Now I ask you, can it get any more bizarre?
As the New York Times reports this morning: "On the morning after the sell-off on Wall Street, Congressional offices reported a shift in angry calls from constituents, with some now demanding that lawmakers take some corrective action -- a distinct change from the outpouring of public opposition that contributed to the defeat of the plan."
What a difference a day makes, since the crisis required a gut-wrenching and instant deepening in the form of a one-day evaporation of $1.2 trillion in constituents' equity assets -- not "fat cat" coin, mind you, but mostly middle-class pensions, 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. -- before the conspicuity of brutal reality started slapping Congress' ideological stubbornness in the face.
Much of that record loss was made up yesterday. But without remedial action, more record losses are in the works. And even worse than what was going down on Wall Street Monday was that, as of Tuesday, the credit markets -- those recondite contraptions that permit the working class to buy, for example, homes and automobiles (the production and sale of which mean jobs, jobs, jobs) -- went into the deepest of freezes. Houston, Seattle and Boston: We have a problem.
In an accompanying piece the NYT's financial columnist, David Leonhardt, tells a noteworthy story:
In 1929, Meyer Mishkin owned a shop in New York that sold silk shirts to workingmen. When the stock market crashed that October, he turned to his son, then a student at City College, and offered a version of this sentiment: It serves those rich scoundrels right.
A year later, as Wall Street’s problems were starting to spill into the broader economy, Mr. Mishkin’s store went out of business. He no longer had enough customers. His son had to go to work to support the family, and Mr. Mishkin never held a steady job again.
Served "them" right. Right?
At any rate, for three years President Herbert Hoover's purest of motives and ideological stubbornness held firm: We simply can't tamper much with the free market. Besides, he assured us, this will all turn around, just you wait and see.
We did. It didn't.
Hoover's successor, Franklin Roosevelt, indeed had mountainously troubling encounters with the preceding conservative mindset; but what many don't recall today, because they don't read history, is that he also suffered repeated headaches from the left.
FDR wasn't interested in a revolutionary tearing down of an economic system that had, until the unbridled greedmongers got hold of it, worked reasonably well by global standards. So he worked within the system, pragmatically focusing and fine-tuning, until some and usually small gains were achieved. He intuitively understood that gradual, constructive gains were preferable to sudden and satisfying ruptures incubated in revenge, which have a nasty tendency to boomerang.
It's one of those splendid paradoxes of history that FDR has been rightly sainted by progressives, although, in action, he was one of the more temperamentally conservative presidents we've ever had. But what made him great -- truly, toweringly great; none of this latter-day Reaganesque-greatness crappola -- had nothing to do with left or right. He possessed instead an exquisitely pragmatic mind. He was, that is, profoundly non-ideological.
And therein lies the key to Barack Obama's future, possible greatness. He reads history. He has studied what works. He cares not one whit if the hidebound ideological left or right wishes to take issue with what are, indeed, his pragmatic positions.
And his latest, most notable position, of course, is that the bailout-loan-investment-rescue-recovery package coming up for a Senate vote tonight and a later retry in the House, with both the reactionary right and reactionary left screaming and kicking, must pass -- must, to avert some future retelling of Mr. Leonhardt's story. For this looming depression can in fact be, in the words of that immortal philosopher Barney Fife, nipped in the bud.
Like FDR, Obama understands that problems are best addressed by actual tools that might work -- not by fixed, one-size-fits-all, preconceived ideas that float about abstractly in the empyrean. Also like FDR, Obama will be faced with leading an administration that's mired in chronic economic difficulties, which tangibly arose, of course, from ruinous abstractions of ideology. And finally, if Obama sticks to his pragmatic guns and ultimately triumphs, he, again, like FDR, will someday be sainted by ideological progressives, even though his success stemmed from taking a profoundly non-ideological course.
None of this should get doctrinaire progressives down in the dumps. Because it just so happens that intelligent pragmatic measures usually square with advertised progressive ones -- which, despite occasionally heated confrontations with the left, was usually the case with FDR's administration as well.
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Wall Street Lobbyists Must Be Excluded From These Negotiatiions
Yes, P.M., something must be done...
Troublesome?
Sounds a lot like the Hoover plan...
Bailout?
