So far all the solutions the big economics brains are coming up with are really just stop gap measures that won’t actually fix the problems, but will extend them.

What we need is more old school, more populist, more Rooseveltian. We need to be able to trust in our futures. We need to be able to pay our bills, feed, house and cloth our families. We need the security of knowing that one unlucky healthcare crisis won’t lead to certain ruin.

We have to do the hard slog work of rebuilding our economy from the bottom up. And by the bottom I mean the most desperate of us first. Previous economic buoys have come from loosening credit, rather than giving people actual economic gains. We need to create more jobs and we need those jobs to actually cover the cost of living. We need to decrease the wealth gap. We need to keep people in their homes.

And so far not a single proposal from either party or either presidential candidate does those things. All they do is stave off the bottom for a little while.

This is going to be hard work. But the benefits of doing things the hard slog way are increased security for all of us, not just the temporary exhale of the baited-breath banksters.

Troops will be brought home from the wars abroad to “assist” with domestic crisis.

Read here and here

I’m just waiting to be labeled an insurgent.

How about you?

I was a very odd little girl. When I was a wee thing, I wanted to grow up to be a famous painter/ queen/ revolutionary. I could totally see myself running around a jungle in camos with a bandoleer of bullets, a portable easel, and a big sparkly crown.

As I grew up, some of those dreams shifted a bit. I’m an artist though I am far from famous. I have declared myself Queen of my own damn universe and you all know what i choose as my blogging id. But I thought that all my chances of being a revolutionary had died out with the end of the cold war and liberalization of Latin American governments (there is a reason I choose to learn Spanish instead of pretty, girly French in 7th grade- I thought I’d go start revolutions there, not here).

But I may not need my passport and malaria meds to get my inner rebel on after all.

It looks like we may just be in the middle of a coup after all.

(Giant disclaimer- I do not read HuffPo. Just like I do not read the orange Cheetoh. I am not a masochist so reading the often sexist dribble at either of those places is not my cuppa. This comes via Corrente. )

Larissa at HuffPo writes:

As I see it now, we have but two options and I have long alluded to hoping against hope that one of these options would not be the only one left to a peaceful people. The first and frankly most preferable option is for Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against the members of this latest Business Plot.

No time needs to be wasted on hearings as we already now have in writing, formally as presented to Congress, the intentions of this administration to nullify Congressional powers permanently, to alter Judicial powers permanently, and to openly steal public funds using as blackmail the total collapse of the US economy if these powers are not handed over. You do see how this is blackmail, do you not? You do see how this is a manufactured crisis precisely designed to be used as blackmail, do you not?

Yep, it sounds straight up like a coup to me. We are being blackmailed in to handing over $700 billion (some people are putting the real bailout cost at closer to 1.8 trillion) and our democratic system in order to ameliorate a massive and totally foreseeable disaster caused by those with money and ignored by those with the power to check it.

This is the moment. Right now we are about to learn if when the shit hits the fan, our government works for us or against us. And if it is against us we will have no other choice than to scrap it. Yes, scrap the entire thing. Learn from our mistakes, and move on.

And on that note, a few choice quotes from my favorite revolutionary. Damn, more than 200 years old and they are still dead on relevant.

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

— Thomas Jefferson
1812

But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, September 6, 1789

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Sunday that if he’s elected, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would be “involved” in the new administration’s transition – a very unusual move when the White House changes parties.
Paulson, 62, is the wealthy former chairman and chief executive of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and is widely respected on Wall Street.
Obama’s announcement can be expected to reassure the business community, which initially had been worried about Obama’s plans to raise the tax on capital gains. But he has now said he would raise it much less than some had feared.
Obama has also indicated he might retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates as part of an effort to send a bipartisan signal at the start of his presidency.

Seriously, every fucking time I might be a tiny bit swayed towards Obama, he comes out and says something so stupid I can’t believe that my resolve wavered for even a second.

Next thing you know, Paulson’s gonna ride up to the Treasury on a rainbow shitting unity pony and ask Obama to hand him his crown made out of the paper of mortgage backed securities.

OHHHHHHH AND the fuckers upstairs are playing more god damned Whitney Houston. I do not wanna dance with somebody who loves me.

(HT to the Republic of Dogs)

The frat boys upstairs have been blasting the crappiest music ever and singing along loud enough that I am half convinced that I am actually in the basement of a karaoke bar.

Let’s see- currently being sang off key and badly timed is American Pie. Before that was Whitney Houson, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, and let’s not forget the long of hour of Leonard Skynard serenades.

Please someone, anyone, shoot my ear drums out.

Below is a copy of a letter I just sent to my senators (and for good measure, Sens Clinton and Obama too) about the atrocious bailout program the treasury is trying to shock doctrine into place. I suggest that you all get on your emails and send your own request that our government think of Households First in any bailout plan. (Thanks again to BlueLyon for the phrase that pays).

Dear Senator:

In the current financial crisis, I beg you to think of households first.

Being at the bottom of the the barrel, with an income of less than half the poverty line and also being a single, now homeless, mother, has made my child and me the first victims of the economic downturn. We have always struggled, but the last year or so has been particularly bad. Where we used to spend one week of the month eating ramen noodles for dinner, we now spend two. We used to have a home. A place we lived for 5 years, one month and 26 days. Now we are couch surfing with whatever friends can take us in. I have been employed by the same place for 5 years, without a single raise, without healthcare, and without pension or retirement benefits. And I work for a community college. We used to be middle class, but life in the Bush economy has never been kind to us.

