The fact that someone's pay has to be capped at $500 grand right now, and that cut will potentially drive people away to new jobs, is infuriating. I won't lie about that. How is it possible people can be so rich, even while they've driven us into financial turmoil and have no reason to care? But what's the point of limiting them? That doesn't change the power they have and the lack of power we have. It won't save these banks and it won't save our economy and it certainly won't force these companies to make stimulative investments.
It's true that the institutions receiving and requesting TARP funds have been horrible at gauging just how patient the American people are going to be with elaborate company trips and massive bonuses. But you know, maybe it isn't that they're bad at gauging these things at all. Maybe they simply don't care. In this economic structure, we rely on them to save our economic asses, and they know we have to bail them out. At the end of the day, they know who they answer to, and it isn't us, as enraged as we become with their incredible wealth while we watch others suffer.
Let's nationalize these banks, as T suggests. I'm certain that if they were run by an organization with a public stake in seeing them succeed (that doesn't mean a big bubble, it means actual wealth creation, lending, and job stability for lots of Americans), the priorities would be different.
All these other petty "regulations" and condemnations are just shallow displays of a fairly low-level populism that one could just as easily see Sarah Palin promoting. This financial crisis and the failings of these financial institutions were not caused by greed or excessive salaries or anything else. They are caused by an ideology that says the free market knows best, for you and me, and that we should trust people who have no interest in serving the public or creating long-term stability or prosperity or loyalty even to the company they work for.
Pres. Obama shouldn't waste my time with pay caps. He really ought to make some substantive demands (like say, these TARP funds can't be used for anything except consumer lending). The stark inequality between my town and Wall Street is astounding, sickening, all those things. But limiting millionaires to a half a million doesn't put any money in struggling Americans' pockets. It might feel good to pretend we're forcing those with no perspective to live within our boundaries for awhile, but it's an entirely superficial sense of satisfaction, and we shouldn't forget that.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Capping executive pay...What's the point?
Monday, February 2, 2009
CNN likes inane polls
Tomorrow's likely CNN poll: Do you think women should be forced to have abortions?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Chomsky on Obama's Foreign Policy and the Economy
At counterpunch, an interview with Noam Chomsky on Obama's emerging foreign policy. (Hint: It's not good.) I think the most original analysis comes in the end, however, when Chomsky briefly discusses the economic downturn and Obama's response to it:
It is a worldwide crisis and it is very serious. It is striking that the ways that Western countries are approaching the crisis [entirely contradict] the model that they enforce on the Third World when there is a crisis. So when Indonesia has a crisis, [or] Argentina and everyone else, they are supposed to raise interest rates very high and privatize the economy, and cut down on public spending, measures like that. In the West, it is the exact opposite: lower interest rates to zero, move towards nationalization if necessary, pour money into the economy, have huge debts. That is exactly the opposite of how the Third World is supposed to pay off its debts. That this seems to pass without comment is remarkable.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Economic crisis leads to conservative budget hysteria
One of the most conservative-dominated states in the nation, Utah, is planning to cut its budget by 15% for the coming year, despite the fact that even the Republican governor recommended only about a 7% cut. And where is this 15% coming from?
Meals on Wheels and a host of support programs for at-risk teenagers and seniors. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports:
Salt Lake County prevention programs -- which help immigrants, teens in juvenile court and others -- stand to lose as much as 38 percent in state dollars, or $811,872, under one scenario. An estimated 17 employees at different community groups would likely lose their jobs due to reduced contracts.
Of the 3,200 students who participated in Cornerstone Counseling programs in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, about 1,300 could no longer be served. That would mean a significant reduction in the teaching of practical life skills that studies link to a drop in drug and alcohol use.
The day the [Governor John] Huntsman scenario was announced in December, Salt Lake County served 1,084 meals to seniors in their homes, a number that could drop by half if the dollars aren't replaced.
"These are people who are very frail, very sick, and we're taking food away from them," said Shauna O'Neil, Salt Lake County's director of aging. Though the governor has proposed backfilling those and other dollars, many community groups and local officials are skeptical the dollars will be found.
Acute needs, particularly those involving youth, have been prioritized at the state level. For example, programs for treating substance abuse were protected while many programs preventing alcoholism were suggested as cuts.
"This is at the point where there aren't a lot of good choices," said Lisa-Michele Church, executive director of the Department of Human Services. She hopes her agency will have some safeguards, because of its mission.
What's being overlooked, advocates say, is how much money prevention programs can save the state in the long run.
A huge chunk of money was cut by eliminating $4.7 million from DORA, a substance abuse program set up by the Drug Offender Reform Act. Its closure ends treatment for 1,400 and could lead to the need for more jails. But without a long track record of outcomes, it was more vulnerable to cuts.
An economic crisis does not mean it's time to stop spending government money. In fact, as pretty much every economist who isn't a libertarian ideologue has told us recently, it's the time to spend, not only to help support those suffering from economic decline in the markets, but because it's the only way to stimulate the markets back into productivity. Beyond this alone, however, it's difficult to see anything but conservative exploitation of the economic crisis to get out of the mandatory welfare programs they have long resisted.
These programs are life-saving programs. Cutting the budget itself is unnecessary, and cutting it at these places is morally repugnant. These calculated political moves demonstrate a marked animosity toward the under-privileged.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Unions are responsible for auto industry failures
This is one of my favorite of the outlandish statements repeated by conservatives as if it's common sense.
