Billmon: Same Day; Different Nations
Lawmakers' Goal to Cap Executive Pay Meets Resistance
Washington Post
February 12, 2009Employers Fighting Unemployment Benefits
Washington Post
February 12, 2009
Back to Main
February 12, 2009
Billmon: Same Day; Different Nations
Comments
My sister fell for an emploýer scam during the recession of the late 80’s: she was fired from her job, for which she was eligible for unemployment benefits.
Then she was “invited” to stay on at her job for anohter month, which she agreed to do. Then she was told that she was not eligible for any further beneifts because she had left the job “voluntarily”.
It was just a clever move on the employer’s part to save costs.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Feb 12 2009 9:21 utc | 1
Josh Marshall, today on Geithner:
Yesterday, after Tim Geithner’s lackluster speech, President Obama told ABC that ‘nationalization’ of the banks “wouldn’t make sense.” He specifically referenced the Swedish model. And he offered two basic reasons: 1) We’ve got thousands of banks whereas the Swedes had only a handful. And 2) We have different political ‘traditions’ that don’t make it credible in this country, which I take to mean that anti-statism is too deep in the American political fabric for it to be workable.
Marshall goes on to dispute the wisdom of point 1). And never returns to point 2). Or in other words, that “anti-statism is too deep in the American political fabric for it to be” QUESTIONED.
Thats why there’s no revolution in this country.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 12 2009 10:19 utc | 2
WSJ
“Revolution” is an ongoing process–to be measured in centuries rather than decades–and perhaps that process is somewhat less advanced in the US than in other countries.
Posted by: alabama | Feb 12 2009 10:51 utc | 3
FEBRUARY 12, 2009
Brakes on France’s Economy Now Serve as Shock Absorbers
(The link @3 is defective. It’s meant to connect with this article.)
Posted by: alabama | Feb 12 2009 10:55 utc | 4
@#2
Josh, I agree. While the Swedish model may not be all that it is cracked up to be (Sweden may not be a model ), at least it might stop this – all too typical, blatant greedy abuse.
Posted by: Fred | Feb 12 2009 11:30 utc | 5
Someone please explain to me why we haven’t had a revolution in this country yet, because I don’t fully understand it
I like this kind of Billmon. This is class warfare, and it’s exactly the way to deal with it. Off with their heads.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 12 2009 11:46 utc | 6
“Off with their heads” indeed, CluelessJoe–were it not for the fact that “it takes a thief to catch a thief”, if only to “unwind” all that intricately toxic stuff. Or if it’s “off with some of their heads,” how to make the selection?
Uncle Bernie, the best (if not the only) informant about the Madoff operation, can’t really talk without having his head attached in some way to the rest of him.
I should look at the French Revolution from this angle. Whom of its targets, if any, did the “Committee of Public Safety” spare to preserve that person’s skill-set, or body of knowledge? I’m thinking of lawyers, bankers, diplomats–the usual prospects….
Posted by: alabama | Feb 12 2009 12:23 utc | 7
If this isn’t class warfare staring at us square in the face, then I don’t know what is!
Posted by: Cynthia | Feb 12 2009 13:15 utc | 9
Mmmm, Billmons call to arms! I think the president’s approach is more realistic, more pragmatic. There’s too many guns in America to have a war.
Though wonderful to have a president that tells the truth, eh? …‘anti-statism is too deep in the American political fabric for it [socialised banks] to be workable’
I said many months ago in these comments that the real work would begin once the presidency was attained.
The conservative’s gloves are off now. Rush & co haven’t backed off an inch and they’re the snarling mouthpieces for (dare I say it, it’s like the sixties again)the establishment.
Big money will fill the air with hate in their determination to rule. The stress on American society will amplified through not only financial hardship and the immeasurable cost of war but through the incitement of violence in the communities of America. Orcinus nails it here: http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/021009church-manifesto.pdf
Obama was a ‘war president’ from the moment he took over and there is no greater responsibility of the office, so he carries a huge political burden from the outset.
