Time for an investigation

It's unfortunate that the GOP has enough power that they've neutered most consumer protection agencies in their attempts to allow rich people to continue stealing from the poor.

The question of the moment, though, is whether they can cover up fraud.

What you might have missed last week, during the debate over the debt ceiling being raised, was the trigger for a huge dip in the bond market. Someone placed a single buy of one billion dollars on the bond futures market. One of the largest single purchases in recent history, betting on the US economy getting worse and our credit rating getting downgraded.

The question that needs to be asked is, was it insider trading?

I believe what happened is a debt-ceiling deal was done in Washington and leaked to a major proprietary trader. Everyone knows the debt negotiations in Washington have been an extreme game of brinksmanship between political parties, but now someone knows how that game played out.

This had the hallmarks of one of the largest bond shops in the world knowing something the rest of the market didn't.

The number of shops or even central banks that can take on this level of market risk is extremely small.

So, who was willing to bet that, two weeks later, the US credit rating would be downgraded from AAA to AA+?

For that matter, was it somebody in Congress? Somebody who had a hand in the idiotic behavior of the GOP these past few months, which directly caused the downgrade?

For example, Eric Cantor was one of the key reasons that the budget ceiling negotiations didn't reach an agreement for so long, and when the economy took a hit like it just did, Cantor made a bundle.

(Here's a new phrase for you: "Conflict of interest." Look it up.)

After all, if insider trading is illegal on Wall Street, it seems to me that it should be illegal in Congress, too. It isn't, but it should be.

It's never going to happen. Why would a Congresscritter vote to stop making money based on the laws he's passing? Which leads to a similar question: why would Congress vote to raise taxes on the richest Americans, when the majority of them - including most of the new Teabaggers - are millionaires?

Pickin' on Paul or Kentucky Windage

Face it, it's become traditional for Republicans to declare that a Democratic election winner is a failure before he takes office, and in Obama's case, even before he was elected. Reality is no longer a prerequisite, if indeed, it ever was.

So why shouldn't I take this opportunity to declare that Rand Paul is a failure as the Senator from Kentucky and why not start off with a nasty, childish nickname like Runt Paul, to reflect his father's superior claim, in my opinion, to be respected for his views. Oh, come on, it's an American tradition and I'm not even claiming he was born in Nepal -- nee-Paul, get it? Of course we don't know for sure, do we? He's ignored my request for a birth certificate. By the way, isn't is suspicious that he want to an expensive, elitist Ophthalmology school? Who paid for it and why can't he produce board certification? Where is Orly Taitz when you need a nutjob attorney?

And look, I've even got a plausible story. Remember how cutting earmarks was the important part of reducing the cost of government both in Runt's rhetoric and that of the GOP in general? Well, that was then and now that we've put away the Punch and Judy puppets, he's now just fine with earmarks as long as they are earmarked for Kentucky. But of course he's still not going to let Washington - or reality - change him as he explained to the Wall Street Journal. I mean he still hasn't let the end of segregation change him. He still thinks it's a violation of property rights - kinda like freeing the slaves.

Of course the federal porkbarrel is not all that large when held up against the Supertanker of Federal spending, even though that spending as a percentage of the GNP isn't quite as huge as it appears when spoken of in dollars, but that sort of relativity sounds socialist or at least overly obscure to the public and we don't need to go into it. Besides, and to his credit, Runt accepts that we're going to have to look at the Massive Military Budget too. Good for him! but maybe that's just a Liberal Conservative ploy and if Kentucky is chosen to build some trillion dollar superbomber to win the cold war that ended before he started to wear a hairpiece, things will be different, so let's just assume, in the fine American tradition, that he's already gone back on his word - on all his words, actually. I mean, he might, so he already did. All's fair, right? If Obama raised taxes by lowering them, Rand Paul has already increased military spending - or maybe cut it. It doesn't really matter. It's all really about whose side you are on anyway so let's not get picky.

So did you hear that Rand Paul wants to make our country weak and is soft on Terrorism?

SHOCKING INCOME INEQUALITY REPORT DROWNED BY MEDIA NOISE

As our mainstream media continues to abuse us with nonsensical blow-by-blow accounts by blowhard headline-grabbing louts, this story received scant attention:

Scary New Wage Data

As millions of Americans lost jobs, homes, and life savings in the Great Recession of 2009, the highest-paid earners saw their average incomes rise more than five-fold in a single year. According to new data, the 74 highest income earners – the uppermost income bracket as measured by the Social Security Administration -- saw their average incomes skyrocket from $91.8 million in 2008 to a staggering $518.8 million in 2009:

These 74 people earned an average of $10 million -- per week. Meanwhile, half of all American wage earners, or about 75 million people, earned less than $505 per week.

An abrupt change in tax and economic policies started under the Reagan administration, conflated by Bush era tax cuts, made this possible. Three decades of Reaganomics have crippled the base of the income ladder while adding a burdensome weight at the top. The result is an unstable and unsustainable structure awaiting collapse.

