So forget the ants from Pi. You know, the ones that produced the stock-market-predicting, answer-to-life-having goo? Ya those. They’re so a decade ago. All you need now to predict the stock market is Charlie Sheen’s #winning and what Justin Bieber is eating for lunch.
If you’re not watching Fareed Zakaria’s program on CNN (or on Podcast :), you’re missing out on what we all lament news programs should be like when we watch The Daily Show rip apart the bobble-heads and noise-chambers of Fox and MSNBC.
With all of the Obama economic plan-talk, how come no one is framing these issues as the failures of Friedmanite economic theory vs. the benefits of Keynsian economic theory? We have already argued Keynes vs. Friedman in the public sphere and we seem to have to come to agree to disagree – split along party lines of course. Only now there are quite a few Republicans that seem to see the light of Obama’s plan. Will they now renounce Friedman?
It seems like everyone in the media is dissecting Obama’s plan and wondering if we’ll be able to pay it back. Haven’t democrats proved by now that investing in public works and stimulating the economy by funding government programs is a successful formula for jump-starting the economy?
Watching the Sunday talking heads and I’m being reminded of just how severely our Fourth Estate has failed us. Back to reading Krugman and Klien…
Last Spring I read the Shock Doctrine and for a few months I was an evangelist for it’s ideas to everyone I talked to. But somehow the Shock Doctrine’s central thesis wasn’t the most present thing in my mind during this week’s financial meltdown. I guess I was so distracted by the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson saying:
(via the NYT)
that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally
I lost perspective as to what stage of the Disaster Capitalism process we’re in. I’ve read the case studies Klein set forth in her book. I understand the thesis. Yet I was one of those distracted by all of the bad news I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. It took an appearance of hers on Real Time with Bill Maher last night to get the gears turning in the right direction. Here are some interesting quotes I pulled this morning:
(via the NYT)
Most broadly, what are the long-term costs of the government’s stepping in to restore order after so many wealthy financiers became so much wealthier through what now seem like reckless bets on housing — bets now covered with public dollars?
But rest assured: the ideology [free market capitalism] will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.
And that’s what appears to be the real A-bomb of this crisis. It isn’t the failing of the storied financial institution in NYC that’s been around for over 100 years. It isn’t the surprising turn to corpotate socialism thr fat-cats are advocating for themselves and their buddies. It isn’t the federal government stepping in at the 11th-hour showing a surprising ability to do something in the face of crisis (see Katrina, Iraq, 9/11, climate crisis, foreign dependency on oil, etc.). The real A-bomb is the DEBT we’re all going to inherit. Read more from Naomi to be better prepared than me.
So I was talking with a tax attorney the other day and he was trying to convince me that Obama would tax the middle and upper-middle class more than McCain to redistribute the wealth down to the poor. This, he argued, would be putting an undue pressure on the “middle-class” therefore McCain was their real champion. Now, I think the central issue with this discussion was this person’s definition of “middle-class”. In NYC, an individual making $100k/yr lives fairly normally once you factor in ridiculous rent, price of goods and services and a responsible savings/retirement stragety – I’d argue they don’t have the capital to go balls-out too often and yet they can most likely afford to do what they want, when they want ot do it (within reason). If we look at this demographic, Obama will actually CUT their taxes by MORE than McCain. So for all of this rhetoric about Obama being a tax-and-spend liberal I have somehting to say: Taxing those that make more than $603k/yr and funding things like schools, healthcare and FEMA is change I can believe in!
(via Vanity Fair)
When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.
Read the article in full here.
