Today's Stories

September 29, 2008

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

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

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

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

September 29, 2008

The Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Hell to Pay

By ALAN FARAGO

In May, 2005 The Miami Herald printed a guest editorial by one of Miami's Growth Machine advocates, Willy Bermello; "Build them and they will come".

"Lately," Bermello wrote, "There has been more written about the "condo bubble" than the weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq war. There is a relationship in both phenomena: If you say it often enough, you actually start believing it, and soon enough you're on your way toward a self-fulfilling prophecy." (Bermello is past president of the Latin Builders Association; the powerful lobbying organization in Florida's most populous county.)

Now we gaze at the wreckage caused by Mr. Bermello's nonsense. But why has the mainstream press been so far behind this story?

The "free market" took a dollar of home or condo mortgage and created from it 80 dollars of imaginary value (that is the ratio of leverage now disclosed by the Fannie Mae bailout); showering a blizzard of fees, commissions, and compensation to an elite group of builders and developers and greasing the wheels of a Ponzi scheme for which no one is going to jail but we will pay for.

Its critics, at the time, were denied a voice by the mainstream press. And still are. It was impolitic or impolite to ask hard questions of the underlying financial arrangements of the housing boom and apparently nothing has changed.

Back when the housing bubble was inflating, the mainstream media-- like The Miami Herald-- did not let a whiff of diverse opinion against the boom and its impacts in its editorial pages, unless it was one of Jim Morin's editorial cartoons. It is still going on.

There is plenty of company for the Miami Herald's failure to connect the dots for ordinary readers.

This is not a matter of complexity, of not wanting to bog down a newspaper's pages with arcane and esoteric finance. It is simple: the Wall Street game on derivative debt depended on all the smaller gears meshing and working together; linking the zoning decisions of the lowliest county commission majorities, for instance, to the originators of mortgages, furniture warehouses, and the whole supply chain of campaign contributions that pushed forward an anti-regulatory fever and despicable imprisonment of the public good by higher and higher walls meant to separate people from their government. (The constituency that "knew" what was going on, better than any other: those "community activists" that the Rudy Giuliani skewered for blood sport in his speech at the GOP convention.)

And it is still going on, at the Herald. Only a few weeks ago, the entrenched political and economic elite-- represented by a planned suburban development for 16,000 outside the Urban Development Boundary called Parkland-- asked for and received a meeting with Herald executives, without reporters. Ed Easton, Jeb's golfing partner, Segio Pino, Willy Bermello's LBA buddy, Armand Guerra, a real estate speculator, and Tony Seijas, Lennar's local executive; these characters represent the local development machine that ground up farmland, open space, and the public interest through platted subdivisions built mainly because they could be financed through derivatives and now exist as toxic waste in some distant investor's portfolio. And, the point should not be lost: you and I as taxpayers are now bailing them out.

Over the weekend, a St. Pete Times journalist wrote his own mea culpa: one other paid subscribers of the daily news are waiting for. Business writer Robert Trigaux acknowledges: "A watchdog media was about as effective as a three-legged chihuahua. When we warned things were too hot as home prices soared, the real estate industry complained we were killing the golden goose. When we've since documented the dramatic price declines, the real estate industry complains we are flogging an already cooked goose."

It happens all the time in Miami: a story either overtly or deemed to be negative to the real estate industry elicits howls of complaint from advertisers from the building lobby. Whenever criticism was leveled during the boom, its big guns were on the phone to the publisher-- then, Alberto Ibarguen: Armando Codina, who helped Jeb Bush to his first fortune, or Adolfo Henriques, who bought out Codina's business, or the chairman of John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Greenberg Traurig managing partner, Cesar Alvarez (and now, Ibarguen's boss.)

(This a parallel question: how could the nation's premier charitable foundations-- charged with promoting independent journalism and analyzing the economy, completely miss the origins of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and who will hold their board of directors accountable?)

Trigaux, of the St. Pete Times, concludes, "Either way, the press did a sorry job of explaining what was happening."

At The Miami Herald, the sorry job is still going on.The newspaper's editorial board is refusing to support the outstanding series by the I-Team (investigative team) on mortgage fraud in Florida. The multi-part series, that involved significant investigative resources, documents how more than 10,000 convicted felons were allowed by state regulators to originate or sell mortgages, even after some had been convicted of fraud. It lead to the resignation of the head of the state's regulatory agency for licensing. (By all means, google Miami Herald "Borrowers Betrayed".)

The point the Herald is avoiding, or, expects its readers to extrapolate for themselves is how the entire regulatory structure in the State of Florida suffered under and is still dominated by so-called conservatives who sold the public interest to the highest bidder, unlocked the cells, and let the loonies run the nut house; all to service low-cost growth, growth that now blooms as toxic waste at the heart of a world-wide credit crisis.

It is not such hard work connecting the dots between the absence of regulation and the anti-regulatory culture that prevailed during the two terms of former Governor Jeb Bush, but the newspapers did not want to do it. If they wanted to, they would have rushed to back-up the "Borrowers Betrayed" series with equal measures of thought and consideration on its editorial page.

The same way that Jeb believed the solution to pollution was dilution-- in other words, writing regulations to minimize the appearance of risk to the environment and public health-- characterizes how the toxic intent of big campaign contributors who were also developers in Florida was masked by mortgage backed securities, collateral default obligations, and credit default swaps. It was a cluster fuck by men with business school manners still wearing suits.

Why won't the Herald make the clear link for its readers: that the Republican status quo never saw a regulation hindering development that they couldn't find a way to cut and trim to the fit of predetermined outcomes? Or, how Florida was the test tube Karl Rove and Grover Norquist intended-- based on the elimination of regulations to free self-interest and to mobilize the economy for campaign contributors long before George W. Bush became president?

What is holding the Herald back from finishing the job started by the I-Team? Why do Herald executives meet with the pushers of suburban sprawl-- the executives of Parkland like Lennar and board directors of US Century Bank-- but not also meet with community activists struggling to protect the Urban Development Boundary? Maybe it is because the community activists are not rich enough. Maybe it is because they don't give to The United Way or the YMCA. Maybe it is because they don't rub shoulders at downtown events at the Performing Arts Center, or, its salons.

Really: we are in a fix because the entire constellation of interests who caused our financial panic are still in power, still working to make a solution along the old lines that created the problem in the first place.

Bermello ended his May, 2005 editorial: "The bubble is not latex but stainless steel." In light of the unfolding disaster Mr. Bermello's point of view inflamed, nothing I have to say in response is printable for polite company.

Alan Farago, who writes on the environment and politics from Coral Gables, Florida, and can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont