Tea Party as Shock Troops

In Naomi Kleins recent book Shock Doctrine she chronicles how economic fundamentalists take advantage of natural and economic disasters to privatize and cannibalize economies around the world. The result being windfall profits for connected multinational corporations while local control is eroded or even destroyed. Here in the US this fake Debt Ceiling crisis is starting shape up to be just such a disaster, this one instigated by these same economic fundamentalists. Their objective: to take over.

The GOP using the so called “Tea Party” as a combination anti-Obama ‘shock troops’ one moment and ‘economic terrorists’ the next, seem to be driving the entire already wobbly US economy off a cliff. First a disastrous stock market 512 point dive last week that followed the very disappointing eleventh hour agreement to avoid the artificially contrived possible US default on money it owes. Then low behold over the weekend a key conspirator in the original financial crisis, the rating agency Standards and Poors (what an appropriate name), dealt the US economy another body blow. By lowering the rating on US Gov bonds a notch, SP drove the stock market into another steep dive while feeding new energy into the politically instigated paranoia about the national debt.

Anyone who has taken even one intro course in college economics should be incensed, demoralized and depressed by this horrendous Kubuki theater by the ruling class we have just witnessed. From any point of view Obama, representing the moderate centrist wing of the ruling class, has been again taken to the cleaners by the far right, which now controls Republican Party. Obama, instead of a frontal assault on the GOP using their contrived Debt Ceiling crisis as a teaching moment for the American public (with lots of colorful graphs and charts), he accepted most if not all of his opponents politically motivated assertions – like Social Security being ‘in trouble.’ One basic fact that Obama could made known to the American public, as mind bending as a number like 14 trillion is, our national debt is being financed at a historically low interest rate. What better time to borrow to rejuvenate a flagging recovery? Yet we are going in the dead opposite direction!

And there was a very real threat of default. But it was not because the US was unable to afford to borrow. We are not like the PIGS in Europe (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) that due to market-determined high interest rates on their government issued bonds, who are in real trouble. No, it was because the Republicans decided to hold the country (maybe the whole world) ransom unless the Demos agreed to begin wholesale extirpation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This political theater exposed to the world the dysfunctional nature of American politics in which hostage taking is now fair game. It made us look like another near failed state. Confidence in the U.S. as a functional democracy must be falling all over the world.

Any objective person recognizes that our ongoing national debt must be addressed in an organized, thoughtful and rational manner. It should be approached as a practical input-output problem not a political football. Instead the solutions are being driven in the worst way by hard line ideologues and cynical power junkies who benefit whether their economic reasoning is correct or incorrect. In fact it is better if they are ‘wrong’ – and they know it.

Obama's War

The Afghan War has become increasingly unpopular as its grinding cost ($2B a week) receives belated scrutiny. Obama sticking to the promised troop reduction timetable, despite little in the way of tangible results from 'the surge', will make few happy. It will be seen as a trickle not a flow. The Army wants more time at maximum troop strength. And the public is bored shitless with the whole costly affair especially since the US is now perceived to be “broke”, overextended militarily and in headlong decline.

Obama in the heat of the 08 campaign let his hubris get out hand. Along with promising to leave Iraq, he also promised to prevail in Afghanistan and track down Osama Bin Laden - two different and only partially related objectives. To Obama’s credit Osama Bin Laden is now history and his terrorist organization with its holy war ideology seems to have been eclipsed by the "Arab Spring" which is anything but Jihadist.

But promising to succeed in Afghanistan was a big mistake. Apparently Democratic Presidents (and candidates for such) have to appear strong on military matters to avoid being called out as wimps and ‘out hawked’ by Repubs (especially ex war hero John McCain.) Yet by honoring his campaign promise (at least this one) and doubling down in Afghanistan, Obama's commitment has only made things worse not better - the classic tar baby effect (as Lyndon Johnson learned in another war in another time.)

Furthermore, the US military officers corps (who are mostly Republican-leaning and don't much trust Democratic Presidents) do not want to be a part of another war that 'was lost.' That's not exactly career building. Besides not offending the military establishment, Obama did not want to oppose the popular Gen. David Petraeus, whose 'surge' in Iraq allowed that war to be perceived as a sort of victory or at least not an abject defeat, as big a disaster as it was and still is. Also to make matters worse, Afghanistan and Pakistan are totally interlocked geopolitically (remember the Pakistan ISI originally established the Afghan Taliban.) This regional relationship wouldn't matter except Pakistan has deliverable nuclear warheads (and has been known to proliferate said technology.) Furthermore the ‘incubated virus’ of the Afghan Taliban has now come back and infected Pakistan further destabilizing an already dysfunctional country.

The original sin here was that after our war of vengeance against the Taliban for not coughing up Al Queda after the 9/11 attack actually succeeded, Bush and Co., idiots that they were, turned away and started a second even bigger war. This as we know allowed the Taliban to regroup, regain territory and support, and define the US presence as an evil occupation army not as benevolent 'nation builders' as we liket to see ourselves.

Obama should have run as a total anti-war candidate and offered to redirect all or part of the money being spent there on military operations instead on making Afghanistan a showcase example of what can be done with a failed Muslim state. And if it was too late for that, then cut our losses and get the hell out– after all it was Bush’s war, not Obama's yet. He still would have beat McCain. Remember in those days the Repubs were still being blamed for the economy then in a full nosedive.

Now he’s stuck. If he pulls out too fast and Afghanistan and/or Pakistan plunges into chaos and/or the Taliban take over again after ten years heavy fighting, many lives lost and something approaching half a trillion dollars pissed away, it will certainly be a post-mortal victory for Osama Bin Laden. Yet with all attention now fixed on “the Deficit” and how to reduce it, how can he afford to stay? Plus the original reason for invading them has been 'deep sixed' and the remnants of his organization run out of the country. The Graveyard of Empires indeed…

Is there any consequence to always being wrong?

There is seems to be no consequence to being dead wrong if you’re a Republican. The Bush II years were an unmitigated disaster any way you look at it: two brutally expensive still unpaid for and still both ongoing wars; failing to ‘apprehend’ Osama Bin Laden); running the federal debt through roof (in which the Debt Ceiling was routinely raised with no comment); the rerun of an already discredited idea -“supply side” economics (lowering tax rates does not lead to more aggregate tax revenues from increased investment); a deregulatory landscape free-for-all especially in the financial sector resulting in a world wide financial credit paralysis which in turn triggered a deep recession nearly as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s (which we are still wallowing in.)

Yet somehow through a mix of right wing radio and Fox media blitzes, a gullible and easily distracted public, and a fat passel of lies and world class dissembling by seasoned Repub pols, all this has allowed the Republican Party to somehow miraculously survive to fight another day.

Blown out big time in the 2008 election at all levels, the Repubs regrouped especially in the Senate, and cornered they bared their long knives. They misused and abused the old boy Senate rules especially the veritable old filibuster rule to paralyze legislation and political appointments. Result: legislation that did survive was so watered down and gutless that many Obama supporters lost faith. One important example was the critical stimulus package intended to pump some air back into the deflated economy which was nearly a flat tire by early 2009. Tried and proven Keynesian counter-cyclical policy had worked for decades. Consequently most mainstream economists urged a robust and targeted stimulus package but all we got was a diffuse and poorly aimed one badly undermined by Republicanesque tax cuts.