He will be harried, distracted, misinformed, lied to and betrayed by the forces arrayed against him, in their gargantuan effort to maintain the status quo.
‘The beacon that lights the gate’ is that there is no doubting the honesty,intelligence and ethical nature of president Obama. I believe his goals are pure and I hope he succeeds.
Posted by: waldo | Feb 12 2009 13:49 utc | 10
Kool aid alert!!!!!!!!!!!
Though wonderful to have a president that tells the truth, eh?
Almost every word out of his mouth has been a lie, many documented here without your response, Waldo.
I guess when I have time, I will have to go back to some textual deconstruction of Obama’s statements.
If “anti-statism is too deep in the American political fabric,” then how come a majority of Americans have long favored universal single-payer health insurance? Explain that one, Waldo? And minimum wage laws, and OSHA, and payments to those without money, etc.
Yeah, the real works begun. The new administration is shoveling money into the bankster’s pockets even faster than the previous one — who “normalized” the process, and so rendered it not even worth commenting on.
The big difference is that Obama shovels with purity of heart, where Bush shoveled with impurity/impunity.
And we now substitute mind reading for public advocacy.
Posted by: Malooga | Feb 12 2009 14:09 utc | 11
This nationalization obsession is another right-wing red herring. You don’t want to nationalize? Fine. There’s always receivership.
Posted by: …—… | Feb 12 2009 14:12 utc | 12
I notice a lot of comments, not just here, but in many of the oddball websites I slink thru, calling for all the financial pricks to lose their heads.
Too easy.
Make them clean the grease trap in a slaughter house; or my personal favorite is a wearable cage they could walk alongside freeways picking up garbage while being pelted by rotten fruit from passing cars. That vision kind of makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Posted by: David | Feb 12 2009 15:02 utc | 13
no, you need regulation that’s all. National banks do not work better than private banks – in Germany you can compare.
Posted by: outsider | Feb 12 2009 15:54 utc | 14
As Marx points out in the chapter on the working day in Capital, the “reforms” demanded by the people to save the world threatened by the insanity of capitalists work, but only at the expense of workers and by reproducing the conditions needed to create the next crisis in need of further “reforms.”
For fuck’s sake. It’s agreed without the slightest dissent that any banks nationalized will be turned over to capitalists asap.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 12 2009 16:00 utc | 15
He mentions the thing (other people and) I have been fearing for some time: that when the popular rage breaks out it will veer to the Right. For that is the path of less resistance.
Posted by: Cloud | Feb 12 2009 16:14 utc | 16
Slothrop: Indeed, that’s why “reforms” don’t work. A reform is an inside job. You need a revolution, and one that replaces most if not all the previous leadership and elite to actually change things in depth.
Alabama: Well, I’ll be cynical; you can just put a limit on wealth and income beyond which every single personn will be shot dead. This way, it’s not personal, it’s strictly business.
Concerning the French revolutionaries, actually some, including some leaders of the Committee, wanted to go hard after the capitalists, the speculation, the nascent business class, merchants, tradesmen, lawyers and the like, and to push for greater social justice. Then, the lesser men realised that it meant them – they were profiteering and had robber people just as badly as the late nobles, and would be the next ones to be beheaded -, so they rebelled and went after Robespierre. It’s quite probable that if he hadn’t been stopped, he would’ve gone after some of the surviving upper-class – I tend to think his main mistake was not to go after them as soon as the aristocracy had been dealt with, but to go into infighting with various other revolutionary groups (though he probably simply couldn’t have done it without wiping out opposition and competing parties).
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Feb 12 2009 16:57 utc | 17
We have no effective representation with the money give away. I am proposing a credit card payment strike. Don’t pay the card. The bank call centers couldn’t deal with the sheer weight of non-payers (and they are laying off employees), the credit rating shakedown scum couldn’t deal with the weight of it and the credit scores would probably have a uniform lower mean score that then wouldn’t mean shit.
