'Scuse me, but I have a VERY strong suspicion about WHY there's opposition to an automaker bailout

yes, i'm cynical, but you already knew that...

i was watching cnn last evening where paulson and bernanke were testifying before congress on the bailout... this was interspersed with stories about the big three automakers also scheduled to appear with hat in hand... now, i don't know about you, but i've been watching our - taxpayers' - money being handed out by the billions to banks, insurance companies, investment brokers and damn near everybody else that passes by, and i was sitting there trying to make sense out of why, fercryinoutloud, our super-rich elites, personified by paulson and bernanke, people who've been so free with our money up to now, were suddenly so hard over against helping detroit... then it dawned on me...

what sets detroit's situation apart from the banks, insurance companies, etc...? hmmmmmm...?? think about it... yep, that's right... unions AND a very large, blue-collar labor force... what is it that our elite, corporatist, super-rich overlords hate beyond almost everything else...? hmmmmmmm...? that's right... unions... who works for banks, insurance companies and investment brokers...? hmmmmmm...?? the super-rich power brokers, that's who... why would these people who are so busy feeding at the taxpayer trough pass up the chance to completely destroy the unions AND take out a large swath of the u.s. middle class in one fell swoop...? what a golden opportunity...!

don't get me wrong... i'm not favoring a detroit bailout... i'm just trying to understand an apparent contradiction... why is aig "too big to fail," but detroit, with almost three million jobs at stake, can be flushed down the toilet without a backward glance...?

just sayin'...

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The Bailout Scheme

(many thanks to vern at ooibc...)

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A brief intermission

as some of you may have noticed, i'm no longer breathlessly and obsessively blogging the daily stream of bad news altho', lord knows, there's still plenty of it out there... our overlords and their minions in the media are still trying their best to paralyze us with fear, but endless speculation on the horrors of a mccain/palin administration or whether or not obama has arab blood seems to me as obscene in its way as the cosmic-scale felony grand theft being proposed by our masters and getting solemn nods of approval from our elected but not at all representative leaders...

i find myself increasingly frustrated and impatient with the blogosphere as a whole and with the so-called progressive, liberal side of it in particular... i was especially annoyed with poll-obsessed, crisis-denier, sports-trivia freak markos' orgy of self-congratulation on palin's fall in the polls (here, here and here), justifying his site's obsession with her every facial tic as being in large part responsible for her recent deline in popularity and trumpeting that it was a chapter right out of his new book... well, woo-hoo... trust me, i couldn't be happier to see sarah palin on a luge run to the bottom but, with the very foundations of our country under desperate assault and the endgame playing out before our very eyes, sarah palin is little more than a deck chair on the titanic... (and to be fair, it's not just daily kos... americablog, think progress, and emptywheel, among others, are just as bad...)

yes, i have devoted some time and space recently to the continuing financial meltdown, but i'm trying to only focus on the biggest and most-noteworthy developments, developments that i believe are leading to a major transformation of the world as we know it... it seems to me that things are building to some sort of indeterminate (1) but inevitable (2) climax (3) that i personally have been waiting for, first unconsciously, and then both intuitively and consciously, all of my life... as things continue to evolve, and when i see things that strike me as particularly relevant in the lead-up to that climax, i will offer the occasional post... in between times, i will be here, watching and waiting...

1.in·de·ter·mi·nate
Pronunciation:
\ˌin-di-ˈtərm-nət, -ˈtər-mə-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English indeterminat, from Late Latin indeterminatus, from Latin in- + determinatus, past participle of determinare to determine
Date: 14th century

1 a: not definitely or precisely determined or fixed : vague b: not known in advance c: not leading to a definite end or result
2: having an infinite number of solutions
3: being one of the seven undefined mathematical expressions


2. in·ev·i·ta·ble
Pronunciation: \i-ˈne-və-tə-bəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin inevitabilis, from in- + evitabilis evitable
Date: 14th century

: incapable of being avoided or evaded

3. cli·max
Pronunciation: \ˈklī-ˌmaks\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin, from Greek klimax, literally, ladder, from klinein to lean
Date: circa 1550

1: a figure of speech in which a series of phrases or sentences is arranged in ascending order of rhetorical forcefulness
2 a: the highest point : culmination b: the point of highest dramatic tension or a major turning point in the action (as of a play) c: orgasm d: menopause

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"Every market is just out of control right now." So, how's that bailout workin' for ya, eh...?

if this obscene bailout goes through, our government is going to have a revolt on its hands... i don't see how it can be avoided... anybody who's paying the slightest bit of attention can't fail to miss that this is robbery, pure and simple... i think the fall in stocks, the rise in oil prices and the fall of the dollar is testament to the fact that there's a hell of a lot of people out there who not only think the bailout is a bad idea and may not pass but also that things stand to get considerably worse...

Stocks fell sharply and oil prices suddenly spiked on Monday as investors anxiously waited for Washington lawmakers to hash out the details of the biggest government bailout in history — a politically fraught process that will create a new slate of winners and losers on Wall Street.

That uncertainty, about a shaken financial system still in flux, appeared to spook investors away from assets tied directly to the health of the American government. The dollar dropped sharply against the euro, and oil prices jumped, closing up more than $16 a barrel.

The Dow Jones industrials closed down 372 points after spending the day deep in negative territory. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index finished down 3.8 percent.

“What can I say? Every market is just out of control right now,” said Tom Bentz, an energy analyst at BNP Paribas.

ferchrissake, let's let the house of cards fall down already...

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Just say "NO" to a $700B blank check with no administrative oversight and no legal or legislative review

total obscenity... my indignation knows no bounds...

Unveiling its plan to rescue the nation's financial system from near-paralysis, the Bush administration is asking Congress for the authority to spend $700 billion and for powers to intervene in the economy so sweeping that they have virtually no precedent in U.S. history.

[...]

The dollar figure alone is remarkable, amounting to 5% of the nation's gross domestic product. But the most distinctive -- and potentially most controversial -- element of the plan is the extent to which it would allow Treasury to act unilaterally: Its decisions could not be reviewed by any court or administrative body and, once the emergency legislation was approved, the administration could raise the $700 billion through government borrowing and would not be subject to Congress' traditional power of the purse.

"Nothing quite of this scale has happened since the early years of the country when Alexander Hamilton wrote the Treasury act to give him the power to borrow and intervene in markets," said New York University financial historian Richard Sylla. And in Hamilton's case, Congress quickly clipped his wings, and no successor -- not even under President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of the Depression -- exercised quite such unfettered power again.

"It essentially creates an economic czar with no administrative oversight, no legal review, no legislative review. And it gives one man $700 billion to disperse as he needs fit," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), referring to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

"He will have complete, unbridled authority subject to no law," she said.

like i've said so many times i've lost count, it's all about money and power and insuring that the average united states citizen has neither...

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