Maybe Meme [dot] Com

Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess

By SpiralMan

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1847053,00.html

[Singling out Pentacostal Prosperity churches for steering the poor into indentured servitude ignores the even more vast and insidious secular and Newage variants on the same theme.

We have had Oprah pushing “The Law of Attraction” and “The Secret” to tens of millions of housewives on her TV pulpit.

We have had a religion of celebrity worshiping the beautiful, Bling slinging gangsters and saints of the music video ceremony complete the 40 ounce sacrament.

We have countless neo-hippy stoners, Buddhists, and Yogi (usually beautiful women and men with middle class parental backing) proclaiming that “The Universe will provide” to all of the less fortunate that they enlighten with their divorce from reality.

So, don’t for a minute think that the Christian pentacostals are/were the primary or only spiritual movement driving poor and middle class people to aspire to a lifestyle beyond their wages; we have a whole slew of slimy snakeoil sellers dressed up in spiritual togas, lulu lemon spandex, LVMH, and hemp doing the same goddamn thing.]

We are living history.

I’ve expected Depression 2.0 for years. Everybody had their heads in the sand, no surprise there.

I tried to profit from it for the last few years, now I’m just trying to run.

Tonight I’ll show my son the Film “Grapes of Wrath”.

Welcome to Depression 2.0

Kucinich on Protecting the public interest in any economic “bailout”

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt “de-leverages.”

Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration’s growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff? This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class. The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves. The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses. This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.

In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.

I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:
Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down:
a) resignations of management
b) givebacks of executive compensation packages
c) limitations on executive compensation
d) admission by CEO’s of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout Demands for transparencey
a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down
b) with respect to Treasury’s dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
An equity position for the taxpayers
a) some form of ownership of assets

Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
A sunset clause on the legislation

Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.

A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts

A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts

And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure. These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.

Dennis J Kucinich
www.Kucinich.us
216-252-9000 877-933-6647

It was fear, not greed, that was driving everyon’s actions”

By SpiralMan

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/business/02crisis.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=all

[Those who are fixated on the self-dealing, slimy, grasping, in other words, conscious aspects of the meltdown and the bailout have no clue at all about the spontaneity, severity and risk of acceleration of this crisis.

I will go further, and say that most of these same folks probably don’t appreciate:

A) the extent to which they themselves have personally benefited from the largesse generated through the tens of trillions of debt and 100’s of trillions of derivatives bubble, faked profits and ridiculous price-earnings ratios, and US Dollar/US military hegemony,

B) how anarchically and fiendishly complex, the seething, billions of tangled and contradictory threads (personal, corporate, national, state/provincial, and municipal governmental, pension funds, risk-seeking, risk-averse, regulatory and tax rules, regulatory and tax loopholes, national interests, anti-national interests, international solidarity, international arbitrage, etc.) that hold this system together in the form of contracts and computer programs and spreadsheets, and which somehow manage to work during ‘normal’ times, and which aggressively, acceleratedly unravel each other when there are systemic shocks.

C) that fundamentally we are in an Imperial Capital Overproduction Crisis, where the world’s wealth and the system that orchestrates its creation and circulates it, has grown too big and complex and opaque for the ownership, regulatory, and philosophical frameworks that enabled it to grow in the first place.

D) that this is a once in a lifetime crisis, like a Tsunami, that will not be quelled for long by any rescue at this point, that this tidal wave of debt deflation and derivative untangling will sweep away so much of what we are accustomed to - economically, culturally, politically and militarily, - that what follows will be almost unrecognizable from a short timeframe, and only is discernable by looking at longer national and transnational development waves of 40 years, 80 years, > 100 years, and overall patterns of colliding waves of differing strengths.  Like listening to multiple songs being sung by multiple semi-intersecting choruses that eventually crescendo into ecstasy or chaos.

E) that the economic aspects of the crisis are primary, the driver of the crisis, however, the political and military responses – class struggle/cooperation and international conflict/cooperation - will Crystallize, Dissolve, Recrystallize, Dissolve again multiple times, out of this reflecting the real or perceived relative strengths of their forces, which will also be in extreme flux.

Anyways, enough of my editorial…… I highly recommend reading the narrative of
As Credit Crisis Spiraled, Alarm Led to Action

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/business/02crisis.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=all ]