This will be the only way we will get representation is to card strike. I called, emailed and wrote my entire upstate democratic Congressional delegation and both Likud senators, Schumer/ Billary, prior to the original TARP proposal. Nothing. They all voted for it. Schumer did vote against after he helped set it up.
If we withhold payment, it is going to hurt the banks real quick. It will also hurt the whores in Congress because they won’t be able to deliver. And, by paying cash we are putting money back into the economy; isn’t that the liquidity TARP was supposed to provide?
And, you might want to look up DRT ammunition, could be coming to a theatre near you.
Buzz Meeks
Posted by: Buzz Meeks | Feb 12 2009 17:08 utc | 18
I think that the pro-corporate policies of the government amount to statism.
Posted by: crasmane | Feb 12 2009 18:04 utc | 19
Class warfare . . . in America it is always waged by the rich against the poor & middling.
Always.
Posted by: crasmane | Feb 12 2009 18:06 utc | 20
Someone please explain to me why we haven’t had a revolution in this country yet, because I don’t fully understand it
Ask someone who did:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The answer: It’s not bad enough yet. Worry not, though; it will be.
Posted by: NomadUK | Feb 12 2009 18:25 utc | 21
There are not enough pitchforks to go around these days, even counting the gold-plated ones from Smith and Hawkins. People should use what instruments they have. Instead of a credit card strike and other financial suicide bombings, I’d like to see some IT workers start dumping some real juicy inside corporate data out into the public realm. Or maybe zeroing out everyone’s debt balances. Most companies have such fragile computer operations that it’s a wonder they even operate in good times. Many of even the largest are dependent on one or two key people.
As far as reforms, this crisis has gone too far for just reforms at this point. The deliberate hamstringing of congress since the Reagan and Clinton years has produced a body which is incapable of adapting quickly enough to deal with the needs of the times. The bi-partisan song and dance will end and Obama will start issuing Executive orders any day now. Unfortunately, all signs point to the wrong road, even if the goal is to save the PTB.
Even as weak as the last reform was- Sarbanes-Oxley, there is enough in there to put hundreds of pillars of society into prison. Why have there been no charges or prosecutions?
Posted by: triklett | Feb 12 2009 18:43 utc | 22
hey, if you want to join the hordes at the guillotines, the answer is simple. pull all your money out of the bank, all your money out of your 401k, buy some gold as a hedge and shove the rest in your mattress for beer and chips, turn off the lights, turn off the water heater, toss your cell phone in the garbage and buy a wood stove, a bicycle and take the bus. anyone can live on less than $100 a month plus the mortgage, still communicating with the world by e-mail and skype, eating rice, beans, freeze dried shrimp and swamp greens. buddy, let me tell you, the all-seeing eye of mordor would crash to the ground in a ny second if they can’t make their capital reserves. police, fire and teachers would be the first squeezed off the dole, then the looters and carpetbaggers would fan out from the inner city, your wife and kids huddled in the dark, praying you’ll get home from work if there still is any, before the looters kick your door in. america as afghanistan. remember, the french revolution chopped off the revolutionaires’ heads after it ran out of royals.
Posted by: Gefilte Fish | Feb 12 2009 19:03 utc | 23
we are witnessing the very beginning of a class war that will be carried out with unparalleled brutality. today’s congress – where the elites refuse pay caps tells it all – the rich will not give away their interests easily – it must be taken forcefully from them
it seems obama will be the cover of hitherto unparalleled crimes against the poor of the empire, especially in the motherland
i’m sorry for the repitition but i am completely overwhelmed by the incompetence of the elites – they are all stark raving mad – hysteric klaus kinski’s riding their rafts over the rapids – guns & bibles in hand – screaming incoherently – the beauty of the american dream
to be alive – even if barely – in such a time when an old world is being torn asunder & the possibilities of a new world – are a privilege – even if we ourselves are close to the abyss
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 12 2009 19:20 utc | 24
An oddity among the many oddities in these latest days, several US military soldiers were arrested recently following a string of armed robberies, where they were pistol- whipping university students for their lunch money and cell phones. True story. WA. Another oddity that stuck out, aboriginals from a tribe in Brazil are on the run after they killed and cannibalized a farmer who had been ‘helping’ them. Skull on the tree.