Meanwhile the Republican Party and their tea party rabble are clamoring for more tax cuts and an indiscriminate dismantling of the social safety net for middle class Americans.  If our mainstream media had done a better job of informing the public, perhaps voters would be making more intelligent choices this November.  Fat chance!

IMO: What's Right On What's Wrong

No pictures today. No jokes. There'll be plenty more to come, I imagine. Today, I want to spell out what I think is happening in our country, what I think it means, and where I believe true morality lies. This is for me. And for JMartin.

I had a couple of comments on a recent post( on my individual blog) from JMartin who made it clear that he or she did not agree with me, but was not swayed by demagogues like Beck and Palin. This commentor was interested in what others, who did not share his or her opinions, had to say. I realized that I read so many progressive blogs--from writers who are dead serious, to writers who use sharp-honed humor beautifully, to writers who wax obscene to make their point--I just assumed that everyone knows all the arguments, all the issues, all the stances available on the left. And that anyone can instantly recognize all of my positions by extrapolating logically from a joke here and a jab there. Or, else, I assume that no one gives a damn what I think. Well, maybe someone might.

So, here's what I think (and I'm not taking time to justify or explain these positions on this post):

1. The War In Afghanistan: The President could not have gotten elected if he had run on pulling us out of both wars at once, so he chose the one on which public opinion had most obviously soured. The Afghanistan surge was a waste of men and money, an expedient that just stirs the hornet's nest. Continuing to back Karzai was wrong. We can't afford to stay on in Afghanistan. The task now is to get out with some balance between saving global face (which ain't what it used to be, if it ever was) and minimizing further loss of life. And that's a balance that cannot be struck. It will be ugly for the Afghans; it will be publicized; we will be vilified; we will have deserved it. Bite that bullet, Mr. President. Fight terrorism as a police action, because terrorists are criminals; proceed accordingly. If there'd been a draft, neither war would have happened; we'd have cared enough to pay attention.

2.The Koch Party: At the bottom of the pile is the duped herd that actually thinks it is part of a grass-roots movement. This mass thinks it's been had, but it is confused about who the enemy is. It's members follow pied pipers, demagogues, and fools (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh) who are blinded by their own celebrity; they are delusional narcissists. Behind the mass and driving it are politicos who are determined to regain power at all costs (Gingrich, Boehner) and who believe that the end justifies the means. And, above the dust of this cattle drive are the Kochs, Murdoch, Cheney and corporate Robber Barons who believe that they belong to an entirely different species from the rest of us...and that works for them as long as we agree with their assumption that they deserve to be in control.

3. The Fundamentalists:  These are often so braided into The Koch Party and the Republican Party, they can be fooled into thinking they have a vital role in both--even a leadership role. Their primary cause is opposition to abortion and to anything that legitimatizes the LGBT citizenry. In fact, they provide a smokescreen that permits the Robber Barons to operate freely to ensure their financial monopoly. As long as the Fundamentalists are willing to beat the morality drum, Big Money will finance their cause. It's about the money. Corporate interests could not care less who gets an abortion, who marries whom.

The Republican party is hoping to let Reverend Beck and Spokesmodel Palin hold the moral hot potatoes for them, leaving the Repubs free to go after independents who have been scared into believing that only unfettered free markets can save us. We tried that already; they didn't and they won't.

4. Wall Street, Big Bank, and Capitalism: Investing is a game of chance largely played by computers now. We've applied our creativity and our energy to designing more and more complex financial products with which to rip off  the working class. Capitalism is a fine thing, but it is a cancer if it goes unregulated. The function of markets is amoral. Greenspan should be prosecuted. Elizabeth Warren should chair Consumer Protection, not advise it...unless there's a Cabinet position for her, even better.  Free markets will NOT operate indefinitely on their own to benefit individuals and the society, as the Bush years proved. In a society that worships The Free Market, money operates as a test of right and wrong--the good make it and the bad fail. And that's not right; hell, it's not even wrong.

5. The Economy, Taxes and Jobs: Mr. President, dump Geithner and Summers. Repeal tax cuts for the wealthiest echelon and save the endangered middle class. But do incentivize banks to loan to small businesses, which are more inclined to grow and hire. (Huge corporations are primarily motivated to perpetuate themselves and continue to grow profits by laying off, dropping benefits, and going off-shore for cheap labor; they do not turn tax cuts into jobs for Americans. They haven't in the last eight years and they won't, period.)  And, Mr. President, push those infrastructure jobs now. Not later; now. They won't put enough of America back to work to turn the economy around, but they might prevent another man-made disaster. We are already becoming a Second World country, with our potholes, our failed levees, our crumbling bridges and rupturing gas lines.

6. Healthcare: Change had to begin, but, no matter how many times I read about the palatable separate ingredients included, I fear that too many crooks cooks spoiled this broth. Glad we did it. Worried about it.

