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"The bailout is bullshit. You broke it, you bought it."

Wed, 01/21/2009 - 2:43am — Randall Kohn



(The YouTube title for this vid is NYC Wall St. Bailout Protest 25 September 2008. Did you see it on the teebee? Me neither. But it strongly suggests that the consensus on TARP outside the Village is at least as strong as the consensus inside - just in the opposite direction.



This video was linked to from the very lengthy comments area for a kos (sorry 'bout that!) post authored yesterday by a famed economics blogger from across the sea:

Oh boy - TARP was not necessary and it's a trillion dollar robbery



by Jerome a Paris

In this post Mr. Paris states what we all know but which the Village simply will not tell us:

Nationalisation is the solution



The current banking system is terminally bankrupt. Banks today will not lend, even to sound businesses, even if you give them the money to do so. So you have to compel them to lend. Banks (or more precisely, their shareholders, management and creditors) should not be saved: they should be repsectively wiped out, fired and made to take their losses. The banking infrastructure (including most employees, which had little or no responsibility in the crisis) can be diverted from its prior uses towards those now determined by government as part of the mopping up exercise of the hole that the very banking system created.



Financiers are part of the problem, not part of the solution, right now. Don't save them. But save the boring, utility bits of banks. Banks will not do that on their own. Government has to force them. Urgently.

Also in the comments was a subthread discussing whether TARP prevented a bank run or whether it didn't do a fuckin' thing. It's worth reading for a look at how everyday Americans with no financial expertise have figured it all out. One commenter in particular, Brooke in Seattle, explains why she can't withdraw money from the bank even with TARP's "help":

But there's a negative balance in my account because I haven't had a job in two years. And that is the real reason banks won't lend -- no jobs.



There are too many people who actually NEED the money but have no jobs to pay back a loan and no reasonable hope that they will ever HAVE a job that will enable them to do so.

After getting static from a pro-TARP bozo (pssst...Brooke, read Corrente, we don't have anyone like that here), Brooke fires back:

You said, "Can you still go to the banks and withdraw money?" And I answered. "No. I can't."



I can't be the only loser in this country who has no job and no money in the bank. (I guess just the only one posting here. What else do I have to do?)

So there you have it: mass rage, clear thinking, and justifiable despair - all the ingredients needed to smash the capital strike and ring in New Deal II.



So which way ya gonna go, Barry? Hoover or Roosevelt? As Klaatu the alien said 58 years ago, the decision rests with you.

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It sounds like all we need are torches and pitchforks.

By elixir on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 12:50pm

The mass discontent is growing, be patient.

angry mob

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I love this job!

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Maybe U.S. automotive

By petty (not verified) on Thu, 04/02/2009 - 9:47pm

Maybe U.S. automotive industry blame themselves for all of this neither the 'world financial crisis' issue. Detroit should be making better and fuel efficient replacement car parts that people wanted to buy.

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So tell me just what the hell you intend to build

By Sarah on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 1:29pm

because that's what's going to matter in the future, not how much you can tear down in a fit of pique.

Damn, but this bitter-mob crap is stupid.

It's stupid. It's backwards. It's Bushian in its contempt for alternatives to its "course," on which it intends to "stay" until it gets its way -- whatever that may be. At the moment it looks very GOP.

Don't like the direction of the country? FIne. Work to change it.
Don't like the results of the election? Fine. Work harder for 2010 and 2012 (because Rick Noriega couldn't get elected, we have John Cornyn grandstanding again today. Think that doesn't gall me? Then think again, because that prize jackass is a target -- a motivating factor in the race to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison, who wants to be governor, and Cornyn, who thinks he wants to be the next GOP Presidential candidate from Texas, with not just Democrats but public servants, whose will and wants are to see the people of Texas better off than they are now. )

All this "pitchforks and torches" rhetoric is heartily self-satisfying -- and about as useful as tits on a steer.

