Whiteysphere, you elected no hope. So, youve gotten more empire and war, but of course that matters only to 'those people over there, the ones not like me.' No, what actually will matter to you, you've gotten no hope economics. Specifically, Mr. No Hope predictably has squandered trillions on terminally ill financial titans. You needed that money, Whiteysphere.
No hope economics means get ready in four or five months for economic Titanic. It's already well underway, of course, but by that time happy & thrifty talk will be overwhelmed and you'll see it on yer corporate media TV. See millions of Americans - many of them 'people like you' - living in Obamavilles. See armed security on your sidewalks as bank robberies and other people's economic crime skyrockets. See unwashed youth prowling city streets - even in neighborhoods where 'people like you' live - begging or stealing, doing anything to feed their bellies.
On the other hand, those people way over there, the ones our empire is injuring, impoverishing, killing and de-housing, they can draw hope from the impending impoverishment of the US economic goliath and its vassals.
Hope, no hope, okay mebbe it depends on your perspective. Whatever, next time how 'bout voting for a non-asshole?
That could never happen to me. My job is secure, I've been with the company for almost fifteen years and am on a first name basis with the owner. Our industry is recession proof. People will always need wire shelving. If we are not selling to new homes then we are selling to the remodeling market. Sound familiar? Let's fast forward a few weeks and listen in again.
What a surprise it came out of no where. Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect they would get rid of the accounting department. Imagine, the owner thinking he can out source our jobs and save money. Sure sales were down but we've had dips before. I wish we had saved a little bit more for a rainy day. I've never been unemployed in my life. What do I do now?
Not an uncommon scene. We hear on the news about the cut backs in the auto industry and other high profile job losses which number in the tens of thousands. What we do not hear about are all the smaller to middle size companies who are also cutting back and discharging employees. The media talks about these jobs as the ripple affect but we don't see the faces of any of them. What we do see is a lot more mothers and fathers showing up at day time events when they used to be at work. Second hand stores are seeing a new clientele and food banks are experiencing an all time high demand. Each of those thousands of numbers laid off, cut, or eliminated from their jobs have a face. The ripple affect flows over faces as well. Those faces are mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors.
The government has stepped up to the plate with stimulus packages, bailouts, emergency funds and programs. The media is full of personal interest stories about this family or that person. Experts are falling out the walls to spout their method of coping. Advertisers has picked up on the terminology of bailout and stimulus. Credit card companies are now trying to convince you they will help you budget not purchase. The band wagon is filling up and there does not seem to be any lack of players. It's getting quite bad so what can we, or what can I do?
We can spout off as to who is and who is not to blame for this mess. We can sit back and criticize everything the government is trying to do. We can turn our backs and say, it's not going to happen to me, I've saved for a rainy day. We can jump on that bandwagon and profit from those who are suffering. We can say I pay taxes and that is enough. We can hide and hope we are not next to be affected with a job loss. We can ignore it, after all if you are retired what is there to worry about? These are all options and I honor those who choose to take one of them or a similar option. I will have no argument with you.
Although there are ways we as individuals can help and it is with these people I will choose to stand. There is no need to go into detail of the many hardships which follow a job loss. There is one though, that I wish to highlight with the current economic situation in our country. And that is the period of unemployment will probably be longer than usual. This will only prove to amplify the many other problems which come with unemployment. So what are the things we can do?
First there are out local Goodwill, Salvation Army, St Vincent De Paul and other thrift stores who have seen a drop off in donations and increase of shoppers. Let's clean out our basements and closets and donate those good useable items. Garden time is approaching. Plant a second row of crops for the food pantry. Are you a retired Human Resources director who could assist first time resume writers? Can you provide child care while a parent searches for work? The list goes on for big and small ways we all can be helpful. The pot of resources available is bottomless, it only needs to be opened and stirred.
This obviously will not stop the recession or turn the economy around. What it will do is put a smile on faces who need smiles. It will get our minds off of the doom and gloom we hear each day and give us a sense of purpose. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents did this during the depression and today they refer to it as the "great" depression. I have always wondered if the great was meant to describe the depth of the depression or the coming together of a nation of people to help one another. I like to think it was the latter. We are faced today with a similar opportunity. Maybe someday this will be known as the "great" recession.
As OpenLefties know, many progressives are comparing the current economic situation to the 1930s. While the hardships of this recession do not (yet) compare with what our country faced in the Great Depression, there is no question that these are tough times.
The idea that we are reliving the Depression or something like it is part of a larger argument that the U.S. is undergoing a leftward political realignment similar to that of the '30s. The hope is that the Democratic Party will rediscover its New Deal heritage and a new progressive coalition will come together around issues of health care, income inequality, corporate power, etc.
However, even if we assume that Barack Obama and his allies are potential New Dealers with good progressive instincts (and I don't assume anything of the sort), we should recognize that the political landscape of today is missing many of the forces and actors that made the Roosevelt era so ripe for change.
In the 1930s, the possibility that American society would be upended by a genuine social revolution, while probably very remote, was a real fear of some people. As FDR put it: "I was convinced we'd have a revolution in [the] US and I decided to be its leader and prevent it. I'm a rich man too and have run with your kind of people. I decided half a loaf was better than none - a half loaf for me and a half loaf for you and no revolution." Roosevelt was half-bullshitting as politicians always do, but there was some truth to that statement.
