Naomi Klein saves the day on Real Time: Andrew Sullivan has no clue
By John Amato Friday Sep 19, 2008 6:00pm
Longer version here 
Download | play 
Download | play (h/t Heather)
Make sure you buy: "The Shock Doctrine"
It's so chic of conservatives like Sullivan to blame the American people for the economic crisis, because as Sullivan stated on Real Time, millions and millions of people took out loans on homes that they couldn't afford. Yes, the Kudlow Thesis of the market housing crisis. Don't blame the lenders and grifters that came upon us like a biblical plague of locusts, blame the people.
Naomi Klein, God love her, told him that it was the Wall Street profiteers that preyed upon society. His ideal conservative world is completely fictional. And as she says, what comes next is the real disaster. Today was Christmas morning to the fat cats on The Street, but what happens next to all the debt we the people have just incurred? Whoever is elected president will have a major role in deciding our fate. Sorry, I can't write the whole transcript, so watch the entire clip.
Klein: The disaster is far from over. They've actually just relocated. The disaster was on Wall Street and they have moved the disaster to Main Street by accepting those debts and you said they didn't have to bomb, the bomb has yet to detonate. The bomb is the debt that has now been transferred to the taxpayers so it detonates when, if John McCain becomes president in the midst of an economic crisis and says look we're in trouble, we have a disaster on our hands, we have to privatize social security, we can't afford health care, we can't afford food stamps, we need more deregulation, more privatization. The thesis of the Shock Doctrine is you need a disaster to rationalize these very unpopular policies so the real disaster has yet to come.The real disaster is the debt that is going to explode on the American taxpayers. And then they do economic shock therapy.
They had to step in, but I don't think they had to step in in the way they did. The reason why the stock market went up on Wall Street today is because it's Christmas morning. Imagine waking up and being told your credit card debits have been wiped out, your mortgage has been erased. There's a fairy godmother that has taken care of you. A guardian angel. But actually that's the tax payers.
With a smirk, Andrew gets pissed and chimes in
Sullivan: You're favoring nationalizing the other companies.and most industries?
Klein: No, I'm just saying. This is socialism for the rich.
Maher: Why are you so hostile towards this?
Sullivan: Because I think the fundamental thesis that she is proposing is wrong. I think the reason why we're in this situation is not demonizing a few individual companies, it's systemic. And part of the reason we have this is the American People. The American people since the 70's have had stagnating income, so they decided to get something for nothing. And the government never told them they couldn't. So we have the stock bubble of the 90's and now we have the real estate bubble in the 2000's.
Klein: That's not why we have this.
Sullivan: And the government never told them they couldn't. Wall Street is to blame for giving these people these loans, but no one is ever forced to take out a bad load they cannot pay.
Klein: The reason why this bubble was allowed to inflate was not that the American people demanded it, it was spectacularly profitable for Wall Street. Just in bonuses last year, they handed out 33 billion dollars in bonuses... The problem is we have crybaby capitalism where when the times are good they are preaching deregulation and when the times are bad they want the bail-outs. The problem I have with your argument is where is this ideal capitalism of which you speak?
Andrew, the lenders told them they could get the houses for nothing and then lied about how they would pay for it and what they would pay, then bundled the cash and passed it on... And it's not the government's role to tell people what they cannot do. That's why we used to have regulations and background checks and down payments and mortgage lenders to oversee the system. It weeds out the people that can and cannot afford a home. He tried to deconstruct her argument because apparently he wasn't getting enough air time at that point (he filibustered the entire show after that) with nonsensical rationalizations on the current state of affairs. I lived through it and saw it up close and personal. Yea, he supports Obama, great, but his conservative ideology is a sham.
Andrew Sullivan has been conned by a fictitious notion of what conservatism really is. He states his Utopian vision of conservatism, but leaves out the part where conservatives want to deregulate everything and get rid of oversight and government so they can reap a magical harvest of cash like they have been doing during the entire Bush administration. Now we are seeing the results of conservatism. It's a failure. Does Sully really believe that conservatism exists without the fat cats expanding their pie of wealth in America to 1920's or pre-New Deal proportions? They've been trying to undo the New Deal ever since it was instituted and by the way which brought the country back from the brink of destruction.
