Carter look like a saint in comparison to every asshole that’s come since.

Savoring This Moment in Our Main Street Economy

Even in terrible economic times, personal memories are still quite affordable. Let's have a few. 78

I enjoyed an unusual conversation about the economy this afternoon at the coffee shop. Although the man with whom I was speaking was a stranger to me, it was fairly clear that he and I shared roughly the same economic status income-wise.

His premise was that the economic troubles our country faces are primarily going to impact citizens at a substantially higher economic position than he or I presently have. His argument, in so many words, was that the nation’s economic troubles would not really ever reach us in a day-to-day reality changing way.

That interesting proposition caused me to add an additional thought to the model. That thought? How aware of “it’s ability to reach us at this level” would the average citizen -- in this case my acquaintance and myself --actually be? In our world our economic destinies certainly ascend and descend all the time. If the impact we were discussing were gradual enough, perhaps no one in our crowd would even notice.

Consequently, I decided that a sort of unofficial “landmark” might prove beneficial. Maybe all the visitors to the meanmesa blog spot might take just a moment to set a benchmark in their own memory about exactly how things really were in January, 2009.

Hence, indulge me to quickly answer a few questions which might reveal, later, the changes in our personal economies between now and then.

This is a personal poll. That means that there is no link, nothing to write and no e-mail or phone call to make. These are simply a few questions to be answered by oneself and, perhaps, tucked away in one’s memory for later.

1. Where did I go today? How did I get there? Why did I decide to go there? Did I really need to go there?

2. What’s in my refrigerator? How many cans of different things are on that shelf? How long could I go without visiting the grocery store if I absolutely had to eat what I already have? How much did I spend on groceries the last few times I went?

3. How old are the shoes I’m wearing? How long could I go without having to buy more shoes? Another winter coat? Socks? When was the last time I repaired some clothes with a needle and thread because they were worn out?

4. Do I know how to grow a vegetable garden? Would I ever do that for food rather than as a hobby? Do I know how to "home can" fresh grocery store bargains or extra good crops from the garden?

5. How much are my monthly bills (not including mortgages, but possibly my car...)? Have I thought about trying harder to keep the lights turned off when not in use, keeping the house heat off except for a few hours a day? Have I thought recently about whether or not my gas and electric bill was getting too high? Have I considered getting along with a cheaper cable package?

6. How many times have I eaten out in the last couple of months? Have I thought about a way to avoid that, work on a less expensive approach such as packing lunch?

7. Have I considered lowering my “sin” expenditures on cigarettes, liquor (yeah, add pot...) by being more conscious of my consumption?

8. Have I recently thought about moving to a different apartment so I wouldn’t be traveling so far to get to work or other frequent destinations? Have I reconsidered how much bicycle riding I could do to avoid car expenses?

9. Have I started shopping more aggressively to find lower prices on everything I buy? Have smaller savings justified extra effort to add another store to my usual list?

10. Do I have close friends I would try to help if they were hungry? Would they try to help me for the same reason?

Add your own questions if some occur to you that were missed in this list.

The media is constantly talking about trillions of dollars, arcane economic things such as the “M1” money supply and “securitized mortgage packages.” If our problem is solved while these are the most central and worrisome questions it holds for us, we should probably feel grateful. On the other hand, five years from now the questions on the list, posted here in 2009, might foster the very memories we will be using for comparison when we speak of the “good old days.”

OOPS. Maybe two years from now.

Believe it or not, the Wiki has a darn good overview of the economic crisis (without wasting much time on finger pointing). This web entry links to several others, if the first one doesn't get it done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_crisis_of_2008

Gee, mom, did God make Banks?

Everything that is "extra, extra complicated" really is "extra, extra complicated."
How to selectively avoid understanding almost anything.73

Oh darn. That $300 Billion bail out was supposed to help get credit started back up again, whatever that means. (For the numerically challenged, 300 billion is 300,000,000,000.) Gosh, we put the money into the “thing” at just the right places, but there are still all sorts of folks who can’t borrow anything. Nothing. Certainly not enough to keep business going and jobs in place.

