The last few days have witnessed a remarkable set of events unfold in the United States. The basic foundations of American capitalism have begun to shudder and are threatening to toss the entire world into an economic abyss. Some pundits and thinkers are seeing these events as the end of capitalism - like the Marxists of the early 20th century many wonder about the future sustainability of the dominant economic system. Are these fears genuinely justified?
This ongoing crisis concerns some very obscure and poorly understood “financial products” (a great phrase simultaneously reminiscent of Huxley and Orwell) about which knowledge in both the business and political worlds is slim and unreliable. However, none of this really matters. What does matter is that in a culture of rampant consumerism, some rather clever individuals began trying to figure out ways to make debt profitable on the basis of future potential returns. To some degree, they were incredibly successful. The growth of such firms is a testament to their successes, but it does not change the fact that they were taking home huge amounts of capital that apparently existed only on paper and in the meticulously manicured yards of dramatically miss-valued homes.
As the talk turns to bailouts and this notion of socialism for the rich, some of us look on with a deep sense of the irony of the situation. To me, it seems to be a no-brainer. The companies should be allowed to fail, their managing directors reduced to pauperism, and an era of responsible government oversight put into place in order to prevent these things from happening again. I think if there is to be any “socialism” here, it should be in supporting those homeowners and renters who are in danger of losing everything they have, and that we should allow for some potentially painful adjustments to the housing market. No matter what happens, this is going to hurt, but I’d like to have better and more stable order in the end.
Nevertheless, everyone in this thing wants carry on like nothing happened, but the fact is that something has been happening to the market, and this is simply the latest phase. In this age of dangerous excess and endless obsessions with hasty wealth, we have been forced to recognize that there are very basic problems with how we understand and manage the economy. I’m not going to stand by the notion that this is the fault of a culture of greed on Wall Street. Of course this IS the culture, but then that is the business of Wall Street. No business of any size, and certainly no public corporation who is the business of operating sole with humility and the public good in mind. The secret to handling Wall Street is to try to make their rampant greed and thoughtless, moment to moment thinking work to the medium and long term benefit of the body politic.
Paulson has proposed that congress authorize the release of 700 billion dollars in order to stabilize the firm affected. While no Wall Street analyst wants to talk about what such a release of capital will do to the value of the dollar as a reserve currency - they have multimillion dollar condos to pay mortgages on - I think that the repercussions are being sorely underestimated by all parties involved. After all, the number of “bad mortgages” that kicked off the whole spiral is estimated at around 1.2 million out of some 50 million active, but dumping 700 billion dollars on world markets will have real effects instead of just spooking investors should these banks be allowed to fail. After all, this isn’t money - this is debt. In order to pay that back, it will require hefty taxes or massive inflation.
We handle these executives with the kid gloves. We are told that we have to keep the bonus situation even for failing firms because we don’t want to scare talent away; we have to make sure that investors don’t get nervous and abandon investment markets; we want them to feel comfortable with us - are these deer or people? The fact is that investment markets are deeply connected. The investing class simply has to invest, and as Americans, we screwed up by having allowed the super rich to do whatever they want, and simply get away with it like nothing happened - heroin users go to prison, managers get multimillion dollar bonuses. This class of people finds itself in a position of power and then rigs the game to stay there. This is a barrier to innovation and fresh thinking. For god’s sake, these are MBAs, not great philosophers and powerful minds. Wall Street is not made up of the greatest people in our society - just the most ambitious, and they will kick you for a nickel.
Our markets are in shambles, and ultimately the only thing we can think to do is coddle a bunch of really wealthy folks because they have convinced us that they are the engines of growth and the real innovators. So great, nationalize the operations of some of the big mortgage firms, and turn that into a means to get everyone a home and to control the prices of the housing market. Transform them into organizations dedicated to the public good. Wall Street isn’t and it never will be - it is an engine of growth that should the be used to the advantage of the rest of us. Its acceptable if a few people get rich on the way, but this thing should be a tool to enable the rest of us to have a better life. We should be using the investing class, not the other way around. All that wealth is useless if it keeps moving further and further from the places that actually need it.
I am reminded of the famous 1916 supreme court case of Dodge vs. Ford Motors when it was decided that the duty of a public company was to provide returns to its shareholders above all else (in the Ford case, it was decided that he was paying his people too much). People would do well to remember that the culture that is at work on Wall Street is not one that is even ALLOWED to consider public good if it wanted too. Government regulation and oversight is the only thing that makes these markets return anything to the societies in which they operate. Cry me a river, but I’d say we don’t owe these kinds of people anything. It is not the duty of government to help people who clearly don’t need it. If you want to add 700 billion to the public dole, expand health care and eduction so that next time, maybe people are smart enough to do something about this before if blows up in our face.
Hopefully, the election will let off a little bit so that I can get to writing about more important things. There are serious policy issues that need to be discussed and I’d way rather write about those. However, this tabloid crap is kind fun. With that in mind, here is my (hopefully last) article about Sarah Palin.
Having largely dismissed Palin as a shallow political ploy, I was somewhat shocked to watch the growing excitement on the part of both the conservative base and moderates who were somewhat undecided at this point. Moreover, I found myself beginning to feel a sense of growing terror; as though there might be something to these concerns. The growing fever surrounding Palin climaxed over the lipstick comment by Obama - when even O’Reilly speaks out in defense of a democrat and tells people that they’re being stupid, you know that things have reached an unsustainable level.
After all, I view her as the antithesis of everything that I know to be wisdom in both social and economic policy. I also see in her that she was someone who clearly had no real idea as to what was really happening in the world. They very idea that she could be sitting in the White House, one step from the presidency, and a major component in developing US policy makes me angry. In fact, it seemed to offend republicans almost as much for a time. I was so outrageously frustrated with Americans who still think that McCain could seriously accomplish anything, or offer us any serious reform in Washington after this. To me, it is obvious the he simply doesn’t understand the changes that are slowly consuming our country. I don’t really think that anyone really does - how can we? Nevertheless some acknowledgment and a preparedness to act quickly would be nice. I don’t see this from McCain, but Obama has me cautiously optimistic.
The superficial excitement generated by Palin threatened to undo all of that. Suddenly, you didn’t have to feel bad about not wanting to vote for a black man, you could vote for a fundamentalist white woman and officially be inclusive, thereby overcoming your white guilt. Slowly though, the media started rolling out details about her political life. What began to take shape was the image of a woman who, in her quest for political recognition and power, found that she could climb by attacking the ethical lapses of her superiors and promote a remarkably reactionary agenda. This made her dangerous, but an asset to her party, but one that clearly knew how to manipulate morality in order to get what she wanted. In the age of the culture war, how could democrats; taking the moral high ground, and touting inclusiveness, hope to win against such a person?
Then I watched the interview on ABC (and you should too).
Never in my life have I seen a candidate for office so wretchedly bungle a scripted, gloves-off interview. Even with her handlers looking on and having a hand in the editing, nothing could salvage this thing. She had nothing of substance to say, repeated talking points to the point where it was laugh-out-loud funny, and even stumbled over the most simple questions about national security and national security policy. Clearly, she had been coached to memorize a few names (naming-dropping the president of Georgia seemed a little odd), and repeating the platforms of the her campaign without any genuine analysis, but was totally unprepared for the more hard-hitting questions that were asked of her. When removed from her teleprompter and forced to improvise, she failed completely. She was condescending, flippant, easily imbalanced, and mostly clueless. In head-to-head debates, she will be destroyed. She is obviously a political and intellectual lightweight - certainly when compared to Biden.
While I recognize that this election isn’t about the vice-president, the selection of Palin show a blatant disregard for the future of the United States. McCain is in this to win - not for any other reason - and he will do and say anything to grant himself that glory. Setting up McCain as the relic that he is and Palin as the serious liability that she is might do the Democrats some good.
However, I must warn Democrats: do not forget the lessons of Al Gore. In debates, many commentators accused Gore of bullying Bush in debates leading up to the 2000 election. It must not seem that Biden is embarrassing her unduly in public. If the McCain campaign continues to play the sexism card, they may decide to allow her to appear victimized by an aggressive Joe Biden. After all, he can be a bit over the top. After all, who can’t feel bad for the hockey mom whose got kids to feed? I can see it now: “Mean Joe B. shouldn’t have challenged her on that… she’s a mom just like me, and I didn’t know that.” Laugh if you want. People are really that thoughtless, and you dismiss that at your own peril.
I found myself thinking that I might have been a little harsh to Ms. Palin in my last post. I don’t usually consider myself an attack dog, so I walked away from my last post feeling a little bad. In light of that, I sat down, checked out her biography, read upon what her sudden admirers were saying about her in their hasty retreat from previous positions regarding her possible candidacy, and even watched Bill O’Reilly praise the virtues of teen pregnancy and the need for discretion for the sake of Ms. Palin’s family.
Then I watched the speech.In fact, I went back and read the transcript of it. This was mostly because of the sudden outpouring of praise it received at the hands of everyone. I am not convinced that she is “exactly what the republican party needs.” Nor am I especially convinced that she represents the “new face” of the GOP. In fact, it sounds like the same stuff that they always say. She talked about what a down-home redneck she really was (I shoot moose!), the amazing things that she’s done for her state and her family (one pregnant teen, and $27 million in special earmarks for a town of 7000).
Of course, the real shining moments of her speech were not the moments she illuminated policy issues (because she didn’t), but instead the bits where she rehashed every single tired and uninteresting attack on her opponents in this race. She called Obama effete, liberal, elitist, inexperienced, out of touch, idealistic, and foolish. She called herself a hockey mom, and suggested that her basketball nickname made her some kind of ultimate political badass.
