bailout

they voted down yesterday’s bailout bill and that’s a good thing. so speaking as one who has been extremely outspoken in her criticism of the party I would like to say thanks for that.

less praiseworthy of course are the reasons they put the kibosh on this bill, and those are far from noble — a pattern that extends to the democrats as well, one that provides a a crystal clear example of just how cynical our entire governmental process has become.

looking at the roster of naysayers and yaysayers from yesterday’s vote reveals two very distinct camps not at all split along party lines but according to whether or not they are up for reelection in november. those that are voted almost unanimously against the bailout and those that aren’t voted in favor.

looked at one way, this can be viewed as a positive thing: our elected officials obeying the will of the people as expressed in hundreds of thousands of emails and calls.

but what about the rest of them, then? if short-termers were obeying the will of their constituents, does it mean the others ignored that same will. and if so. in favor of what?

oh. politics. that old ugly thing.

so political considerations outweighed the will of the people for those politicians who felt they had nothing at risk, and almost all of them went with the “politically correct” option.

in other words, if we’re not in the very shadow of an election, or if your representative is on his or her last term, what YOU want doesn’t matter. what the citizens of this country want is only important as a subsidiary concern in pursuing political success. nice.

yet there’s something even more important missing from this picture and it’s the one thing that we specifically elected these bozos to do: weigh all the aspects of the proposal and make a clear, unbiased recommendation of what you think the very best course of action is. in other words to use the brains god gave them, let their consciences be their guides, and then do the right fucking thing.

doing the right thing for the sake of the right thing has been entirely obliterated from our governing process.

standing up for a principle that you truly believe in is considered naive. foolhardy. it’s inexpedient. you can’t get things done that way.

and so we have made ourselves hostage to a congress of liars and fools who daily demonstrate the truth in the saying if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.

it absolutely sickens me.

and you?

and what can we do about it? what happens here if the whole nation stands up and acknowledges that the emperor has been naked for quite some time?

bookmark to:

i live next door to Washington Mutual Bank, the first big-bank branch to have opened in my southern harlem neighborhood. i have a CD on deposit there, and this seemed — in light of the fact that you don’t get ongoing statements or an ATM card with a CD — a good time to ask for some kind of statement of accounts. i wasn’t sure if they’d be open, this being saturday morning and them being in trouble and all. i wasn’t positive there wouldn’t be lines of screaming depositors outside the bank, clamoring for their cash.

yes to being open and no to the bankrupt hordes: it was business as usual at WAMU this rainy morning, and the young man at the convenience desk was more than happy to print me a copy of my CD’s You Are Here summary (unfortunately without troubling to ask me for ID, but i guess you can’t expect too much when the whole economy is in the toilet and banks are folding in the middle of the night). in fact, the two customers on line ahead of me were actually making deposits. so much for my updated 1929 fantasies of doom.

if evidence of doom is what i wanted, though, there sure are enough hints of it in this statement. i opened this CD in october 2006, and added more funds in november of that year. since that time, the amount on deposit (roughly $35k) has remained constant. interest was deposited, like clockwork, the middle of every month.

and there the symmetry ends. at the beginning of last year the interest payments averaged around $150/month, culminating in a high of $156.70 in june 2007. it was all downhill from there, with payments hovering around ninety-something bucks until this summer when they plunged — PLUNGED, i tell you! — to $48. all this, mind you, while the capital amount (initial deposits plus interest earned) had grown by more than $2,000.

and the financial meltdown is only just getting started.

well, i’m grateful. i’m grateful that i have money in a CD that i am able to leave alone, and i’m grateful that it hasn’t (yet) been wiped out by the shenanigans of wall street. i’m grateful that ordinary citizens understand enough about the way that finance works not to have started a run on this (or any other, so far) bank. i’m grateful that WAMU has been bailed out and that there is still money in the FDIC.

i’m grateful but not complacent. i’m worried, and wondering what i should (or even can) do to protect myself in the event the country slides further down the tubes into bankruptcy. there is no doubt in my mind that if the absolute worst comes to pass and john mccain wins the coming election, that we are all well and completely fucked. on the other hand, despite the trust and respect i hold for barack obama, i’m not convinced that anybody can repair the wreckage that the republicans and their high-rolling buddies have wreaked on our economy, at least not in my lifetime (and i ain’t all that old).

bookmark to:

no doubt you’ve heard the news about an unrestricted $700,000,000,000 “bailout” for the banking industry. the proposed solution is a blank check for the bankers that does nothing for people who are losing their homes.

ahem. $700 billion is more than the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. are you kidding me or what?

that’s unacceptable to me, and should be unacceptable to every taxpaying american. it includes provisions for bailing out foreign banks — FOREIGN BANKS! — while allowing families to lose their homes and…what, exactly? with the republicans having virtually destroyed our already-fragile social safety net over the past eight years, people in foreclosure will likely not even have the “luxury” of ending up in a shelter, because the shelters are already full. meanwhile, the financiers who actively participated in this collapse (some might even say who caused the collapse, because the were the ones handing out bad loans the way dentists used to hand out lollipops) keep their million dollar bonuses and, even worse, are allowed to continue running the institutions that they have already run into the ground.