Well, most of the most important people who could have signed off on those bail out checks, have. They are okay. They have enough money to last them through the disaster the rest of the country is facing. After what’s left straggles back to its feet, they can start the “trickle down.” Again.

“Trickle down” means that their banks will finally start loaning the money businesses need to keep going. Just before these "trickle down" folks start “trickling down,” most businesses will be in a failure state. They will be on their last legs. or, perhaps, on their backs. You know, “for sale” at a really cheap price. If the neo-con wet dream has come true by this point, it will be a shopping extravaganza if you have any money.

Gosh darn it, no one seems to have any money, though. Wait! There’s still the “trickle down” folks wandering around with what’s left of their $300,000,000,000! After all, they certainly haven’t lent much of it to anyone. Maybe, out of the goodness of their hearts and their great love of our country, they might be inclined to take a risk here and there, buy a few American businesses at bargain basement prices, and try to start the economy again.

That would be something new. Once again, they would wind up owning everything, strangling the rest of us not by “innovation,” “invention” or “competition,” but by good old fashioned business sense, funded with the tax dollars they took from us back in 2008. This next chapter of the “American Dream” just happened to have fallen into their laps by extraordinary good fortune!

They will have solved the labor problem, too. Labor problem? That means excessive wages and benefits will have been curtailed just in time for prosperity! The American worker's race to the bottom will be well under way by this time. No business means no jobs. No jobs means extra, extra low wages and plenty of desperate workers ready to gobble up any job (and any wage) they can get. It will be paradise! You know, just like "the good old days."

Captains of Industry. Maybe Dick Cheney will feel well enough to be President for a while. You know, well enough to “git ‘er did!”

Solution-wise this travesty makes the black hole of Calcutta look like a Sunday school social. Turn on your television. The man in the suit will explain everything. There is no solution. We just have to pump as much money as possible into these banks and then patiently wait and see if they start making loans again. Sort of like pushing a lobster through a key hole. It might work....

The reason it is all so complicated is because we just have to wait for these frightened bankers to get themselves into a little better frame of mind. They must be reassured. Right now, they are so freaked out with the prospect of being poor, they won’t even loan money to each other! The television man will provide you with 97 reasons why that is the case and another 231 reasons why this insanity is the only chance we have to get the lobster through the key hole.

Well, there is another solution.

A surprisingly American solution.

Here’s the plan. Split off a few billion of the bailout money and convert it to cash. (Bushie’s old Iraqi viceroy knows how to do this. And how! He was tossing around pallet loads of bundled U.S. hundreds to everyone who would stand still!)

Next, buy two or three thousand used Winnebagos. It’s okay. Gas is cheap right now, and we’ll be done with them before the price can get back to $4/gallon. Put a cot and a coffee maker in each one. Pack the back half of each Winnebago with cash.

Hire ten thousand bankers. There are plenty of unemployed bankers running around loose right now. Loan officers would be good.

Divide the bankers into three groups. Make them all Federal employees. The first group will go in the Winnebagos to make loans. The second group will be in charge of bookkeeping. The third group will be in charge of catching bankers from the first two groups when they cheat.

Next, park the Winnebagos in every city where the banks have not started loaning money, put out a sign, open the door and start making loans. I have to suspect that business will be good.

Pretty soon all those frightened bankers will get over their fright. Oh, whatever. In any event, they might stop buying each other, paying stock dividends and huge executive bonuses with our bail out money and start making loans again.

Total cost? $30 billion ought to get things rolling right along. Bailout money going to banks ($300 billion) hasn’t done much yet. Bailout money to businesses who need it and qualify might accomplish quite a bit.

God, is this ever complicated.