And from a treatise on the Spanish in Cuba, slaves would take their final revenge by diving into the sugar cauldrons to spoil the profit, or collectively hang each other.
We sit here all fat and happy, gnoshing on dumplings and punching keys, haw-haw, but around the world, Cheney’s Little War essentially bled out the non-industrial nations.
Iceland bankrupt and 25% unemployment, sure, but imagine Borneo, wasted by Freeport. This is the part of the movie where the steerage class break out of Titanic’s hold.
Posted by: Tita Nic | Feb 12 2009 19:23 utc | 25
@ outsider
no, you need regulation that’s all. National banks do not work better than private banks – in Germany you can compare.
I have to disagree. I think that problem only occurs when publicly owned banks are given a free hand by their guardians (the politicians ) to behave in the same way as commercial banks. eg that the main purpose of the institution is to look out for the management strata of the institution.
I’ll try to illustrate this. Up until the mid eighties here in NZ we had three separate identifiable publicly owned banks which had been created by old school socialists following the egregious acts of banks world wide in the 1890’s and 1920’s. They varied greatly in the degree to which they moved from a public institution whose job was to supply secure and ethical investment for citizens and to loan money at reasonable rates.
Probably the best of the bunch was the old Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) which was exactly that; a secure place to save your money and borrow for your house from, located in every post office (at that time there was a post office in every town and suburb)
At the other end of the scale was the Bank of New Zealand which had started off as a commercial trading bank funded by shareholders and which got nationalised in the 1930’s. It had managed to force the shackles of state control off and was nearly as predatory as any of the other corporatised banks, except that it was under no pressure to return a profit to shareholders so in some ways eg mortgage rates could give better deals than it’s competitors.
When the neo-lib scam hit the BNZ was quickly privatised but so was the POSB which was taken over by the most predatory of the commercial trading banks (this bank made poorly paid employees make up any shortfalls in their cash drawer outta their pay, went straight into mortgagee sales, had a taint of corruption etc).
Anyway all the banks disappeared including the POSB which may have given the greedy pricks a few new marks but whose ‘books’ otherwise didn’t have much meat on them. But that wasn’t why it got bought. The point was to eliminate all competition so the usual banking cartel could set extortionate fees and charges.
So it went for some years, by the time I returned to NZ in the 90’s and decided on volunteering to help poor people on various forms of welfare. The poor had to have a bank account to receive their payments and were being charged vampyrrhic fees like $70 bucks a month to run an account which just received money from welfare (often just $200) twice a month and then disbursed it, no loans or anything like that just bank charges for quick computerised transactions which would have cost the banks no more than a few cents each.
When the neolibs got chucked out on their asses in the late 90’s a change had to be made, after all in the end these extortionate charges were being funded out of government funds. So very reluctantly by the labour party portion of the new government who had to go into coalition with the more leftist ‘Alliance’ Party, a new state bank co-located in Post Offices was set up.
It had no bank charges yet still returned a small profit and people changed to it in droves despite the fact the ‘new’ government publicised it as little as possible. That meant the other banks had to drop their charges or lose business. Oh they tried to undermine the newcomer but failed. For the next two elections the re-privatisation of Kiwibank was at the top of the list of why people wouldn’t vote tory, because the tory policy at that time was to get rid of Kiwibank.
Natch after a while Labour was claiming the bank which they had so strenuously opposed in cabinet, was their baby.
Anyway the trading banks had all got bought out by big foreign banks and in one of those weirdly counter-intuitive situations that makes economists claims that what they practice is a science derisible, that (foreign ownership) is one of the reasons why the worst of the recession is yet to hit here, (unemployment has skyrocketed to 4.7%) there were no huge debts that needed underwriting to prevent banks going under, the sub-prime shit and other derivative trading had all been conducted offshore in the banks’ HQs.
