The Market Munched Bobo and Buds
As I posted recently, there is a convenient right wing revision of history making the talkshow rounds. FDR really was not responsible for recovery from the Great Depression, according to the wingers. George Will has cruised all his venues parroting the theme of failure. According to Will and Brooks, FDR's New Deal made it worse. The fact that jobs got unemployed workers out of the cities and made great strides in putting in infrastructure rings like a death knell to the perpetrators of horribly wrong, failed, trickle down economics.
Last night listening to David Brooks comment that the nation was hurt not when the stock market crash, then depression, but when 'the New Deal hit' is hardly surprising. He clings passionately to the story that tax cuts will eventually make us prosperous. Of course, tax cuts were made in 2001 that had been promised by the worst administration ever because there was a surplus. When the cuts were made, there was a deficit. No matter. The excuses are just decoration, dragged out to justify wrongheaded and increasingly insane policies.
When Brooks later went on to protest that giving the public stimulus checks of some hundreds, maybe even a thousand, dollars would only mean they would put it away and save it, not spend it, further goes against any pretense to reality-based thought. The figures that had just been reported are of a country where one in ten mortgage holders are either behind or are in foreclosure proceedings. Of course, the self-proclaimed conservative thinkers are totally in favor of throwing taxpayer money into banks that actually have socked it away instead of putting it into circulation. Therefore, the $700 Billion so far dedicated to pulling the economy out of its plunge has done no good so far. I suppose the likes of Brooks want to pretend that the consumer is still just holding onto his fat wallet like the financial community. That simply isn't true, but it has become the viewpoint the wingers insist on when they report.
According to the Wall Street vision, we have the money out here in the real economy and are depriving the rest of them by keeping it in our pockets. Starting with false premises like that, of course the Maria Bartiromo's and Brookses are free to fantasize that all we need is consumer confidence, and all will be peachy again. Their job, if that were true, seems in their minds to be to lie like a rug to get us back spending again, and, of course, in more debt to keep the financial community operative.
The inability to accept that the boom was a myth stems from the long euphoria of the boom. Right wing financiers enjoyed blissfully that the price of houses went up and up and then up some more, debt was piled on top of debt, and the investment community bought those tottering debts. The ponzi nature of the boom time was obvious to Krugman, to Roubini, and to many of us on the left. That made it all the more necessary for the 'conservatives' to believe in their own creation, a paradise of endless commentator roles for the prophets of the boom. The bust that has resulted hasn't convinced the deeply deluded that we were right and they were wrong. It has just made them mad. Instead of being able to learn the lessons of the economic disaster they had created, they are trying to strike at the very means to combat that disaster with tried and true methods. Ending joblessness just offends the sensibilities of free market promoters. Their vision of the world that they so recently owned, full of greed and abuse, was perfect in their eyes. This dreary one where workers get paid a living wage and start buying just doesn't work for the dethroned advocates of Eat The Poor.
Empowerment that the long boom provided to the scions of The Market, giving it all their respect and devotion, is impossible for the advocates of market ideology to part with. We will keep hearing about the New Deal failures, because Jobs Program and Civilian Conservation Corps successes are desperately needed to return buying power to the working people. That isn't making the market ideologues happy at all, and they will not take it lying down - though lying will certainly continue to be a big part of their creed.
It's past time for any show that pretends to present the news to stop shuffling out the deluded; Brooks and Wills have shown that they are not able to see, and not going to tell, the obvious. Trickle down economics was not what they want to insist it was, delightfully successful. They can't bring themselves to say they were wrong all that time. It's time for those who were right, and have been resoundingly proved right, to replaced those delusional remnants that get dragged out over and over. Reality has intruded with a really big bang.
The market has worked, but in a way that free marketeers said didn't happen. It smacked them down.
They've seen the ending. Deregulation fails and living wages succeeds. The free market ideologists all get munched. They hate that.
Last night listening to David Brooks comment that the nation was hurt not when the stock market crash, then depression, but when 'the New Deal hit' is hardly surprising. He clings passionately to the story that tax cuts will eventually make us prosperous. Of course, tax cuts were made in 2001 that had been promised by the worst administration ever because there was a surplus. When the cuts were made, there was a deficit. No matter. The excuses are just decoration, dragged out to justify wrongheaded and increasingly insane policies.
When Brooks later went on to protest that giving the public stimulus checks of some hundreds, maybe even a thousand, dollars would only mean they would put it away and save it, not spend it, further goes against any pretense to reality-based thought. The figures that had just been reported are of a country where one in ten mortgage holders are either behind or are in foreclosure proceedings. Of course, the self-proclaimed conservative thinkers are totally in favor of throwing taxpayer money into banks that actually have socked it away instead of putting it into circulation. Therefore, the $700 Billion so far dedicated to pulling the economy out of its plunge has done no good so far. I suppose the likes of Brooks want to pretend that the consumer is still just holding onto his fat wallet like the financial community. That simply isn't true, but it has become the viewpoint the wingers insist on when they report.
According to the Wall Street vision, we have the money out here in the real economy and are depriving the rest of them by keeping it in our pockets. Starting with false premises like that, of course the Maria Bartiromo's and Brookses are free to fantasize that all we need is consumer confidence, and all will be peachy again. Their job, if that were true, seems in their minds to be to lie like a rug to get us back spending again, and, of course, in more debt to keep the financial community operative.
The inability to accept that the boom was a myth stems from the long euphoria of the boom. Right wing financiers enjoyed blissfully that the price of houses went up and up and then up some more, debt was piled on top of debt, and the investment community bought those tottering debts. The ponzi nature of the boom time was obvious to Krugman, to Roubini, and to many of us on the left. That made it all the more necessary for the 'conservatives' to believe in their own creation, a paradise of endless commentator roles for the prophets of the boom. The bust that has resulted hasn't convinced the deeply deluded that we were right and they were wrong. It has just made them mad. Instead of being able to learn the lessons of the economic disaster they had created, they are trying to strike at the very means to combat that disaster with tried and true methods. Ending joblessness just offends the sensibilities of free market promoters. Their vision of the world that they so recently owned, full of greed and abuse, was perfect in their eyes. This dreary one where workers get paid a living wage and start buying just doesn't work for the dethroned advocates of Eat The Poor.
Empowerment that the long boom provided to the scions of The Market, giving it all their respect and devotion, is impossible for the advocates of market ideology to part with. We will keep hearing about the New Deal failures, because Jobs Program and Civilian Conservation Corps successes are desperately needed to return buying power to the working people. That isn't making the market ideologues happy at all, and they will not take it lying down - though lying will certainly continue to be a big part of their creed.
It's past time for any show that pretends to present the news to stop shuffling out the deluded; Brooks and Wills have shown that they are not able to see, and not going to tell, the obvious. Trickle down economics was not what they want to insist it was, delightfully successful. They can't bring themselves to say they were wrong all that time. It's time for those who were right, and have been resoundingly proved right, to replaced those delusional remnants that get dragged out over and over. Reality has intruded with a really big bang.
The market has worked, but in a way that free marketeers said didn't happen. It smacked them down.
They've seen the ending. Deregulation fails and living wages succeeds. The free market ideologists all get munched. They hate that.
Labels: Class Warfare, Credit Crunch, Liberals, Republican Lying, the Press
posted by Ruth at 10:45 AM
2 Comments:
wow...really,wow...nail-meet hammer-thank you for putting MY feelings into your words
My pleasure, I just wish that there weren't so many abominations to post about. 44 more days, now.
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