The Nation: Economic Chaos, Political Consequences

[marmar]

Economic Chaos, Political Consequences
Nicholas von Hoffman



"Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" --Margo Channing (Bette Davis) in All About Eve.

Bumpy is no word for it. The news coming out of Wall Street makes what the three presidential candidates are saying beside the point. Cancel the fun. The bad news also bids fair to change the daily lives of 300 million Americans. No, kidding, folks. What's going on in the business world is as serious as it can get.

Events unfolding this week on the lower end of Manhattan will cancel out all the projects John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been talking about. McCain will have to deal with the home truth that, though he may dig up enough soldier boys for the Middle Eastern wars, there is no money to pay for them. And thanks to the ever-shrinking dollar, other countries are not going to lend us more money to carry them on. We have run out of money: it's time to cut and run.

The billions that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would have had to spend to do the wonderful things they are dangling in front of the voters do not exist. Tradition has always allowed campaigning candidates to make promises they will not make good on, but this time they are bumping up against the limits of the plausible, let alone the possible. It might be helpful if they would ease off with the pretty pictures.

There will be no health insurance for everyone. No long-needed increases in teachers' salaries, no big infrastructure projects, no decent-paying new jobs for those laid-off workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and nothing for single-parent (read mothers) households. There is no money. As things stand now we may have to spend hundreds of billions to prevent millions of people from being thrown out of their homes and billions more to prop our crooked, avaricious, heedless and duplicitous financial system so it does not come crashing down on all of us. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/howl

[LiberalEsto]

1. The money went to Halliburton, Exxon, KB&R,

Blackwater, and all the other vipers who've been squeezing profits from this stupid wasteful war in Iraq.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

8. Went - still going

Whatta plan, bush*co. Nothing surprises me.

[SpiralHawk]

14. "Smirk. Sneer. Smirk." - Commander AWOL & Republicon homelander cronies

[KaseyM]

2. Chicken in every pot

I agree that the chicken in every pot talk needs to go.

We need straight talk about how tough things are going to be.

[marmar]

4. Agreed. Now is the time for a cold dose of reality....

..... And welcome to DU! :hi:

[democrank]

3. It`s really a very sobering situation.

Time to tighten my belt...again.

[tabasco]

5. One of the biggest diseases of the economy is the Iraq war.

Voters should hold those cowardly politicians accountable. Every one of them who voted to give madman Bush a loaded gun should be kicked to the street.

[superkia]

11. I dont believe they are cowardly, I think they all share the same...

agenda. If Americans continue to believe that a letter D in front of someones name, means that they are good and for the people, we are doomed. We should take ALL politicians on their actions not their words and the letter D. Think of how stupid we are as a nation, a fucking letter puts people at ease so they can continue with their agenda.

THEY ALL HAD THE EVIDENCE (OR LACK OF) IN FRONT OF THEM AND THEY IGNORED IT BECAUSE OF AN AGENDA, NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE STUPID OR COWARDLY!

[Selatius]

6. A-fucking-men. What we need is a dose of reality. I'm tired of the propaganda.

I want politicians to talk plainly about what they can or can't do given the current economy.

[bhikkhu]

7. In 1999 the candidates were competing on how to spend the Clinton surplus

which, of course, evaporated to nothing before * even had a chance...

Now there is not the ghost of a chance of a surplus but the campaign promises keep coming as if there were. If anything, this should shock some reality into the campaigns.

[drexel dave]

9. Like, I am totally not going to be going to the mall five days a week now...

"I'll probably only be able to go, like, three days a week or something."

an oft-too typical suburban ohio attitude.

[starroute]

10. Even in 1933, Roosevelt could spend to rescue the country

Money is always there for the things that are really needed -- unless it's being spent on things that are irrelevant, unnecessary, and counter-productive.

This country has gotten used to a lifestyle of planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption, having been told 50 years ago that it was the best way to keep the economy cooking along. The military-industrial complex also got bloated on the belief that Americans should be put to work making things that would either be deliberately blown up or left on the shelves until they became obsolescent.

All this apparently made sense at the time, when there was a firm belief that the recurring financial crises which plagued capitalism were a result of overproduction and more things being made than could be sold. But they make no sense now.

What does make sense is rebuilding the country and preparing for the future. To do that, we have to prioritize ruthlessly. Investing in infrastructure, in education, and in basic r&d makes sense. Going green makes sense. Universal health care makes sense, because without it American corporations will never be globally competitive and foreign firms will be reluctant to invest here. Those things are not luxuries. They are necessities.

What doesn't make sense is either trying to be the world's policeman or throwing money into the black hole of massive weapons systems designed in an earlier era to defend against the now-vanished Soviet Union. The only way to get out of that dead end is to re-prioritize like crazy -- but that's going to be the hard part.

The only way I can see to break America of its twin habits of over-consumption and militarism is for the country to become something verging on a basket case -- and to need rescuing by those in a position to set the terms. But there's a hitch there, which is that "rescuers" have recently tended to be of the disaster capitalism variety, who would rather loot the treasury and reduce the population to peonage than to do anything constructive.

What we need instead is sensible rescuers, who would see that the US economy could still be the most productive in the world if managed sanely and humanely and who would insist on the necessary steps to make that happen. I just don't know if there are any plausible candidates for the role.

[DCKit]

12. Well stated. n/t

[Perry Logan]

13. The last thing we need during the next Great Depression is a Republican President.