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Tuesday, October 7, 2008 |
Capitalism has truely reached its ultimate predatory state. After most governments announced measures to remedy the crisis, the markets fell even more than before. The capitalists no longer trust their own system. They are waylaying each other. It is the criminal elements who organised this crisis who are now taking their millions out of the banks. They don't give a damn about what happens after that.
But what worries me is that the architects of this debacle, Bernanke, Paulson, to name just a few, are now in charge of distributing the taxpayers' money.
ABCNews: "The Dow settled at 9,955.50, down nearly 370 points and 3.6 percent from last week. The close capped a roller coaster day for stocks, with the Dow dropping 800 points in the mid-afternoon before rebounding by the day's end."
Telegraph: "The FTSE-100 index of Britain's biggest companies dropped by 391.06 points - its steepest ever fall - to end the day down 7.9 per cent.
The FTSE's tumble was mirrored across Europe, as markets in France, Germany, Italy and Spain all recorded heavy falls."
FT: "What we are experiencing now is the bust that has followed the 30-year bull run in conservative ideas that began with the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of 1979-80.
The current financial crisis can be traced to three of the central ideas of the Reagan-Thatcher era: the promotion of home ownership, financial deregulation and a fervent faith in the market. Each of these ideas did sterling service for 30 years, increasing prosperity and freedom. But pushed too far - and combined - they have created a disaster.
The same process of intellectual overshoot happened with other signature ideas of the Reagan-Thatcher era: privatisation, scepticism about environmentalism and democracy promotion."
TheBigMoney: "But now, real economic conservatives have disappeared from the Republican stage. Many will vote for Obama this year - they call themselves Obamacons. Though we still disagree on nearly everything, we're on the same side. This is curious, and there seemed to be a book in it; The Predator State is that book.
Real conservatives know that neither Bush nor McCain is one of them. Bush is a bread-and-circuses reactionary with a clientele of lobbies. McCain gets his economic ideas from Phil Gramm, the ultimate architect of the Enron culture, of libertine speculation and financial disaster. As for Sarah Palin, back in Alaska she took every dime of pork she could lay her hands on. This crowd deregulates and privatizes not because they think it might work out for the public but because they know it won't. What they care about is putting their friends in charge.
Under Bush, oil and gas, drug companies and defense contractors, insurers and usurers, banks and big media control the government of the United States. John McCain was a key member of the Keating Five and a lynchpin of the savings-and-loan debacle; then, as chair of the Senate commerce committee, he presided over Lobby Central; notoriously, his campaign is run by lobbyists to this day and until last week his policy could be summed up in slogans: he was a 'free market' man, a 'deregulator'.
The predator state has no public purpose. Apart from a few empty slogans - smaller government, balance the budget, feel your pain - the connection between actual problems and actual policies has disappeared. It has become clear that, if the Republicans had their way, this election would not be about issues. It would be about anything else: personalities, associations, the politics of fear, and the life history of a long-ago prisoner of war.
The Bush-Paulson bailout exposed the predator state in detail. Deregulation and desupervision were the origin of this crisis: the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealing Glass-Steagall, and the Gramm-authored loophole legitimating credit default swaps in 2000. Bush's financial regulators brought chainsaws to press conferences, a clear signal to sub-prime hustlers that 'anything goes'. 'Liar's loans', 'neutron loans' and 'toxic waste' became financial terms of art. When the crash came, Paulson and Bernanke were plainly not up to the job. The original three-page Treasury bill was less a power grab than a punt; it said to Congress: 'there's nobody home over here'."
GlobalResearch: "That bear market will not end just because the Fed bails out banks. It will end when the excess inventory created by this real estate bubble is slowly bought off the market and prices come down to a level that makes sense from an investment standpoint. Home prices are not going to bottom because people all of a sudden start to throw money at houses with the thought they are going to make a big return when they appreciate in value. The bottom will come when investors can buy properties with the intention of making a profit from renting them. The condo flipping game is over and is not coming back.
We are probably a year away from the bottom in real estate.
What this means is that the bailout bill will do absolutely nothing to help the real economy.
That is why after the bill passed the stock market fell anyway."
AntiWar: "Threatening an imminent economic collapse, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have bamboozled Congress into enacting the most brazen confiscatory scheme ever concocted by government. The scheme would have American taxpayers fork over $700 billion of their cash to help recapitalize some of the country's biggest banks - the same banks that recently larded their bigwigs with $62 billion in bonuses.
Sensing a pushback by the world's dollar-surplus regions - Asia and the Mideast - to finance the largest debtor economy, the U.S. government will now plunder its own countrymen to keep capital running 'uphill'. As with most statist remedies, it is being marketed as a boon for Main Street, tantalizing its inhabitants with the prospect of profits wafting westward from those malodorous Wall Street investments. However, Congress has inured the Treasury from accountability and legal recourse, giving Paulson dictatorial power over the nation's financial sector. Rather than let this bloated segment of the economy shrink and consolidate, Paulson and his successor will extend it unlimited life support, bloodletting everything else, in a final ruin of the nation.
So here we are: a phony monetary system, $3 trillion wasted on wars, and a citizenry mired in debt. And what does Congress do? It adds more debt - a trillion dollars, just for starters, since once starting down this slippery slope, it won't be able to stop. It then gives the Treasury the green light to buy securities that are trading as low as 20 cents on the dollar at the hold-to-maturity value, i.e., par!"
Just imagine what will happen when China really gets angry and gets back at the US. America has become an anomaly. Right now America is still denying it has lost its power, and continues to act as if they were ruling the world, thereby kicking its own ass.
ETaiwanNews: "China on Saturday denounced proposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan worth US$6.5 billion, according to state media, warning 'there is only one China in the world, and that Taiwan is a part of China'."
What will happen when the citizens start rebelling against the criminal system?
TimesOnline: "Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain."
GlobalResearch: "Police officers from forces across the South West are to receive training to prepare them for riots."
11:00:49 AM 
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© Copyright 2008.
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