—


We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

1 John 4:18

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I let Thomas Jefferson speak for me

By Aeryl on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 2:29pm

When it comes to mobs and pitchforks and revolutions.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

&

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

&

Every generation needs a new revolution

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He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond

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These times call for SIMPLIFICATION.

By Randall Kohn on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 2:39pm

We'll just have to disagree on that.

—

JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream

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j'repete: what do you mean to BUILD,

By Sarah on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 3:23pm

once you've destroyed whatever it is you're out to destroy?

Look. What is in front of us today is a Democratic President and a Democratic majority in the House and a Democratic majority in the Senate. With those advantages, what did the GOP do, over the past 8 years?

Remake the country according to their wants, without bloodshed.
Dare we be less successful than were they?

—


We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

1 John 4:18

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Well, what I'd like

By lambert on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 3:37pm

1. Single payer

2. Restoration of Constitutional government

3. HOLC

So far as I can tell, none of that is on offer from the FKD. If any one of those happens, that would be great. If they don't, we might want to think about this paragraph in Stirling's great post:

The progressive movement has come to realize that the suburban-industrial complex, and it's means of finance, do not work. There is a parallel social argument to make about the nature of carrots and sticks within the suburban-industrial complex.

What then do progressives see? What they see is that the costs of control are, in themselves unbearable. That the top-down system requires very large expenditures for carrot and stick allocation. Defense spending, wars, health insurance profits, the profits of finance, executive compensation, the environmental costs of factory farming, the costs of political campaigns, are all top-down costs. The progressive movement's ideas are simple: reduce the costs of control, and there is sufficient effort to convert the society from the petroleum top down system, to a new system. That new system will rely on decentralized and emergent structures. This is a fundamentally humanist idea: humanism argues that people can organize for the good without arbitrary and dictatorial control. Whether this is democracy, science, capitalism, art, or social good, the idea is the same: emergent structures are better and cheaper than top down structures. The second part of the idea is that it is necessary to have a core which maintains the emergent environment, but does not dictate it's results. The purpose of a modern liberal government, is to remove the very distortions that having a government creates in an economy, making it seem to most participants, that the government is invisible in their decisions.

Thus the progressive movement is the movement of ideas, and it is the most dangerous force in politics, because it has ideas. These ideas are a threat to every collector of rent in the world, because the rentalists want to collect rent, but do not want to provide the stabilization that rent is supposed to provide.

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"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi

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What can you build?

By Aeryl on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 3:54pm

I, personally, am not out to destroy America. I think it has already been destroyed, and all we're doing is fighting over the ashes. So, no building material left.

And we wouldn't really need to build anything. Even if there is revolution, the structures outlined in the Constitution could survive relatively intact. That's the foundation stone of our country, and any revolutions I see myself being a part of, are against an Unconstitutional government(which this one is, IMO, no matter how democratically elected it was), so I see it as fighting to restore the Constitution, not tear it down.

We just need to throw all the bastards out. There will always be more to take their place. And after a revolution, maybe they will behave for a little while.

—

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond

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No inclination to write a position paper today.

By Randall Kohn on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 2:44am

Maybe some other day.

—

JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream

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all right, here we go ...

By Sarah on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 4:30pm

you'd need a Constitutional amendment to push single-payer and HOLC successfully.

Is that what we want to build?

The alternative is to expand Medicare to the entire populace, and I'm for that even if it does put boatloads of parasites out of work (the more of the first-deny ilk, the better IMNVHO).

Nationalizing the banks is ... problematic ... but may be the alternative the Village finally reaches consensus upon, whereas in the name of "responsibility" they all want the unions further broken.

I predict that we will have another Depression. Since this one started with two wars on hand, I don't think we can go to war somewhere else to get out of this one.

So let's see.
What would I build?

A nation where equal opportunity starts with education. Public schools serve as the glue that binds a peacetime republic together, because reading and writing and arithmetic are basic skills a nation needs to survive -- and excel -- and yes, damn it, writing well is more about the spelling and the grammar and the precision of the wording than it is about the writer's self-esteem. So there's that. Then you need science to reinforce the understanding of how the world, on a physical and biospheric scale, works (leave faith aside a moment, and look at the physics, the chemistry, the beauty of biology. I will not argue among superstitions to determine which, if any, is superior; but I would love to see us bring up a generation of youngsters who admire George Washington Carver as much as they do LeBron James, for the sheer brilliance of achievement Carver's work toward feeding the hungry and using materials at hand in place of expensive or unobtainable materials that others used before!) so that you can indeed work with instead of against it.

Artificial fertilizers and the dead spot in the Gulf of Mexico are but one example of the kind of stuff I see us able to overturn, if we get to work.

Build a nation where we build what we use.

Build a nation where we take care of ourselves and our neighbors as a community, rather than as a selfish mob of uncoordinated, bigoted and short-sighted grabbers.

Build a nation where thinking is as applauded as slam-dunking.
Build a nation where thoughtful inquiry and experimentation is as welcome as evangelistic rhetoric, or more so.
Build a nation where we really do believe, and act as if we believe, that all are created equal.

How about that, for a start?

My preference in Constitutional amendments?
Let's see. First, we do away with corporate personhood.
Second, we pass an Equal Rights Amendment.
Third, we extend Medicare to everybody.

That's enough for four years, isn't it?

—


We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

1 John 4:18

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I support all of this

By Aeryl on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 4:50pm

And would like to see it happen. I, along with everyone, will work our hardest to ensure these things happen.

I just have zero faith in it happening, unless we make with the torches and pitchforks.

—

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond

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Say wha???

By a little night ... on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 12:43am

"you'd need a Constitutional amendment to push single-payer and HOLC successfully."

???

Then you say:

"The alternative is to expand Medicare to the entire populace"

Isn't that single-payer? How does it (or HOLC) require a constitutional amendment?

This is something I haven't seen raised before and I'd really like to know what you're thinking.

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We can't afford not to have single-payer!

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What if we don't have time for the pitchforks and

By Sarah on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 5:38pm

torches?

What if we have waited too long already? The layoffs are coming hard and fast all across the US now. It's time the layoffs extended into Wall Street and the insurance industry. Put the parasites out of a job first and most.

Do we in the US build anything anymore? Do we build a fuel-efficient car? From what I can tell by checking the manufacturers' web sites, we've come a long way in the wrong direction from where we were in 1989, or even 1984 (K-Cars, anybody remember those? The first whole line of cars in Detroit in more than 50 years that didn't include a six-cylinder or V-8 motor? Yeah. Oh, btw, that was Chrysler Corporation.)

Do we build an HDTV set? Um, not from scratch.

Do we build a PC or laptop? Ditto the HDTV. Also, cell phones. Overseas components and assembly. Hmm. Wonder why we can't build them here and save the shipping?

Do we make cloth? Well, actually, some. In Littlefield, Texas, there's a denim plant; but we just got the news a few days ago they're cutting back about 100 jobs at that plant.

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We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

1 John 4:18

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Now THIS is a damn GOOD question.

By Randall Kohn on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 2:52am

And rather than answer it (since I can't), I'd like to expand on it:

What if our deindustrialization had a second purpose, aside from the obvious one of driving our wages into the ground?

What if the ULTIMATE intention was to destroy the manual laboring classes ALTOGETHER, so that we no longer had the PHYSICAL CAPACITY to resist our oppressors????

Naaah...they couldn't be THAT evil, could they?

—

JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream

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I was at that rally!

By a little night ... on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 12:49am

It was organized over about a 24-hour period by the formidable NYC Central Labor Council. Our Unions get great turnout on short notice!

I'll have to see if I'm in the video...

Pictures here.

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We can't afford not to have single-payer!

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Or maybe not...

By a little night ... on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 12:55am

Now that I've looked at the video, it must be another rally later in the day. (I seem to recall that there was one in the evening that day.)

Ours had even more people!

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We can't afford not to have single-payer!

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