Today's Stories

September 27 / 28, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
September 27 / 28, 2008

How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Their Assets; Our Debts

By MARY LYNN CRAMER

Sometime ago, Bank of America took over my AAA credit card company.   Now my bank statement lists the amount I owe on my credit card as an “asset” of mine.  The more debt I owe, the higher the value of my overall “wealth” according to this way of accounting.  Likewise, today we hear about the federal government buying up “assets” of the failing banks and other financial institutions.  These “assets” are, of course, also debts, and very bad debts that can’t be repaid.  One small but significant difference between the quality of the assets listed on my bank statement and those of the failing financial institutions is that I know the market value of each item I paid for with my credit card. Financial institutions that sold, and resold their “assets” to other foreign and domestic banks, have no idea what they are worth, and many experts say most of this financial debt is worthless, not collectable.

So what are the consequences of taxpayers bailing out these troubled financial institutions by buying their worthless assets?  The result is the same as it has always been historically during times of economic crises.  Economic wealth is “redistributed” from the pockets of wage earners, into the pockets of private corporations.  During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes met with President Roosevelt to advise him on the best way to carry out a program of redistribution of income and resources away from  “consumers” and toward expansion of profitable industrial production.  FDR reportedly said that Keynes seemed like a nice young man, but he had no idea what he was talking about. 

Keynes’ message about the least painful way to bring about the necessary redistribution of economic resources sufficient to get the economy expanding profitably is set out in his “General Theory,” where he underscores that inflation is the safest way to lower wage workers’ consumption and their portion of production.  Direct wage cuts, he cautions, would turn the workers against their employers. Significant injection of government spending into industrial production, rather than into the production of “consumer goods,” results in inflation.  The price of daily necessities goes up due to shortages or rationing, and the real value of workers’ wages goes down. (Milton Friedman has also advocated inflation as a most efficient tool for redistribution of economic resources and increasing profitability.)

It is difficult to believe that FDR did not understand Keynes’ perspective.  However, the President clearly understood the politics of the enormous investment in real economic expansion that would be required to increase the profitability of US industrial corporations sufficiently to get us out of the depression. The WPA benefited relatively few individuals; and the government refinancing of foreclosures also helped a tiny fraction of those who lost their homes.  It took entry into World War II for the president to acquire the expanded authority necessary to take over US economic production and bring about a “redistribution” of economic resources adequate to retool industry and expand production for military purposes.

Many economists and policy advisors  over the past 25 years have taken note of declining rates of profit in the largest US manufacturing industries (particularly prior to the invasion of Iraq), and the declining value of real wages for the average working person since the early 1970s.  Some have said that it would take another Pearl Harbor to resolve the ongoing US economic and political problems.  Others noted that “911” resulted in an enormous increase in presidential powers, and that both private military contractors and the oil industry profited tremendously from the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, cuts in wages, lay-offs, unemployment, increases in hours and worker productivity without increases in pay or jobs, have continued to insure that working peoples’ real incomes decline. When will this process of economic “redistribution” be sufficient to get the US economy going again, creating jobs, and increasing real wages?  Will taxing our wages to pay for the trillion-dollar bad debt of failing financial institutions do it?  Will war with Iran increase government spending and redistribution of economic resources sufficiently to get the US economy working for all of us again?  Or is this what many are calling the end of the American dream and our relatively high standard of living?  It appears that retooling our industries, and acquiring the economic resources of US occupied countries will require even greater sacrifice on the part of the US wage-working consumers and taxpayers.

Economists used to be more forthright about acknowledging that war was just economic competition by military means.  In the usual “booms and busts” of  “business cycles,” so-called “less efficient” companies went bankrupt and were bought up at bargain prices by larger corporations. Unemployed workers were also willing to work for much lower wages.  This cheap source of industrial plant, equipment, and labor has historically lowered production costs of the bigger, surviving corporations.  In this way, economic production and profitability has repeatedly increased at even greater rates than before the recession/depression.  When this usual method of economic competition is not sufficient to turn around a deep economic crisis, taking the resources of another country by military force, while reducing its population to beggars willing to work for starvation wages, is another way to reallocate or “redistribute” economic wealth and resources.

Are there any limits on the U.S. Empire and economy to carry off the necessary redistribution this time around? Recently, a commentator on the BBC referred to the solutions being proposed by the US government and the financial institutions as “progressive corporatism.”  He said (down-playing the idea) that some people have called this “fascism”, subsequently concludingthat this combination of “semi-public, semi-private” ownership and management of the economy is neither socialism nor fascism. 

Regardless of what we call it, the important question is how long will working people, consumers and taxpayers stand for paying the costs of larger, deeper, more wide-spread economic busts that lower our standard of living, destroy social programs, and bankrupt our pubic institutions and infrastructure.  Bursting financial bubbles are just the sexy foam that distracts us from confronting the crisis in the underlying material economic reality.  Our economic system, as well as the financial and political institutions that prop it up, has been in trouble and changing radically since the 1970’s.  We need to decide for ourselves which road we want to take in creating a system of production and distribution that truly provides for us all.

Mary Lynn Cramer has dedicated the past twenty-five years to very-low paying "applied economics," working as a bilingual social worker with families and children. She has degrees in economic history, economic theory and social work. 

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