Obama is no FDR. At that pivotal point he did not sense the need to rally the nation. Instead he tried to deal with the devil, the devil being the Repubs collectively. The stimulus package of 2009 after lots of fanfare did not have the bite nor the scale it needed (and it did escape notice that far more was done to save the broken banks which through their own greed and irresponsibility had reluctantly and humiliatingly required a bailout.) In any case we are now all paying for that the inadequate first stimulus package. We still have nearly 9% official unemployment a year and half later, and the American people are totally demoralized. The aftermath of the real estate bubble, which drove the entire economy for most of 2000s, is a ravaged landscape of foreclosure-riddled ghost towns, lost dreams and personal bankruptcies. Yet in DC all attention is now suddenly turned from the continuing effects of the biggest downturn since the 1930s to the perennial problem of the national deficit.

But what is forgotten in all the posturing over the ‘unsustainability of the entitlements’ and the 'over extension of the welfare state' is that the recession itself causes the deficit it to increase ever faster. Out of work people pay less taxes, buy less and thus feed negative energy into the recessionary cycle. Repubs lied about the effectiveness of the first stimulus insisting it was flop. It was a flop in terms of theater but not in terms of actually producing a reversal in the downturn and mild positive numbers in the economic indicators. But most Americans saw little tangible evidence in their daily lives as the economy only very slowly came back to life.

And into that breach wades the hypocritical, intellectually dishonest, demagogic (while using the word on the Demos), opportunistic bastards known as the GOP especially their young guns such as House member Paul Ryan. Now with hotheads and airheads of the so-called Tea Party faction behind them, the GOP is threatening to blow up the entire global economy by refusing to legally raise the debt ceiling on money already legally allocated if they don't get their way. These fuckers are incredible! These teabagging assholes think that the worse case is simply some Ayn Randian/Grover Norquest wet dream: a shrinking and then drowning of what’s left of the US's rather limited "welfare state" in the proverbial bathtub.

The problems is, like the gangsters that they are, the Repubs have discovered extortion works! Having gotten away with it twice before, they believe the third time's in the bag. First, in late 2008 they refused to vote for retaining the middle class tax rate (which if eliminated would have kicked the already weak recovery into reverse) unless they kept their Bush II engineered budget busting lowered tax rate for the very rich (which Obama eventually caved in on.) Then they held up the badly overdue 2011 budget until lots of painful (and recession exacerbating) cuts in the 12% slice of discretionary spending was reduced (which did zilch to fix the overall deficit problem.) Now they want to use that same perverse leverage on the routine (and unpleasant) raising of the debt ceiling.

Everyone including the dimmest Repub House backbencher knows that all hell will break loose if the US defaults (or seems like might default) on its long running debt. For starters the interest on Federal Treasury bonds will rise and counter productively increase the national debt itself, not to mention the dislocation and chaos if checks to pensioners, contractors and government workers stopped flowing. And of course the stock and bond market could weird out big time as well as the already unstable commodity markets. And if the US sneezes the hold world economy catches a cold or worse. Of course it’s a game of chicken and no one (except the Pee Party nuts) wants to actually drive the car off the cliff or be blamed for said car landing on said rocks.

Remember the one thing about the Repubs that always appeals to the average overextended American is the Repubs (irresponsible and demagogic) anti-tax policy. It is their ace-in-the-hole, their tactic for all seasons, their ever-popular standby carrot ‘n stick. But will this continue to work forever? The old bait 'n switch - offer to lower everyone's taxes but then mainly reduce taxes on the already shamelessly financially porcine.

But they unlike the Demos the Repubs also do service their base, a base that consists of hodgepodge of disparate subcultures. You have the anti-abortion zealots, the 2^nd Amendment gun rights fanatics and now the stronger than ever Ayn Ryan worshiping teabagger/Libertarian ideologues. Plus there is their real base: the Fortune 500 corporations with their army of lobbyists and of course those of the very rich, the sociopathic crime families who are completely free of any debilitating social or environmental conscience.

But the Repub base is not enough to carry them over the line electorally in many important areas of the country. They must appeal to the called “independents” - the perpetually undecided, the distracted, the apolitical, the apathetic (who often hide behind a facade of cool cynicism.) The tired old refrain “taxes are too high” and “the Democratic Party led government wastes your money and will raise taxes”, "tax and spend liberals' are the real problem, etc, These have become tried and proven means to get these sometime voters and right leaning 'independents' off their asses and voting for Repubs. But will it work forever?

The Democrats must hold the line in this latest effort of budgetary extortion. Reasonable plans do exist, “centrist” in any reasonable political spectrum. But again Obama seems to be conceding too much in his opening position. He should be starting from as far “left” as possible in terms of our crazy right-shifted spectrum and work toward a moderate, real centrist position. And such a position already exists in the (unfortunately named) Peoples Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It contains reasonable adjustment of tax policy so as to reinstate what worked in the past along with a healthy trimming of the bloated budget military, and it would balance the budget by 2021. And it accomplice all this without butchering the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s Medicare/Medicaid programs.

The only antidote for Republican poison is a robust counter proposal that solves real problems and takes on the crushing corporatist state institutions that are bleeding us dry and dragging us into the Third World, ‘banana republic’ status. Here's hoping we will see a new more combative Obama. The American people, that is those who are not already lost to tin-hatted delusion, would respond to forceful leadership at this crucial junction in US history.

The American Middle Class are Chumps

How does the Republican Party so effectively bamboozle the middle class? As a political party they are not their friend. The Republicans do everything possible to reduce the numbers of their own supporters. But the chumps keep coming back for more. Republicans hate unions which bring middle class wages to blue-collar workers. They despise safety nets such as unemployment insurance or especially European-type income floors that keeps people falling into the abyss of full homelessness. They are fully supportive of off-shoring jobs ( as well as corporate profits to avoid taxes.) First it was manufacturing and now we see technical/clerical jobs going to low wage countries. Yet millions every election buy the same bogus line of bullshit hook line and sinker - to whit everything that is wrong with the US is somehow the fault of “The Liberals” and “Big Government.” In fact some of the more militant members of the hard core Republican loyalist middle class recently went on the war path bringing their guns and wearing silly colonial outfit to town hall meetings, some even threatening invocation of “Second Amendment rights”, armed insurrection, when a the Democrats were merely trying to repair a badly broken, budget busting health care system. What in the hell is going on? Is it in the water?

We are at a strange juncture. The so-call “free market” economy, that many of us especially the Republicans hold so dear, is not delivering. Instead we are entangled in a king’s hell of a perpetual recession. Even though technically “it is over” (small GDP growth is occurring), millions are still out of work. The initial crash was so severe it verged on becoming another 1930s scale Great Depression. And it happened under again a Republican administration. Yet again the hapless Democrats inherited it and are now being blamed for it. So it now behooves the Republicans to keep it going as long as it takes to retake Congress and the White House. The fall guy Democrats were voted back in en mass in a wave of messiah-desiring fervor. The knee-deep-in-shit situation that the new administration stepped into almost guaranteed disappointment from the left and malicious second-guessing from the right, then the growing realization by the right that is was to their advantage to make things worse.

The Demos under Obama inherited quite a mess - not one but two ongoing wars, a financial system in paralysis, housings prices in free fall leading to a wave of foreclosures not seen since the 1930s, and unemployment nearing 10%. And to make matters supremely worse due to the abject failure of Republican driven “supply side” econ theory, government debt was already before the recession at astronomical levels. Recall the notion behind Reaganian ‘SS Economics’ is that if we lower taxes, there will be adequate new investment and thus new tax revenues generated that it will actually compensate for the lost revenue from the lowered taxes. This especially presumably applied if the taxes are lowered for the investor class: the upper income tiers, millionaires and billionaires. The cake and eat, too plan didn’t fucking work! Ask David Stockman, Reagan’s head of OMB. The deficit skyrocketed in the Reagan years. The other net result was a massive retribution of wealth upwards.