Do you want Barack Obama or John McCain to make these decisions? I think the choice is easy. Conservative rule rains Armageddon down upon our heads---whether it happens in two years or twenty. It's inevitable.
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Sully's an asshole. Naomi Klein is spot on, as always. Great post!
It's amazing how Sullivan attempts to say that the Republican party and George Bush are "liberals", and that this market crash should be an example of the failures of the ideas of Noam Chomsky... Conservative policies drove our economy in to the ground, and this SOB cites Chomsky and liberals as the ones to blame, other than the right-wing of this country including people like Milton Friedman!
Is this guy insane or what? Why do certain people on the left take him seriously at all? This crisis our economy is in is a direct result of free-market deregulated capitalism. To try to blame it on the far left, and Noam Chomsky of all people is absurd. Sullivan is only a Republican because he supports deregulation! His economic ideas are the ones that got us all in this mess, and he's going to sit there and blame the far left? Outrageous.
And my god does that jack ass ever know how to shut up and listen to people? He basically ruined that show by talking over EVERYONE including Bill Maher.
Naomi Klein is brilliant. Best Real Time ever, despite Sullivan's know-it-all oxygen consumption. I can't wait to read The Shock Doctrine. We need more Naomi Klein.
Wash Post headline says it all
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/wash-post-headline-says-it-all.html
So when the gov't bails out the auto industry they will pretty much own a stake in almost all markets. Wasn't that what we called communism in the old Soviet Union where everything was run by the party????
The "government" wouldn't bail an individual out period ... they don't give a damn if you lose your house and have to live in a box. They do however, care if the fat cats have to take responsibility for their actions, and so they help them cover it up by bailing THEM out.
That my friends, is the difference!
Naomi Klein, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Rachel Maddow, Tina Fey and my wife (not necessarily in that order) are the five sexiest women on the planet.
Is it possible that the "American workers" who haven't received any real increase in wages in thirty years, used credit cards and home equity loans just to break even? Thirty years ago, average CEO pay to average worker's pay was 35:1. It 2007 it's 344:1. Add to that "deferred income," offshore tax shelters and "favorable" tax laws, the American worker is subsidizing these outlandish salaries. One income used to support a family. Now two incomes don't. Limit CEO pay to 25 times the salary of their lowest paid employee.
I just watched this episode 5 minutes ago. Sullivan crucified McCain, Palin (Oh my god he ripped her), and Bush. They only disagreed at the very beginning of the show and it was over how much the "american people" were to blame. The rest was a lovefest.
B
Sullivan and Phil Gramm are part of the blame America first crowd.
Just when I was giving Will I Am credit for keeping his mouth shut, he disappoints.
As usual Sully's a pig's pig.
I thought the ideal capitalism of which he speaks was supposed to be in Iraq.
Now, I'm NOT sticking up for Sullivan, but in this case, he was pretty much right, which is not to say that Naomi was wrong. They were both right. As Maher pointed out, the American consumer/taxpayer has been living on debt in the global economy, with the aid of a crooked, gutless government that refuses to tell the truth or do the right thing. It's a sick symbiosis that has helped create this disaster. Much like the oil "crisis" that everyone with a shred of sense knew was coming, this crash/bailout/debt crisis was completely ignored by the majority of Americans who choose to believe fairy tales told to them by their nanny state representatives.
I pray to a God I know doesn't exist that people will finally start to wake up, and maybe tune out Paris Hilton and tune in CSPAN.
the rats are jumping ship, they're drowning, and soon they'll all be singing, "all hail king john mccain, ruler of sea monkey atlantis!"
Anyone who had no clue (like me) how this happened should take forty minutes and listen to this interview with Michael Greenberger on Fresh Air.
Basically ground zero in the debacle is "The Commodity Futures Modernization Act" (The Enron Loophole) of 2000. Put forward by Phil Gramm with no debate and no report and signed into law by none other than President Bill Clinton.
Do give it a listen....it'll piss you off no end.
Could anything be more important to organize against NOW.....
Bush bending over the US taxpayer before he leaves....