Consider the times:
In those years, Huey Long, a terrifyingly ambitious populist from alligator-haunted Louisiana, had the political establishment (and many on the left) shitting bricks with his crusade to radically restructure the American economy.
During this same period, important sectors of the labor movement advanced an explicitly anti-capitalist line. Also, many prominent artists and intellectuals affiliated with the Communist Party, or with Trotskyism, or with the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas.
Left-wing newspapers developed respectable circulations and wide appeal, with sports pages, comics and all. Homeless people, tenants, farmers and other burdened groups organized themselves into associations and managed to cause considerable trouble.
Today we have to ask ourselves, where is our radical labor movement? Where is our EPIC? Where is our Farmer Labor Party? Where is our Daily Worker? Where is our Huey Long?
Maybe the social conditions of this economic downturn will produce similar anti-systemic left/populist movements, but right now I don't see anybody arguing for anything beyond the mild liberalism of MoveOn. I'm all for MoveOn and we'd be lucky to get the MoveOn agenda realized, but I believe progressive politics is the art of backing up maximalist demands with credible threats ... and MoveOn isn't nearly scary or threatening enough for the task at hand.
It's not really all Bush's fault, but his "leadership" may well have sealed Obama's fate. Unless...
In the period from August 1929 until he left office President Herbert Hoover oversaw a 43-month long contraction of the US economy of 33%. Barack Obama looks set to break that record, to preside over what historians could likely call the Very Great Depression of 2008-2014, unless he finds a new cast of financial advisers before Inauguration Day, January 20. Required are not recycled New York Fed presidents, Paul Volckers or Larry Summers types. Needed is a radically new strategy to put virtually the entire United States economy into some form of an emergency 'Chapter 11' bankruptcy reorganization where banks take write-offs of up to 90% on their toxic assets, that, in order to save the real economy for the American population and the rest of the world. Paper money can be shredded easily. Not human lives. In the process it might be time for Congress to consider retaking the Federal Reserve into the Federal Government as the Constitution originally specified, and make the entire process easier for all. If this sounds extreme, perhaps revisit this article in six months again.
Smart as Obama may be, I have my doubts that he'll get rid of the financial creeps and crooks fast enough to not go down in history as Hoover #2.
Then again, maybe Engdahl is wrong.
On another note, Progressives should be putting pressure on Obama (certainly not attained by keeping their mouths shut and acting like lemmings) regardless of any coming Depression. They should do this not just by complaining, suggesting and debating, but also by looking for prospective progressive Presidential candidates for 2012 to primary Obama with. Starting now. Obama has been dealt a bad hand (even if partly his own fault), and thus is likely to be even more amenable to real pressure. A progressive economic agenda may be just the thing that saves an Obama presidency, even if he's pushed into it kicking and screaming.
Looks like we might actually get to a full scale Depression after the Senate Republicans, led by southern senators with foreign car companies based in their states, shot down the $14 BillionBig 3 bailout.
Richard Shelby of Alabama cried the crocodile tears for the Repubs saying that the Big 3 didn't know how to be competitive any more and that bailouts don't work.
GM and Chrysler will probably go bankrupt and restructure...but this will put thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people on unemployment for short or long terms.
The anti-union stance of the Republicans will come back to bite them in the ass... the fact that Mitch McConnell and his buddies don't realize this is a sign that the change we have all wished for with Obama will have considerable, short-visioned competition from the old guard right.
So have a Merry Christmas, autoworkers. We'll get back to you in January.
Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. He was Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors from 1995 to 1997 for Bill Clinton. He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He opposed financial industry deregulation under Clinton, fought with Larry Summers, who is now Obama's chielf economic advisor, over regulating derivatives (Stiglitz wanted to, but Summers won and that wrong decision contributed to the mess we are in.) Stiglitz, while favoring trade, has questioned some of the faith-based beliefs of the free trade fundamentalists.
Stiglitz has an excellent article in Vanity Fair on how we got to the worst economic times since the 1930s. He points to five key mistakes-under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II-and one national delusion.
The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal.
1.2 million jobs were lost over the past three months.
The workweek dropped to 33.5 hours, "the shortest number of hours since the Department of Labor began keeping records on hours worked, back in 1964."
A substantial number of people are too discouraged to even look for work.
He pegs the actual percentage of people who need work at 11 percent. I would throw in the prison population of 2 million or so, which gets us to around 12 or 13 percent.
During the nadir of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was 25 percent. This is more of a mini-depression than a great one.
We have been in a RECESSION since December of 2007. All those months when most of the blogosphere acknowledged that we were in a recession, but Bush and buddies said "Oh no, we're not" have come back into sharp focus.
The best prediction is that we will stay in recession well into 2009 and we could go beyond that.
The solution that Paulson and Behrnanke are pushing is to print more money and feed it to the banks... banks like AIG and Citigroup and other biggies that seem to take the bucks that we print and turn them into big cash subsidies for executives.
How will you dress for the Bush Depression this winter? Me, I'm counting on my slightly tattered but super-toasty flannel-lined OshKosh overalls--so old they were actually made in OshKosh. That, and the sweaters I'll be wearing à la Jimmy Carter, since our thermostat and our bank balance will both be chillingly low.
President Carter tried, and failed, to make cardigans and conservation cool during the seventies energy crisis. He warned of "the serious consequences of our long delay in creating a comprehensive national energy policy" in a speech announcing the Emergency Natural Gas Act of 1977, and called on us all to buckle down and bundle up:
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