Now I know that we all have wonderful memories from high school, and that fishing is fun.I also know how tough motherhood can be; since I’ve asked my own mother and she told me as much. Of course, I also know that we have to be careful again to avoid sounding sexist, but she didn’t do it for me. Again, she’s no Hillary Clinton.As for her speech, I was bored.I was genuinely underwhelmed by what I heard was a tired and divisive attack speech. There were no new ideas, and she said nothing about her positions that we didn’t already know.
She governed Alaska in much the same way everyone else did – with lots of government money, and dealing with the sorts of issues that arise in small towns.Her life sounds typical to me – not special, and aside from a clever speech writer who tried to make her sound superhuman, she didn’t have much to offer.However, maybe I’m being simplistic – a lot has been made of her foreign policy experience.As has been pointed out by several important figures throughout the political establishment, Alaska is close to Russia, and that means that she has as much foreign policy experience as Bush in 2000, who grew up right next to Mexico.
She is an outsider though.She is a republican who has not yet been corrupted. However, she is the sort of republican who will be – and quickly. She is a religious conservative, which immediately puts her out of step with me. Anyone who supports teaching creationism is an enemy of reason in my mind. In fact, it makes me wonder why she joined the PTA. Was it to improve schools, or to push through a religious agenda on the good people of Alaska?When she becomes vice president, or possibly president, will she understand the need for transparency and compromise? Will she get that we need to protect our environment and work to improve the lives of people? So far, she’s told me nothing.
A stunned silence has fallen over the American progressive left in the past couple of days.We cannot believe exactly what has happened to the McCain campaign over during the lead up to his epic contest with Barack Obama. Having already failed to stand up for every value that made him a man to admire on the other side of the congressional aisle, John McCain has selected a maddeningly confusing and insulting running mate to take on the Obama/Biden ticket.
I don’t want to attack Sarah Palin. I think it would be unfair to level my guns on her. I don’t think that she can weather the storms about to roll into her world, nor do I think it is fair – after all, she is a victim here. She was tapped as a last ditch and desperate effort to make John McCain look once more like a man who is in touch with what voters want. From the melodrama within her extended family, to the all too real problems within her immediate family, she certainly has a slew of personal problems that she needs to deal with, and might have a shimmering career on daytime television, but by her own admission, she doesn’t understand what the duty of the vice president actually is.
I am the first to admit that the vice presidency isn’t as important as the presidency. But we have learned through Cheney that the vice presidency does wield some clout.After all, most republicans I know are quick to blame the failures of the last eight years on both Cheney and associates (Rumsfeld is a popular scapegoat for evil these days). How then, can this party hand over this office, the President’s second, to a woman who is so obviously and bewilderingly ignorant of its purpose and function?Moreover, she woefully under qualified and, by all reports, a rabid conservative ideologue. So how did this happen?The answer, of course, is Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton, while I found myself mildly disappointed in the gracelessness of her campaign in defeat, did something amazing for the women of this country. It isn’t important that she didn’t win.She opened the doors for the future, and she would have done that just as well had she overcome the narrow margin between her and Mr. Obama. Palin is a far and desperate cry from Senator Clinton.
I see her as a funhouse reflection of the Clinton campaign, and no better nor more interesting than the puppet first ladies who have usually bobbed around presidential candidates. I am reminded of the glazed over look of the non-threatening Bush mothers who showed no substance whatsoever in the public sphere… taking on pet projects at the behest of their husband’s campaign managers and political handlers, but otherwise completely uninvolved in the great work surrounding their husbands; token women on the arms of powerful men.In short, Sarah Palin’s acceptance of the vice presidency cheapens the achievements of Hillary Clinton.Moreover it delivers, without labor or effort, to someone undeserving, an office they cannot hope to match.She is a political prop, and one that John McCain should have had the strength to stand up against.He should be ashamed of this kind of pandering.
I do not understand the Republican machine today.It simply boggles my mind and strains my imagination to try and understand what the American right is thinking. How can they possibly believe that they have anything to offer with their recycled plans and intentions? Can they really pretend that they have shown us anything but a dream of a past that never existed?Should not the business of those who govern be to make our lives better and to secure the future? Why do some many of our leaders insist on their correctness in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
Sarah Palin has no business in this new role. She is a woman certainly, but as the ideological opposite Hillary Clinton, she promises to undo the work wrought by Mrs. Clinton’s historic efforts in the past year and a half.The world is changing, quickly and dramatically.We need new solutions and better planning – to rethink our approach to the challenges of our age, and so far the right has shown us that all they can do is grab on to the coattails of history and ride them until they are tatters. Conservatives often forget that part of conservation is rebuilding that which you use up, and that no resource in limitless – not oil, and not the patience of the American people.