Goldman: the big banker that takes homes away

Why does the latest bailout/recovery piss me off so much?

Of course, it’s neoliberal.

Let me explain for those of you who are not “ideologically aware”. These days, many Obamites are calling the potus the greatest interventionist since FDR – which I find insulting.

In a similar crisis 70 years ago, FDR grasped at straws to overcome a Depression. He tried just about everything – and found that what worked was pump-priming the economy from below. By strengthening unions, creating labour-intensive infrastructure projects, creating SS and unemployment insurance – all to the tune of being by far the largest portion of the national budget – FDR redeveloped the economy from the bottom up.

Obama’s “recovery plan” is basically trickle-down. Tons of cash to those who are responsible for getting us into our current mess, nary a provision for the financial institutions to provide credit to those who need it to revamp the economy, a fraction of the budget spent on the middle and lower classes… Obama’s “plan” would be embraced by the most reactionary rw if it wasn’t for the fact that the libtard right is ideologically against ANY economic intervention by the government.

Ultimately, Obama has taken Reagan’s ideology and raised the stake. Reagan supposedly wanted as little government intervention as possible, Obama’s given corps virtually all the freedom that Reagan would – but has opened the treasury’s door to the wolves in the process.

And here’s where ideology shows its ugly face. Obama, as Reagan, as the Bush’s, as Clinton – see private initiative as the panacea for our ills. While the rw would rather avoid, or hide, government support for private initiative (aka corps), Obama has the unmitigated audacity to tell us that he’s being an FDR while acting like a big-spending corporate whore.

CIT was a recipient of government bailout money. That is to say, OUR money. Many corps have received money – but the long-awaited re-regulation of the financial market has been put on the back burner. And the CIT pot boiled over in the process. Re-regulation has reappeared, but boiled down to the minimum.

As noted in another thread, virtually nobody is opposing the current status quo. A miniscule and ineffective “public option” regarding healthcare is being peddled to hoodwink lesser progressive lights as we continue to compromise from an already compromised position. Luckily, in Europe, the sold-out social democrats are beginning to see some opposition from a new, anti-globaliation and anti-third way left. 10-12% in the recent German elections, an increasing presence in other nations – there IS some ideological hope elsewhere. In Europe, people are seeing that the third-way social democrats have been selling themselves out and selling out their electorate, and I prophesied that they will either prevail or tear the SD’s apart… and none too soon.

If we continue to see things from the perspective of day-to-day expediency, democracy will have shown itself to be useless. Hereabouts the number of corruption scandals is, well, scandalous. The non-ideological political class is showing itself to be utterly corrupt – and without an ideological mirror to check itself. Over there, the absence of ideology has given us a one-party system only differentiated by stances on relatively unimportant issues.

For the second time in our recent memory we have been on the brink of a major Depression. First under Bubba, then under Dubya – and in both cases the salvation of our economy has been left in the hands of those that put is in our mess. And in both cases the ultimate victims are the middle and lower classes – it is now almost accepted that our “recovery” will be partial with regards to employment, wages, etc. It is a foregone conclusion that our children won’t have it as good as we had it – or that we will return to as good a life as before.

Why aren’t people pissed off about this? Absence of ideological awareness, I say. They cannot conceive of an alternative and accept the status quo as a necessary evil.