i mean, what the fuck? joshua holland lays out quite clearly the ways in which this crisis is a direct result of greed on wall street. and it’s not the first time we’ve been screwed by the manipulations of the bankers in collusion with their political counterparts.

initially, i was not in favor of any kind of a bailout. a lot of people used the mortgage frenzy to finance and flip any number of properties, and did quite well for themselves. if they were left holding some kind of outrageous paper when the music stopped and couldn’t pay the interest, let alone the loan itself, i call it just deserts. but that’s not the whole story. plenty of low- and middle-income families looked at the mortgage givewaway and saw it not for the scam that it was (scam is the right word because the bankers KNEW that it wasn’t sustainable; responsible economists have predicted this collapse for years) but as a way to finally own the home that had, until then, been out of their reach. not to mention GWB harping on and on about the great new ownership society.

it’s those families, ones that were doing okay for themselves in their rented apartments and houses but who yearned for something more and couldn’t make heads or tails out of the fine print on those oh-so-easy-to-get subprime mortgages, that are being destroyed in this crisis. and paulson has the massive balls to propose a huge taxpayer funded bailout that protects the fucking bankers but not the people who got burned?

no. i say, NO! and the democrats are also saying no — thank you for finally growing a pair, nancy pelosi — and we need to join our voices to theirs. paulson is insisting that this is the only way when it is NOT the only way — check out this alternative (and much less expensive) plan from ian welsh and some good ideas from the nation on how we could finance all these rescue missions. you know, a billion here a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money. the government is already in debt, so where’s all that money gonna come from. yeah. you guessed right.

our homework for today is to contact our representatives and TELL THEM THAT WE SAY NO TO THIS PROPOSAL.

after all, it’s our money they’re spending. think about that. it’s equivalent to a couple grand for every man, woman and child in this country. i’m sure you can think of better things the government can do with a couple grand than hand it to wall street.

send your congressman an email (you will need your zip+4 to find them).

please also CALL THEM, and while you’re at it call your senators, and do it today — phone numbers and street addresses for all are here. if you’ve got an extra stamp handy, send them a snailmail as well. it can be as simple as printing out your email and putting it in an envelope.

you can get all this done in about ten minutes. that’s not a lot of time. the future of this country is, quite literally, at stake. if paulson gets the bailout that he’s asking for, it is equivalent to handing the whole treasury to wall street.

and you know how wall street works. they get a $20,000,000 bonus while the town sheriff is throwing your aunt tilly’s furniture into the street.

thought i’d leave you with something incredibly sweet, after all this bile & bad news. thanks to crooks & liars for letting me know about this gorgeous performance by alison crowe.

bookmark to:

last night i dreamed of the economy. except it wasn’t the economy, it was a landfill. this is how dreams work: you’re walking through a castle and dream says “this is your office”. rather, dream makes you Know this is your office. dreams are all about knowing, vivid slices of Real in the sleepy night. dreams can be ecstatic, terrifying, repetitive, confusing, erotic — the only thing a dream can never be is uncertain. dreams always know.

i dreamed of the economy and the economy was a landfill but it wasn’t a sparkly new separate-your-recyclables landfill, no. it was a seething, boiling, fetid lake of filth abubble with disintegrating plastics and grease and stale medications. i held a cloth over my face. i couldn’t breathe. i was there, alone, at the edge of the poisonous landfill of our economy. it was a long, long dream. i stood and watched the noxious lake in a landscape that held nothing else, grey and barren as the moon. i saw heat squiggles rising off the black swells. i took small breaths and shivered in the freezing cold.

how many of us believed that the US economy really could collapse? how many of us understand that it has already happened, nothing but the details of it to be worked out….and worked out, and worked out, as savings vanish and opportunities for livelihood cease. a few months ago i wrote here that it’s too late for everything, environmentally speaking. i might have missed the whole point in that post, climate change may be the least of our problems. not that i’ll stop recycling or taking a tote bag to the grocery store.

our next president, whoever it may be, will be stepping into an impossible job. john mccain said yesterday that he knows how to fix this problem. maybe he doesn’t yet understand, or simply doesn’t want to admit, that this isn’t fixable. that to bail out all of the failing firms means mortgaging not just your future and your children’s futures, but several generations of futures. it means writing checks that we have no way of cashing. it means china cuts off our credit. (it’s abominable that this country has even come to rely so heavily on loans from china in the first place. but we have. how the fiscally conservative republicans who started this practice square that with their financial philosophy is beyond me.) conversely, not bailing out the failing firms means that insurance policies and savings accounts become worthless. means that mortgages vanish completely and only those wealthy enough to pay cash can buy a place to live. it means owners walk away from rental properties and throw up their hands when the shivering residents scream that they need heat. blood from stones. suing the landlord doesn’t accomplish much if he’s as broke as you. lawsuits never filled a furnace or changed a lightbulb yet.

nor fixed a bridge nor paved a road nor repaired a levee. 

but hey, mudd & syron will still get their multimillion dollar kisses on their way out the door. the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

and last night i dreamed of a landfill.

bookmark to: