Uppity Wisconsin

Rightwing pundits [who ought to have their credibility licences revoked] have been wrong about every major policy area in the last eight years.

Now they're telling Obama to go slow and be mindful that the last election demonstrates that we are a center-right nation demanding only slight changes in the direction of foreign and domestic policy, and indeed rightwing prescriptions for the crises that ail us.

You want to help Americans make a living : Listen to the economists in the Wall Street Journal.

You want to help Americans get health care: Let people choose to pay for it or not get it. [Wisconsin's Paul Ryan is big on that.]

Obama might be listening, but thankfully he's not heeding their advice.

And Obama continues his outreach directly to Americans. Good for him, good for us.

From Change.gov:

Warnings that President-elect Obama err on the side of doing too much as Americans watch their retirement savings dissipate are words from the wise.

Make that err on the side of extreme intervention and innovation.

From Nouriel Roubini's The Dismal Outlook for the US and Global Economy and the Financial Markets:

- The U.S. will experience its most severe recession since WWII, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-75 and 1980-82 recessions

- Obama will inherit and economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades

How was this supposed to work again? We give Wall Street investment banks billions in taxpayer money, and it was supposed to help how?

Now financial "experts" are saying, " ... the government is papering over the problem with a quick fix that was not well planned."

No, you don't say? Come again?

"No one else benefits," former AIG chief executive and major shareholder Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg wrote to AIG's current chief executive on Thursday. "Unless there is immediate change to the structure of the Federal loan, the American taxpayer will likely suffer a significant financial loss." 

Unfracking believable.

The promotion of failure apparently knows no bounds.

Where else can you receive welfare from the working class, more than $1 trillion worth, give a big assist in bankrupting the global economy, and still get bonuses to the tune of $70 billion in the same year?

Well, it sure didn't take long for the corruption to begin in the process of bailing out Wall Street.

Wackovia bank is using FDIC taxpayer money to loan the National Republican Congressional Committee $8 million to help out in the last lap of the election. And nevermind that Wackovia has cut lending to everyone else, more than 1,000 colleges, in fact.

I would bet this isn't the last we'll hear about kickbacks and corruption regarding this ill-conceived bailout for the wealthy.

Hap tip to Facing South.

Who can argue that the Bailout Plan, incomplete though it is, is not needed to halt the fear breeding on fear? From Reuters:

By Doris Frankel CHICAGO, Oct 6 (Reuters) - An index regarded as Wall Street's fear gauge surged to a record high on Monday in a sign investors expect more stock market turmoil as they scramble for options to insure their stock portfolios.

CBOE VOLATILITY INDEX (^VIX) or Fear Index over Five Years

Update II: 'Fear' Index at All-time Intraday High; see http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5Evix

Paul Craig Roberts ought to be required reading for all policy makers during this apparently long period of multiple crises. Holding the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations accountable for the financial crises currently (as in right this second) shaking the world, Paul Craig Roberts points to three extraordinary culprits:

- The repeal of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act [known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999] repealing the separation of commercial from investment banking, that was signed into law during the Democratic Clinton Administration in 1999

- The exclusion of derivatives and credit default swaps from regulation in 2000

- And most importantly:

Before the bailout crisis dominated the political and financial news, a high-circulation political newsletter, CounterPunch, continued its breaking analyses and exclusives on its free website, sounding alarms to which we all should have listened.

Prominent among CounterPunch writers is Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and former contributing editor of National Review.

Roberts has been warning for years that America is hollowing out its labor force, and is in clear and present danger of a market crash with clearly dangerous ramifications vectoring like a killer virus.

Writes Roberts:

WTF is going on? Seriously!

The Wall Street bailout legislation passed by the Senate has $1.7 billion in tax breaks for shit like this:

• Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.
• Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum producers - $192 million.
• Wool research.
• Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.
• Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.
• Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

NASCAR is being subsidized in this taxpayer bailout of Wall Street? Do the people who represent us know what's going on in this country? Do they know healthcare and education systems are broken? Do they know bridges are collapsing? Do they know unemployment is at its highest levels in years?

WTF alternate universe are these people living in? Does anyone know?

"You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It's that simple. ... They're pretty fearful. In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now."
- Warren Buffett, October 1, 2008 on the Charlie Rose Show

Why the Charlie Rose show featuring an exclusive conversation with Warren Edward Buffett, regarded as the world's greatest investor and chair of Berkshire Hathaway, is not endlessly broadcast this week is a mystery of the American political culture.

Even as House Republicans scream (at the apparent urging of Newt Gingrich) that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act 2008 is a slippery slope to socialism, Buffett's reasoned defense of the Bush-Paulson-US Senate-Everyone-except-the-GOP-House Members Act assures that not only may the bailout bill produce a net profit (if conceived of in those terms) for American taxpayers, but the fear and loathing epitomized by the House Republicans (though not singled out by Buffett in the interview) is ludicrously removed from reality.