They are looking like the next default.

Through all this the only country with the cohones to stand up to the banks and stick to their guns has been Iceland.

Ich bin ein Icelander!

Can you believe on deaf ears the trillions given to Wall Street is going to cause a bloodbath for Democrats? Shame there isn't much of a choice to vote for. Usually there is one good one running each cycle, but I've been so disgusted I haven't even checked positions, backgrounds yet. I wish there was "none of the above" or the whole country got some write ins and promised to vote for them in masse.

The FDIC has to be getting funds from somewhere to be covering these losses.

Whatever happened to the missing $200 billion in cash that was airlifted to Iraq and then went missing? They used one of those cargo planes normally used for moving heavy equipment.

No real Fed audit, the list goes on.

Who owns and controls the Fed? It's a quasi corp with shareholders - Are they all US banks? I used to think all that was just pie in the sky BS, now I believe there is really something there. Not enough time to push that in anyone's lifetime.

Have to love how they say no taxpayer money is being used to support Kabul Bank. Sure they are just printing some Deutschmarks instead of dollars this month.

I'm still expecting to be seeing $100 small pizzas in the not too distant future.

Unemployment is a structural problem not a cyclical problem. Leadership is spending on Government programs that do not create wealth. Capital flows is to deficit spending instead of wealth creating private sectors. As long as taxes are increased, Federal Government deficits, and higher pricing then the consumer purchasing power is still shrinking. That means less jobs and a continued degradation of the job picture. New leadership that looks at capital allocation differently and protections to middle income wealth will bring an end to high unemployment.
If Leadership can not change their thinking, then we can only change the leaders.
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much”
-Ronald Reagan quote
“The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.”
-Ronald Reagan quotes

Wheee.

We need a new form of capitalism.
. . . As Professor James Galbraith has stated American capitalism is not what we are told by politicians, media or textbooks: benign competition leads to a greater good for most people.
The defining feature of American capitalism today is predation – where a class of people – the oligarchs – feed off the demise of people not within this class. This oligarchy, or as Professor Galbraith calls them the predatory class, has control over the government and the capital in our economic system.

Capitalism is an outgrowth of British colonialism, and has always been as predatory as its predecessor. Its theology-- oops, ideology-- is British, not American, and the dumbest-- or most naive-- thing the founding fathers don't seem to have understood is that a nation's politics and economy are an integral system, not two separate things. So they created a better political system without also revamping the economic system. As a natural consequence, "American capitalism" at its worst aped the British model, and at its best only grudgingly acquiesced to the regulation and moderation of the worst of its predation, not by itself but by the government and unions-- but only for a while which is over.

A tick on the back of a wildebeest is obviously a parasite. Less obviously, the "noble" lion is in reality just a parasite on the wildebeests as a herd. Neither predator can exist without its prey. Neither parasite can live without its host.

Now look at what Galbraith said again. If capitalism's defining feature is predation, it's a predator, which is just a nicer way to say parasite-- a parasite on everyday human trading activity-- on a world scale in this modern day and age. It's not and never has been a complete economic system in and of itself. It has to have prey. That's what the British colonies were. That's what our "banana republics" were-- some of American capitalism's prey. That's what the "developing nations" are now. They're the herd "multinational" western capitalism feeds on, and "globalization" is its vainglorious attempt to domesticate, or at least fence in the herd so it's easier to prey on them. And as you are aware in you own way, it's working hard to reduce the United States to where it's just one more nation in that herd.

We don't need "a new form of capitalism".
(a) It's a predator, so it's not even half of a viable economic ecology.
(b) It espouses "the law of the jungle", so it's an animal loose in a human world.
(c) It notoriously operates on greed and fear, which is exactly what we try to raise our children not to do anymore.

Using the latter image, we don't need a new form of childishness, we need a more mature system. And I don't mean socialism or any other currently existing model. What we need doesn't exist, and won't unless we grow up enough ourselves to work together to figure it out.

And for that to happen, this conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat "we're the goodguys" bullshit has just naturally got to stop. Harping on the rightness of what you already know ain't how you figure out anything new. In fact it's the single biggest impediment to learning anything new.

I hope that stirs the pot a bit.
:-)
Regards,
Al J

One can tell the official issued "talking points" by some political party/corporate lobbyist group just because they are repeated ad nauseum, in the press, on cable noise, devoid of fact, value....like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The latest is this one, trying to cut off at the pass, any new stimulus spinning, claiming it's "too late".

I've got news for everybody. The Great Depression got so deep, from Oct 1929 to early 1934, because initially Hoover did not go far enough, especially with....financial reform.

So, literally FDR was "round two" or a "do over" on policies to deal with the Depression.

It is not too late, if they don't start enacting real policies, as they did in the Great Depression, well, then it will be "too late" when the country implodes.

midtowng, congrats you pounded the nail on this one.

This cuts across all party lines.

People who lived through this and read into it will never invest easily on Wall Street again just like people who lived through the Depression (the other one, not this one)
stopped using banks. My sainted Grandmother worked in a factory from dawn to dusk to death and when she passed on she had somewhere north of $80,000 in her mattress.

The French Revolution Redux

Aux barricades!

...it was obvious what Obama was way before he ever won the nomination. In fact I blame those who were clueless enough to vote for this waffling corporate "center" right wing screw-up. This guy and the so-called leadership of this party has FU'ed any potential populist progressive movement for a generation. Instead Obama and his fellow Democratic screw-ups are about to deliver us true right wing government.

When I disputed Obama's progressive credentials in the lead up to his nomination, and posted those reservations, I had a nationally known blogger that we all know infer that I was a racist. I knew at that point there was something sick within the so-called political left.

All I can say is get used to a far right wing government that the Democrats (they cannot blame this one on Nader, but they will probably try) have delivered to us.

I voted Democratic nearly all my adult life, I started to sour during Clinton's administration when he supported NAFTA and other trade agreements which have basically destroyed much of the middle class in this country. However, early on it was just philosophical because the damage of the trade agreements was still to be felt. I knew the damage to this country was going to be great, but it was hard to imagine until the devastation could be seen with my own eyes. I then had an even stronger retroactive disgust for Clinton and most Democrats, between 2006 and 2008 after they took control of Congress. They seemed pathetic, and Obama fit right in with them, as just another neo-liberal piece of trash.

Then in 2008 I supported Edwards, and then Kucinich, which of course ended up being hopeless, and then for the first time I voted 3rd party in an election for Nader, and felt great about it, and feel even better about it today. Nader had figured out what the Democrats were becoming long before I or most anyone else did, I think most of us just didn't want to accept it, but of course he was spot on. For now on I will vote candidate by candidate and not for party and most of them will be 3rd party, however I will vote for good Democrats like Virg Bernero for Michigan Governor. In fact he might be the only Democrat I vote for in this election (perhaps one or two others). There are truly very few good Democrats left.

I will vote in every election though, my only hope is that a progressive populist 3rd party will emerge that truly makes a difference and hopefully snuffs out the corporate "center" right Democratic Party. At least I can dream.

Regards,