I don't think this bailout
Learning from history
Seems it was mostly New Deal socialist programs and fighting WWII that "rescued" America from the Great Depression, with scant help from FDR's "pragmatically focusing and fine-tuning".
Mayhaps this relatively recent and periodically problematic type of economic system the world now "enjoys" has just run its inevitable course, and jury-rigging it once again to delay the necessary change into something truly sustainable for the long-term future of humanity is not really so wise?
Just who do you think presented the New Deal
Comprehension
Do you have a reading problem?
The point was FDR's socialist programs and the "good fortune" of having to fight WWII is what ended the Great Depression, and that had very little to do with adjustments to the financial system.
There are lessons for us in that, though like doing Iraq & Afghanistan after the Vietnam War, we probably won't learn much once again ......... and that is my bigger point: failure is necessary if we ever are to have any hope of changing for the better.
It's clear something has to be done
As long as it isn't what Bush wants, which is basically billions given to Paulson with which to do anything he wants, no oversight, no accounting, kind of like the Iraq war resolution. There are no consequences for any of the D.C/Wall Street hooligans, whose greed and lack of transparency led to this crisis. Until there are consequences (as there already are, and will continue to be, on main street and in middle class America, we will find ourselves in another mess like this or worse in the future.
Any truly great president, like FDR, will catch hell from both sides of the ideological spectrum for the simple reason that great presidents are not ideologically brain-dead. He/she does not automatically consider all conservative or liberal ideas as stupid. A great president listens to a range of opinions from respected people on both sides and, hopefully, from those in the middle, who are beholden to no ideology, neither left nor right.
Among my hopes for this nation and it's people:
1) That the American people will wake up and wise up, educate themselves on a range of issues and, therefore avoid rigid ideology or believing in fairy tales, like the American dream or George Bush's ownership society. (I realize that Clinton is getting plenty of the flak for that among the ditto-heads, but he isn't by himself.)
The reality is that the American dream can become a night mare so fast it will make you head swim and that which you own, in fact owns you. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is an old American saying which indicates that all Americans are or should be alike in their dreams and desires and if they aren't, it is shameful somehow. Being poor in shameful in America If I can't afford a new car every year and my neighbors can, in America, I'm a loser. Actually, being poor in shameful in America. I don't know when that b.s. started, but it is an attitude that is in itself shameful.
2) That Americans will truly take stock of their own behavior, the one thing they can actually do something about. I would advise cutting up the plastic. Keep one credit card in case of emergencies; real emergencies, like your hot water heater blowing up, not your teenager having to have the very latest in whatever, and pay the bill as quickly as humanly possible. (This is a great time to be teaching kids about the value of money, not plastic. It is bad parenting to protect children from the reality of what is happening now and why; it's pure insanity to continue to live life as if nothing is happening. Children need to learn now, what happens when one insists on living above one's means.) Americans, I sincerely hope, have learned that they need to be very wary of banks and other lenders and never, ever, use your house as a a big credit card. Your local banker is not your friend. He/she answers to a higher authority and I'm not talking about "God" but greed. You cannot trust bottom-line worshipers any further than you can throw them and for a very long time now, the deck has been being stacked against the average individual.
People like the ones who head these "too big to fail" corporations, and others, cannot go unregulated. Too many Americans are in the market in the form of financial devices for retirement. The elderly, who are already retired are the ones I worry about the most, right now. Small businesses, run by local people, are at risk. Elected officials who insist on a free for all in the business world ought to be fired by the voters. If the ultra-wealthy want to get together for a craps game once a week, fine. Let them do it with their own money.
3) That Americans will stop the silliness of voting for people simply because they can identify with them, want to have a beer with them or whatever. Does anyone really believe that George W. Bush identifies with ordinary Americans? Get real. I can't really identify with Barack Obama. I was not brought up by a single Mom and grandparents, I'm not black and I didn't graduate from Harvard with honors, but I do know this. Obama is a very smart man, who seems to have boundless energy and I think that is the kind of person we need to lead this country through the nightmare that lies ahead, "rescue or no rescue."
If Americans stop living above their means, there will most assuredly be an economic reckoning (long over-due) and it may well stave off staggering inflation. The Recession is here, the only question is will it grow considerably worse and how long it will last, one year or three to 4 years? If there is recession and inflation, most of us will be in grave trouble and had better make our last major purchase a good, hardy, all-weather tent.
The Media Has Done Its Job