We are not Iceland (but maybe we should be)

What can I say? Seven weeks now, and the market is still up. I'm beginning to regret moving most of my investments to bonds.

But not just yet, because I remain convinced that we have not yet reached the bottom of our economic crisis. And why do I stick to that belief?

Because we're not Iceland.

Iceland went bankrupt a few months ago. Its conservative-led government let what the New York Times called "buccaneering free marketers" run amok through the country's economy, with the expected results.

Disaster.

But unlike here, Icelanders apparently think with the brains they have, and they knew that their conservative, anything-goes-in-the-free-market government was to blame.

So, naturally, they started protesting in the streets. And that led to the conservative government's resignation and a caretaker government's installation -- led by the Social Democrats, whose leader, Johanna Sigurdardottir, became caretaker prime minister.

This weekend, the Icelanders went to the polls, and they chose the Social Democrats and their liberal coalition partners the Left-Greens (does that mean Iceland has Right-Greens?) to stay where they are. And that includes Sigurdardottir, who is Iceland's first female leader.

And the world's first openly lesbian head of state.

I know the American right is terrified right now. But that's what happens when you fuck up your country as badly as the New Vikings, as the greedy sons of bitches in Iceland called themselves, did. The lesbians take over. The lesbians and a trucker dude from the Greens. His name is unpronounceable to us white folk in the United States too. Steingrimur Sigfusson. He's also a geologist. The prime minister used to be a flight attendant. Not a lawyer in sight. Or an MBA.

Sigfusson was Iceland's finance minister in the caretaker government, and he'll probably stay there. Despite being a geologist and former truck driver, he seems to know what he's talking about, finance-wise.

What are the people of the United States mad about now? It is the same poisonous philosophy that we had here, based on a lack of moral awareness and greed, and people who thought nothing of flying Elton John into Iceland for their 50th birthdays and paying him 70 million Icelandic kronur.

That's about $600,000, if you're keeping score. $600 grand, just for the entertainment at your 50th. I had Mexican food at one of my favorite restaurants for my 50th. The entertainment was the house band. If I had $600K to spend on entertainment for my birthday party, I'd fly all my friends to someplace really cool. Maybe Reykjavik. But we'd have to import the Mex.

Anyway, the conservative Independent Party -- independent of reason? -- managed 16 seats in the 63-seat Icelandic parliament -- called the Althingi, which they say is the oldest continuous legislative body in the world -- two more than the Left-Greens. But Sigurdardottir's party racked up 20 seats, giving their coalition 34, more than enough to form the government.

Interestingly, this is the first time in modern history Icelanders have elected a left-leaning government. But no wonder they did it this time. The conservative-New Viking alliance pretty much destroyed Iceland's economy. Unemployment -- virtually unheard of in the tiny country before -- is now at about 10 percent. Inflation is well into the double digits, and the financial experts are still trying to figure out what happened and how much it cost.

According to the Times,

Many of the debts that drove the banks to the brink of default were incurred as the New Vikings went on a splurge of acquisitions that made them owners of department store chains, soccer clubs and investment houses in Britain and other parts of Europe, as well as mansions, helicopters and Ferraris on their sojourns at home here in Iceland.

Sound familiar?

And as for the costs, the Times says that some estimates run to as much as $10 billion, which is about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in a country that has just over 300,000 people.

But unlike here, the Icelanders are following their leader -- a quiet, steady and pragmatic leader, who does not seek the spotlight, but instead puts her attention toward fixing the mess she was left with.

The people are calling for a change of ethics. That is why they have voted for us,

she said. Her chief opponent -- the leader of the Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson -- reacted much like his Republican counterparts in the United States. That is, he was clueless.

We lost this time but we will win again later,

he said.

Anyway, Sigurdardottir, who at 66 was getting ready to retire from politics, will have to stick around for a while longer to fix what conservatism wrought in her country.

But that's how I know we're not done here yet. Because in Iceland, when everything crashed, they didn't try to pretend we just needed a little stimulus here and there and some more tax cuts for the rich and everything would be fine. When everything crashed, it crashed, and everybody knew it. And they threw out the greedy bastards who did it.

But don't worry, some of the conservatives in Iceland are just as brain dead as ours are. If you read the comments on some of the Icelandic media Web sites, you'll find them claiming the Social Democrats, who were not in power until earlier this year, were responsible for the collapse of the economy last fall. My Scandinavian language skills are really poor, but I think I saw something about Sigurdardottir being born in Finland or something too. The socialist thing isn't working though, because, well, her party is the Social Democrats.