Kiwibank only uses money it has invested, it doesn’t try to raise funds from foreign sources like the ‘carry trade’ so it has been unscathed.
But this won’t last. The tories got in in November on a platform of not privatising Kiwibank during their first term. Instead they will most likely make it institute charges to the point where peeps won’t miss it when it does go. Most worryingly new PM Key claims that NZ taxpayers should provide bad debt subsidies to foreign banks although these have already been underwritten by the governments in their home country chiefly Australia and England.
Tory governments here have always got the bulk of their funding from the trading banks and ex Merrill Lynch middle manager John Key will do everything he can to restore that relationship.
A well managed state-owned or co-op bank will always beat a commercial trading bank for honesty, cost and support for the community that it is located within.
Just because lazy and/or corrupt politicians have allowed the public banks to sink to the gutter level of private institutions doesn’t mean the public model is doomed, it just means we took our eyes off the ball when the generation before us moved out of positions of power. The reasons are obvious and we can feel as ashamed as we want but that won’t fix it. What will fix the problem is acknowledging our mistakes and accepting that greed must be recognised for the socially destructive force it is, then ensuring restraints against a recurrence are implemented.
They won’t last for ever but gauging from past performance the public banks should work in a socially supportive manner for about two generations before the same sort of thing happens again.
But this can only be forced on the decision makers in capitalist societies after a great deal of action, agitation and sacrifice.
When will that happen? As soon as people ‘on the left’ stop arguing amongst themselves about how many 5 year plans you can fit on the head of a pin, whether Marx was as smart as Engels or any of the other pointlessly divisive bullshit the left engages in for amusement.
Will it take a revolution?
Whilst it is difficult to see amerika finding it’s socialist heart without at least the threat of some form of organised violence by the citizens, that may not be the case with some other nations which are less divorced from the realisation that:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne 1624
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 12 2009 22:14 utc | 26
As far as banking goes you can always consider using a Islamic bank. Who would have thought?
Islamic Banks
This could be the wave of the future. Better Islamic than Icelandic banks for sure:)
Posted by: David | Feb 13 2009 2:20 utc | 27
#13, David. No guillotine for me; just set the bums up in pillories and let me spit on them.
Posted by: Obelix | Feb 13 2009 3:37 utc | 28
If “anti-statism is too deep in the American political fabric,” then how come a majority of Americans have long favored universal single-payer health insurance? Explain that one, Waldo? And minimum wage laws, and OSHA, and payments to those without money, etc.
The key word is political. The word social is not used for good reason. Of course ordinary Americans want good health care, good wages and of course Obama wants to achieve those aims. It’s the established political structure that does not want a more egalitarian society in America and you’ve just watched them, led by a drooling psychopath, create potentially never-ending cycle of war and bankruptcy for the U.S. And they’re obstructing efforts to fix it! Remember I mentioned betrayal?
Gregg sought out the position. He knew the policies. He said he could accept and support them. He publicly supported the stimulus package. And now he’s saying it had become apparent to him he couldn’t do something that he had already agreed to do and in fact had done publicly.
The White House source in the CNN article is right that Gregg was erratic. But in another sense, Gregg is being consistent. He’s always been a rightwing Republican, and like those Republicans aligned with the right wing of their party, their allegiance to the right wing of their party is more powerful than their commit to look out for the good of all the country. ~http://www.dailykos.com/
Look, Slothrop, I am a little bit silly. Having witnessed and taken part in the searing madness that was the American war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, my political views are a little….radical. For instance I do believer that the American government was involved to some extent (even if it was looking the other way) in the 9/11 attacks. The consequences of those events have had a monstrously debilitative effect on the average person in America and around the world. As a result of America’s actions, the economies of the world are shaking and that makes everything, not just getting along day-by-day but addressing the consequences of huge issues like climate change, harder.
Events like today, when it’s reported that Australian troops killed five children in Afghanistan (a direct result of our involvement in the U.S led alliance) tend to make me a little upset, to make me doubt that anyone can divert this blood-soaked conspiracy from from its cataclysmic end.