7. The Democrat's task: The real moral message is that the Koch Party, the Party of Wall Street, the Party of Big Oil, the Party of Big Insurance does not care one iota about those of us who earn less than that proverbial $250,00 a year. They sure as hell don't care about those of us who earn less than $100,00 a year. What's truly immoral is that our earnings are stagnant or reduced, our retirement funds were raped and left to die, we all know someone who was laid off and can't find work. We were seduced by predatory lending and our hopes, our credit, our very country, was destroyed when Wall Street bet that we couldn't pay off those loans. Small businesses cannot get loans now; they'd hire us if they could.

8. The Deficit Reduction Commission: Alan Simpson is demented. Social Security is not the problem; years and years of war is a much bigger problem. If Soc.Sec. is privatized, Wall St. will get that, too. At which point, every state might as well legalize assisted suicide.

How could anyone vote for the party that designed and engineered those moral crimes? How could anyone vote for the confused Koch Party candidates? How could anyone vote for the Republicans who ignored our streets, our gas lines, our levees? How could anyone vote for the party that was brought to you by Big Oil, and radicalized beyond the point where they are recognizable? How could you vote for any party that doesn't care enough about the unemployed to extend them the pittance of unemployment compensation? How could anyone vote for the party that wants to hold the middle class hostage to tax breaks for the richest 2% of the country?



[Imma turn the mic back over to Slutticia von Heretik, now]

p.s. Well, okay, maybe just this one picture. Big H/T to Tom Degan at The Rant

MAKE THAT ONE DIP OR TWO?

No, I am not selling ice cream with sprinkles. The term, double dip, refers to a second recession that may collapse an already fragile economy and trigger the second Great Depression.

About two weeks ago, I discussed the possibility in this post, The Looming Unemployment Bomb. To recap some key points:

When you look at this multimedia visualization, you can see why joblessness represents an even bigger threat to economic recovery than the credit crisis that triggered this mess. Watch the black death of unemployment sweep over the country in 30 seconds or less. And notice the data feed: It does not even include the latest unemployment figures. The visualization gives you a snapshot through September 2009 when the unemployment rate reached 8.5 percent.

In fact, the current official unemployment has reached 10.2 percent and still rising. When you count real unemployment, the one that includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs and those marginally working part-time jobs, the true unemployment rate (also known as U-6 - Alternative measures of labor underutilization) is closer to 17.5 percent.

Paul Krugman has joined the ranks of pessimists with a Double Dip Warning:

I’d be more sanguine about all of this if there were any indications that private, final demand is taking off — consumers, business investment, whatever. But I haven’t seen anything suggesting that sort of thing (…) The chances of a relapse into recession seem to be rising.

The stimulus has run its course, and all leading indicators suggest a continuing downward trend. One problem is that the econometric forecasting methods used by Washington assumed an unemployment rate of 10.3% by the end of next year. In fact, we arrived at this level a year earlier, and the worse case turned out worse than expected and sooner than expected.

The problem with the stimulus may not be the stimulus, although Krugman advocated for more robust aid, but the TARP bill that was cobbled together in the closing months of the Bush administration. If you recall, then Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson sounded the alarm in the form of a one-page memo that would have given him unbridled power to distribute the almost $800 billion in TARP funds with no controls. The compromise bill rushed through Congress did not anticipate the chicanery that would render it ineffective. Here is what the TARP bill should have accomplished:

Rule #1. Never leave it up to banks to decide for themselves what to do with public funds. Tell them how and where the funds should be allocated. The purpose of the funds was to unlock frozen credit markets. Why this did not happen? The banks used the money to improve their balance sheets when they should have been making commercial loans.

Rule #2. When banks are bailed out with public funds, make sure banks get out of the lobbying business. How is the public interest served when public money is used to buy influence that may go against the public interest! Post-bailout lobbying smacks of double-dealing, self-dealing, and conflict of interest. That is why current reform efforts are stalled in Congress.

Rule #3. No bonuses or wage increases until all public money has been paid back. The hubris of Wall Street offends us and turns upside down our basic values: We should reward merit, not failure, nor entitlement.

Rule #4. Community banks play a larger role in distributing commercial loans to local businesses than big banks. Why were these NOT included under TARP?

On the subject of reform, I have two more pet peeves. First, there are other professions - doctors, lawyers, real estate brokers, and teachers - that undergo some form of accreditation or licensing. Why not those on Wall Street to whom we entrust our assets, our retirements, indeed our lives. The same fools who authored the credit default insurance swaps that brought down AIG are the SAME fools who authored the junk bond crisis 25 years ago. When you recycle fools back into the system, you perpetuate their culture.

Second, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. The regulatory system installed during the Great Depression and dismantled in 1999 must be restored and the Glass-Steagall Act reinstated. Regrettably, our diversified financial institutions are bigger, more arrogant, and more dangerous than before. To suggest that it is too unrealistic to put the genie back in the bottle is unacceptable.

Bombs or Buicks?

My hypocrisy detector burned out on overload ages ago, so I can't really tell whether the idea that preserving jobs at GM and Chrysler is an outrageous example of Democratic overspending while eliminating a smaller number of jobs producing weapons systems designed for all-out war with the Soviet Union is an equal and opposite outrage -- even though the overall military budget will increase by $20 billion and even though the plan to halt production of the F-22 super fighter and the C-17 cargo carrier come from George Bush's former secretary of Defense.