Oh, and by the way -- I love this -- 26 members of the Althingi elected this weekend were women. That's 46 percent. Compare that to our 16 percent. Now, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the Althingi probably isn't very ethnically diverse, but then, we are talking about Iceland, where 94 percent of the people are a mix of Norse and Celts and the rest come from somewhere else more recently.

Y'know, we could maybe learn a lot from a little island in the north Atlantic.



News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at News Writer's Guide to the Market

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Commonalities

Jay Schalin is a software engineer by trade. He went back to school to study economics and was scheduled to graduate last year. Don't know if he did. Now he writes about higher education issues for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a non-profit agency aimed at improving North Carolina institutes for higher education.

North Carolina State University is changing some of its general education requirements, which annoyed Mr. Schalin, a self-professed conservative, to no end. So he wrote an article "attacking" (his word) those changes, saying they were necessary to create a "common cultural identity" in America.

I haven't read that article. But I have read his response to a reader of the first article asking how his idea of "common cultural identity" is any diffierent from the cultural "indoctrination" he and his conservative colleagues constantly throw at liberals (for example, Obama's volunteer program that includes "service training" -- about the Constitution, American history, the importance of volunteerism, etc.) in order for schools to qualify for some of the money.

In an nutshell, his response is this: It can't be indoctrination if it's the way things are. And the way things are is that we're not created equal, never mind what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, which means that some people will do well and others won't and we just have to depend on the goodness of the hearts of those who do well to take care of those who don't, regardless of the reasons for their failure.

It's true. Here he is, in his own words:

There is a fundamental difference between the two perspectives of left and right that has important bearing on this discussion. Those on the left usually believe in some grand vision of an idealized equality—there should be no rich or poor, all people should have their basic needs satisfied, there should not be justice in the ordinary sense, but 'social justice,' and so on. Achieving this vision would require a complete transformation of society and its institutions, with no ties to the previous culture and with the ends justifying the means.

But this vision of equality is frequently in conflict with the real world — people are not equally gifted or inclined. Some are ambitious, others lazy; some are bright or creative, others dull, for reasons beyond our control. If there is liberty and equality of opportunity, some inequality of wealth and achievement will result. What liberals don’t realize, or choose to deny, is that to achieve the vision, equality must be imposed at the expense of liberty, against humanity’s natural differences in abilities and ambitions.

Conservatism, however, does not begin with any such constructed ideal. Perhaps its most important guiding principle is that tradition represents the surviving wisdom of the past — people over time tend to adopt the ideas that enrich them and empower them, and cast off the ones that fail or weaken them. It views modern free society as the result of the grand trial-and-error experiment that is Western civilization, occurring over many centuries — the result of efficiency and justice winning out over the inefficient and divisive.

It is therefore a philosophy thoroughly grounded in real events and human nature—it is confined to the possible. There is no need to convert or coerce people to believe in a vision that is against their nature — it is about letting people do as they will, knowing that they will generally choose wisely, having the wisdom of past generations to draw upon. Despite a hard-edged pragmatism that is often mistaken for 'mean-spiritedness,' conservatism is a very optimistic outlook that places great faith in humanity to do what is right.

How's that for the American Dream? There there you poor deluded poor people and liberals who are so worried about them. Conservatives are perfectly rational, optimistic people, and we know everything's gonna work out just fine, but human beings aren't greedy sons of bitches who'd rather run the country into the ground than admit they might be wrong.

Rather than try to rehash what's already been written, here's what Phila said about it at Echidne of the Snakes:

How do you choose 'wisely'? Well, avoiding becoming a homosexual is a good first step, since doing as you will in that case will lead to having fewer rights, being persecuted, and so forth. Being a woman, by contrast, is an accident of birth for which you can't necessarily be blamed. But you can make the most of it by drawing on 'the wisdom of past generations,' and making the choices that time has proven work best for women. In other words, you're free to choose, as long as you make the right choice, and stick to it come what may.

We arrived at our present 'natural' levels of inequality through 'the grand trial-and-error experiment that is Western civilization.' But now that we're here, trial and error must end, lest some "constructed ideal" redefine what counts as human nature and get everyone all confused. In the worst-case scenario, different people might end up being enriched and empowered, which would turn the natural order on its head. The purpose of the past was to get us to this point, and keep us here: 'It is ... an organic process happening over time—an evolving mindset that adheres to the basic principles despite the changes.'