And then I see that the government is about to spend 700 billion to bail out the banksters. 700 billion (not counting the money already spent to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) and I am gobsmacked. As a country we can’t come up with the money to make sure that people are housed and fed and treated when they are sick, but we can come up with the money to make sure that the financial tricksters don’t have to pay for the risk they willingly took on. I may not be an economist, but I do know one of the basic tenets of capitalism is that those who can and do take the risks get the gain, but must suffer the consequences also. With these bailouts we have removed the downside of risk for them. We, the American people, have taken on the risk with none of the gain. And we are supposed to hand this bailout over to the profiteers with as little oversight and reform as possible. We might as well declare the Treasury Department to be an unquestionable god like entity with the powers they want enacted.

Now I may be atrocious when it comes to providing for my family financially, but I do know one thing. When my child comes home with atrocious grades, I don’t bail him out by doing his homework for him. I don’t punish him for misbehaving by buying him an ice cream cone. I know that would just reinforce the idea that bad behavior gets rewarded. The government cannot reward the bad behavior of the financial sector with a blank check and a pat on the back. And no one has explained to me how these bailouts are going to help the millions of homeowners who are facing foreclosure. To the contrary, I have heard the foreclosures are about to go up as ARMs are the next style of mortgage to go on the chopping block.

As a representative of the people of this country, I beg you to think Households First when it comes to the economy. It is real people who are losing their homes. Real people who can’t make the same dollar they had yesterday stretch as far today. And it is those same people who are going to carry the tax debt for any bailout. It makes sense that they should be the first beneficiaries of assistance. The truth is that it doesn’t matter if John McCain can’t remember if he has 7 or 8 houses when so many people are about to lose their only home.

The government’s first and most important job is to provide security for the people. For the Republicans, this has always been interpreted to mean strictly military security. But the current economy is inflicting a kind of violence on the populace that only strong governmental measures can stop. It is your job to protect us. The current plan from the treasury department will only strengthen the case for continued economic violence against the American people. It might be a better idea to just take the 700 billion and directly pay off as many sub-prime mortgages as possible. At least then we’d know the money was going to the people who need it. What difference does it make that they are paying income taxes instead of mortgages? Households first, then banks and brokers and insurance companies. This country is made up of households and the people that create them. And we are suffering. Please do you job and stop this continued assault on the American people. Don’t pass the bailout bill without remembering who is paying for it, and how little we will benefit from it.

Sincerely,
RQ

Households First! Then banks.

HT to Bluelyon via Lambert.

This country is not made up of banks and corporations. It is made up of households. It is made up of families. Not all families are bankers and finance people and insurance industry mucky mucks, but all bankers and finance people and insurance industry mucky mucks are parts of households.

Fix households first, and you fix the whole of the problem. Subprime loans are toxic because the mortgage payments were more than the families could afford. Make the mortgages affordable and suddenly those loans aren’t so toxic. Next up on the foreclosure block are the Adjustable Rate Mortgages, whose interest rates are about to skyrocket. Freeze those rates for a bit and people keep their homes. Which means they keep paying their mortgage on time, which means that the loans don’t become the financial equivalent of toxic waste.

All of this falls into my gallon of milk analogy of economics, or why having more people who can afford some stuff is better for the economy than having a few people who can afford a ton of stuff. No matter how rich someone is, they are never going to buy more milk than they need. They may buy slightly more than the average person, perhaps two gallons a week instead of one. But that rich person is never going to be able to buy as much milk as 15 middle class families, or even 4 poor ones.

Now rich people who own a lot of property, like say John McCain and his 8 houses, will never be able to match the shear numbers of property owners in the middle class. They just can’t. And keeping families in their houses benefits not just the family, but the neighborhood the family lives in (no foreclosure blight) and the city the house is in (property values stabilize because the number of houses on the market isn’t increased) and banks stop panicking because mortgages keep being paid.

Now if we take the Republican view that those being foreclosed on didn’t deserve to own their own homes to begin with, or even just go with the idea that we need to save the banks first and the people second, we end up with downward spiraling property values, massive homelessness, deteriorating communities, and skyrocketing rents.

So in this brave new Great Depression, remember Households First! Everything else will follow if we keep that in mind.

You get to be relegated to 3rd world nation status.

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.

Go read the whole thing. It’s so fucking funny I could cry.

The Canadian channel is showing the Grapes of Wrath.

Could it be that the Canadians are willing to admit something that our Dear Leaders are not?

Can you say Great Depression II, eh?

Many months ago the boys in the house upstairs from Ruth’s knocked out the gas line. So there is no heat and no stove (there is hot water though).

It’s a fight between the boys and the owner over who is going to pay the 4000K to get it fixed, and Ruth is just kinda stuck until their game of utility chicken plays out.

In the mean time, it’s cold and rainy and fall is here. And all I want is soup. Tortilla soup. And it has taken over an hour to get a pot of broth on a hot plate to boil.

Oh and BTW- the rethuglikans are doing the same thing to the banking industry that they did to civil liberties with the Patriot act. We are all scared and worried about being able to feed our families, so they are pushing through emergency measures that are supposed to make us feel better, but really just fuck us up the ass without lube.

Now you know.