There can be a tremendous difference between speaking well, and actually being correct. Mr. Sullivan gives us this perfect example in that clip. And it is always amazing how so many can tell others not to interrupt them, yet they have no qualms about doing it themselves.
Bald Dipshit said- "No one is ever forced to take out a bad loan."
Is this guy retarded? Is he so out of touch with reality that McCain needs to snatch him up as an adviser?
While fucktards like him got rich and fat, many (like myself) were struggling to pay off astronomical student loans, outrageous credit card debt and home/car payments.
Sullivan IS partly right, believe it or not. It is the fault of the American people. NOBODY forced them to live higher than they could afford. NOBODY forced them to take loans out that they knew they couldn't afford. The credit card debt and mortgage amounts are nobodies fault but their own. And Sullivan is also right that Bush and his merry band of cronies are not conservatives. A true conservative does not borrow borrow spend spend. They are cheap. They do not live beyond their means. Bush and his band are thieves.
Mind you Klein is right on one thing. If you are going to take on the massive debt of corporations, you should also be able to take the massive profits of the oil industry as well.
John: I am voting for Obama,and am hopeful, but looking at some of the things he's said, and at those whom he has picked for financial advisers, and his ties to the U of Chicago, I think there's very good reason to fear that an Obama administration may have many of the unfortunate corporatist tendencies that kept the Clinton admin from being the boon to our country that many of us had hoped it would be. Don't get me wrong: I think (as someone once said) that Clinton was absolutely the best Republican president we've had since T. Roosevelt, and I expect Obama to be at least as good. I think, tho, that those who expect the kind of vision and sagacity of an FDR, or even a JFK, qualities that we are sorely in need of, thanks to Bush/Cheney, are probably going to be disappointed. Of course, even if Obama is not all that we might hope, that in no way mitigates the fact that a McCain/Palin presidency would undoubtedly bring worldwide catastrophe--possibly even enough to engender nostalgia for the Bush/Cheney years along the lines of the bumpersticker sentiment "I never thought I'd miss Dick Nixon."
Foodstamps, probably...
But if anybody, McCain, Obama, whatever, tried to eliminate healthcare (I'm assuming Klein means Medicare) and succeeded somehow... they'd be signing their political party's death certificate.
No way that happens.
Capitalism is dead, finished, gone, over, done. This trillion dollar socialist bail out forced on Americans killed it. Sullivan's an idiot.
Once again, the testosterone-addled Ayn Rand fetishists are given the pulpit. They deserve another chance b/c this last time there were no REAL conservatives to animate the fantasy of uber-individualism.
Why is it that greed is a valuable driving force when there's a profit to be made, but it doesn't warrant our attention when it drives corruption?
anyone else catch palin's bizarre ramblings about flagged molecules, etc., the other day?
little princess is playing her disruptive part to a "t", i gotta admit...
BennyP @ 19:
He's right. No one forced them to take the loan but that's not the point. Banks should never have loaned it to them because they weren't "good risks". They weren't qualified to receive the loans, aka basic solid banking practices...Something that used to matter before making fast money on the commissions then bundling them into securities and insuring the losses were the only reasons to write mortgages.
Bankers are supposed to be experts, aren't they?
If you had several millions of dollars, and your neighbours, who make $30,000 a year, want to borrow $450,000 each, to build new houses, would you give it to them?
Only if you knew you could sell the bad debt to someone else. This is the house of cards. There's so much debt, only the taxpayers/federal governement have enough money to pay it back (actually you don't have enough moeny, so that might be the next disaster.) Total American Bankruptcy.
It's Naomi Klein's (and Thomas Frank's) world. We only live in it!
sullivan is not an idiot...he just thinks that there are still some real conservatives out there...the conservative movement...the real one....died a long time ago
come on john....show the parts where sullivan reams mccain and palin...and when told by will.i.am that we are spending too much time talking about palin, and when maher goes on to show how talkiing about palin loses white female votes, sullivan explains how destroying her will destroy mccain....and ultimately the christian right
and maher needs to let go of his hatred of all things religious...he is wrong...not every religious person is a walking, talking idiot....just the extremes of all religions are dangerous
Why does everyone here pay homage?
It's simple. People like Henry Paulson have taken advantage of ordinary Americans.
Now, because we pay homage, we will give him what he wants.
Fuck these bastards. Take to the streets. Unless you're too comfortable.
Re: my post at 27. This is where the lack of regulations plays out. The banks should not be allowed to package and sell bad debt. But that's "the free market". If people want to buy it, it's for sale. Did people know they were buying bad debt, with good? Or did they hush up about the bad debt in the package?
"ConcernedCanuck Says: Sullivan IS partly right, believe it or not. It is the fault of the American people. NOBODY forced them to live higher than they could afford. NOBODY forced them to take loans out that they knew they couldn’t afford. The credit card debt and mortgage amounts are nobodies fault but their own. And Sullivan is also right that Bush and his merry band of cronies are not conservatives. A true conservative does not borrow borrow spend spend. They are cheap. They do not live beyond their means. Bush and his band are thieves."
Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? The smell of Clearasil and ditchweed come to mind for some reason...
"Live for yourself, there's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will
Only cry out for more"
Rush-Anthem
Naomi just stated that the Thuglies need a disaster to push through their agenda. She is spot on! Much like the PNAC crowd needing "another Pearl Harbor". Well, with September 11, 2001, they got what they wanted and we got the Patriot Act, the spying, and the loss of civil liberties.
Fear. Fascists have always used fear as a tactic to subvert the Constitution and wipe out the pitiful gains of working Americans.
oh, and klein wasnt the first to float this theory
the goal was to destroy the new deal protections, and then to say that we can no longer afford any of the new deal legislation...and people were saying this all the way back during reagan's time
took 20 years...and a very intense 8 years...and they did it
and she is right...the goal now is to say that no social program or safety net is affordable
the neo cons have won....huzzah
holy christ, amato. nice piece of writing.
givin' 'em the ol' catholic exorcism, eh?
Nobody here is too pissed off.
John, I almost always agree with you, but I think you're a little off here. Americans have incurred too much debt and willingly took the shovel that lenders gave them in order to dig a big hole for themselves. Now, where Sullivan goes astray is when he ignores the fact that many Americans are in debt not because they want the latest gadget or a new addition on their house, but because their healthcare costs, stagnant wages, or some other systemic, non-individual crisis have pushed them against the wall, and rather than starve or forego prescriptions or food or clothing for them and their children, they charged it, figuring or hoping that someday they'd be able to afford to pay off the credit cards. But then the Bush economy continues to screw everyone who actually works for a living, and the credit card debt continues to rise, and the people who were lured into mortgages they could afford under one rate but not another, higher rate, end up losing their house. Etc.
Sullivan's is a straw-man argument, started by the same people who created the crisis in the first place.
Few people signed on to loans they could not afford. They signed onto loans that the did not know they could not afford.
They signed onto loans that they could afford IF neither spouse lost a job or fell ill.
They signed onto loans that had payments doubling when they failed to be on-time, everytime.
People were misled from the start about the well being and fundementals of our economic system by experts who looked at GDP instead of the man hours that a family had to work to obtain food and shelter.
The propaganda machine had the middle class battling the poor while the elitist rich laughed at all of us.
Why do idiots like Sullivan get to get paid for their inane opinions? WTF?
They have been wrong about everything, heck look at his personal life: Andrew Sullivan, as a British gay man prostituting himself for the American homophobe right, is the poster child for confusion and self hate.
Just wondering but why is a gay Brit stumping for the Conservatives?
If they had their way he would either be kicked out of the country because he is an immigrant, or he would be thrown in jail because he is gay.
I want Ralph Nader.
I trusted Obama until I got flim flam. I never trust McCain.
No, if we bail the Fat Cats out, we attach all sorts of strings. I don't see the strings yet.
This argument that people should not have taken the loans that they could not repay is completely specious!
These conservatives talk personal responsibility. Where is it? I don't see it.
This bailout is a swindle.
Andrew Sullivan is not clueless. His argument concerning the irresponsibility of the American consumer is valid.
I liked Naomi's suggestion that we nationalize the oil industry if we nationalize Wall Street. Overall, this was one of the better Realtime shows. "New Rules" is usually the only clip worth watching.