At this point, forming 'a common cultural identity' seems primarily to be a matter of stifling complaint. Schalin claims that there are no racial barriers to 'American identity,' except to the extent that one insists on one's grievances. Racial complaint is answered by the observation that 'Jim Crow laws are long over.'Does this mean that Jim Crow laws are part of 'the wisdom of past generations'? Or does it mean that we're not, in fact, confined to the possible, as defined by the dominant "cultural identity"? Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is that Clarence Thomas is a conservative even though he's black, and Irving Berlin wrote 'White Christmas' even though he was a goddamn Jew. Though these men are minorities, they were able to transcend that limitation, and provide a useful service to the people whom nature put in charge. That, in a nutshell, is what forming 'a common cultural identity' is all about. It's not indoctrination; it's our birthright.

So we have free will, which we can use to make the right choices, based on what's known to be possible, according to the winners who wrote the history books. And that's why America is unique in giving its citizens 'a focus on the future and not the grievances of the past; a feeling of limitless potential ... a sense of wonder, innovation and discovery; and the feeling that one is in control of his or her own destiny.'

The sky's the limit ... as long as you don't step outside the bounds of what's 'possible.'

I don't know about you, but I buy Schalin's bullshit about as easily as I buy creationism or intelligent design or whatever the hell they're calling it this week. In fact, they're about on the same level. This is how things are, and you can't change it, so shut the fuck up. And work three or four times as hard (at least) to get what I got for nothing.

Nope. If that's what conservatism is about, then no wonder I can't accept it. That's not American, and that's not even Christian. That's selfish and greedy.

Conservatives can't accept that times change. Hell, if they had their way we'd probably still be burning witches. They have a peculiar idea of what liberty means, when you come down to it. To them, liberty appears to mean "I can do whatever I want to whomever I want and fuck you if you don't like it."

Y'know, I don't think that's what the colonists had in mind with their "Don't tread on me" slogan.

And I think that what we have in common is where we live, and -- except for a few greedy bastards -- a desire for all of us to succeed.

Because what we deluded liberals realize that the conservatives can't seem to understand is that we all succeed when one of us succeeds. And when more of us succeed ... my god, what a wonderful world.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Demented

So the television is on this morning. One of those cop dramas, and the case is about a bigoted asshole who shot and killed a black man because he was pissed that a black guy took a taxi he considered "his." Turns out, of course, the guy has a history of racism, like writing letters to his co-op board opposing interracial couples and accusing a black co-worker of stealing his clients. The prosecutors charged him with a hate crime. His defense? Bigotry is a mental disorder.

It is. But it's not one you're born with, or one that just has a later onset. It's a learned behavior. But at any moment you can step out and start unlearning it. Or, you can keep teaching yourself bullshit, and teach it to your children too. That'll make it much harder for them to get along when they get older. Kinda like those assholes in New Jersey who named their children JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie and Adoph Hitler.

I'm just sayin. Plenty of people are obviously batshit insane, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions.

Like Fox "News," for example, and a whole bunch of newspapers. They showed you plenty of images from Wednesday's teabaggeries. Images like this one. Now, there's much we can say about the sign behind the taxes sign -- "silent majority no more." Things like, you've never been silent, and you aren't a majority, but we'll let them have that little delusion. Tea-ed off about taxes, that's kinda delusional too, because these same folks want a return to the Reagan years, when taxes were 10 points higher than they will be under Obama's budget. But hey, we can't all have brains and actually use them.

But that was the stated purpose of Wednesday's protests. Unless you were actually there. Then, as CNN's Susan Roesgen correctly pointed out, "This is a party for Obama bashers." She asked a guy holding a sign picturing the president as Hitler why he did so, and his response was "He's a fascist." Several times she tried to ask him why he said that, and his response each time was "Because he is."

That's kinda 8-year-old logic. Because I say so. I'm king a da world! And an asshole. Because you're not 8 years old. You're a grown man.

And that brings us to the images the right-wing media and their blind followers don't want you to see, because they want you to think they're a legitimate group of Americans just complaining about high taxes -- and we won't even go into how America has the lowest tax rate of any developed nation or that what the organizers of the teabaggeries are insterested in is not help for the average American taxpayer, who is getting a tax cut this year courtesy the president, but rather for their rich-ass selves. Go figure.

Nope, they don't want you to see the prevailing attitude at the teabaggeries -- the attitude fueled by the bloviators on the radio and tube. They would prefer that you not see images like this one.

Man, they got pissed off when idiots on the left compared GW to Hitler. Or called him a fascist. Or a torturer -- and we all know how that turned out.

But nobody at the teabaggeries said word one to guys like this one. Pity the photog didn't get his face. I'd like to splash it all over so anyone who runs into him would know what a dick he actually is.

And just like the McCain-Palin rallies during last year's campaign, the anti-Obama folks like to lie and say it's just a small part, that they're not all complete jackasses.

That much is true. They're not all complete jackasses. But most are on the scale somewhere.

Here we see Obama portrayed as some kind of maniacal street thug attacking Uncle Sam from behind. I think the text says "we must resist." How about resisting hyperbole? Somebody hit the panic button and these guys went totally berserk. It doesn't help, of course, that their heroes on the airwaves are telling them this shit.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not advocating that we take 'em off the air. Just that we be more honest about what's going on. It's really hard to have a radio show that keeps its audience by having a rational, intelligent discussion of the issues, a true debate about one approach versus another. Much easier just to say "SOCIALIST!!!!!!" and wait and see what happens.

I mentioned children earlier. Here we return to the Obama as monkey theme that featured so prominently during the campaign, this time with a child.

They like to use children -- and, interestingly, complain bitterly if the left does so. But it's really quite clear that everything is fair game if you're a conservative or Republican.

It's as if they think they own the market on children, that children on the left don't matter, I suppose, because they're parents are so incredibly wrong and perhaps gay on top of that.

Which reminds me ... remember the right wing extremist report from Homeland Security this week? And how the right got all crazy about it -- as if it were talking to them specifically? Apparently, it was, and they're not afraid at all to admit it. But get what Christian extremist Pat Robertson said? Here's a hint -- remember that he thinks gay men and lesbians are responsible for hurricanes.

Give up? Aw, try again. It's not that hard. I mean, it's not like the Bush administration ordered the report ... oh, yeah, they did. Well, it was prepared by Obama's people ... oh right, the department that prepared is headed by a Bush appointee.

OK, here's what Pat said:

It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.

Only a fucking queer would ever question the patriotism of somebody who advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Jeez. What was I thinking.

I might have been thinking that people had a little more sense than that. I'd have been wrong, of course. After all, we're talking about folks who don't accept certified copies of birth certificates as certified copies of birth certificates. Not to mention the idea of impeaching a president after two months in office for doing pretty much what he was elected to do.

It's that whole "taxation without representation" thing again. See, these lunatics like to try to link themselves with the colonists who dumped tea into Boston Harbor. Colonists who had no representation in London. Seems I remember having an election not to long ago in which we chose 435 members of the House of Representatives, several senators, and, oh, yeah, a president.

Are these folks sore losers or what?

Remember when they called Al Gore and Joe "I really am a traitor" Lieberman "Sore Loserman" for taking the 2000 election to court after they won and had the election stolen?

This time we have Norm Coleman still fighting to keep Al Frank from being Democrat No. 59 nearly six months after the vote -- Minnesotans are rightfully getting pissed -- and in New York, the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's seat is being held up while Republican Jim Tedisco challenges his loss to Democrat Scott Murphy. This week, despite trailing by several hundred votes, Tedisco petitioned the court to declare him the winner.

And then there's the threat of violence. Rick "Gov. Hairdo" Perry of Texas joined traitor Chuck Norris in talking openly about the Lone Star State seceding from the Union. That didn't go over so well last time, as I recall. I wasn't there, but I have read rather extensively about it. The teabaggers seem to be very confused about what constitutes treason too.

But there's that airwaves thing again. When the leaders of your party are media celebrities who command big paychecks as well as your attention, the black guy at party HQ means very little. As does IQ, apparently.

American history, of course, isn't the only thing the teabaggers have trouble with. There's that little thing they keep talking about -- socialism.

By their definition, just about any government program is socialist, including -- especially including -- the military. But given the right's propensity for hired mercenaries, maybe they'd like to open the military to a free market system too. And they'd probably take no-bid contracts on it, which means the taxpayer would be paying wayyyyyy more for the hired hands than what we pay now.

We already know what they think about that other great socialist program -- public education. And the very idea that all Americans have equal access to affordable health care, well, that's just anti-American.

I don't know of Marx would be proud, but I bet he's laughing his ass off.

So, they don't know much about history, systems of economics or government, official documents or the law, and they have no problems displaying their ignorance and bigotry.

Talk about embarrassing. Sheesh. Then there's that little problem of our president's name. It's Barack Hussein Obama. Personally, I love it that we have a black president with a funny name, if for no other than to watch the right spin itself into a frenzy over the very idea of not having a president named John or Richard or Ronald or Herbert.

They do have a problem with this name, though. And we've already addressed the impeachment thing. Although these folk may think he should be impeached just because his name is similar to the guy who ordered other extremists to fly airplanes into buildings several years ago. A guy who, incidentally, is still at large despite our previous president's declaration that we would get him dead or alive.

Really, there's just so much wrong with this group. The good news, of course, is that they didn't quite draw the millions Fox "News" tells us they drew -- that's a lie. Five Thirty-eight compiled as many non-partisan estimates of crowd size for the rallies as it could, and came up with a total of 300,000 in about 350 cities across the country -- although I have some doubts about the non-partisanship of the estimate where I live. Regardless, that's a pathetic turnout. Why, more people than that turned out just in Washington for Obama's inaugural.

But that's just it. These folks think they're right, and they think they're a majority, both of which are demonstrably wrong. The truth is that they can't stand it that they are truly and clearly in the minority -- and it's a shrinking minority.

Must be horribly frightening for them. But it doesn't excuse their irrational behavior.

That behavior may be the most pathetic thing of all, But it's par for the course from bigoted extremists, who, while 100 percent responsible for their 0wn actions, are nevertheless quite demented.


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Let's Talk About Conservative Pretense

As right-wing mouth-breathers continue to scream against Obama's so-called "socialist agenda" and his "pork-laden stimulus package," let's remind the Chicken Littles what 8 years of conservative leadership in Washington D.C. have wrought us:

* Misled the American people into an endless war in Iraq that has made the United States less safe, has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of American troops and Iraqis, has cost American taxpayers as much as one trillion dollars, has strained our military to the breaking point, and has prevented us from finishing the job in Afghanistan.
* Stood idly by while thousands of Americans lost everything during Hurricane Katrina – and still haven’t taken leadership to rebuild the Gulf Coast and help people return home.
* Allowed trickle-down, laissez-faire economics to help the rich get richer, while regular Americans struggle with soaring gas and food prices, a meltdown in the housing market, and exploding debt during today’s economic recession.
* Turned control of our country’s health care system over to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, leaving millions of Americans incapable of paying for the rising costs of health benefits and turning emergency rooms into primary care physicians.
* Broke their promise to America’s children, failing to fund early education programs and No Child Left Behind.
* Ignored the scientific reality of climate change, obstructing efforts to make our air and water cleaner so oil and gas companies and big business could achieve record profits.
* Turned their backs on America’s workers, assaulting workers’ rights and impeding regular Americans’ efforts to form unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions.

The reason why I bring this all up is because we still have conservative Republicans whining over earmarks in Obama's stimulus package, which contain solutions to the very same problems I listed above! The conservative grousing would be laughable if it weren't so damn hypocritical. Lady Rose of Sanity Rant gives a perfect example. She writes:

The Republicans whining over earmarks is just as silly and totally hypocritical because they load up a ton of earmarks into every spending bill. A prime example was Sen. Lindsey Graham's interview this weekend where he contradicts himself exceprt:

"We do need earmark reform," said Graham. "I wish [the president] would veto the bill, we'd get back together and come up with the earmark reform process." Seconds later, however, Graham was reminded that he himself had inserted 37 earmarks in the legislation, including $950,000 for "a convention center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina." After defending the transparency and necessity of such an expenditure, Graham finally finished the 180, saying of the Myrtle Beach funding: "I voted to take all earmarks out, but I will come back in the new process and put that back in."

So he is basically saying, lets pretend to have stand for NO earmarks and stop this budget so the Republicans can claim victory, but later when no one is looking he will put back in his own earmarks.

But don't listen to us ramble on about the GOP sanctimoniousness...take a listen straight from the horses' mouths'!

Mark Bruno
AWOP Politics Contributor
Author of Left Of Center Blog

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Sense Of Entitlement

Conservatives are whining about "entitlement programs" now. You know, entitlement programs, like Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, food stamps, unemployment benefits -- anything that could actually help the citizens of the United States of America.

Keep an eye out for Democrats -- and not just those stinking Blue Dogs -- who may follow suit and adopt that hideous language as if people in dire straits are sticking their hands out and demanding help because they feel entitled to it and not because it's the right thing for government to do when its people are desperate.

But it's not true that conservatives oppose entitlement programs. Why, they're some of the biggest supporters, in fact.

You may not be aware of it, because when a conservative supports an entitlement program, they don't call it that. They call it a "bailout" or a "rescue plan" or "tax cuts." And it's meant explicitly for bankers and investors and CEOs and other campaign contributors.

Some people get it though. I found this blog, Stunatra's Place, earlier today.

You know, I am tired of hearing about this fucking stimulus/bail out/bullshit package. Look at these whiny motherfuckers. Let's see if I got this straight....you fucks are okay with bailing out the rich cocksuckers on Wall Street who robbed the people on Main Street but when it comes to helping those on Main Street you say "Fuck them?" What a bunch of bullshit.

If we're gonna alienate Main Street....why don't we just save us all a lot of money and not bother bailing anyone out. Tough shit for everyone. Auto industry, banks, crooks on Wall Street, struggling homeowners and anyone else who wants a hand out....fuck you.....you're all on your own. Good fucking luck!

Now, I won't go that far. I think that government does have a place -- an obligation even -- to help its citizens. And yes, that is a bit different from how it was set up in the 18th Century, when the entire U.S. population could have lived in Brooklyn. Times -- and the country -- have changed. Then, an economic downturn would have made barely a blip on the population since most of it was agrarian.

Not true anymore. Now, the population is too dependent on all kinds of artificial constructs -- many of them, if not most, set up by the government. An economic downturn -- especially a severe one like we're seeing now -- has the potential to be devastating to the people of the country.

But still, the conservatives would rather continue with their own entitlement programs for companies and rich bankers. Why, they're so horribly upset that taxpayer money might be used to help taxpayers that one of their rich buddies in the media, Rick Santelli, is calling for "tea parties," presumably some take off on the Boston Tea Party way back when. All the conservative sycophants are drooling over the possibility.

Billmon, however, says the rich guy version of a tea party doesn't look like anything like the old American variety of tea party. He thinks it probably look more like this, and I'm inclined to agree. It's clear they don't really know what the first one was about -- the favored tax status of the British East India Tea Company. Not the same thing as an attempt to help the people, and more akin to the Republican entitlement program of helping out corporations.

You heard them all going on and on about how the stimulus bill, for example, was just awful, was going to add to our already skyrocketing debt, shackle Americans for generations to come. John McCain, I think, called it "generational theft."

Only one problem, and for that I go back to Billmon. Government debt, it seems currently amounts to only about 50 percent of Gross Domestic Product, which is not that far from where it's been for the past 30 years. In fact, government debt as compared to GDP has risen only about 38 percent in those 30 years.

And, that's far below most other industrialized nations, like Japan (180 percent), Italy (170 percent), France (70 percent) and Germany (60 percent).

But other kinds of debt, not included when politicians say "national debt" but possibly more important in the grand scheme of things, have jumped far more.

And the biggest offender is the indebtedness of our finely tuned, well-oiled and strongly running financial institutions, now at about 350 percent of GDP -- more than six times what it was in 1975. And that's precisely where conservatism went wrong. Billmon...

The trend towards ever greater debt ratios has been particularly steep since then mid-1990s, which was roughly when the global creditor class decided that the "Great Moderation" (the globalization-induced taming of both inflation and recession) was here to stay, and began shoving loans in the face of any borrower who could fog up a mirror -- and some who couldn't.

There is an on-going economic debate -- too wonkish and tedious to explore here -- about whether this wall of money was a result of a coincident collapse in personal saving in the US, the UK and some of the other wealthy countries, or whether it actually caused middle-class and upper-middle class consumers to go an a spending spree the likes of which the hasn't been seen since the invention of the credit card.

Suffice it to say both sides of the trade thought they were getting a great deal at the time. And many of the same right-wing financial pundits now bitching about all this debt were perfectly happy to invent sunny stories that explained why it could go on forever.

But equally problematic is that private debt -- the kind that you and I hold -- has also risen, to just under 300 percent of GDP, one and half times what it was in 1975. That's also the fault of the conservatives, who convinced us over the years that we'd be just fine, no matter how much debt we took in. Billmon again.

Of course, conservative gospel tells us private debt is never a problem -- even when it's used to turn houses into ATM machines. But government borrowing (the only type of IOU dignified with the label 'national debt') is always a problem, even when it's used to build roads and bridges for all the cars bought with all that equity extracted from all those overpriced suburban mini-mansions. Then it's 'porkulus.'

It's been all that financial indebtedness that has us in the pickle we're in now. Nobody was very concerned about it, especially conservatives, because according to their smoke and mirrors fiscal understanding, everything worked out fine in the end.

Except it didn't. It created "toxic assets," all those crap loans that they gave to people who couldn't afford 'em, pushing private debt up. And now, all the chickens have come home to roost. The banks are stuck because the people they loaned money to can't pay. Then there's a bunch of financial mumbo jumbo about what makes things work or not work that come into play, and the result is that people who could pay their mortgages and car loans start to lose their jobs. Then they can't pay either, and everything slides further downhill.

Now, according to the conservatives, all we have to do is make sure the shareholders and executives of the bank receive their entitlement funds, and everything will be OK. But it won't. People will still be out of work. The bad loans will still be bad loans.

That's apparently not the concern of conservatives, who care only for their own bank and stock accounts. Except, again, it's not going to work. The same shortsightedness and half-assed efforts that doomed the Republicans before the last Great Depression are dooming them now. And us, if we don't act quickly and forcefully.

I go back to Billmon, who knows whereof he speaks, having covered financial matters for a long, long time.

The hard truth is that there is now only one, and only one entity on the planet that can keep the private credit excesses of the past decade, which most conservatives wildly applauded, from ending in a classic debt-deflation meltdown. And that is the US federal government.

Sometimes, deficit spending is the right thing to do. And the "entitlement" programs the conservatives hate so much are the very ones that need to be carefully preserved during this very difficult times, Republican governors refusing the bucks to bolster their conservative street cred be damned.

It's clear that Republicans have no answers but the ones that got us into this mess. Listen to them. What do they say that's different from what they've said for the past 8 years?

Oh, that's right. Because they've run us into the ground with their deficit spending, we must stop it now that we've sunk so low that the middle class is feeling the pinch. Oh, and cut taxes for our rich friends.

Don't buy it. Don't even think it. They're wrong, as they have always been. The Blue Dogs are wrong too. The liberals? At this point, they may not be right either, but they've sure got a better shot at it than Republicans who only want to keep doing what they have been doing.

It's gonna be a hard road ahead, my friends.

The years of anti-government and anti-deficit propaganda have definitely left their mark -- not least on the village idiots of the Beltway media, who may not rant and rave on camera, but who can't even comprehend, much less accept, the idea that there are times when expanding government debt is not only not a bad thing, but is a positive good thing, even an essential thing. The Keynesian idea of fighting a recession brought on by excessive debt with more debt is a hopelessly counter intuitive strategy. And intuition, for better or worse, is what democracy runs on most of the time -- that is, when it isn't being powered by base emotions like greed, fear and hatred.

Maybe there is no way out of this mess, either practically or politically. Limitless growth, Edward Abbey once wrote, is the ideology of a cancer cell, and the doctrine of endless debt-fueled expansion may have created an economy so riddled with it that any therapy powerful enough to kill the cancer will also kill the patient. In other words, globalized capitalism (or rather, this strange brew of corporate oligopoly and lemon socialism) may have finally dug itself a hole too deep for the traditional neo-Keynesian policy tools (fiscal and monetary policy) to lift it out of.

But, if that's true, then our children and our grandchildren may indeed spit on our graves, but it's going to be because we have bequeathed them much bigger nightmares than an increase in the federal debt.

And if that happens, remember where it came from. It didn't come from helping America's citizens. It didn't even come from unnecessary wars and bailouts. It came from unfettered financial irresponsibility brought on by greed and megalomania -- outside the government sector, but enabled by greedy and megalomaniacal elected officials who duped an entire country into thinking it could survive on somebody else's money.

They were wrong. And these modern day robber barons are wrong now to give a pass to their own entitlement programs while denying help to people who really need it.


Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Sticker Shock

I could almost give 'em this one, except for the "Obama bin" part. That's pretty telling. There were, after all, plenty of "Impeach Bush" stickers around for the past 8 years, although there is that little thing of actual impeachable offenses.

But the Patriot Depot, based in Atlanta, is making quite a name for itself among the dittohead followers of the Ayatollah Limbaugh with its array of items that "unapologetically reflect a politically conservative and/or Judeo-Christian ethic." There are Ann Coulter books, Bernard Goldberg books, Mike Huckabee books, anti-global warming books, something called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women and Feminism" that I'd be scared to open and bumper stickers galore.

Take this one, for example, riffing on the "Obama is a socialist" meme. Y'know, if these assholes knew what socialism actually is, they might have made up Comrade Bush stickers last year. But that would not have been right, since, clearly, Republicans would never, ever, ever do anything that might bring socialism to America. Whatever it is.

Speaking of change we can't afford, there's also this little gem. At risk of bringing the wrath of a certain segment of feminists upon my head, let me say once again: Sarah Palin would make a horrible president. She lacks the breadth of understanding of the issues facing the United States that is necessary for a president, and has yet to show any desire to obtain that understanding. Stirring up racists and playing to the worst of human nature is not a qualification. At least it shouldn't be. So, thanks, I will keep the "change."

Here's another change I'll keep. Isn't this what it's all about for these guys? Guns, freedom and money. I can understand the guns and money part, but as best as I can tell, when they say "freedom," what they actually mean is "I get to decide who is a real American and who isn't, and if you aren't, you are screwed, and I've got the guns and money to make sure that's true."

Here's another cute one. Notice the little Democrat donkey representing the word "ass." There's the usual uncreative suspects too, like "Don't blame me, I voted for Palin" -- not McCain, mind you -- and "January 20, 2009 -- the beginning of an error." There's an unbelievable number of anti-Hillary Clinton books, not surprisingly since she clearly scares the bejesus out of these folks. And there's a bunch more Politically Incorrect Guides to things like English and American Literature (I'm scared to look at that one, too), Global Warming, Darwinism (what the hell is that anyway?) and Intelligent Design, Hunting, of all things, Science (oh spare me), the Civil War (eegads), the Bible, the Constitution, the MIddle East, Islam (oh my god. this one sounds scary too), Western Civilization and the South (and Why It Will Rise Again), festooned, of course, with a Confederate battle flag. But I'm sure there's not a racist bone in any of their bodies.

Now, far be it for me to deny someone their god-given right to make a buck in this capitalist system anyway they can. I bring this to your attention just so you'll know what we're up against here.

Y'know, I was horrified when the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush our president in 2000. I feared for the worst. But I had feared for the worst before, and things had come out more or less all right then (little did I know that the worst I had feared wasn't actually coming to fruition until the latter years of GW's rule). So I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. Never even considering hoping he failed. And for a few minutes there on 9/11, I thought maybe he'll turn out all right.

It was soon afterward that it became painfully obvious that GW's call to bring us together in our darkest hour was just so much bullshit, the high point of a presidency that would slowly drag the country into the mud of its own creation.

The past eight years were a bit like living in Alice's looking glass, where the economy's in great shape early in the morning and in the crapper by the afternoon, where "nobody could have predicted" was the watchword for things everybody but the administration did predict.

It's a a world where freedom is having your civil liberties stripped away, where a crusade is launched to "install democracy," where reasons for war change as often as the hour.

In that same world, Michael Brown did a "great job" in the Katrina disaster -- which, incidentally, caused no oil spills (!) -- FDA inspections and enforcements were down and reports of tainted food and other products skyrocketed, and dozens of "signing statements" assured that the administration didn't have to enforce or obey laws passed by Congress.

There are still tens of thousands of weapons missing in Iraq, our treatment of many veterans is beyond shameful, Osama bin Laden -- the guy we were gonna smoke out of the caves he was hiding in -- is still hiding, whether in caves or some more comfortable abode we don't know, and we had a Justice Department that wouldn't define torture.

That same Justice Department admitted hiring based on political ideologies, scientific reports were routinely changed or suppressed if they didn't agree with the party line and environmental rules and regulations were routinely eased.

And then there were the constant "Bushisms," "nucular," trying to rub the German chancellor's shoulders. And what was that bit about not reading?

But yeah, turnabout is fair play right? That's all Patriot Depot is doing. Returning the favor of all the anti-Bushies.

I just can't get over this one little difference. We may not have liked the Supreme Court's choice in presidents. We may have been angry about it. We may have even feared for the worse. But our fears and anger weren't about not being in charge. They were about what we wanted for this country.

I know, plenty of conservatives say that's what they want too -- McCain's "Country First" comes to mind. And I'm sure that some of them really believe it, but I'm afraid they're in the minority now. Modern Republicans, who now represent the conservative movement, are only concerned with getting back in power.

There's that lil bumper sticker up there -- "I'll keep my guns, freedom, and money ... " That's what they want to protect. Not the people. Not the citizens of this country. Not even its reputation in the world. Just the guns, "freedom" and money of a ruling class that does not have our best interests at heart.


Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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