I totally agree. I’ve been reading Chris’s page since September 2008 and I have seen a pretty consistent amount of criticism over all of the bailouts - Republican, Democrat, corporate, & consumer. Regarding what I wrote on the topic Friday "ChrisM. ‘not on board with Obama - or humanity…’" on Friday
I didn’t really mean that Chris Martenson or people on his site have expressed disagreement with the $75 billion given to consumers, but not the bailouts given to banks. Rather, I’ve noticed a lot of rage in our greater society and media toward the homeowner bailout that seems disproportionate to the reaction they gave the bank bailouts. In regards to that, I think that Russ . here makes a good point:
I don’t think Obama team has thrown $10 trillion dollar at bankers yet. Have they? As far as a team of people he has surrounded himself with for economic policy, yes, it seems that the same people who have contributed to creating this problem are in charge. I hope Obama is a quick learner to make policy changes before it gets too late.
As far as him being "a political practitioner extraordinaire", I think it is an excellent asset this country can use now. I am not a subscriber to conspiracy theories yet because I personally have not seen enough convincing evidences for that. It seems to me it is more of a case of "infinite human stupidity, greed, arrogance and delusions". If Obama manages to use his political skills to pull many groups of constituents - - who can be impossibly stupid, boundlessly greedy, prejudiced, fearful, not respecting others with different opinions and irrational - - together to achieve a decent level of common goods for people in this country and the world, I would be very happy with that. I think he has several ingredients which make me feel hopeful rather than giving up totally; good intentions, the first class intelligence with less delusions than most people and political skills to be able to sell his policies and ideas to people.
"I think he has several ingredients which make me feel hopeful rather than giving up totally; good intentions, the first class intelligence with less delusions than most people and political skills to be able to sell his policies and ideas to people."
Hope is like riding a carousel horse; no matter how fast you go you never get closer to the one in front. The idea, however, is to persuade you to stay on the horse, despite the evitable disappointment, in the ‘hope’ that things will change. But they don’t because the very system is designed to prevent it." - David Icke
Thanks for sharing how you see this. Yes, ideally I think the current financial system should collapse to allow a new, workable and sustainable financial system to emergy. I also agree that all these tinkering by government creates a situation where priviate and productive business people can’t operate successfully due to business environment which does not have predictability, rules of games clearly understood nor individuals / institutions bearing the full consequences of their actions.
What I am wondering is how government needs to balance the needs to have a new system and to go through this process of financial system collapse in an "orderly" fashion so that the consequences of this meltdown are not that devastating to over 300 million people. Go through a shorter, but more painful process and get over with it sooner OR drag this longer with a bit less pain, which is questionable… I am not sure which one is the better strategy.
I hope the current administration creates some kind of forum where these issues and the solutions to correct them are studied, vigorously debated and vetted transparently. I have seen too many utterly incompetent and compromised leaders, politicians and bureaucrats. The question is how we make this happen. I was glad to see Rick Santelli’s recent "ranting" and the Whitehouse responding to it. Maybe, more influential people should be ranting to force this debate with policy makers.
[quote=presentmoment]go through this process of financial system collapse in an "orderly" fashion [/quote]
We have an orderly process, if only the national government would let it work. The orderly process is what always happened in the past. Bankrupt banks go into bankruptcy, a very orderly process called restructuring which takes assets from insolvent, worthless companies and sells them to companies that did a better job and are solvent, still serving customers. That immediately shifts productive assets from incompetent people to competent people who can keep running the operation and serving customers. Many of those competent banks are more local, smaller banks, so this would also facilitate a massive shift in power from top-down national institutions that treat people as a spreadsheet data point to more local banks where relationships are the key currency.
That shift would be painful…very much so. But the pain is inevitable. The worse thing to do is for the national government to step in and prevent that orderly process from happening by propping up these dead, top-down, Wall St institutions which prevent the power/financial shift to state/local level from happening.
On the issue of Obama and conspiracies. The power elite has always existed throughout human civilization. There’s never been a time when they didn’t seek and gain power. They have successfully trained the masses to writeoff as a crazy "conspiracist" anybody who points out what they do. That’s too bad…ensures the healthy revolution in ideas that we need will never happen. But even if Obama isn’t in that game, though his appointment of the entire Clinton apparatus sure looks like he’s in that game, then he’s just a clueless believer in caretaking national government, i.e. 1 person in DC can better take care of the lives of 350,000,000 than letting power shift back toward those 350,000,000 so they can take care of themselves and each other. I’d almost rather have a power elite "conspiracist" than a utopian oaf.
Strabes,
I am in awe of your writing. You are so clear in your thinking and you make so much sense. Just wanted to let you know I am a fan.
For what it’s worth…
I totally understand and respect your desire to keep this non-political, but the undeniable truth is that our government is currently controlled by those who freely call themselves "Progressives", which is the same political party that gave us the federal reserve and the New Deal. Yes, both parties have contributed along the way and at this point there is very little difference.
So, like it or not, this is political. It is those who want limited government represented by a Constitutional Republic as our Founding Fathers gave us, or those who want big government, including President Bush and our current Progressive/Socialist President Obama.
Progressives will never allow our financial system to reset. It is essential that the debt continue or their system fails. So, as long as President Obama and the Progressives who control congress are in charge, there is no hope for a non-governmental solution.
I admit that the other major side (the Republicans) at this point have abandoned Constitutional, small government as well.
So, the bottom line is that I believe we are all in for a rough ride.