Friday, September 26, 2008

Disintegration of the Illusion

I've been meaning to write something about this long-coming economic crisis we find ourselves in, but things have moved too quickly for your slow-writing, time-crunched blogger. But I like what k-punk says here:

"What we're seeing is not the collapse of capitalism, but the disintegration of the illusion that capitalism is about the untrammeled free market."

Yeah.

And, regarding the $700 billion figure, this quote was priceless:
"It’s not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."
See also, among many other worthy items, the following: Michael Hudson at CounterPunch (on the insanity of the giveaway plan), Richard Estes at American Leftist, Naomi Klein at The Nation (article is from July, about "Obama's Chicago Boys"; link via Matt Christie), Cassiodorus' Daily Kos diary suggesting "Maybe we can call it 'late late capitalism' now?". . . . so many others, too numerous to collate or summarize, etc. . .

Meanwhile, Lenin reminds us not to forget about recent American strikes in Pakistan, expanding the illegal, immoral, ineffective, total bullshit war of terror.

3 comments:

Matt Christie said...

Naomi Klein on DemocracyNow the other day was saying not to believe the false eulogies...free market fundamentalism/speculative capital will come roaring back...there will be a period of ritual illusion busting, while we rationalize this corporate hand-out but then the time bomb of this new deficit will hit the next incumbent and the state-of-emergency stage will be set for the next, even worse shock treatment (McCain would almost certainly privatize SS, Obama will be forced to scuttle his dreams of progressive reform, and likely adopt compromise half-measures, Clinton/Rubin austerity, etc.)

But basically, speculators are already looking down the road and see this in the longer run as massive opportunity.

Matt Christie said...

The Naomi Klein transcript is now available. She does a good job explaining why some Republicans are "against" the bailout, as well.

Anonymous said...

I keep saying the only edge the powerful have is knowing how little power they have.