Hostage crisis

The more I think about it, the worse I think this trillion dollar bailout is. The government is being held up by the financial sector. They are demanding that the government turn over all the money it gets from taxes--or else.

This is the subjection of the state to the demands of finance capital. It is not the state taking control of banks, markets, finance. That's why there were no provisions in the initial 2 page plan for oversight or accountability. That's also why it was written by a former head of Goldman Sachs. That's what Wall Street is demanding.

This isn't socialism. It's the triumph of neoliberal dominance of the state.

Imagine: over the next years they will continue to tell us that we can't afford health care, infrastructure, research. They will continue to tell us that the social security and medicare/medicaid are too expensive, unworkable. The state is already running a record high deficit--without including the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Does giving the finance sector a trillion dollars change this?

And when it happens, where will we be? In the streets or just sitting around blogging?

Comments

[bob allen]

objective conditions will drive the level of resistance, presumably. A friend describes this crisis as "being made to buy our own rape kits", I concur- there is no reason, except the election and covering the behinds of the parasitical investment bankers, why this has to be "resolved" immediately. Would it not be interesting if, in the model of declining symbolic efficiency, the rightists wave the flag of hated "socialism" to impede
this giveaway somehow, after all from a social Darwinist free market view this giveaway is an affront to property rights, this socialization of market losses...just the fact you have to say "this is not socialism" is my point, it means "they" have framed it as such...

[Richard Grusin]

I've seen my thinking move in the opposite direction. The more I think about the bailout the more I'm prepared to accept it--if it is structured according to principles like those Obama laid out and if it is a prelude to more fundamental reform under an Obama administration. At the beginning my sentiments were like those you express above, but I was uneasy that my position looked like that of conservative Republican Senator Shelby from Alabama, or the hundred-plus conservative House Republicans who are now holding up a deal.

Of course this isn't socialism--any more than Obama is the most liberal Senator in Washington, another conservative Republican stalking horse. But if there is no "bailout," I fear the prudent thing to do would be to clean out what little savings I have and put the cash into a cookie jar or under my mattress.

My hope is that this thing can be resolved in such a way that McCain is further discredited and Obama is elected with a sizable Democratic majority in Congress. Then we need to do all we can to hold the Dems' feet to the fire to bring about long-term planning and intelligent reform to address the major global crises we face in security, climate change, poverty, disease, and on down the list.

Either that, or the country will just have to take its medicine. Unfortunately the damage is likely to do more to hurt those who have benefitted least from our nation's wealth--even though I not-so-secretly hope that an economic collapse would hurt those who have benefitted the most at others' expense.

[Jodi]

I'm not bothered by the fact that the far right and the far left converge on this. We converge for different reasons. After all, that Carl Schmitt was a Nazi does not mean his critique of parliamentarism is wrong.

And, why make the country 'take its medicine' when 'the country' is what has been screwed over?

[Thivai]

I'll be running in the streets:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/business/26bailout.html?_r=1&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin

[acumensch]

In the streets!

[Kareem (^_^ )]

"And, why make the country 'take its medicine' when 'the country' is what has been screwed over?"
A lesson in humility this country may have needed to learn? To vanquish the stink of an arrogant and illogical ideology?
What if, we needed a force feed of this medicine because there is a blatant ignorance, bias, and hubris we need to deal with? One that's eaten us from the core of America and been given power to manifest itself on a global stage - beyond isolated bubbles of think tank bickering with no connection to the outside world and beyond national politics.
I think there are some with the heuristic tools to see through the 12/hr * 2 (because of the re-runs) pop-news cycle, just how dangerous that ideology is. Of course, there are those that do not. All this posturing and stage craft, this bolstering… is only going to fuel frustrations – on both sides.
This bailout, (it will pass), will only add more fuel to the fire and encourage what will win this election year: strategically “the ground turn out.” Who can mobilize those frustrations best and translate it into actually numbers on Election Day.
What will will be in this machine… The cynic in me is terrified, the optimistic-realist thanks from a strategic numbers front, frustration and the improvement seen in America w/ developing the heuristic tools to function in a democracy (thou I’ll grant, an illusion of one) has reached a point where the constant bombardment of data and information (false and otherwise) is becoming easier to process.

That may help kill that ideology at it’s private little core. Maybe we need this medicine?

[Kareem (^_^ )]

*thanks from a = thinks (

(still need to slow down... hmph)

[Kareem (>_> )]

Onoes. Do see other minor typo misteps in that speed run. But hopefully forgiven. ;)

[Seb]

The "country" to which Kareem refers is this same group-hug Paulson et al. are attempting to gather us into, in spite of the fact they've had everyone (globally) outside the top 20% in a headlock for the past 30 years. It's a collectivity that does not exist, no small thanks to the people who are now desperately appealing to it.

Bob's "rape kit" metaphor is probably the best line of read in the past two weeks...