It's getting harder to be partisan when the perceived difference between spending and cutting, big and small government no longer relates to the actual budget -- unless, of course, you just cover your eyes and ears and pick a side.

Of course there's a difference between pouring money into consumer products, the use and maintenance of which creates further jobs and into products that create shock and awe and a lot of debris, but if there's any discussion of that, the noise of the turf wars between the military and private sectors may be drowning it out.

The defense industry is trying to hang on to its share of the gravy train, says The Washington Post today.

"Why, they ask, would President Obama push hundreds of billions in stimulus spending to create jobs only to propose weapons cuts that would eliminate tens of thousands of them?"

Maybe because building more jets not only takes money away from systems we need more of, like armored vehicles and armored soldiers, but because every Chevy built supports not manufacturers of the car; of tires and batteries and spark plugs and glass and paint and steel : it supports not only dealers, mechanics, salesmen, gas stations and all the businesses drivers patronize, but it supports every business that needs to transport people and goods and that means virtually all of them. More money travels more places, through more hands and at a higher velocity and that's exactly what we need to save our sabotaged economy.

But that's just my opinion which hardly counts because I can only vote and I only have one voice to complain with and I don't have the $175 million or so the defense industry spends on contributions and lobbying. I don't have Rupert Murdoch's billions behind me or a huge, underground staff of spammers and swift-boaters and seditious talk radio gasbags hoping to profit from further chaos and collapse.

Am I wrong to expect nothing but the worst?

A GHOST OF DEPRESSION PAST

(Double click on the image for a larger view)

Fellow creatures above and below the waves: We have managed to retrace the route of the Great Depression and repeat the same mistakes as if we learned nothing from history.

Marriner S. Eccles served as Franklin Roosevelt's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November 1934 to February 1948. In his memoir, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), he offered his opinion of what caused the Great Depression:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

Sound familiar? In essence, Bush's economic policies created conditions similar to those that triggered the Great Depression. From 2001 through 2007, the American economy grew by 31%, but the increase in wealth was not fairly or evenly distributed throughout the economy. After-tax income for corporate CEOs grew 40 to 400%; whereas average income for middle class wage earners declined 3% during the same period.

Factoring in rising costs of energy, food, education, and health care, which rose faster than the base inflationary rate, what do get? A middle class that can no longer serve as the engine for economic recovery. Thus, the real reason behind our economic crisis is the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many ... just like it was almost 80 years ago.

Moving On From Stimuless?

My mind has been unfortunately consumed with thoughts of the economic stimulus for what feels like at least a decade. I don’t even really know what to think anymore - maybe I never did. The President didn’t do an effective enough job selling his plan to the American people early on. He should have been hitting us over the head with talk of how badly we need this package - about how it may be imperfect, but for God’s sake at least it’s something. For the second half of this week, he succeeded at doing this - often with a bit of flare the usually cool leader shies away from. And he tried for the first half of the week, but his cabinet appointments seem to have a bad habit of not paying their taxes. Since the media can’t focus on more than one thing at a time, discussion of ethics and poor accounting practices consumed the airwaves. Nonetheless, Obama tried. Plus, while the President and his party could have executed better, blame for the recovery catastrophe lies almost entirely with the Grand Old Patronizers.

The Republicans systematically undercut everything logical about this economic discussion simply because everything logical about this economic discussion came from the Democrats. They offered no ideas, save the tired ones about cutting taxes for rich people. John McCain reverted to campaign mode, complaining, “This is not a stimulus bill; it is a spending bill.” Thanks John. McCain’s concession speech after the election seemed very heartfelt. I even inquired as to whether the old McCain, the one unencumbered by political theater, would return to - wait for it - getting things done. I guess I was wrong.

I’ve championed bipartisanship, and I still believe it can work. But it is certainly more difficult than seems reasonable. Paul Krugman says there’s no room for compromise with a party that is as “irresponsible" as the GOP. I don’t want to be corrupted, I want to believe in Obama’s call for unity, but Krugman makes a good point. If the Republicans continue to obstruct to this degree in the future, and the Democrats are again outmaneuvered, then I certainly hope the Democrats are at least able to mobilize enough support to push these yahoos out of office. I firmly believe the GOP is going to remake itself as a party of moderates - if they don’t, they will die off - but in the mean time, we have a lot of serious stuff that we need to deal with. And yet the Republicans seem set on standing in the way.

Luckily, a deal on the Senate version of the recovery package seems to have been reached. It cuts a substantial amount of spending - about $100 billion - from a bill that probably didn’t have enough spending to begin with, but it's a step in the right direction. Maybe Democrats ceded too much, maybe they did the right thing. We'll have to wait to see how effective the plan ends up being. But Republicans! Seriously! You guys have got to get your act together. The economy is collapsing on all sides and the only thing you can think about is scoring political points. We cannot afford to have the battle over reconciling the two versions of the stimulus bill take this long. So GOPers...play nice. And Democrats...don't let Republicans dominant the argument - your ideas are right, you are on the right side of history. Act like it.

