The Cause of the Crash
The current economic implosion results not from market failures, but government success. Government exists purely to centralize benefits and socialize costs; anything else is pure marketing.
The most effective means of transferring wealth from the productive classes to the plutocrats is inflation. Government is now dealing with the inevitable consequences of long-term inflation. Of course, the only thing they can do about it is what the US is in fact doing: inflate more.
All the bad behavior by Wall Street, the banks, and the other usual suspects was subsidized, hence encouraged, by the US government, whose partners in crime they were. (The US is massively subsidizing such behavior again, under the guise of "stimulus," i.e. direct transfer payments to the rich.)
How much of this is "capitalism" is a matter of semantics. I'm inclined to agree with Kevin Carson's "free-market anti-capitalism" formulation myself.
The collapse certainly has nothing to do with the markets being "too free." They've been manipulated every step of the way. Meanwhile it was the hard money and real free market types (not the neocons and their conjoined equally-evil twins, the neoliberals, passing off their mercantilism-warmed-over as "free markets) who predicted the meltdown all along.
Mainstream economists, who cheer-led the inflationary bubble and predicted it would expand forever, now tout the Bush/Obama Rich-Only Recovery as "green shoots." One wonders how much of this is innocent stupidity, and how much is paid.
Ethics-free hacks
So "prominent Berkeley economist Brad DeLong" calls opponents of the stimulus plan "ethics free Republican hacks." (Hat tip to Jesse Walker at reason, by way of Antiwar.com.)
Good one.
Given that what DeLong and Paul Krugman and their fascist troll ilk are peddling - economic "stimulus" and the nonsensical notion that we can spend ourselves rich - is nothing more than a slathering of whore's makeup over history’s greatest known transfer of wealth to the very wealthy. Which wealth, by the way, is going to be ripped off our bodies like skin, through the miracle of hyperinflation.
To be sure, the Republicans clamoring in opposition to the bailout are ethics free hacks. Leaving aside the fact that's a truism - nobody gets elected to national office without being one - let's recognize their stance for the cheap ploy it is. The Republicans know the American people are largely wise to the fact this is all egregious socialism for the rich (a tautology anyway); they're just pandering. Of course they favor the bailout: they're employed by the same people the Democrats are, and that isn't the voters.
And after all, the bailout was one of the final pet projects of George W. Bush.
This is a trick the Democrats have proven adept at: vocally opposing Bush's war against American liberties at home and todo lo mundo abroad - and then voting for every stinking scrap of it, from funding the war waged against Iraq in total opposition to US strategic interests, to the confirmation of whatever torture monkey the Busheviks threw up to be Attorney General. Few were more assiduous at that than the new puppetoon President - whose definition of change, you should be realizing now, means "more of the same, only bigger and harder."
You Can’t Afford Him
That's the one thing you need to take away from today's investiture of the new Führer: you can't afford him. Not you, not me, not your family, not your friends. Certainly not the American people.
The good news is, the United States - the Empire - can't afford him either.
Of course the O-Bomber is a "post-partisan uniter," as reason puts it, snarkily and correctly. That's because there's no difference between the parties - not in practical terms. Not in terms of what they actually do.
Both parties do what governments are instituted among men to do: to preserve and increase the power, privilege, and profit of the ruling classes. What rational reason is there to suppose government would do anything but serve the interests of its proprietors?
And as if there was any doubt that, as I've told you before, "Change" means "More of the same, only harder and worse," recall that the newly anointed Dear Leader has voted for or otherwise endorsed pretty much all of the evil things his predecessor did - when he hasn't outdone him in militaristic zeal, as when he proved himself far to the right of even the rabidly anti-freedom Sarah Palin on issues like killing brown people in Afghanistan and Iran to make them better.
He endorsed war, torture, spying, and the real war which is being waged against American liberty - not to mention American property and American lives.
And most of all he, like his mentally-deficient sock puppet of a predecessor, vigorously supports a "bailout" of 8.5 trillion dollars, and rising. Which constitutes history's greatest known transfer of wealth to the very wealthy.
Why settle?
Why, indeed?
Really, could he be any worse than McInsane or O'Bomber? How?
They both stand four-square for war, torture, domestic spying, and massive welfare for the rich. Or hadn't you noticed?
Anyway, click on the link to buy the swell shirt. I'm happy, at least, to be able to plug my pals Ray and Barb van Tilburg and their wonderful Offworld Designs. Ray's an excellent artist who does tee-shirt designs for a lot of Midwest cons, including Archon. Plus they have tons of non-con specific designs, such as the above, which are nifty and wicked clever.
Even if they're distressed by my usage of their design, if, like most people, they cherish the belief there's an actual difference between the sock puppet on Leviathan's left claw, and the one on His right.
But relax. It's nothing to the pain that your guy will cause if elected. No matter which he is.
(And then again ... not even a Great Old One can prevent the implosion of the Unitedstatesian Empire.)