So as we know the Democrats under Bill Clinton, ever embattled by fake scandals like Whitewater and Troopergate and finally nearly impeached, managed like a good 1950s’ moderate Republican get the budget in order, and we had few good years relative to the national debt. After particularly close election and with the help of the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, enter one George W. Bush. This is the same person whose own father, George H.W. Bush, as a presidential candidate and one time moderate Republican accurately coined the term “Voodoo Economics” for this bogus and dangerous idea of cutting taxes to the wealthy to create jobs. Well “W” being his own man returned again to voodoo economics full force engaging and not one two wars (both off-budget,) a poorly designed increase in Medicare benefits and another very generous irresponsible but popular time limited tax cut for all but especially for the so called job creating upper income tiers. Supply Side was back! Result: another huge spike in the Deficit. All this is widely known.

Now here are in 2010 and Bush tax cuts are due to expire automatically. But we are still in the toilet relative to a real recovery. So expiration of the Bush tax cuts would amount to a sudden tax increase. But suddenly also again The Deficit now at is front and center, with a august presidential commissions and pundits right and left agonizing over “under funded entitlements” and other future shortfalls. Draconian changes are being proposed like cuts in middle class tax deductions, Social Security and Medicare eligibility. All aimed at the middle class. And this unbelievably still with 9.8% of the population are officially unemployed (with more not counted or working only part time.) Astonishingly the right wing of the Democratic Party and the Republicans in mass are suddenly simultaneously concerned with the dreaded Deficit but are also all or retaining a budget busting, deficit exploding, irresponsible retention of a "temporarily " lowered income taxe for all including inexplicably the very wealthy who have shown they don't fucking invest it US jobs. How do they get away with it?

In this context we have another sad spectacle of the Obama caving in on another core principle. He promised to let the budget busting counter-cyclical dysfunctional upper income tax cuts expire. But the Repubs naturally want it to all stay intact so they and their rich friends will continue to wallow in money. And they will filibuster any proposed change to the end. If the thing expires as designed everybody’s taxes go up come the come Jan 1. In the middle of a recession it would be another kick in the balls to the economy. But only for middle classes who will spend most of it, the wealthy really don’t need the money and will only speculate with it. If they were going to use it fruitfully in as trickle down supply side investment way, they would have already done it. This is class war - blatant, redistribution of income upwards. They were already rich when the tax cut hit under Bush. They had managed to accrue great wealth under the old tax code. Bush just made his friends richer! These people are motherfuckers of the first magnitude. They have driven the country into penury and then have the audacity to call Obama a “socialist” when he tries to enact minor but necessary minor rational reforms.

Obama could hold out and let the damn thing expire and take it to the people exposing on prime time the supreme hypocrisy of the Repubs. But, alas, also the federal extension on unemployment is also due to run out. And the Repubs will filibuster this one too. Both would have to be ought in the trenches with Obama using his bully pulpit to rally the masses. He would need to be a fighter not a conciliator. Even the Repubs would respect him. On both of these issues he has the majority on his side. It would be a two front war and real political gamble to let two both of these hits occur in the same time frame. But it would it could turn things around like a game-changing pass that was caught but not a “Hail Mary.” He would have reenergized the same masses that came out in 2008 and voted him in and other Demos in a near landslide. But that is not the Obama we have. We have a different guy.

The Wreckage of a Crashed Opportunity

As we pick through the post mid term election wreckage the recriminations and blame spews forth from all points of the political spectrum. While the gloating and back patting on the right commences. 'Overreach' and 'under reach' are oft used terms. Also the accusation of a ‘lack of focus’ is often thrown out (see Paul Krugman’s 11/5/10 NY Times column.) It is certainly ironic that Barack Obama would write a book titled The Audacity of Hope and would arrive on the political scene with such a resounding message of hope, and yet would show so pathetically little audacity. Month after month we watched in dismay as Obama tried to curry favor and offer humiliating compromises to his political enemies who responded by consistently moving the goal posts ever further away. It was obvious to the even the least politically astute among us that his opponents had only one thing in mind - his complete political destruction. Why someone as intelligent and politically successful would believe compromise and bipartisanship would work in this poisoned milieu will surely be hashed over by future historians.

If one side stops playing by the rules and begins misusing traditional Senatorial prerogatives such as the filibuster or the right for a single senator to hold up legislation or routinely blocking all executive appointments or refusing to even pretend to negotiate, why would the other side not counter with similar ‘creative’ maneuvers? It is like one side is playing big league baseball dirty, firing 92mph spitballs, why would the other side responds by playing elementary school softball by the rules?

Is it simply not in Obama’s DNA to match their guile and ruthlessness? Progressives had such a rare opportunity with big Democratic party majorities in both houses of Congress, a young fresh face in the White House and the America public ready to see some fur fly. Now all that is history. An ugly backlash was spawned and was allowed to reproduce itself into a dangerous virulent reactionary surge. We watched at first in bemusement and then increasingly in alarm as his enemies used his reluctance to press his advantage against him. The whole Tea Party thing could have been nipped in the bud had the President early on, with his wit and oratorical gifts, taken these crazies to task over their absurd allegations and laughable stupidity like “death panels” and “getting the government out of my Medicare” and the mismatch between lowering taxes and (a sudden belated) concern over a soaring deficit. It would have been so easy to show the absurdity of this crap on prime time. But for whatever reason they (Obama and his advisors) left it to the left and right wing pundits, editorial writers and bloggers to fight it out. And the corporate media loved it, since the function of the corporate news media is to entertain not inform. Provocations pseudo controversies and spectacles, like the early yell-fest tea bagger/party town hall meeting confrontations, were grist for their ‘infortainment’ mills. And the GOP biggies egged em on, some even joining in. When something is a boldface lie it should be the media’s job to expose not let it fester and evolve into a legitimate “point of view.” This is wrong and it is undermining are whole system.

Repubs have become a shrill but appealing one trick pony with a simple syllogism: taxes = bad, taxes = government, therefore government = bad. As political formation they have mutated into something far worse than simply the old GOP of the past, a party representing the American haut bourgeoisie and it’s small town wannabes. They now have become of party of the proudly ignorant, the staunchly anti-intellectual and the covertly racist, demanding we follow a path that will drive our country even faster downhill toward second tier world economic status. And the resulting public reaction to increased impoverishment could well trigger some very grim times indeed. Remember what happened to the democratic German Weimar Republic of the 1920’s.

The most ill informed and ideologically blinded now have the wind at their backs. Yet they are so full of shit on so many levels it is difficult to keep track. Some of the absurdities they believe are breathtakingly stark such as:

• Darwin’s theory of evolution can be easily called into question by religious theology.
• Global warming is a world-historical hoax and research on it is a scam mainly driven by the “liberal” scientific community seeking cushy government grants.
• Environmental protections should always and at all times be resisted.
• Capitalism works best without any restraints whatsoever.
• Lowering taxes especially for the very rich always results in aggregate economic expansion.
• The US military budget is sacrosanct.
• The deficit only matters with regard to entitlements.
• Unpaid-for wars and lowering government revenues through tax cuts can be ignored as a cause for a growing deficit.
• Our health care system was fine before “Obamacare” was enacted and needed only minor tinkering.
• Proposed ‘end of life counseling’ paid for by Medicare = Death Panels.
• The 2009 stimulus package failed to produce any jobs.
• The bank bailout of 2008 was the Obama Administration’s idea.
• Barack Omama is a socialist and/or Muslim and/or a Marxist and not a US citizen.