(I'm afraid to imagine what passing universal healthcare is going to be like.)

YEAR OF THE MELTDOWN

Happy New Year, everyone! Americans are famous for customary greetings that bear little relevance to events or context.  By all accounts, the New Year will be anything but happy. For some, 2009 will be called, “Year of the Ox.”  In my book, it should be called, “Year of the Meltdown” … in more ways than one.

The Economy
Since the first of the year, 100,000 job cuts have been announced including: 30,000 at Circuit City, 5,000 at Microsoft, 6,000 at Intel, 2,500 at United Airlines, 11,000 at General Electric, as examples.

According to Futurist.Com, our economic problems are "deep and structural and even cultural. It has to do with energy, with lifestyle, with the shape and form of what we build, and with global politics, and more."

In Florida, for example, our local supermarkets stock oranges from California and vegetables shipped from Chile, Mexico, and Peru.  Most of this produce is grown locally, transportable to market at little cost, and far cheaper than inferior store-bought varieties.  Yet, local growers are struggling or going out of business. Why? It seems chain stores favor a procurement model that ignores long distances, higher energy costs, inferior quality goods, and impacts on local economies. Hardly a model of efficiency, one would think.

James Howard Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation says we should "prepare for the end of current global commerce as currently conducted, prepare psychologically to downscale, take a time out from immigration, prepare for a lot of paper “wealth” to disappear, prepare for a psychology of resentment."

America’s Defense Meltdown
Our country supports an annual defense budget of $600-700 billion and rising but gets less bang for the buck with each passing year.  We have the fewest number of navy combat ships, submarines, and combat aircraft, and the smallest number of personnel in uniform at any time since the end of World War II.  Why are we spending more and getting less?

According to Winslow Wheeler, "In Congress they're interested in jobs and campaign contributions. In the Pentagon they're interested in various political and bureaucratic agendas. They're not paying attention to the lessons of combat history … we should only fight when we truly have to fight rather than pursue agendas and political dogmas and help politicians posture as patriots."

Global Climate Change
In March of 2002, a giant ice sheet known as Larson B broke away from Antarctica and went adrift. According to global climate scientists, the Antarctic continent as a whole warmed at the same rate as the rest of planet.  Local conditions, however, are another matter of special concern:  The western peninsula warmed at a rate five times faster than the rest of Antarctica. Ice sheets such as Larson B hold back the glaciers behind them.  If they were to collapse completely, scientists say, the entire western ice shelf would fall into the ocean … resulting in a 16-foot rise in sea level.

In 2009, an even bigger chunk threatens to break away.  The Wilkins Ice shelf, roughly equal in size to the State of Connecticut, is literally “hanging by a thread” and “could go at any minute,” according to the latest observations.

ExxonMobil gave $1.6 million to the American Enterprise Institute in an attempt to undercut the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a report widely regarded as the most comprehensive review of climate change science.  The Bush administration sought to further undermine public understanding of the issue by censoring the findings of climate scientists.  Thus, our government, under pressure from the oil lobby, suppressed meaningful data to influence the debate.

Apparently, a little propaganda money goes a long way.  This comment from a conservative blogger is representative of how public opinion is shaped by good ol’ boys:

CB (12-20-2008 at 9:35 AM): I am an outdoorsman and a conservationist. I support clean air, water, etc. What I object to is the leveraging of carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas and not a pollutant, into anti-capitalist redistribution schemes.

... and some of my best friends are [fill-in the blank].   When a conservative blogger makes a statement like this, claiming to appreciate the outdoors while debunking climate science, it reminds me of a pedophile who says: “I like children.”

Shadows of the Indignant Desert Birds
There will always be shrill voices resistant to change. Public policy debates have an aspect of “advertising jingle” to them.  A catchy melody repeats endlessly on the radio over months and years, then plays continuously inside the head long after the product has disappeared from the store: “Its not how long you make it, its how you make it long.” Once firmly imprinted, it is difficult to reshape public opinion.

Or perhaps one can look at the issue of changing public opinion from the perspective of a psychotherapist whose client engages in reckless behaviors.  An addict clearly knows the risks of substance abuse but is unable to break the habit in emotional terms, such as a chain smoker who reaches for another cigarette after being told of dire health consequences.  Even when understood intellectually, it is hard to change old habits and perceptions.

For those of us who read scientific studies, the data may seem compelling, but how do we convince others who don’t study graphs and maps, who listen only to long imprinted jingles?

And then there are lobbyists trying to protect their dirty franchises. They would have us focus attention, not on the data points clustered around a trend line, but on the statistical outliers … the confounding dodge and feint.  Once imprinted, only a catastrophe will change minds.

There will always be voices from a bygone era still hearing messages the dead have stopped sending. There will always be voices arguing, not for the common good, but from pure self-interest. Implementing public policy changes are difficult at best. We can understand these quirks of human nature with all due patience, but we are running out of time, and there is little wiggle room left.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Fortune 21 - who's the dumbest of us all?