For a quick review of the journey of bail out money so far:
http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/storysupplement/bailout_scorecard/

Revisiting Unthinkable Presumptions

A Glimpse at Re-Birth Instead of Melt-Down

Are we “man-enough” to turn around and walk away? 74

George Bush (GWB) (Oh hell, why not both of them...?) has always done his very best “work” when he paints his pitch with the direst urgency. Texas style, hair on fire, save America urgency. Recalling what may be the most calamitous deceptions he has “sold” to the American public, we are impressed with the sinister alacrity always present.

A breathless pharmaceutical bill passed a 3 AM half by exhausted, threatened senators and half by others wildly drunk on avarice, a panicked Patriot Act recklessly perched on choreographed “facts,” an emergency $300 billion dollar Christmas present to an unnamed “black hole” filled with “special bankers,” the only ones who could be trusted to save the country from “special bankers” who had just finished looting it -- all these are but a few of the more public outrages.

“Gee whiz, they all seemed to make sense for a little while!” Is anyone else getting tired of listening to this endless toothache of, well, emergency emergencies?

Now it’s hangover time. There’s simply nothing to do but have another drink.

We don't even know who got our money. We don't even know what who ever got it, did with it! Sure, we asked, but those in charge told us to "Shut up." They told us we didn't know enough about such things to even ask questions like that one, let alone expect that we could understand the answers. "Just keep paying." "Otherwise, melt down! Whatever we decide that is, it will be lots worse than this!" "Just keep paying."

Sorry, maybe not. What exactly happens if we bravely turn our backs on this whole collection of vipers? What exactly happens if we just lean back, relax and let the whole financial “whatever it actually is” demolish itself? It’s pretty clear that the hardest part of fixing things is finding anyone to trust long enough to do the work.

Maybe these fun loving opportunists need a stake through the heart. Yeah, their movie making machine is running full steam with yet another saga of precisely how awful things would get if we don’t keep paying. Yeah, they’ve managed to recruit some otherwise credible voices to join their well paid choir of impending disaster. The economic charts and graphs are flowing like a river at flood stage, every one of them portraying something akin to a Biblical disaster.

There is even a short hesitation generously injected to attempt to educate us about the difference between “financial” and “economic” disaster. The “financial” disaster is the one to be suffered by our road weary billionaires if the bail out should so much as pause in its progress. You know, billionaires. The people who make campaign contributions because they love our country so much that it hurts.

The “economic” disaster, I suppose, is the one we will be feeling. The story line says that the billionaires must always be considered first. Something like the instructions to the mother on the air line. “Put the oxygen mask on yourself before the baby.” We have been artfully convinced that the billionaires are the ones who will need to keep breathing if the rest of us are going to make it. An interesting coincidence when, not long ago, they were the ones in favor of "drowning the government in a bath tub."

Owning the media, lock, stock and barrel, comes in handy for stuff like that.

Well, if these old banks fall apart, isn’t it the American way to expect new banks to rise up out of the ashes? If the stock brokers take the hit they are always claiming to be ready to take, why not let them take it? If the dottering bigots in the Congress cut loose with their practiced screams about “good Southern ideology” and “American ideals” and “founding fathers” and the like, what happens if we don’t dance?

Wouldn’t honest, hard working Americans recreate the stock market if it turned out to be something we needed? Wouldn’t American voters realize what kind of crooks we had been electing if we saw, first hand, the damage they had inflicted all these years while they were convincing us they were actually doing something else? Something honest? Something American?

Could the United States somehow just dump all this crud and start over? We started from scratch more than once before. The wealth of the country remains. The old owners are such toothless whiners we start to suspect they never really owned everything anyway. We start to suspect that our indebted servitude to them doesn’t actually amount to much more than hot air, the rancid stench of something dead in their over burdened digestive tracts.

These "old owners” have now perfected their endless ranting about the sanctity of capitalism, at least capitalism as they have always promoted it. Leaving them on a street corner with their fancy paper and their shrill voices doesn’t really seem like such a bad idea.

Time for a realization. They aren’t capitalists. These unquestionably elite "Captains of Industry" haven’t “competed” or "invented" for decades. This sacred economy that we are being told that we must save -- for them -- is about as capitalistic as a bunch of over weight oligarchic pigs with trust funds squawking with screams of desperate urgency in a belching contest. They bought all these politicians, judges, media corporations. They dreamed up all the “financial doo dads" that they lost their shirts selling to each other.

So? Let’s honor our traditional ideas about “private property” and let these clowns keep all these expensive folks they’ve bought. We can elect new politicians. If it turns out that we need to, we can create a new stock market based on capital that actually exists. We’ve already started the replacement of their crooked, worthless media machines. (You’re reading this blog right now! Ain’t it great? No newsprint!)

Oh gee. What about all those honest foreigners who lent us all that money? They shouldn’t have to take a bath just because they tried to help us out with a few trillion. They only had our best interests at heart. They only wanted to take a small, honest advantage of our great capitalist system. Right. None of us has ever even seen anything that money bought! It certainly doesn’t seem to have bought anything for us. We don't even know where in hell it went.

If we walk away, we will be standing there without any hope that these hard working billionaires and their honest, compassionate "foreign friend" billionaires are going to “help” us any longer. We would just have to look after ourselves.

We could start looking after ourselves with whatever is left in the treasury.

I think we could make it.

One of our founders said that democracy needed to be covered with the blood of patriots every decade or so. He was close. Our democracy needs to be covered with the blood of crooks and cheats, their professional liars and their private collection of “bought and paid for" politicians.

Time to clean house, take our lumps and get this thing back on the tracks.

Gosh. Did I tip my hand?

For more insight concerning the"Extra, extra complicated" melt down picture, the following explores the question, "How many different directions can a room full of bankers point their fingers?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cra25-2008oct25,0,394443.story

Pretending It’s Just More Politics

Cut the drama already! It's just another election.
Right? So, chill. Everything will be back to the way it was in no time.70

Here, in America, we love our politics. We take great pains to say we don't, but we do. These athletic contests we hold periodically allow those of us with an appetite for any channel of respect and superiority to proffer up “the right answer according to me,” along with every manner of dramatic persuasion. It seems that we have an unending ambition to have been the ones with insight or perception remarkable enough to either prognosticate our future dilemmas or offer up spectacular solutions which testify to all who watch of our remarkable savvy or, perhaps, even our startling genetic, intellectual prowess.

We also have an indulgent taste for predicting exaggerated dire adversaries and other threats.

We comfortably perceive our politics as an indulgence directed at “better” or “worse” answers. After all, in the past even our worst decisions have been survivable. So far in our entire national history we’ve sought out every answer by dissecting the more acceptable alternative topics not included in the “burning question of the day.” To date we’ve never paid too great a price for our foolishness or naiveté. We’ve never been successfully invaded, conquered, attacked or damaged -- nationally -- so gravely that we could not endure and recover.

Having never been laid that low, our pretense about politics continually provided the narcotic implication that we dealt with every challenge from a position of strength, that is, strength sufficiently great that we would inevitably emerge to correct our errors. Living in that unlikely fantasy, we encountered no events so troubling that we couldn’t disregard them in favor of debating nuances of our national reality as if they were the substance of everything.

Some of our population saw the contest between the extremely old and the frighteningly new in the last election in just this superficial manner. All the banter seemed quite comfortably moribund, couched in no more than another set of traditionally indulgent details to be chewed as fat by fish wives whose entire universe extended only to the last tents in the market square. We moan and reassure ourselves about our skeptical superiority, romantically akin to desperately swimming to the nearest lifeboat -- or any accessible flotsam -- after a sudden and disastrous capsize, then, once again, devolving into endless arguments of inane ideology before scrambling on board.

The United States is not smoothly dipping through another period of “corrections” for some trivial miscalculation, anticipating a few weeks or months of being denied a few normally available prerogatives. Our descent is suspiciously steeper than that, and deeper. We are apparently dumbfounded at the full scope of the damage now that it is revealed in a more rational light.

We have been, perhaps, mortally injured. We may not survive the damage we’ve suffered. The stakes are that severe.

It seems that not a single tool of our national sustenance remains in tact after the last outrageous subversion. We face the possibility that neither our military, our economy, our Constitution nor our spirit has survived in a form strong enough to hold us together while we frantically rebuild what we have left. The final looting of the treasury might be the bright spot. It suggests that the thieves believe the currency will have value again someday.

Of course there’s still the currency exchange.

Obama might be a solution to this national hemorrhage, or he might be just a hopeful triage or, at least, a soothing first aid placebo able only to comfort us for our final denouement. His election may have harnessed a horse which can pull us through this Bush crisis or maybe offer only a lessor promise, that is, a delay and a respite until its final, inevitable outcome.

A few matters are becoming more clear. Yes, we were stunned at the $700 billion cash affair. Those of us who paid just a little more attention to the news now know that the total is actually approaching $8 trillion and that the credit swaps and other doodad parasites imposed on our economy amount to more than $500 trillion.

By the way, that last figure is more money than there is in the world.

We are led to believe that we dare not simply stop, but that we still need to pay it back. Otherwise, those folks who managed to take it will return and scare us even more.

We are led to believe that it was something ugly that “just happened,” that is, “just happened” like a sudden rain storm or a flood. We are led to believe that those who profited so much cannot really be expected to repay the larceny extracted during their schemes. We are led to believe that the same thing would have happened no matter who was in charge of the country. We are even led to believe that the whole business actually has very little to do with us, that it is a problem inhabited by pain and recovery only for the stratospheric elite.

There is a storm coming.

Remember the endless discussion during the most violent period of the Iraq invasion? "Gosh, is it a civil war or not?" The new version addresses whether or not it is a recession, or, even a depression, as if anyone walking on the earth here could still wonder. We may need a new, even more depressing term to describe what awaits us.

The current job loss figure is around 15,000 per day. The value of trillions of dollars worth of retirement investments is around 40% of what it was a year ago. The individual tax burden of Washington’s most recent largess amounts to around $140,000 for every taxpayer. The ninnies of the far right still explode with fractured indignity at the prospect of talking to the enemies they’ve made for us.

Just another election?

Just another correction?

Imagine holding the 23rd century history book which accounts the story of the world. Perhaps, mid way through there is a chapter describing the period of the democracies, two or three centuries around the second millennium. Place the story of the events of the last eight years toward the end of that chapter.

Now, for the “politics as usual” crowd of cynics, try to ignore it. Convince us that it amounts to no more than a wild, silly exaggeration. Just another election.

So, how are the levees? It's Pearl Harbor Day.

Fill in the holes. Exactly what could this turn into? This is an account of a similar situation as it developed in Argentina (you know, that country in South America where the ruling class were crooks):
http://seekingalpha.com/article/111315-america-s-economic-collapse-how-bad-will-it-get

The BailOut Begins

The scene: a dignified mansion in the hills of Connecticut 62

October weather had turned the color of all the tall trees along the long curving drive. The guards and the security gate of the place had been left far behind as the Rolls limousine slid silently into the covered entry way. Its privileged passenger jumped out, rushing in to meet his comrades, a boisterously grinning group of middle aged executives.

“Jerry! Come on! The meeting’s just about to start. Want a drink?” one of the well suited but already disheveled gentlemen in the massive atrium asked.

“Is Paulson already here? And, Jack. Is Jack going to be in the meeting?” the limo’s passenger asked of the laughing crowd as he joined the happy procession to the meeting room.

“Oh, yeah! Everyone’s here. We were waiting for you. Did you get those last positions posted in the market?” someone in the crowd asked.