What do you do when your debating opponents who have their own bogus belief structure unfounded on reality? You can only debate something if certain rational ground rules are agreed upon, one of them being neither side is entitled to his or her own facts.

We can only hope that the Obama does not fall prey to the idea that further capitulation will help win him a second term. Somehow a popular counterweight of concern, anger and practical aggressiveness has to take hold or we are all destined for a collective slide into some new, awful reality.

A Fine Mess

Stan Laural on occasion would proclaim “Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Ollie.” Well we are on a whole new level of ‘fine messes.’ It involves a confluence of two globalized processes that are maliciously feeding off of each other bringing ever day closer to the point of no return. Capitalism, our preferred mode of production and distribution is seriously malfunctioning. And at the same time we face the looming catastrophe of global climate change with unknown consequences. These two interlocking crisis’s besiege and confuse us and lead many into a deadly combination of denial and toward embracing reactionary political and cultural ideologies. Simplistic dogmas in both religion and economics are becoming increasingly appealing to masses of the poorly educated and semi-literate. Both in the US and in the Muslim world, our quasi-adversary, religio-political demagogues allied with opportunistic political parties offer easy, simple and very dangerously wrong solutions from 10th Century holy war to 19th Century lassiez faire capitalism. Despite an abundance of well-researched books, periodicals and Internet blogs, serious objective thinkers seem powerless to permeate this horrendous confluence of ignorance and rigid dogma.


Respected scientists worldwide plaintively warn us that we are irreversibly damaging our biosphere with runaway industrialism, yet nothing substantive is done with the US being the leading recalcitrant. In fact in the US an entire political party has based its platform on almost total denial. Industrialism that seemed to have given us so much has now reached a point of seriously diminishing returns. But a ruling class of billionaires and multi-millionaires, who continue to financially benefit handsomely from this state of affairs and control powerful interlocking corporate interests, conspire in a multitude of ways to keep things rolling right along (or more recently just sputtering along as a nasty global recession lingers.) And so we slither toward the dreaded point of no return in which self-perpetuating feedback loops become unstoppable. This while most of world’s population blithely contends with business as usual. This ‘business as usual’ ranges from simply survival all the way up the food chain where the comfortable and well fed but existentially dissatisfied are absorbed in varying degrees of banal but expensive forms of avaricious competition and conspicuous consumption.


To make matters worse an ill-fitting frame of reference, is constantly reinforced through a hegemonic, seamless 24/7 corporate owned media. Its dependence on advertising profits degrades the news with endless spectacle and allows for precious little real information. Providing understanding and clarification of complex issues is left to an underground of alternative sources. Yet on some visceral level everyone feels things are coming apart at the seams. A sense of hopelessness, resignation and cynicism reigns. With our beloved capitalist mode of production bogged down with overcapacity and under investment and unemployment at record levels, resorting to the usual materialistic consumerist solutions becomes ever more out of most people’s reach. ‘Shopping to the point of dropping’ is now as out of fashion as the leisure suit.


And a hapless president watches as his party now devoid of credibility despite significant achievements fall prey to a pack of fools without answers or even common sense, and they move ever closer toward retaking the levers of legislative power. The ensuing political dialogue is led by the some of the most intellectually dishonest, disingenuous and opportunistic individuals ever to suck air. Analysis using the best science, statistics and objectivity is ghettoized and pilloried as propaganda while the real propagandists commandeer a vast interlocking array of electronic and print media.


Suggestions of rationale approaches or even comprehension of these two interconnected world-historical emergencies - economic and environmental, rarely see the light day. Too many wars and too many individual acts of violent desperation cloud our collective mind and consume our national budget. And many are direct results, “blowback”, from previous geopolitical blunders. This again as hordes of the illiterate, semi-illiterate and minimally educated embrace the most retrograde versions of pre-medieval monotheistic religio-cultural traditions. Ironically as we move deeper into this new millennium the appeal of superstition and atavistic urges becomes evermore compelling. And most unconscionably here in the US a large portion of the population, presumably educated at least through the high school level, have joined into this retreat into the past with their leaders railing against science as ‘humanist’ ideology.


With the election only weeks away both parties are now engaging in the most demeaning forms of political advertising to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electorate. Complex issues are watered down to a thin gruel or else abandoned altogether. It is no wonder than many turn away from politics altogether to avoid being collaterally soiled. It is indeed an ugly spectacle. We are indeed in a Fine Mess.

Obama and the Democrats: A Fatal Under Reach?

Barack Obama (and Harry Reid leading the Demos in the Senate) seem to have frittered away a rare opportunity for real change. With their reluctant, diffident, non-confrontational, filibuster-shy approach they have achieved the worst of both worlds – virulent ire from the right and crushing of all hope on the left. On issue after issue this administration has come on too weakly and compromised too soon against a ruthless adversary that takes no prisoners: health care reform, not prosecuting the torturers in our midst, postponing real confrontation with the doomsday scenario of impending climate change, ignoring the environmentalists on the risk of offshore drilling, not reversing the Bushian Justice Dept’s draconian overreach, letting the banks call the shots on a bailout of a mess that they made, and most of all failing to robustly address the Great Recession.

Of course the rescue of the economy is still a work in progress, but it’s not going well. In early 2009 we needed a seriously large stimulus that was well designed, without gimmicks (like tax breaks) and implementing visibly useful public works projects, infrastructure overhaul and a wholesale green re-engineering of the economy. If implemented in concert with a massive “bully pulpit” campaign informing the public as to the impending global disaster of climate change, Obama could have produced the public support necessary to hold off the opposition. But no, we got a typical half-measure (even though the numbers seemed large) that satisfied no one.

That said, please don’t vote for a Republican as a protest of the Obama administration’s disappointing performance thus far. As bad as the Democrats are we must support them. A return of the Repubs by their attaining a majority in either house of Congress will be an unmitigated disaster. They have no answers!

The Bushian dead-enders, the racists, the hardcore right, libertarian ideologues and the Repubs in Congress will hate and oppose Obama whatever he does. And an organized Fox Channel/hate AM radio supported, loud, ugly, ‘tea party’ type backlash was inevitable. Whatever was proposed by the Democrats, be it tepid ‘boiler plate’ moderate Republican programs (as it appears to be), or a mildly reformist agenda (as it could have been) or a true break with the past (which was possible), the right would have been livid with rage.

But ask yourself where would we be if the McCain/Palin “team” had gotten in? John McCain had no plan at all for an economy that had just plunged off a cliff (in fact even he admits he dislikes economics.) Look at him now as he skidaddles to the extreme right shamelessly abandoning all previous reasonable positions (climate legislation, immigration, campaign finance) to save his butt. We might have had more budget busting wars, though. And Sarah Palin (one heartbeat from the Presidency) is a certified airhead who resonates only with others of her ilk. To everyone else she is either a dangerous demagogue or a broad (excuse the pun) target for derision.

Recall that by January 20, 2008, Inauguration Day, the US economy was in full free fall. Remember the entire banking sector had seized up and we all were relying on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (a ‘liberal Democrat’ FDR Depression Era reform) to keep our bank’s doors open. Unemployment was in vertical ascent, the auto industry was a basket case and most of us our houses had lost 1/3 of their value.

Now less than two years later things still suck but they suck a little less. Or maybe it’s worse in the sense that we now all of us are thoroughly disabused of any ‘audacity of hope’ campaign bullshit. Obama’s corporate alignments and abandonment of his base has won him enemies on all sides and few allies as Yeatsian centrifugal force sets in.

