Bailing Out Main Street
Today is
Friday, 26 October 2012.
On this date
in 1977, the last known naturally-occurring case of smallpox was discovered in
Somalia. The CDC and WHO recognize today
as the anniversary of the disease’s eradication. It is the result of the most effective
vaccination program in history.
Unfortunately, one must assume that a significant number of nations,
including the United States Empire, retain smallpox as part of their biological
weapons stockpiles.
Andrei Bely
(pen name of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev), author of the great novel Petersburg,
was born on this date in 1880.
The Museum of
the Bourgeois extends best wishes to Hillary Rodham Clinton, born on this date
in 1947. May insecure sexist males
everywhere dither and cower.
Natalie
Merchant (10,000 Maniacs) was born on this date in 1963.
________________________________________
Among the more
pernicious lies of our times is that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party,
through the financial stimuli meant to avert the Second Great Depression almost
caused by the irresponsible and greedy policies of the Repub Partei, are guilty
of bailing out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.
I think not. Wall Street and Main Street are intimately
and inextricably bound up in the continuum of the actual beneficiary of the
bailout: United States Empire
capitalism. Had the great USE financial
institutions been allowed to collapse into bankruptcy, sinking financial
markets world-wide, the result would have been catastrophic to almost all
Americans. (The much-vaunted “creative destruction”
(schoepferische Zerstoerung) is usually simply destruction and devastation,
pure and simple.)
The bedrock
principle of American capitalism is not wealth trickling down, but wealth being
sucked up. Thus, it should come as no
surprise that the only way to save the system was to staunch the bleeding at
the top.
Your author believes that, in fact, Obama didn’t
propose a large enough stimulus package, a position also held by Nobelist Paul
Krugman, among many others. Of course, the Repubs in
Congress (ideologues, hypocrites, the ignorant, and the nervous willies)
blather on about The
National Debt (“Oh! the horror!”), and
probably would have blocked any larger stimulus. The truth is that all successful
nation-states must incur appropriate state debt properly to function. Certainly, it can get out of control, as in,
for example, the state defaults/bankruptcies of Philip II of Spain (1557, 1560,
1575, 1596), but the USE is far from that situation.
Without strict
regulation, capitalism eats its own.
__________________________________________
On a related
note: read “Tax Policy Center in Spotlight
for Its Romney Study” by Anne Lowrey, in 24 October The New York Times. The study noted that Romney couldn’t fulfill
all the promises in his tax ”plan”, and that, fundamentally, it would raise
taxes for everyone but the rich, who would wallow in cuts.
Even a tax
expert at the hard-right American Enterprise Institute, the staunch defender of
unregulated predatory capitalism, agreed.
“I like tax reform. I want to
broaden the base. It’s something I’ve devoted my life to. And I would welcome
Governor Romney and the Republicans’ strong push, but the plan doesn’t work
out. It’s not mathematically possible.”
Thus spake a True Believer.
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