Sullivan was an aggressive jerk. And he places too much blame at the feet of Americans who took on debt they couldn't repay. Both the mortgage industry and home buyers are to blame. And in both cases it was a form of greed. But hey people are greedy and they will continue to be greedy. So what do we do about it? As a group, our society through our government needs to regulate the industries involved. Then it's not in their interest to make ridiculous loans and Americans won't be able to get ridiculous loans. This is where free-market ideology has gone off the rails. There were no referees making sure the football teams weren't cheating. In fact, there weren't even rules for the game.
If you want a concise evaluation of the ongoing economic meltdown, read Robert Kuttner's assessment here.
That is what a regulator does.
Andrew Sullivan is a total fool. He talks about Adam Smith as a guiding principle for our economy. Excuse me, Adam Smith lived and died before the Industrial Revolution. Smith had no idea about the pernicious affects of corporations with vast economic and political ability to manipulate the "Free Market" as well as control our government. That is the definition of fascism; a government controlled by corporations, no??? Sullivan is a prime example of the stupidity of the American voter. He is a pernicious enabler.
No more private profits and socialized risk. Hang the crooks. And, remember:
John, John, John McCain,
Mighty big liar with zero shame.
McCain is all bluster and no action. He is known by his colleges as a grandstander that does nothing to move American towards a more equitable, fair and sane society. He's just a "hotdog" that tries to "look and sound good" to the fools that vote while doing the bidding of those that pay for his political campaigns. And Sarah is just a shallow, shrill shill.
To Naomi Klein, all my love.
If I knew/exposed half the crimes going on that she did, my heart would explode and my soul implode.
Someone has to do it, good job, Naomi.
Friday, September 19, 2008 was the last day of the Reagan Revolution.
I had his website the "Dish" bookmarked. It is now off my list. He does not understand that it is the whole policy of the conservative movement that is wrong. We must end conservative thinking.
Dave
Viet Vet
Johnny2Bad @ 26:
This is something that is starting to piss me off. Most of the crisis is not due to the "subprime" mortgages issued, but the debt packages that these institutions had engineered. The mortgages themselves had been used by these banks to create credit packages between them. The value of the bad mortgages pales in comparison of the junk portfolios the banks were able to derivate from the poor saps trying to own a house.
They are using mortgages to blame this shit on the homeowners.
BennyP @ 19:
I don't know, have you considered buying a cheaper car, a smaller home (or renting until you're more financially sound), going to a less expensive college, or buying less on credit? I've managed to get to the age of 30 without accruing any debt, ever and even putting money into a retirement account. How could I do this? Simply by living beneath my means. I paid for my own schooling and my own car. I have decided not to have children until I am more settled into a career with a paycheck that could support them and I rent a small apartment because I know I can't afford a house yet.
Neither the Wall Street economists nor the foreclosed homeowners deserve a trillion-dollar bailout, one that this country cannot afford. I made sensible decisions and I don't want myself and future generations burdened with a 10% increase in the nation's debt to bail out people who didn't make sensible decisions.
Besides being an obnoxious, interrupting, arm-waving boor, Sullivan gets so many things wrong here that it's hard to keep count. I'll pick just one: he says that "no one is ever forced to take out a bad loan they cannot repay." Of course no one was FORCED to take out loans, but they certainly were INDUCED to do so by lenders who had lobbied hard (can you say Phil Gramm) to be able to offer all kinds of exotic mortgage instruments to consumers. George Bush also induced people to buy houses, promoting what he calls "the ownership society."
To think that the average home buyer has anywhere near the sophistication of the slick mortgage lenders who invented and then made a living selling these creative loans day in and day out, which apparently is what Andrew Sullivan believes, is to live on a planet on which the rest of us do not live.
Sullivan says that we need to deregulate, that this crisis supports Ron Paul, not Chomsky, yet it's also the government's fault for not telling the people what they couldn't afford.
Talk about having your cake and eating it.
Tyler Durden @ 49:
Yeah, and Pelosi's saying "the bailout should include provisions to help families facing foreclosure to stay in their homes"
Talk about buying votes.
I watched it and, as usual, I ended up being pissed off that Maher never makes the Republican shut the fuck up long enough for anyone else to get a word in edgewise.
And Maher was right there with Sullivan, blaming the people who are "choosing to walk away" from their mortgages. Nice way to describe losing your home, because it actually implies a choice.
But both Sullivan and Maher glossed right over Klein's point about the CEO's "walking away" with HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS in severence pay and golden parachutes.
Are they kidding? One group is walking away with just what they can carry and a future of ruined credit and higher interest rates on everything for years to come and the other group is walking away with billions in unearned pay and bonuses and a trail of destruction in their wake?
Maher is so big on the irrationality of "magical thinking" but can't seem to add two and two together when it comes to the role that CEO compensation is playing in this disaster.
How many homes could have been saved if mortgages had been restructured at lower rates? Probably most of them, but the problem is that the bad lenders bundled the bad loans and sold them at profit, removing themselves from total responsibility. It was a house of cards, and that was NOT the fault of the home owners.
Instead of allowing CEO's to drain their companies treasuries, they shouldn't get a damn cent until they do something to help fix this mess.
Oh, but that's a sin!! Take the robbery out of the "free" marketplace? Heaven forbid! Not allow a CEO to take obscene payouts for ruining their companies? Unamerican!! Even Maher can't conceptualize it. He can bitch about it, but nothing more.
We are all supposed to sit back and let the robbers keep what they stole because they had a job title? Really?
I'm a real estate agent in Florida. I didn't do any of the bad loans myself, because I was fortunate in who I dealt with, but I've seen plenty of them and I've seen too many people who had no idea what they had been sold. Now they're screwed and their mtg companies are still doing nothing to help this - and they won't be, either.
Don't be fooled that this is just greedy people on the bottom.
The corporations that control insurance and credit cards and auto loans are all intertwined now, thanks to deregulation, and everyone one of the millions of people who have lost their homes will now also see their credit card interest rates, auto insurance rates, any interest rate at all, adjust up to the max, because the corporations have all been allowed to tie variable interest rates to credit scores.
Think about how many more billions in interest all these corporations will be charging millions of Americans for years, maybe decades to come, because their homes were foreclosed on and their credit ruined.
Credit cards, auto insurance, auto loans - you name it, all will be charging top interest to the poorest, which will keep it harder for the people at the bottom to save or get ahead.
But someone will be raking it in. That's why Klein was saying Wall Street was rallying so fast. Their debt was wiped out and passed to us and their future is looking bright.
"When there's blood on the streets, there's money to be made."
roooth @ 54:
Goddammit, I wish you were wrong.
Klein was right... on the money... ahem. :)
I thought Pam Martens summed it beautifully too:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens09202008.html
Sullivan? When will the so-called progressive folk start treating this guy like the cretin he is? How many mulligans does he get? Jesus. Marginalize... marginalize... marginalize... strip the pulpit and let him loon to himself.
biodrummindieseler @ 42:
First off most of this crisis is not due to consumer debt, thus the irresponsibility of the American consumer (which is an issue) has no place in this discussion. The banks that had to be bailed out for the most part were investment banks, and AIG was an insurance company with too much exposure on derivatives. Ergo the American consumer (irresponsible or not) is being used as a scape goat to diver from the real issue: this country lacks the assets required to back up the level of debt and credit it has amassed and thus... here we are with the chickens coming home to roost.
Using the canard of the American consumer irresponsibility for this crisis, is like blaming the Super Bowl loss of the New England Patriots on the bad performance of the Red Sox bench.
Blaming this on the American consumer is out of the GOP playbook, who for decades convinced most of the idiotic American populace that it was them Welfare Queens who had run Rayguns' trillion-dollar debt. Sure some of the debt was due to shady welfare behaviors, but that was order of magnitude (trillions vs. hundreds of millions) less than the real culprit: the subsidies paid to the Military complex and general corporate welfare.
Sure there is a responsibility on having the chickens being watched by the foxen. But I think the responsibility for the demise of the chickens is not that they are too tasty for a Fox, but on the foxen that eat the chickens.