The fight in Congress now should be over another major stimulus package as we seem to be falling back into the dreaded ‘double dip.’ But it’s not. That battle is already lost due to the widely held perception is that the first $830 billion was a big fat flopperoo. Why throw good money (we don’t even have) after bad? The Repubs, of course, fuel this belief. But what was avoided will never be known. And how bad it might have been is simply unknowable. It’s impossible to prove a negative. But it certainly didn’t fix things entirely. As most economists predicted it was too small. The typical Obamaian reluctance to swing for the fences is now biting him and his party in the ass.

The Republican Party’s plan is simple. They want things to get even worse. They offer no credible plan for the economy other than to further sabotage of the Democrat’s agenda through recalcitrance. They can only drag out their tired old warhorses: “more tax cuts” and “cutbacks in entitlements.” But it’s even uglier than that - they want to retain the budget busting tax cuts put in by Bush for millionaires and billionaires, tax cuts that didn’t do jack shit for the economy. It only fed cybermoney into a feeding frenzy of disastrous financial speculation that almost brought down the whole global banking structure. The big buck buckaroos won’t invest their money in new factories and jobs in the US. Forget it! Their money earns greater returns in firms that offshore manufacturing by availing themselves of cheap labor and environmental law free zones.

In the last great economic downturn the FDR administration reluctantly adopted the theories of John Maynard Keynes. Once that happened the Great Depression became significantly less onerous. Keynesian fiscal policy is the idea that government should makes up for inadequate aggregate demand during downturns in the “business cycle” by deficit spending. And then repay the deficit by taxing it back during the upswings. The old ‘priming of the pump.’ This policy was dominate and not even questioned by either party up until the 1980’s. Then something called ‘supply side’ economics came on the scene. It is the disreputable cousin of them more academically respectable Monetary Theory. Monetary theory is the ideological adversary of Keynesian theory favored by conservatives. All of this is tied into the rise of something called neoliberalism, which actually negates ‘liberalism’ as understood by most people.

For a number of reasons Keynesian theory fell out favor by the late 1970s, one reason being that it seemed to be failing. Something called ‘stagflation’ had set in. During the heyday of Keynesian theory it was normally accepted that inflation was a tradeoff for growth. As the government spends money, the demand for goods and services would sometimes outstrip supply and force prices up - hence inflation. But at least unemployment was tolerably low even as prices crept upwards. But in the late 1970’s, the hapless Jimmy Carter years, we experienced both flattening growth along with inflation. Energy costs (mainly oil) went through the roof and was probably the main culprit but the anti-government spending ‘monetarists’ and their allies on the right, the flakier ‘supply siders’ (AKA “voodoo economics”) advocates stepped into the breach. The ‘supply siders’ purport to believe in a notion long since discredited, “Says Law”, that supply creates its own demand. Following from this they (pretend) to believe in the ever appealing but manifestly erroneous idea that if you lower taxes the amount of economic activity generated, the supply side, will create enough demand and thus enough economic growth will occur to compensate for the lost tax revenues. But unfortunately it doesn’t work!

The Republican, Ronald Reagan (and later his imitator, Bush II) lovingly embraced this bogus concept and as president(s) implemented it – result massive, bone crushing deficits. The irony is that (old style moderate) Republicans always hammered the Democrats over modest Keysensian deficits, but as born again ‘supply siders” they ran the deficit through the roof. The real reason obviously is to tie the hands of successive Democratic administrations from implementing popular social spending programs – schools, health, welfare, infrastructure. And it has worked. It worked with Clinton and now it is working with Obama only on a more profoundly disastrous level. The deficit is now $13 trillion and growing. How do you public support for more spending to counter the worse recession since the 1930s with that backdrop?

The Monetarists, led by Milton Friedman, believed business cycles can be better managed by varying the money supply through the Federal Reserve – fiscal policy. They basically want the government out of the way especially regarding regulation of business. From this flows neoliberalism embraced in recent years embraced by both political parties. Also in practice both Keynesian and Monetarist principles are used, fiscal and monetary policy, to (try to) manage business cycles as both have their virtues. For one thing the Fed can pump money into the economy without going through Congress. And of course the government is always inextricably entangled in the economy through military-related spending - AKA “Military Keynesianism.” What the right is opposed to is Keynesian social spending, the very thing that mitigated the Great Depression. The Great Depression had a ‘double dip’, too (what many are afraid of now) as the FDR adminstration pulled back in government spending in 1938 due to pressure from the GOP. But the (military) Keynesianism eventually saved the day due to massive deficit spending to fight WWII.

We need another Keynesian social spending injection now but we won’t get it. The right is too influential and the most of the public have never taken Economics 101. We need another blast of deficit spending to overhaul our infrastructure and to implement climate saving ‘green technology’ on a large scale. But instead what we have forming is a political tug of war between the still employed (the majority) who have been encouraged to worry about “Obama’s deficit” (that he inherited most of it from Reagan and Bush II) and the un and underemployed who are increasingly desperate. As we cut back on spending it will get worse but it will be blamed on the Democrats. We are following the same path the Japanese took in the 1990s.

Americans seemed to be ‘ahistorical’ even regarding recent events and only respond to the siren call of the moment. Hence during crisis periods those with the least intellectual integrity and the most visceral appeal can step into the breach and rule the day. It’s sad but true from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush we have had to endure fools in times of crisis. Where do we go from here? Which well-coifed, golden tongued, empty-suit charlatan will step forward to lead us down the primrose path?

Obama Dilemma

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats


Barack Obama is now enduring a veritable blitzkrieg of criticism from all directions. The public is sore as hell whether or not they identify with any ‘left’ or ‘right’. And everyone is predicting the Democrats are going to eat it in November. By being politically a ‘centrist’ Obama has gotten himself in one king’s hell of a bind. To the average American he is a certified ‘liberal.’ But Obama is liberal only in a relative sense. He is only liberal in this crazed post-Reagan era in which the entire political spectrum has shifted mightily rightward. It’s a world in which a Ralph Nader, once known as a respected and effective moderate reformer and consumer advocate, now sounds seems like a Bolshevik. And the health care reform plan once proposed by Richard Nixon, so hated by the anyone left of Ginghas Khan, was far better than the one Obama so exhaustively achieved. Also remember it was the Republican Nixon administration that established the now reviled by the right Environmental Protection Agency. It is a time when reasonable social policies once supported by bipartisan majorities are now considered anathema. Even unemployment insurance extension, with national unemployment hovering over 9% and way over that in some states, is now being held hostage by Repubs. It is a time when many want to revoke the entirety of FDR’s legacy.

The Obama administration by being centrist has no friends. The left wing of the Democratic party or “progressives” (and which seems to includes most Demos I encounter) have either lost faith entirely or are profoundly disappointed in Obama. Many believe that Obama, with a Democratic Party majority in both houses of Congress and a resounding mandate from the people for change, has blown his opportunity. Time after time when he should have come on strong and rallied his supporters behind a definitive game-changing program, he has backed off and equivocated so as to avoid being accused of not being sufficiently ‘bi-partisan.’ Instead he kissed up to said Repubs (who righteously ignored all such untoward overtures.) The net result is that every initiative has been a watered-down disappointment - from rescueing a totally broken banking system, to stabilizing an economy in absolute freefall, to engineering reform of our greed-bound health care system. Each and ever effort has been weaker and less effective than it could have been. Is it Obama's reluctance or was it the complex, institutional nature of each crisis? We will have to let history judge. And of course what Obama has done that has worked (the economy is no longer in freefall and the health care system isn’t quite heartless) is quickly ignored in a blizzard of “what have you done for me lately’s”

The Republicans party, knowing in their hearts that Obama’s modest and tepid initiatives were necessary if the Great Recession was not to become the Second Great Depression (which may still happen), nevertheless, are attacking him full force. And refusing to participate in the legislation process pretending he is some left-wing ogre from hell. Their plan is no plan. They openly admit they only want only one thing: his political demise. And it is to be achieved through perpetual obstuctionism. Their intention is to undermine the administration’s credibility with the beleaguered and demoralized public at every turn. And they have been very effective. Their simple objective is to regain power at any cost. But as criminally irresponsible and corrupt as the Republicans are even more so than the Democrats, they are fully owned paid reps of their corporate overlords. Yet they seem sane and reasonable compared to the raging ill-informed tea-bagger stooges, ditto-heads, and useful fools of the new ‘far right.’

In any case Obama can’t catch a break. To make matters worse the centrists in the electorate, the so-called ‘independents’, don’t align politically with Obama’s actual centrist position. These so-called independents, who swing elections and whose vote the Democrats periodically pander to each election for are really not politically center at all, they are mostly proto-right wingers. And as such they are fleeing Obama like rats off the proverbial sinking ship. Many or most of these so-called independent voters are fickle, apolitical shallow thinkers who are often swayed more by personality and style than actual proposed policies. By not committing to being ‘left’ or ‘right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, they are political AC/DC’s and totally unreliable. Often they are easily bamboozled by well-crafted propaganda (‘Swiftboated’) and Internet blogger bullshit. In fact it’s these so-called “independent voters" that requires ever more grotesquely expensive advertising media campaigns (read political propaganda) by candidates.

The real centrists appear mainly as the chattering classes - the windbag pundits (such as NY Times’ David Brooks) and the professional journalists and media talking heads. They are often accused of being part of some shadowing Liberal Media Establishment conspiracy but basically they are simply well paid media personalities, celebrities basically. They simply are out to further their own careers - ideally by provocation and sensation. But paradoxically the net effect is to actually anchor things at or near the center even as they often disdain from defending Centrist Obama. And this is fine with their corporate overlords as a strong center or center-right maintains the status quo. Essentially Barack Obama has few friends in the media.

In most democracies it’s always two against one. When the left is in (not in the US so much since we have no left or even center-left political parties), the center and the right gang up on the left. They do this by carping at and discrediting the left's policies and by exaggerating and missteps or mistakes and downplaying or ignoring any successes, always waiting for the next election. And when the right is in, the center and left must work to oppose the right’s usually upper class-biased, often reactionary and demagogic programs.

And so it follows when the center is in, like the for instance the Obama administration, the right and left, attack from both flanks. Being outflanked Obama has nowhere to turn. I watched key Obama adviser, David Axelrod, field hostile questions from CNN’s Candy Kurlick (she looks like she eats too much candy.) She alternately attacked him from both directions – pro ‘progressive’ and pro ‘teabagger’. Of course Obama, as most Democrats do at election time, pretended to be more of a left/progressive than he would (or could be) in office. And the right, always ‘working the refs’ exaggerate their disdain and alarm at his so-called ‘socialist policies.’ Barack Obama might be a lot of things but he is certainly no way a socialist. If anything he is the polar opposite. He did his undergraduate work at University of Chicago, the citadel of neo lazzie faire capitalist theory, the home of Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism. In fact his economic brain trust and key appointments are either Bush holdovers – Republican Ben Bernake as head of the Federal Reserve or Wall Street friendly, such as Tim Geithner as Sec. of Treasury who is a protégé of Goldman Sachs alumni and arch neoliberal Robert Rubin, and Laurence Summers as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, who performed the same service for the Reagan administration, where this all started.


The underlying problem is that with this current global economic crash we are in uncharted territory. Which is the true boogieman? Is it Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe level of hyper- inflation? Or is it a full-on 1930’s type Second Great Depression with paralyzing levels of deflation. Even Obama’s conservative economic advisers are worried more about a deflationary double dip in a possibly economic recovery than runaway inflation. A faction no doubt is arguing for a second stimulus package as politically difficult as that may be. But conventional wisdom and intuitive inclination especially outside of the administration and economic academia is more concerned about the ever-growing monstrous US budget deficit - $13.2 trillion and counting. How can we borrow so much without triggering runaway inflation? Where is that money coming from? Who will pay it back? When will the cost of borrowing suddenly go through the roof? Already the interest alone is billions a day. And any stimulus package will kick it up even more. Yet without another stimulus to jolt the faltering recovery we may sink into a dreaded double dip. People that are still working are worried about a sudden loss in value of their money; people that are out of work are worried having suddenly having no money as their unemployment insurance runs out. And yet projections show even a greater rate of growth in the deficit as more people retire and go on Social Security and Medicare. All of this is being milked by the suddenly ‘fiscally responsible’ right. They want more than anything for Obama to fail even if many suffer in the process.

Keynesians, economists who adhere to John Maynard Keynes’ theories, which were credited with saving capitalism from the last great depression, argue that only by getting the economy growing again will the upturn be created. As economic activity increases there will be less payout of entitlements and more tax revenues. Furthermore, Keynesians worry about serious deflation setting in, something has not happened since the Great Depression. Deflation on the face of it sounds good - a lowering of prices, things get cheaper. But it is actually devastating in an aggregate sense since it re-enforces the downturn turn in business activity, since as prices falls consumption is postponed and weakened.. Some economists (see Paul Krugman in NY Times 7/12/10) believe we are already on the cusp of such a phenomenon.) But spending more when you are broke or deep in debt is counter intuitive to the public. So Republicans (and some Democrats), who were quite understanding when Ronald Reagan and GW Bush were pumping the red ink, are now suddenly ‘very concerned’ and are rallying the public against the ‘exploding deficit.’

If all goes as predicted, there will be a wholesale flushing out of Democrats come November and Obama’s program(s) such that it is(are) will come to a screeching halt. All the non-ideas and failed ideas of the Republicans will the get another chance for consideration – such as further deregulation (more oil spills, salmonella outbreaks and mine cave-ins,) lower taxes for the rich (more irresponsible speculation) wholesale cuts in entitlements (retirement at 70?), further denial of climate change (unequivocally passing the point of no return), revocation of the New Deal (privatization of of Social Security) and so on.

Maybe things have to get really bad before they can get better. Or maybe we will just have to endure and console ourselves that we had a nice a run while it lasted….

Is this what ecocide looks like?

Ecocide is defined as murder of the environment. It is now happening and its being broadcast 24/7. I consider myself someone who can steel myself to view unpleasant things if I have to. But I cannot look at another miserable, dying, oil soaked pelican such as this. The horror show coming out of the marshes and beaches comprising the Mississippi Delta and the adjacent states has become unbearable. I grew up on the west coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico so I feel a special affinity for that body of water - swimming, fishing, snorkeling (and getting sunburned) there. It is absolutely heartbreaking for 50 days and counting to see on the news the grainy live image of ugly black matter uncontrollably spewing forth cloud-like, raw petroleum that was once safely sealed a mile below the sea in a layer of solid rock now gushing out uncontrollably destined to turn huge swathes of the Gulf into dead zones and poison the largest wetland in North America.

This count of days of unabated oil flow is mounting. And it is moving Barack Obama into hapless Jimmy Carter territory. President Jimmy Carter, also a ‘centrist’ Democrat, and also one prone to listening to the centrist Washington consensus including his hawkish National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. It was Brzezinsk who no doubt encouraged him to allow the disgraced Shan of Iran into the US for medical care when Iran was on the brink of revolution. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards countered by seizing all the employees of the US embassy and keeping them for over a year, until his right wing successor, one Ronald Reagan, negotiated their release. The whole affair totally undermined the Carter presidency as the iconic image of a blindfolded captive American with the numbers of days held so far was shown daily in the national media. Every added day of captivity served to underline in the public’s mind of Carter’s profound ineptitude.