So I haven’t drunk Jones-like political Kool Aid for anyone. In forty years you could count the current-day politicians I admired on two hands and most of them were defeated whilst trying to construct more egalitarian societies.
Nevertheless, I will not despair, I will not allow dark forces to make me lose my faith in the common goodness of mankind and the ability of one good man to change the world. That said, I also know that no matter how good a man is, he’s going to make mistakes, he’s going to doubt himself, he’s going to fail, he’s going to be defeated. Do you really think I haven’t noticed that he flipped on FISA? Do you think I don’t read Glenzilla when he wrote of the monumental fail on rendition?
President Obama is the only thing between America and fascism and the only way he can survive is with the support of the electorate, and even then he may fail. The world praying that he doesn’t.
Posted by: waldo | Feb 13 2009 4:09 utc | 29
Excellent points, thoughts and comments all around. Great and bright, and hungry minds here tonight. I love dialogue as apposed to debate, For myself I get more out of listening than trying to be heard. I think we do a jam up job of that here, with as much respect is due. We may not always agree on certain nuances, but we honor our disagreements and that’s important to me. Everyone has a right to be right and a right to be wrong. What matters is the continued conversation’s, and the honesty to look at our own preconceived notions.
However, having said that, I resonate much with Cloud #16 in that, cloud say’s, “He mentions the thing (other people and) I have been fearing for some time: that when the popular rage breaks out it will veer to the Right. For that is the path of less resistance.” Always to the enuresis to the entropy which falls right ward.
As one of my fav authors wrote, “sometimes the answers can’t be given, but they can always be conceived.
Thanks to all the new faces and de-lurkers too…
@malooga, my friend, I have spent the last three days jumping hoops to getting into Grad school and haven’t had time to brush my feet or wash my teeth, as the saying goes, but I do plan to respond to your questions when things settle a bit. Gradschool deadline is tommorow, but offically tues due to the monday holiday. I promise to revisit it then.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 13 2009 6:31 utc | 31
The looming danger is the thrashing of Social Security.
(medicare and medicaid are a different story, not for now)
Bush didn’t manage but the O-man might.
The Nation lays out some of the issues, have not read them for years but, OK:
*Looting Social Security* (3 pp. Feb. 11, 09.)
link
r giap wrote: it seems obama will be the cover of hitherto unparalleled crimes against the poor of the empire, especially in the motherland
Watch Social Security. Under Bush, the ppl did not let it pass by. It was the one issue they rebelled against; prevailed. Subsequently it was sort of passed over or under the radar etc. The next onslaught is near.
If Social Security goes it is the end of the US as a country. If that kind of minimal solidarity is destroyed, there is no more Nation, it is replaced by jackboots.
Posted by: Tangerine | Feb 13 2009 20:14 utc | 33
Sweeping simple explanations are always at least a bit of an exaggeration, but I think television is responsible for a large part of the social inertia in the last line of billmon’s post.
Posted by: mats | Feb 14 2009 1:42 utc | 35
Well waldo, all we have now is faith that O is really the combined incarnations of the Vulcan Sarak, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Amazing Kreskin, and Alex the Great. If he’s agent of change as advertised, then all those tales of his undemonstrated ruthless prescience (he really hired the devil summers to clean up after himself; and clinton to keep his enemy closer than his friend; and his stimulus isn’t capitalist gangbang but trojan new new deal; and his “entitlement reform” threat is secret death punch to deliver partisan support for now…) better be true, or I’m afraid that black part of the O is first name uncle, last name tom.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 14 2009 2:18 utc | 36
We’ve got 4 years to assess that contention. I’m betting on the O.
Posted by: waldo | Feb 14 2009 7:26 utc | 37
@36
thats a pretty high performance standard. And come to think about it, theres nothing more Uncle Tommish than the sight of just about any American politician speaking before AIPAC. Amos & Andy would be impressed.
Posted by: jony_b_cool | Feb 14 2009 17:57 utc | 38