Sullivan, and of course many others believe and trust in, "The Captains of Industry" depicting them as always with more intelligence and courage than the unwashed masses. But they always forget it takes the mindless uneducated masses to put these pricks where they are in the whole scheme of things. If the masses can`t afford to pay, the elite will perish. They want us to believe a con artist is a better person because he has outsmarted the rest of us. We deserved to be fucked, cast aside. Greed is good.
All I can say is Naomi Klein deserves the utmost kudos for standing up to that fool Sullivan. The problem here isn't the American people. The problem is the greed of the corporations and how they profited off the backs of ordinary Americans. They took the American Dream and danced on it while playing fiddle as these financial companies went under.
The point is that they aren't hurting. But the citizens of this country will be hurting for a long time.
It's almost as if this was a show that failed in its network run. The network heads, producers, directors, writers and the stars make money even though the show is a failure. But the viewers who liked the cancelled show suffer and get nothing.
Typical Ron Paul drivel from Sullivan that monopoly capitalism isn't "really existing capitalism" but Socialism. His perspective is that of the petty bourgeoisie who can't accept that small scale capitalism becomes monopoly capitalism as wealth becomes concentrated.
They fanticize about a government that is like the Leviathon of Thomas Hobbes, a disinterested referee that prevents large capital from changing the rules of the game as large capital becomes more and more powerful.
Without a class analysis of social events, you get the clap trap that nationalizing something is socializing it. But real socialism requires that nationalized property is also democratically controlled. England never had socialism even though it had to nationalize a lot of its failing institutions and infrastructure. The nationalizations happened to save capitalism from bankrupcy.
Perhaps to make things easy, let's just say there are 3 main classes in society: the monopoly capitlalists, the petty capitalists and the working class. Each class is antagonistic to the two others but the large capitalists are the most antagonistic to democracy. The petty bourgeoisie is caught in the middle of the two major classes and hates them both.
There is no time machine that can take American society back to the time of small farmers and small capital like when the country was formed. We live in the time of Phil Gramms, not Ron Pauls. The petty bourgeoisie must chose sides as this crisis evolves. Their day is over. But socialism is not against those who want to self-employ themselves. They will just not be allowed to exploit workers.
Rooth at 54: Thank you for saying that. You have put all of these sentiments in one neat little package. Kudos to you.
It's the American peoples fault that their wages have stagnated? God, I HATE these people!!!!!!!
Shannon, I agree with you. We can't blame the American people for the housing bust -- weren't those "unqualified" borrowers at first able to pay their mortgage payments but when the interest rate ballooned, they had no idea it would increase so much? The banks had no crystal ball to tell them how much more it would be in the future, and if people thought it would be $50.00 more per month, most would say they could handle that. And the banks didn't care -- by then they'd sold the mortgages at inflated prices to huge financial institutions or other banks, which are the ones being bailed out with taxpayer money now.
The problem was an absence of government oversight and regulation, which allowed institutional greed and corporate profits to skyrocket. We cannot live in a world that has no limits, no regulations. That would be anarchy, which is what the government and corporate sectors are now approaching. Fascism on the march.
Kudos to Bill Maher for getting Naomi on that segment. It would have been much more informative without Sullivan.
Jesus, I hate these smug, entitled fat cats. Most conmen at least have the decency to disappear after they swindle you, instead of sticking around to rub your nose in it, blaming you for the royal screwing they just gave you.
These people are the reason previous generations built guillotines.
1. If banks accept a lot of bad loans then the banks are just as much to blame. Its kinda their job to measure risk and not give out bad loans. If the banks encouraged people to ask for bad loans then the banks accepted the bad loans, then the banks are mostly to blame.
2. Issue 1. is irrelevant. The problem with the market isn't people defaulting on loans. The people have nothing to do with what is going on. The current problem is that the BANKS SOLD BAD LOANS TO FINANCIAL COMPANIES WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO BUY RISKY SECURITIES. That is the cause of the current financial crisis. To blame it on the loan recipients shows someone with either a frightening ignorance for someone who takes it upon themselves opine about these issues professionally, or someone with an agenda. In this case I'd say its a little from column A and a little from column B.
Naomi Klein is a very rare talent. And besides being a great debater, she is a superb author. The level of information in "The Shock Doctrine" is so expertly conveyed and written in such chronologically fascinating detail that 600 pages just fly by and you dont want the book to end.
