Comrade Bush's "Five Year Plan"

Igor Igorevich

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism. Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation's wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government. The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system. Washington Post

The British and American plans, though far from identical, have two common elements according to officials: injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes and guarantees of repayment for various types of loans. (...) In the rescue law passed a week ago, Congress stipulated that the Treasury must strictly limit the pay of executives in banks to which it adds capital — including provisions that ban golden parachutes and that direct the government to recover bonuses based on stated earnings that prove inaccurate. Britain’s plan also hinged on the willingness of several of the largest banks — Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC Holdings, among them — to sell preferred shares to the government. It is not clear, administration officials said, that the largest American banks would agree to this, particularly given the restrictions on executive pay. New York Times

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they ``rewrite the rules of international finance.'' ``The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,'' Berlusconi said (...). A solution to the financial crisis ``can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.'' Bloomberg

The big lesson is that the west can no longer assume the global order will be remade in its own image. For more than two centuries, the US and Europe have exercised an effortless economic, political and cultural hegemony. That era is ending. Philip Stephens - Financial Times

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Well, it appears that George W. Bush is going to nationalize American banks...

Holy Moly!

My inner Lenin is having the shivering fits.

My inner Ilyich is in stitches.

I sure never thought that it would be Dubya that would end up building Socialism.

Damn!

Isn't the world a wonderful place?

Isn't life fun?

What other planet can offer such horse shit? DS

Some post-debate analysis

"Although Obama is winning, neither he nor McCain seems to have a genuine grasp of how grave our economic situation is, how stark the prospect of a looming possible Depression. You'd never know from this evening that 5000 Dow points have been lopped since the previous debate and that those retired or near retirement have seen their portfolios crushed and have no hopes of recouping those losses in their nonproductive years. Not to mention all the job losses that the Wall Street plummet portends." James Wolcott - Vanity Fair

"Though both candidates spent a while (and it felt like longer) on the economic emergency, I didn’t feel that either’s comments advanced the discussion, or seemed equal to the gravity of the situation. Almost the first words out of McCain’s mouth were “energy independence”; almost the first words out of Obama’s were “blame deregulation”. We know, we know. Neither gave much indication that the crisis was leading them to think things through afresh; one wonders what it would take to do that." Clive Crook - Financial Times

“These days, you have to struggle,” she said. “As a kid, I used to be able to go to the movies or to the zoo. Now you can’t take your children to the zoo or go to the movies, because you’ve got to think how you’re going to put food on the table.” Snodgrass’s parents had raised four children on two modest incomes, without the ceaseless stress that she was enduring. But the two-parent family was now available only to the “very privileged.” She said that she had ten good friends; eight of them were childless or, like her, unmarried with kids. “That’s who’s middle-class now,” she said. “Two parents, two kids? That’s over. People looked out for me. These kids nowadays don’t have nobody to look out for them. You’re one week away from (a) losing your job, or (b) not having a paycheck.” George Packer - New Yorker

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Americans are so used to suffering privately in a general climate of cheerful banality, and have so little knowledge of history, that they may not realize what a potentially perilous moment we are living in.

With the world economy in spitting distance of collapsing, the lame duck President of the United States, in the process of losing two wars, has approval ratings of under thirty percent, and in an exclusively two party system, with no other alternative possible, the Congress, controlled by the opposition, has approval ratings of under twenty percent.

At this juncture, one of the objectively gravest in US history, the American people are being asked to choose for their new leader between two political dwarfs who have not managed put forward any major ideas or to suggest any meaningful, much less inspiring, path out of the situation.

This is as close to systemic failure as I can imagine.

In many extremely civilized countries this would guarantee millions of sullen, if not violent, demonstrators in the streets demanding action.

With much less cause, many countries have suffered coup d'etats.

The question would be: is inane banality and a fundamental lack of seriousness, America's fatal curse or its saving grace? DS

Into the wild blue yonder

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president. Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post

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I don't like Charles Krauthammer, but before he was a columnist he was a clinical psychiatrist, a "psyco-analyst", and sometimes, when he sticks closely to what really knows about: the human psyche... he makes some sense.

I chose the quote of his above because it encapsulates, in only a few words, this very special moment in American history.

Many think this moment is special because the likely winner of the presidential election is black, but in that case, "special", would only be the voters themselves who put aside traditional race prejudice to vote for him, something which will make them feel very good about themselves, no doubt, but says nothing in itself about who they are voting for.

On the contrary, I would say that this moment is special because, at a time of enormous gravity, with two wars going nowhere and the economy about to melt down, the American people are very likely going to vote for someone about whom almost nothing is known: the color of his skin being practically the only indisputable fact known about him and, unless you are a racist, the color of a person's skin says little or nothing about what is under that skin.

What sort of "Hail Mary pass" are Americans making if they elect someone of no experience at a time like this? Not just the candidate's personal lack of experience, but much more importantly, electing someone that they the voters themselves have no actual experience of, other than hearing a few speeches and reading the candidate's story as told by the candidate.

This I think is the center of the question, instead of accepting their losses, leaving the tables and just getting on a greyhound bus and riding home, with enough money left to tide them over till payday, the voters are about to take their last chips and bet double or nothing on a number they saw in a dream.

Watching the debate between Palin and Biden, I couldn't help asking myself why Joe Biden did so poorly in the primaries? What is wrong with him? He gives long winded answers?

To me Joe Biden seems a more reasonable proposition than either Obama or Hillary ...or McCain, for that matter. What is wrong with the voters?

Biden looks and sounds and has the record of someone who knows what to do and how to do it... In a moment of great doubt and danger why has someone so sensible, distinguished, experienced and knowledgeable been of so little interest to Democratic voters? Can democracy and such desperate, frivolous, stupidity long coexist? DS