Let It All Fall Down

The United States Of Money

“The world has changed,” Mr. Obama said. “And for a lot of our friends and neighbors, that change has been painful. Today the single most serious economic problem we face is getting people back to work.” After his remarks ... Mr. Obama met with members of the jobs council he created [to discuss]... a few ideas the council is exploring to increase employment.

But none of the ideas, which included setting up job training initiatives, providing loans to small businesses and trying to increase tourism, contained any groundbreaking proposals. They said they would deliver recommendations in September focusing on “fast-growth” companies, small businesses and the competitiveness of the country’s infrastructure. [New York Times]

If you have any curiosity left about where things are, go and read this.

A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House’s Blue Room... Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them “fat cats” and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

The event... kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash — in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Then, have a look at this. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court majority which delivered this ruling are the same honorable people who declared Corporations are really just like individuals, and after kicking Citizens United to the curb, roared that money from corporations (including foreign corporations) can be funneled into America's political parties and campaigns without limits.

And we're just waiting for the Rightist bloc of Roberts / Alito / Scalia / Thomas / Kennedy to repeal Roe v. Wade, and declare that Wisconsin's Rethug brownshirts were perfectly correct in busting unions.

With Justice Clarence Thomas writing for a 5-to-4 majority, the Supreme Court has made it much harder for private lawsuits to succeed against mutual fund malefactors, even when they have admitted to lying and cheating.

The court ruled that the only entity that can be held liable in a private lawsuit for “any untrue statement of a material fact” is the one whose name the statement is presented under. That’s so even if the entity presenting the statement is a business trust — basically a dummy corporation — with no assets, while its owner has the cash [This frees the 'Owner' from any liability for harm or loss that came from a reliance on 'untrue statements' made by the dummy business trust].

Afterwards, you should peruse this.

It is obvious that Elizabeth Warren should head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau... [however, she] happens to be applying pressure on what is turning out to be a central fault line for this Administration.

[The Obama administration] bought the bankster line that giving them first priority on “fix the economy” money would not only appease this key donor group, but it would also work out just fine on the economic front. Enough peasants would be lifted up along with the financiers’ yachts that the economy would be, if not in rude health, at least enough on the mend to assure an Obama re-election.

But that is not how things are working out, as we know all too well. The President is waking up to the fact that if the jobless situation is as bad as it is now next year (and it is possible it will be worse), his reelection bid is going to become quite complicated...

And the gap between the banks’ demands and what the great unwashed populace wants is widening.

Eat Your Pie. Every Bite.

A lawyer and diplomat for the House of Savoy in the 18th century may not have coined the phrase, but once noted (as did the father of one of my closest friends, proving common wisdom has long legs) that Peoples get the governments they deserve.

It isn't Santayana ("Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it"), but the sentiments are similar -- Only the insane perform the same acts, and expect different outcomes.

The Savoyard wouldn't have known about modern political states, but he would have known about Rome, Greece, Babylon and the Holy Roman Empire. As part of an Italian city-state, he would have known about the Borgias and Medicis, and Renaissance power politics. He probably would have read his Heroditus, Pliny the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and Dante. We have Digby, Bill McBride, and a few other wise Cassandras.

In the 1977 film, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, a mysterious power outage darkens part of the Midwest and appears to be spreading. Two engineer-supervisors at a power plant are shown talking about how to stop what appears to be a widening outage.

"We should isolate it," says the first (I'm paraphrasing here). "Work the [power] grid, find the break."

"No, no; let it all fall down," says the other supervisor. "Let it all go down, and pick up the pieces afterwards."

Perhaps that's where we're headed. And the failure of Obama may lead to another ten years of rule by a President Mittens (or worse, a President Grand TurtleBear Bachmann, or a President Gingrich) -- a vapid, stupid, faith-based future, filled with strip mines and oil platforms, fouled water and air; the only Darwin being taught will be the institutionalized social Darwinism of a dog-eat-dog culture.

Perhaps, then, some of us will remember that Herr Obama's choice to Have More War, Fluff the Banksters; ignore long-term massive unemployment; and embrace the kind of Medicare-limiting, Social-Security-privatizing Austerity the Tea Partei demands was utterly short-sighted, corrupt, and a narrow political solution which made the resurgance of the Right possible: Peoples get the governments they deserve.

Watching The Accident Happen

In trying to maintain Democratic leadership of the government and ensure a second term, Obama believes he's neutralized criticism that as a 'liberal', he's soft on National Security. He assumed that giving the Banksters everything they wanted, and giving Congressional Republicans (goaded further Rightwards by the Tea Partei) what they want, that magically, it Would All Become Really Pretty In Downtown America. But that isn't what's happening.

Perhaps we'll become like France in the Thirties, with the government polarized and paralyzed; like Italy under El Capo di Buffoono Berlusconi, or Russia under Putin -- a nation with a thin layer of unimaginably wealthy Oligarchs, the Owner Class, and everyone else... while Little Rupert's and Comcast's media tell us 24X7 that someday, we can be an Owner, too.

Perhaps it will all fall down. I'd hope not, because that would mean the end of the 'American Experiment'. But life in America now, from a certain point of view, is watching the slow-motion accident: People are screaming from the sidelines, Take action, take action; yet nothing happens. The Crash, right now, appears so avoidable; but when it comes, it will seem inevitable.

At this point, I don't care about the political maneuvering; I only want Herr Obama to do what's right by people. He was elected to serve The people -- all the people, not ten per cent. Not the hedge fund managers he's cozying up to, but the unemployed single mother with three children in Newark, the unemployed construction or manufacturing worker, and to hell with the Banksters.

In the end, he may be seen as more a Warren Harding than a Hoover, and we'll all pay for his lack of vision -- some, if the GOP/Tea Partei return triumphantly to power, will pay more heavily than others.

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