What were the "dumbest moments in business" during the newly departed annus horribilis, asks Fortune Magazine, which lists their choice for the top 21 feats of stupidity in 2008. Was it the beggars from Detroit arriving in Washington in private Jets or the Man from Chrysler arriving the second time around in a bloated SUV hybrid scheduled to be cancelled? Can any of that compete with investing money with BernieMadoff , ( number 17) or be more laughable than John McCain telling us the "the fundamentals of this economy are strong."only hours before the Dow fell 500 points on news of the Lehman bankruptcy? (number 13) Maybe number 21; PhilGramm's calling non-optimists a "nation of whiners" and his condescending dismissal of a troubled economy as a "mental recession" deserved to be on top.

It's hard to rank blunders so gross on any kind of scale. It's hard even to count them when the road to Black Monday was so long and so well paved with politics and patriotism and of course, funny as such pratfalls usually are, nobody can afford to laugh.

January may be a rough month "There's going to be a massive sea change in the retail landscape," said Nina Kampler, executive vice president of Hilco Real Estate, which advises retailers on their property management. and the likelihood is severe enough that even the mixed metaphor won't draw many giggles. All in all, this is not a good time to ask the mirror who's the dumbest of them all. It reflects us all equally.

"Class" Sensitivity

Ever since Fogg’s recent passionate & compassionate, sensitive post I’ve been thinking about the effect of our unstable economy on the people of my world. Considering the incessant screaming from the headlines about the increasingly dismal state of the economy with words such as “worse since depression” being bandied about – one would think that most Americans would be economically quaking in their boots. Well – going by those I know – this is only partly true – which raises the prospect of some interesting social tensions in the future.

A few examples from my world.

I am an acquaintance of someone where I work who works in Human Resources. I ran into her the other day & she started complaining about all of the people coming into her office complaining about the economy. She said she wanted to put up a sign by her desk that said “no whining.” She then proceeded to fill me in on her Thanksgiving plans. She & her husband had decided to blow off the large annual family gathering hosted by her daughter & were instead going to NYC for the weekend. She then proceeded to tell me about all of the shows they were going to go see.

Mmmmm

For starters – she missed the irony of her complaining about complainers. Then – she seemed to miss the fact that issues pertaining to people’s finances were the concern of Human Resources offices (i.e. benefits, etc) so therefore people’s economic concerns were going to rise to the surface in her office. In other words – dealing with these people’s issues was at least part of her job. Thirdly – she was completely insensitive to her own good fortune in the face of others’ woes. The kicker about all of this is that this woman is really a very nice person. Cheerful & engaging. Kind even. I genuinely like her. But for heaven’s sake does she have a blind spot! I was taken aback by the whole conversation. Her obliviousness to the disconnect between her situation & that of others was incredible.

Then there is another coworker who daily regales me with tales about the remodeling of his home. He asked me recently what my plans were for xmas. I said I was staying put by myself, not traveling. He then suggested that I go to one of the local spas for a few days – he was dead serious. I evasively made some kidding remark about that not being my thing (which is true) – quickly changing the subject, not wanting to engage in a discussion of money. I’ve seen the ads for these spas – one would have to mortgage one’s soul to partake. This man happens to know exactly how much money I make – he hired me. He also knows how precarious my particular employment situation is in the current economic climate. Therefore -what a ridiculous suggestion. Now – he did not mean to be insensitive. And I took no offense – though it made me roll my eyes heavenward for days after. He’s a nice person. Really nice. Kind. I like him. But – like the HR woman – clueless.

Now – to be sure – there has always been a disconnect between the have’s & the have not’s in society. And insensitivity between the two is nothing new either. However – I wonder if the disconnect, the unintentional insensitivity is screaming louder these days? Egged on by misleading media analysis & political rhetoric. I wonder this because the headlines keep telling me that WE – in the collective sense as a society – are suffering. But WE are not. Only some of us WE. And some of us WE are suffering more than others. I do NOT include myself in this. I currently have a job with insurance. A place to live. A car. From the point of view of many this is huge - & it is. And from whose point of view am I fortunate? At least partly from the LOWER economic class point of view. You know – that class that NEVER EVER gets mentioned. The class completely dissed by political rhetoric during the election? All we’ve heard about in recent months is the woe of the MIDDLE class. The poor MIDDLE class. Defined by even Obama as being up to $250,000 per anum income. That’s just plain silly and encourages too many people to think of themselves as “suffering.”

I can not help but wonder if the insensitivity of these nice people I know is being nurtured by this inaccurate sense of SHARED suffering being spewed by the media & politicians. Not only are some members of the MIDDLE class acting insensitively to their fellow class members, but they are completely forgetting about the LOWER class in our midst. A class that we like to think doesn’t really exist in our fair country. We give to food banks but do we really stop to think about the lives of those who utilize food banks? If we do not start recognizing the LOWER class then how will we even be sensitive to our fellow middle-classers when they fall into it?

OK - thanks for listening to that rant!