“You betcha!” he answered jokingly. Everyone else began to laugh even more raucously. “I’m all set to go. I wanted in a couple of tasty little banks and some commodities stuff before we prime this market for the big one! Heh, heh.”

Outside a chilled autumn drizzle had begun, misting over the two dozen or so gleaming limousines in the side driveway. Chauffeurs, abandoning their automobiles, had begun to congregate in the caterer’s tent. A few of the younger ones took furtive glances at the girls who had just arrived in the caterer’s bus.

Inside, the meeting was starting. Treasury Secretary Paulson, flanked on either side by a couple of Wall Street giants, was chuckling at a quiet joke shared between them. Behind the Secretary a ceiling high panel lit up. On it were a cascade of the most recent inside trader information from the market. The attendees grew silent.

Bernake sat solemnly at the other end of the great conference table. Dignified servants rushed to fill every coffee cup and drink, pausing only to slightly rearrange the incredible bouquets. Paulson swept his hand to the side. All the staff quickly hurried out of the room, closing the door. Two Blackwater guards took their silent positions on either side of the doorway. Husky and intimidating, neither of those two faces reflected a sense of any of the events in the meeting room.

Paulson began, still chuckling. “Okay guys. Who would like a chance to participate in the, ah, saving of the economy? A show of hands, please.”

All those now seated around the table quickly raised their hands, smiling but attempting to feign a serious, concerned look.

“Very well,” Paulson continued, also pretending seriousness, “I want each of you to take your pencil and the little slip of paper in front of you and jot down what you think your fair share of this should be. Be sure to write down your name so we can be sure you get the, uh, financial help you’ll need to, uh, well, you know, save the economy.”

Again, the room filled with laughter. The stock market moguls began to write, all the while looking suspiciously at each other. Most of them held their hand to block any possible view of their papers by those sitting next to them. Almost all at once, everyone present folded the little slips and placed them in a basket being passed around.

Bernanke rose, tapping his water glass as if to propose a toast. “Some of you may have noticed that I have five extra slips here at my chair.” All eyes greedily shot toward the Federal Reserve Chairman. “Hank and I have a special surprise. We all know that the drama of our credit tantrum is what made this possible, and, right now, Hank and I would like to express our special thanks to a few of you who really got involved with our dog and pony show.”

The Federal Reserve boss droned on, “We know that you could have refused all those nasty little interviews with the media hacks. We also know that those of you who actually submitted yourselves to those ugly questions could have just lumbered through it. Well, in some cases those interviews were truly works of art! All those troubled “deer in the headlights” looks, the smiles of desperate optimism and the loosened ties were sheer mastery. You guys terrified the whole world with your performance! Bravo! Bravo!”

“For you, we have a extra bonus! Right now, I am writing down your names and yet another amount of bail out cash in addition to what you’ve already asked for. Everyone! Everyone! How about a big round of applause for the actors in our midst?” the Reserve Chairman beamed.

“You know who you are! Barry, Steve -- stand up! Josh, Bill, Mikey! These are the boys who drove this baby home! Big round of applause! Big round of applause!” the Chairman continued, folding the extra five slips of paper and ceremoniously dropping them into the basket.

One of the honored interjected his own praise. “Hank, annihilating your old Goldman Sachs foe at Lehman was a stroke of genius! That scared the crap out of anyone who might have seen through our other antics. A big hand for Hank! A big hand!”

Paulson, bowing and still clapping, made his way to Bernanke’s end of the table. Taking the basket, he went to a small door at the side of the room. “We’ll have the results of our, uh, work here in a few minutes. My Treasury people are issuing the credit vouchers right now.”

Returning to his seat, he glanced over his shoulder at the trading board behind him. The cascade of stock prices had already grown a hint of positive trends. A moment later all the bail out issues had been posted. He rose again, this time turning to look at the results. “Okay. We still have four-hundred- twenty-seven billion of the original seven-hundred.” Every face at the table was now locked onto the Treasury Secretary. “So,” he continued, pausing for effect, “let’s have some fun!”