Let’s hope that does not happen to Obama. Let’s hope Obama will not be forever remembered for this monumental environmental catastrophe - that keeps getting worse. If only Obama had learned from the health care reform debacle not to bargain with the ‘corporatocacy.’ But since the whole health care reform effort, once so close to total collapse, finally passed, it was interpreted by him, his staff and the corporate media as “a success.”

Apparently those early deals and sell-outs to the corporate health insurance kingpins and pharmaceutical oligopolies was to serve as a model for the upcoming climate bill struggle in Congress. So Obama several months ago announced that he was in fact supportive of ‘offshore drilling.’ In hindsight what a monumental blunder! Already he was making nice to the Energy-Industrial Complex and the Republican (and Demo) carbon based energy troglodytes in Congress and was perversely embracing his former arch-enemies’ mantra – ‘drill, baby, drill.’ This was of course a huge disappointment to the environmentalist community who had strongly supported Obama. Obama’s appointment of Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior, who had a mixed record on environmental issues, was already been a bad sign. So it was not totally a surprise that Obama would equivocate on offshore drilling. But this typical act of ‘splitting the difference’ with his opponents on the right has now bit him on the ass big time. It has totally undercut his moral authority on this issue as he stands in his rubber boots in a huge, nasty, ever-growing puddle of crude oil mixed with salt water containing dead birds and rotting fish. Indeed he is up to his knees in it. He has truly stepped into some shit!

Had he done the right thing and continued to oppose offshore drilling as he had during his campaign for the presidency, his standing now would be so much better. Had he remained opposed to offshore drilling even as there had been no serious underwater drilling spills in US waters in over 40 years (not since Santa Barbara in 1969) and even as a majority of Americans supported offshore drilling (who foolishly believe it will lead to cheap gas at the pump), he would in so much better shape. He would have a stone solid "I told you so! to throw back at the Repubs. But now the whole thing has made him look like a fool and exposed his strategy vs. the GOP as a peremptory sell out to Big Oil. Furthermore, he simply now looks helpless as BP continues to call the shots and control the information and fails to staunch the bleeding. Sure he now can call for drilling moratoriums, etc. Sure he can now call for reorganization of the pathetically inept and corrupt Minerals Mgt. Service (why didn’t Ken Salazar clean house there as soon as he got in?) And can sympathize until he’s blue in the face with the victims of this “Korporate Katrina’ but it’s too fucking late in so many ways. Even it the oil flow is stopped tomorrow, the damage environmentally and politically is done.

Many are calling for a new Obama to rise phoenix-like from this oil sump and declare a no-holds-barred FDR style a new 100 days of job creating environmental and infrastructure overhaul in concert with a real and robust effective new energy initiative that would be a model for the entire world. Let the Tea Party fools, who will call him a socialist and a left wing radical anyway, go bananas for a good reason. Why not really kick some ass? Not just BP’s ass, the obvious target, but the whole complex network of corporate slimelords who would (and are) feeding like vultures on this dying planet and it’s population - human, plant and animal.

Let them eat oil

Let’s see if we can list all the stuff that is happening, most of it awful, and maybe see how it is all connected:

• The Gulf of Mexico is being turned into a giant oils sump due to BPs breathtaking irresponsibility and the Minerals Management Service’s ineptitude and corruption.

• The European Union (EU) is in economic disarray as the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) sink further into the muck - especially Greece.

• Unemployment in the US is back up again.
  

• The US Senate has passed some kind of financial reform – hope it has teeth.

• A new bear market is reflecting pessimism and fear.

• Thailand is near revolution (or would like to be.)

• North and South Korea are near war with a recent sinking by N. Korea of a S. Korean warship.

• The climate bill in Congress according to most environmental organizations is a dud of the first magnitude (and maybe DOA, anyway.)

Does anyone now doubt this fully industrialized phase of late monopoly capitalism is not lethal to the planet and its inhabitants? As I write this thick black crude oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate equivalent to an Exxon Valez oil spill every three days. They have no fucking idea how to stop it other than drill into it the reservoir from some other location – which will take weeks more! It is a horror show of the first order as the oils seeps into the biggest remaining wetland in the US, the Mississippi Delta, and gets into to a current that will take it to the Keys and on around encircling the entire state of Florida.


Moving right along. The European Union is in trouble. Its poorer members like Greece rode high while the whole global economy was living off of an inflated US housing marker, are now is hitting the skids. The bubble popped and trillions of euros, dollars, rubles, shekels, yens whatever vanished into cyberspace (just like your long winded email note does when your email word-processor acts up.) After all it was really never was any more than bits and bites in bank leased 'server farms.' No doubt the banks that financed Greece and the other major debtor states during the gravy years also invested in heavily in lots of BP common and preferred stock. After all BP was/is making billions in profit in 2009. The irresponsible financing of runaway expansion in the PIGS is all a part of the financial complex’s lust for easy money led by what we fondly call “Wall Street.” The banks European and worldwide are understandably in cahoots with the carbon extraction energy giants (like BP and Exxon-Mobil, Massey Coal) because they are so profitable. It is very profitable to kill a planet. When the oil corporations lobby Congress for regulatory leniency and (appallingly) subsidies they are only fronting for their real owners, the banks and investment houses.


No one really knows what the US banks are now worth. Since all of the high tech financial instruments, derivatives and various collateralized packages containing 'underwater 'mortgages are still owned by the banks and are still part of their reserves, their value is what the banks claim their value is. The big bailout that everyone resents so much merely put the US government in as co-signer on all this bad debt. Once confidence was restored between the banks, they could again return to making business as usual. With credit restored they can borrow from the Federal Reserve at nearly zero interest and buy US bonds essentially loaning money back to the government at interest. Kind of a good deal, huh? Obviously the EU is left out of this subterfuge to some extent and must support their poor sisters, like Greece, all by themselves. The EU, which mainly means Germany, is the most prosperous of the EU members but is hardly happy about the prospect. Economists say the EU crisis calls into question the whole concept of a unified Europe economy with one currency for rich and poor countries alike. Exacerbating the situation are currency speculators who make big money by ‘shorting’ (betting on the euros decline) thus making a bad situation worse by creating inflation forcing up interest rates.

The instability in Europe has had deleterious effects on the US stock market with the Dow Jones falling over a thousands points since late April – remember all the financial giants are hooked together is various ways. Also adding to the pessimism of the investor class is the fact that the Republicans have been unable to beat back the Democrat-led financial reforms since even the GOP’s own Tea Party base also wants the Wall Streets boys’ heads on poles. Also unemployment numbers went back up after months of improvement possibly indicating the 2009 stimulus may be petering out. A southward bound stock market leads to a consumer reluctance to spend, this fear of layoffs in turn actually creates said layoffs, which loops back as increased unemployment and feeds additional sell offs in the stock market. Paradoxically they in aggregate could create the dreaded ‘double dip’ they so fear. Such a self-perpetuating recessionary loop can only to be arrested by another deficit-increasing stimulus which is becoming ever more unlikely as comparisons of the US to Greece abound by both Republican and Democratic party 'deficit hawks' (see Paul Krugman and his commentators in the 5/21/10 NY Times.)