While that formula might work for other genre's, a non fiction story, especially one as depressingly stark with the rapacious greed of the corporatist's in this country who have exported their wars over and economic cruelty over the past 30 odd years, and broken the backs of those who fight for human rights and equitable resources provided by their governments for its citizens, is really saying something. I didnt know if I would get through this book when I started based on the subject matter but quickly found the information indispensable.
If you have not read this, you must.
53 Stone Pony Says: Tyler Durden @ 49:
Johnny2Bad @ 26:
BennyP @ 19:
Bald Dipshit said- “No one is ever forced to take out a bad loan.”
Is this guy retarded? Is he so out of touch with reality that McCain needs to snatch him up as an adviser?
While fucktards like him got rich and fat, many (like myself) were struggling to pay off astronomical student loans, outrageous credit card debt and home/car payments.
He’s right. No one forced them to take the loan but that’s not the point. Banks should never have loaned it to them because they weren’t “good risks”. They weren’t qualified to receive the loans, aka basic solid banking practices…Something that used to matter before making fast money on the commissions then bundling them into securities and insuring the losses were the only reasons to write mortgages.
This is something that is starting to piss me off. Most of the crisis is not due to the “subprime” mortgages issued, but the debt packages that these institutions had engineered. The mortgages themselves had been used by these banks to create credit packages between them. The value of the bad mortgages pales in comparison of the junk portfolios the banks were able to derivate from the poor saps trying to own a house.
They are using mortgages to blame this shit on the homeowners.
Yeah, and Pelosi’s saying “the bailout should include provisions to help families facing foreclosure to stay in their homes”
Talk about buying votes.
With so many people foreclosed upon, what will be the drain on our social safety nets--which are almost nonexistent at this point--if homeowners aren't assisted? Having mass homelessness will only fray our feeble systems all the more. What are cities going to do, set up mass homeless camps? And if people just walk away from their homes, the banks are almost certain to fail. The banking system is smoke and mirrors as it it. Banks need the people to at least continue trying to pay on their homes.
Look, I agree that it's responsible to delay big life decisions until you're solvent. You're to be applauded there. There is an element of "personal responsibility" in every purchase, in every contract. But the people who work on Wall St. used this bad debt to create investment packages that would enrich themselves! In other words, in order for Wall Street investors--also people who need to show some personal responsibility--to make a scheitload of money, they needed to encourage people to get into debt beyond their means. They could then use this to move money around as though it were a "product," skimming something off the top for themselves. No homeowners, no bad debt, no money made.
Second, how many times have we been told--by CNBC, CNN, any of these daily financial report shows--that it has been the American CONSUMER keeping the economy afloat over at least the last seven years. Without people buying beyond their means, we would've hit a crisis point long ago. It doesn't excuse it, but it does point out that it's the public that was taken for a ride in this situation. (Remember Chimpy telling everyone to be patriotic and shop after Sept. 11?)
Now, put that together with the fact that wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, and that most people can't afford health insurance, and that people are often one not-so-large catastrophe away from bankruptcy, and you can see that this clearly can't be blamed on the home-buying public beyond a small portion. They are pawns.
The financial system in this nation is set up so that the permanent upper-class--the "investment class"--needs the permanently indebted in order to keep making money for themselves. This has nothing to do with buying votes (and I'm not a person with any amount of affection for Nancy Pelosi, so don't go there). It has to do with helping people who were set up for a fall before the game even started. If anyone needs the help, it's them.
Tyler Durden @ 49:
Bingo.
Steve E @ 58:
Right on... couldn't agree more.
Stone Pony @ 53:
That is nothing more than a buyout of dissent for the bailout of the perpetrators. Shame on her.
I told friends that the ARMs were a bad investment and the due date would come, and they might not be able to refinance. There is plenty of fault to lay at the feet of the foolhardy. Don't try to absolve the foolish of their culpability in this mess. There were plenty of us warning them about the bad investments.
Still, that is the reason we have government supervision...so that someone will be the adult in the economic turmoil of buyers and sellers--the greedy and the foolhardy. Deregulation is at fault, and that can be laid squarely at the feet of the Republicans.