And thanks, Fogg, for your sobering post of yesterday. It got me to thinking . . . And not to put my fellow Zoners & readers on a pedastal or anything, but I have been heartened by posts & comments of late to believe there is compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves. Such as Rocky's story about the local restaurant's Thanksgiving practice. Now - if only we can tune in the media & politicians to the scope of the under classes . . .

The Spongey Brains of Squids

I have been a remiss member of the SwashZone community of late. Many excuses of course – too busy, blah, blah – the ready excuse of our modern age.

But that’s not it. For days (weeks?) now I have been watching SZone emails (comments & posts) filling up my in-box. All unread, I confess. I never even followed up on the last conversation I was involved in – I believe it was you, Dino, I was talking to? Maybe?

So why my rudeness? Please don’t take offense anyone. None is ever intended. But I have come to the conclusion that SQUID’s have sponges for brains. Yes – sponges. You know – my fellow sea creature of the deep? And sponges can only retain just so much until they are saturated & can hold no more. And my spongy-squid brain is saturated.

At first I thought this brain condition was a simple matter of election overload & subsequent burnout. I thought, I am just too whimpy a Squid to talk politics with SwashZoners right now. I am just too intellectually feeble to process any more angst over this or that. Too cowering of a deep sea creature to be able to handle dissent & conflict. In short – I thought – I am simply no longer up to the task of being a good zoner.

Yes . . . but why? Why haven’t I been able to squeeze some of the excess out of my spongy brain in order to make room for more info & discussion? I thought a week or so away from the blogosphere in general would help. And divorcing myself from the politically swashing zone.

But it didn’t work. Yesterday it occurred to me perhaps why. The pieces of the puzzle of Squid’s continued state of saturation began to fall into place.

I was driving around doing errands & I saw a sign posted about an auction of a home today. A home in which somebody once lived. A somebody now perhaps homeless altogether. Jus the week before there were signs posted all along the highway claiming “no credit check, loan guaranteed, 100%, new homes.” Bailout lessons blatantly NOT learned. More homes blatantly to be sold into later foreclosure.

Then there are the weekly meetings at work about hiring freezes, budget cuts, increased workloads, etc. Doom & gloom talk all over campus as programs are cut . . .

And every morning, on the way to my doom & gloom place of employment, my walk from my parking garage takes me past a congregating area for my city’s homeless. Everyday – I walk past these people – women & men. Quietly sitting, talking, living.

And more reality checks - last weekend I was sick with strep throat. My throat ached. I needed soup. Something soothing. I opened my cupboard to find nothing. Not a canned good to be found. Not a one. My child had cleaned out my cabinets the week before in support of said child's school’s food drive for a local charity – the SECOND food drive the school district has hosted in a month. As I ate a scratching, unsoothing granola bar instead of soup – my painful swallowing reminded me that there were those worse off than me. At least I had the soup to give.

And - the weekend before my child had strep throat. My child is allergic to penicillin so has to take a special anti-biotic. After paying my meager co-pay I happened to glance at the pharmacy printout & noticed what the BEFORE insurance cost of my child's meds was – it was staggering! I thought – how in the world would a parent without health insurance pay such an outlandish sum? And there are so many parents without health insurance.

So – I’ve come to realize that the saturatedness of my spongy squid brain is due to so much more than depressing headlines & blog posts/comments. It is due to the reality behind the headlines etc. staring me in the face everyday.

Today that home nearby goes up for auction. I can not help but wonder if the family in it will be needing those cans from my cupboard. I know that sounds a bit melodramatic – but – sadly – it just might be the stuff of hard core truth as well.

I am a lucky Squid, all things considered. Though my spongey brain continues to leak with a mixture of genuine compassion & selfish anxiety.

Pigs, arrows and outrageous fortune

That giant oinking sound you hear is all the pork being herded into the Bailout Corral. Even though the plan passed last week has been so brilliantly successful at transferring all that nasty smelling bad mortgage debt to the Taxpayer Government, the Fed is planning to make us a present of bad commercial paper as well. There just wasn't enough pork in the original deal.

You can't expect to have a barbecue of wall street lobbyist proportions without big chunks of pork and little scraps like the tax relief for manufacturers of wooden arrows designed for use by children. You have to admit that their plight is central to the economic health of all of us. Who knows, your ex-broker may be making wooden arrows designed for use by children before the week is out.

Don't worry about it. All of us are going to hell or to Alaska in the next few months according to Sarah "ya betcha" Palin. She has a plan for everything.

Bye bye Miss American Pie

Indications are that a majority of Americans still oppose anything like a bailout for financial institutions. An unscientific CNN poll today has 59% answering "let risk-taking financial institutions fail." A Time Magazine article says much the same thing.

I think many people underestimate the risk of doing nothing. I think the smug, Reagan era idea that Government is essentially bad, can't fix anything and can only make things worse, plays a role and I think it's only human nature to distrust a plan drafted by the people who not only told us only days ago that it was foolish to think ( or to whine ) that we are experiencing recession; the people who have been preaching deregulation and advocating "anything goes" markets for decades, the people who refer only to dogma and ignore reality.

I have to admit that a part of me wishes it would all fall down and plunge us into depression simply to punish the slight majority who have been mocking reality and the people who recognize it, and mocking anything to do with government participation in anything but warfare. Of course I know that even bread lines and 30% unemployment wouldn't change such minds; they would simply blame it on Liberals with the same instinct that causes a land crab to run for the darkest place when you're trying to chase it out of your garage. Conservatives blamed the Great Depression on lazy shiftless workers. Not much has changed.

So seeing the intransigent stupidity and self-delusion of America, I have to believe we're in need of some kind of rescue; some kind of government intervention. Judging from events elsewhere however, I think the Post-bailout America would be only marginally different from the post "let them fail" America and either way, we're in for 5 years to a decade of high unemployment, inflation and increased marginalization of our position in the world. We're in for a long period of blaming, scapegoating and scurrilous propagandizing. Faced with a stalemate in Iraq, a rapidly declining position in Afghanistan and a Pakistan that cannot control its borders or prevent itself from being a haven for al Qaeda, it's hard to be optimistic no matter what is done, who wins the presidential election or which party controls the Congress.

I would like to believe that we will eventually see a leaner, more fiscally fit and saner America, but I don't believe in our ability to learn from mistakes, to recognize that we have made them or to see beyond the rhetoric and dogma and slogans when looking for solutions. Instead, I see more excuses for cute and perky incompetence, more praise of folly and more of our eternal hunger for fast food, fast solutions and the comfort of false certainty.

America - I wish to hell I could quit you.

Cross posted from Human Voices

The McCain Bailout: Privatizing success, socializing failure.

When it looked like the bailout bill was going to get the votes, who was all too happy to claim the credit?

John McCain.

When the bill didn't get the votes, who deserves the blame?

Practically everyone except that wacky Maverick.

Democrats failed.
Pelosi failed.
Obama failed.

John? Not his fault. He didn't phone it in. (Except that reports say that's exactly what he did, preferring telephone calls to face-to-face meetings during his little jaunt back to Washington last week.)

For the McCain campaign, the buck stops... ...anywhere but with them. Like the failed Wall Street firms, they're only accepting credit for good news. Blame for bad news belongs to someone (anyone, & if possible, everyone) else. Profits to me, loss to everyone else.

And after it failed, who looked more presidential?
Obama spoke to the American people and appealed for calm, assuring them that there will be a solution.
McCain boarded a plane without speaking to reporters or issuing any statement.

That's some kinda leadership there, Johnny... Heck of a job...

X-post @ Wingnuts & Moonbats

Similar:
Think Progress: After Taking Credit For Bailout Bill, Is McCain Campaign Willing To Share Responsibility For Its Failure?

Marc Ambinder (September 29, 2008) - McCain's Share of The Blame?

Bail Out Fails,McCain Owns It

I don't know anything

Nobody knows anything. I've heard the quote attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, but I don't know. I don't know anything.

I don't know how the economy can go straight to hell in a supersonic hand basket and yet the dollar can gain strength against stronger currencies.

I don't know how John McCain can bellow about Obama's lack of leadership when he can't rally his own party to fix his own party's disaster and I don't know how he can mock Obama for being aloof regarding the deliberations when McCain continued his campaign after his "putting it on hold" play to the grandstand, and he and Lieberman went out to dinner at an expensive restaurant while it was going on.

I don't know why it's a good thing to be a maverick who can't get along with his party or the other one when leadership is required and I don't know why it isn't a bad thing when a senator or congressman votes against the wishes of over 80% of his constituents.

I don't even know why McCain, who despite his hyperbloviations has reversed 26 years of experience in backing this bailout, can blame Obama for being more fiscally conservative and a big spender at the same time. I don't know why McCain bellows about lowering taxes when the Democrats' tax plan lowers them for more people and I don't know why his party doesn't simply fall down and die of shame after telling us we need an immediate, no questions asked bailout only days after insisting that the economy was sound and debt didn't matter and in fact we needed more of it. I don't know how leadership consists only of blaming others while weaseling out of responsibility for having been part of the collapse that I and many others predicted would come of borrow and spend economics. I don't know how leadership involves lying repeatedly, consistently and thoroughly and I don't know how one gets points for snickering and grimacing in a debate.

I don't know why this flyblown, disease ridden, dishonest old crank has more than a dozen supporters, but he does. I don't know anything and that's an understatement.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Preaching to the Choir

Election dialog is of most value when we are spreading the word as opposed to preaching to the choir. There are web sites that the average public posts to and those sites feed information to many people. I believe we need to flood those sites with our opinions. Brief statements, simply stated, that point out the obvious.

For example, the home page on AOL had an article about Biden's comments concerning taxing the rich. http://news.aol.com/elections/article/biden-calls-taxes-patriotic-for-rich/179323 Following the article was a straw poll containing two questions. One question asked if the rich should be taxed more heavily than the rest of us. 55% of the respondants answered yes. Yet, the second question asked whose economic policies were supported more. Over 60% said McCain. Hello? At the end of the survey is an opportunity to blog a response. I did so. We need to bombard these straw polls and respond to educate consumers.