Paulson and everyone else roared with laughter. “We, ahem, still have to decide the ‘quick and the dead’ out there among all those little banks. Anybody got any scores to settle?”

Instantly, all those at the table rushed to raise their hands. One particular man was frantically waving his arm back and forth.

“Okay, Larry. You look like you’re ready to go. I assume you would like to make a call to Quicksilver National in Cleveland. Go ahead! Get even with that little ingrate!”

Larry was already punching in the numbers on the elaborate telephone at his seat. He toggled to the speaker phone. A pleasant woman’s voice answered. “Quicksilver National. How may I direct your call?”

Larry, struggling to control his glee, answered quietly. “The bank president, please.”

The receptionist answered politely. “I’ll transfer you to his office. Thank you for calling Quicksilver.”

The Treasury Secretary quietly held his finger to his lips. “Quiet everyone. Quiet.”

Another woman’s pleasant voice answered. “President’s office. This is Ms. Mayhew. How may I help you?”

Larry, now almost out of control, stumbled ahead. “This is Lawrence Kashbague from Kashbague and Scrape. I need to speak with Mr. Tumblethorpe.”

The voice responded, “Mr. Tumblethorpe is in a meeting at the moment. Can I relay a message to him or, perhaps direct your call to someone else?”

“No, I need to speak with Tumblethorpe himself. This is an urgent call. Please slip him a note and tell him I’m on the line. Tell him I’ve got some important news for him.”

The crowd around the table struggled to swallow their guffaws.

After a few moments, the bank president was on the line. “Yes? Mr. Kashbague?”

Larry attacked. “Tumblethorpe! How’s your begging coming along? Did you manage to swindle anyone out of any cash or is Quicksilver still only a couple of hours from collapsing?”

The voice on the line was surprised. “I didn’t expect to hear from you, Kashbague. What do you want?”

“I want to buy your bank, asshole! I’m sitting in a, ah, special meeting with the bail out on a trading board in front of me. I’m offering you a hundred-seventy-six million for Quicksilver. Is that enough to bail it out?” Larry laughed.

Tumblethorpe, obviously shocked, stammered for a moment, then answered. “Well, we’ve been asking three hundred-forty-five million, but no one has any money. A hundred-seventy-six is awfully low. I’m not sure we can do that.”

Larry shot back, “Okay. Just ride the bastard all the way down, then! This is the last chance you’ll get. That’s a fact! Heh. Heh. You can take that to the bank, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“Where did you get that kind of money, Kashbague?” Tumblethorpe asked.

“Doesn’t matter, loser.” Larry fired back. “It’s a hundred-seventy-six or nothin’. Take it or leave it.” The others attending the meeting could barely contain themselves. “Make up your mind. You want it or not?”

After a pause in the conversation, Tumblethorpe’s shaky voice returned. “I, uh, guess I’ll take it. I mean my shareholders will, ah, ...”

Larry shot back. “Done! There is one other small matter, Tumblethorpe. That hot teenage daughter of yours. She’s got to marry my boy.” The efforts to maintain silence at the conference table now fell apart.

Tumblethorpe’s voice, now thoroughly shaken, finally returned. “You’re crazy! Who else is there? I hear voices.”

“Yes or no. What do you want? You think that daughter of yours will have a nice life with a washed out ex-con for a bankrupt father?” Larry continued to press.

“Oh God. What am I doing?” Tumblethorpe struggled. Stammering, he continued. “Okay. You’ve got me, Kashbague. Take it. Take it all! Take Melinda!”

“We’ll be talking.” Kashbague added ominously, chuckling. He hung up. The entire table exploded with violent, hysterical laughter and back slapping.

When the roar subsided, Paulson again rose, asking, “Okay, who wants to go next?”