One can only hope

It has been a busy week in politics what with a proposed bank bailout, a presidential candidate debate and at least two overseas terrorist bombings. Economic hardships always seem to bring out the worst in people. Understandably, I suppose when the certainty of your next meal is in doubt. Why we, as a species, insist on treating our fellow humans worse than we treat the lowest feedlot animal is beyond my comprehension. (Not really, I have my convictions and if you read between my lines they become obvious) For most Americans, the economic downturn is the premier issue of their daily lives. In truth, the daily inconveniences and terrors of our domestic lives are almost all directly associated with economic concerns.

Since the Democrats abandoned the no bankruptcy provision of their proposal in response to Republican demands I am inclined to side with the House Republicans who flaunted their free market ideology by pulling out of the bailout negotiations on Thursday. Let the bastards who created the present stew cook in the juices of their own making. Why the Democrats did not counter with a repeal of the Republican backed bankruptcy reforms passed a few years back is beyond me. And, since the Bush administration wants to let foreign banks, foreign institutions that were all too wiling to profit from the speculation, participate in the bailout I am experiencing another knee jerk reaction against a national government dedicated to serving its citizens bailing out wealthy foreign nationals. The whole bailout stinks of corporate and class-based socialism.

Contrary to global, free market ideologues, government intervention in capitalist market policies is as old as capitalist empire building. In the US alone the unprecedented period of economic growth we are seeing coming to an end is the direct result of government policies that began in the Great Depression. When Wall Street capitalists screwed the pooch through excessive market speculation on very small credit margins in 1929 the US government under the presidential administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began direct infusions of government capital in massive and not so massive infrastructure projects, such as the Hoover Dam and the WPA. The onset of WWII created more economic opportunities for US industry, initially through the Lend Lease Program and eventually through the massive production of war material.
After WWII, the US began the unprecedented period of national economic growth that we are now seeing end. For the first twenty-five years after the end of the War the US supplied the goods and material needed to rebuild the infrastructure of both Europe and Asia that was nearly completely destroyed during the conflict.

In the thirty five or so years since the end of the period of reconstruction, the US has pandered to industrial and financial capitalists whose only goal has been to feed their own pockets and the purses of Wall Street coupon clippers. Ideologues conveniently forget that the US had an efficiently functioning health care system prior to the Reaganization of US politics. Consumer savings and spending were in a satisfactory balance prior to the Reagan era free market deregulation of banks. I can name a dozen other areas of economic disaster we presently deal with that began as ideas and lobbying campaigns of powermongering influence peddlers in the Nixon administration and came to actuality during and following the Reagan years.

As a nation of independent and free citizens we have stood by and allowed the rich and powerful to dismantle the largest and at one time the most efficient manufacturing complex in the world in order to funnel ever larger percentages of the world’s wealth into their own pockets. The Democratic demand that caps be placed on executive compensation and “golden Parachute” buy out programs be eliminated in those companies doing business within the bailout’s legal provisions is a step in the right direction, but so much more needs done.

Where there is a will there is always a way

The government bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG and the impending bailouts of several other greedily run banks has everyone I know talking of nothing but money. Nearly all of us oldsters, myself included, have taken a huge hit in our mutual fund retirement programs. Unless Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and a few other multibillionaires decide to donate their huge fortunes to be divided up between each of us there will be no retirement for this old man, not that I expected one anyway.

The murder rate among young men in major metropolitan areas is at an all time high. As I pointed out in an earlier post, a direct statistical correlation exists between a rising unemployment rate in 18-25 year old males and a rising crime rate. Let’s face the truth—a high school diploma will not get a person decent work so a high school dropout will get a kid NO work, ever, in an economy whose movers and shakers have seen fit to deny the legal means of economic self-sufficiency to any citizen of low to average intelligence or from a poor, working class background. In such hopeless circumstances tempers of young, physically robust males become hair trigger short and since most money making opportunities in poor neighborhoods and bad economic times are firmly grounded in illegal activities, the seeds of desperation and cynicism fall on fertile mental ground and lead to an eventual harvest of violence.

Even those young men who have the native intelligence and financial resources to secure a BA degree have little opportunity for gainful, long-term employment after graduation, especially if they come from families whose annual income is less than $60K. The largest, single NATIONAL market (the US, dummy) that drove the international economy has been raped and left beside the road to die by the multinational corporations it spawned. Until we, as members of a failing society/economy/political structure, decide to swallow the bitter medicine and work for the benefit of all our neighbors and friends that injured roadside corpus will become a roadside corpse.

In my estimation, the will to build a successful economy and political system on the ruins of the present one is strong. More than one casual observer has made the comment that all that is necessary is a visionary government and the stepping/pushing aside of the corporate megaliths who have engineered this present international disaster. Frankly, as jingoist as what I am about to say sounds, I’m all for the economic success of my foreign brethren but not at the expense of the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of family, friends and future generations of my immediate acquaintance. I believe equanimity in all areas of human endeavor is possible if all work to achieve it.