How does poor Thailand fit into all of this? Thailand is part of the global economy so times are hard there, too. Apparently the ‘Red Shirts” causing all of the turmoil are angry to the point of insurrection as a reaction to a 2006 military coup. In 2006 a putsch ousted then-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a folk hero among the urban poor, a new-money business class and millions of Thais in northeastern farming country. They’re angry and want an election. - not unreasonable. It’s a typical class struggle situation.

And then there is North and South Korea and their lingering cold war. It was temporarily alleviated by a liberal government in the South making overtures to the North. But now that the conservatives are back in power in the South, the hostility is again making a comeback. The conservatives probably got back in because of dissatisfaction with their economy's performance. North Korea, a pariah state that is the best argument against police state socialism that ever existed, is by all accounts a basket case in every respect. Whatever could be done with them as far as integration into the world order never is done and they stay outside looking in. No doubt N Korea would love to emulate “Red China’s” economic takeoff. They hate being ignored and neglected so they cause some ugly incident every so often. My guess is that it is tacit and unstated in US foreign policy circles, Demo and Repub alike, to keep them permanently out in the cold and unhappy so we will have an on-going ‘serious threat’ as an additional justification for our massive military machine which props up to some our much or our economy.


Finally, climate legislation seems to be on everybody’s back burner. But this mother of all problems is not going away because 40% Americans don’t think it’s a problem; or that the carbon based energy complex (BP et al) has more money than God to buy off Congress; or that the Senate’s Kerry Lieberman bill sucks (”Kerry Lieberman”! doesn’t that say it all?); or that the Markey Waxman bill passed by the House strips the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The beltway boys are predicting the Gulf spill will undermine passage of Climate legislation. Maybe that’s good since doing a half-assed job (like they did with the Health Care bill) might cause more harm than good. At least with health care the problem can’t be ignored and if it fails to perform it can be fixed. With climate legislation our program is as much a signal to the world as it is an effective policy. If we set up something that looks inadequate, it will take on a life of its own for better or worse.

Let’s hope this unfolding world historical disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be the catalyst for bold, robust, effective, visionary climate and energy legislation. The energy behemoths like BP now appear to the public as do the financial behemoths of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs as big, evil and greedy. Will Obama and the Demo controlled Congress respond or will they disappoint us again?

A new ragdoll to gnaw on

We need a new ragdoll to gnaw on now that health care reform legislation finally passed, although it sure is far less than it could have been. As far as I can tell it contains no real means to keep health insurance rates down. Then there was tactical surrender on the Hyde amendment so that health insurance offered on the exchanges cannot include abortion coverage. And of course meds bought through Medicare will continue to be the full non-negotiated retail price. Also it turns out the insurances companies’ punishment for dropping people when they get really sick apparently is a mere wrist slapping. But at least many more people will have some level of care so they won’t suddenly show up at the ERs around the country desperately sick and uninsured. Everyone will be able to get see a doctor early on before it’s too late. And importantly the mad dogs in the Republican Party cannot claim victory thus beginning a bloody feeding frenzy on the remains of Obama’s reform agenda.

The new ragdoll for the media’s talking heads to growl over and chew on and pull apart is now ‘financial reform.’ The big boyz on Wall Street and their hotshot lobbyists and their $1000 dollar an hour lawyers must be gobbling down piles of Adderall hoping to conjure up some fine new ideological justification for keeping their no-holds -barred Greed Arena (AKA Wall Street) up and running. (One argument might be if you are smart enough to understand some of the more esoteric financial derivatives, then you deserve to be rich.) No one regardless of their politics likes the idea of these guys emerging from the partially reconstructed ruins of a crashed world economy even richer, an economy that they brought down, especially since the taxpayers (some now unemployed and/or ex- homeowners) and their children and their children’s unborn children had to ‘front’ the banks an astronomical sum to bail them out (and to presumably 'unfreeze credit' worldwide.)

Otherwise what? Full scale global Economic Armageddon or merely a winnowing out of the losers. We will never know – until the next time. Naturally the Repubs, even as most of them voted for the bail out, are now conveniently taking a full-on lassez faire libertarian view that the banks should have been allowed to fail even if all hell broke loose as it did in the 1930s – ‘creative destruction’ and all that.

The Wall Streeters emerging from all of this richer than Crocus is like the captain of the Titanic being awarded a shiny gold medal for hitting an iceberg (or GW Bush’s handing out Freedom metals to the architects of the Iraq debacle.) It turns out the ‘masters of the universe’ combined income for 2008 is twice the size of the debt of the a now bankrupt entire country, Greece, which apparently gorged itself with now worthless bonds at the urging of its investment bankers Goldman and Sachs (see Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.) Since teabaggers and lefties alike are pissed, for once the Demos and GOP are forced to come together on something – but what? That remains to be seen.

The pols are arguing over issues that manner greatly - such as whether to reinstate Glass Stegall, an effective Great Depression era law that imposes a firewall between old fashioned commercial and freewheeling investment banks, controlling derivatives by making them more transparent and subject to monitoring, breaking up the monster banks that can bring down the entire global world capitalist order if they fail and giving financial consumers some kind of regulatory protection. Other ideas include, taxing speculation to reign in the hot money that fuels volatility in critical commodities (like oil) as well as currencies (that can bankrupt whole countries.) Another problem is the inherent corruption of paid-for bond rating services such as Standard & Poors and Moodys. Triple AAA rated bonds turned out to be actually to be triple AAA rated dogshit because the bonds’ ratings were paid for by the very outfits floating the bonds. Nice huh?

To further muddy things up the financial big boys gave lots of money to Obama’s campaign. And Obama has seen fit to staff his economic team with Goldman Sach friendly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s whose key aide is from Goldman Sachs. And of course Obama signed on to the big bank bail-out called TARP devised by ex-Goldman Sach CEO and GW Bush’s Sec of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. But now with Demos are on the move in a regulatory mood with the wind at their back, Wall Streeters have slid their bets over to the GOP side.

So with the GOP setting themselves up to carry the water for the Wall Streeters it should be interesting to see how they manage things. The populace politically right, left and center really do want the bankers reigned in (and maybe punished a little to boot, like hung from the nearest lamp post.) So far it looks like we are going to see a rerun of their health care bill strategy, that is the GOP by dicking around and stalling and undermining things in general will make sure what does emerge is a big fat toothless dogturd.

Will it work again? Will the home of the endless filibuster threat continue live on in perpetuity, the land where a democratic majority equals 41%? The American people are so seriously bifurcated that whatever intellectually dishonest, disingenuously brilliant points the Repubs make combined with whatever valid concerns they raise will be lost in windstorm of left and right oriented cable ‘news’ - hype, rabid overstatement, pundit grandstanding and spinmiester bullshit.

In any case, no one has any real answer as to how to deal with a US economy that now runs on essentially fictitious capital, where profits are made from instruments that generate monetary value but no actual utility. Increasingly the economy has become dependent on casino-like speculation driven by so called ‘markets’ (often manipulated as we see with Goldman Sachs shorting its own product.) Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63 percent of GDP. And that’s just the largest ones, what about adding in the rest? Now it’s all about finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE.) We don’t actually manufacture that much anymore. No wonder we have nearly 10% unemployment. There are few factories left. They all went east young man, Far East. From these figures, 63% of the GDP, it seems to mean the banks are ‘producing’ 2/3’s of everything. But what comprises this 63%? Aren’t these assets valued at what the banks says they are valued at and include all kinds of toxic CDOs and whatever, assets that contain ‘tranched’ that is embedded mortgages that are now ‘underwater’ but haven’t been defaulted on yet? Remember the banks weaseled out of ‘mark to market’ valuation of their assets awhile back. As far as I can see it will take a revolution to reign in these bastards, but I hope it’s not the kind the teabaggers have in mind…