I’m So Stupid!

Posted on 02/16/2008 at 9:09 am by Bob Cesca

I caught the first segment of Jim Cramer last night in which Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) was the guest (via phone) to discuss this insane economic clusterfuck which the Bush Republicans and the Rand Free Market Anarchists have created for us. I learned three things during this segment of television:

1) Governor Spitzer is a very smart man.
2) Governor Spitzer spoke at great length and speed about things I’ll never understand.
3) Spitzer and Cramer ripped both the president and Ayn Rand at the end of the conversation. I enjoyed and understood this part.

I’ll never fully grasp the intricacies of this crap. But I do understand enough about the economic philosophies that caused it. Cramer and Spitzer (and Thom Hartmann and Atrios and all the rest) are doing their damndest to expose and repair the filthy, destructive contrails of the administration’s laissez faire economic policies, but I’m afraid that Ayn Rand is alive and well and running wild like a psycho-bomb through the American economy.

Rand’s free market capitalism, by its very nature, functions outside the realms of democratic accountability and so my basic worry comes down to this: can anyone contain the madness? Can anyone bottle this thing up again? And whoever tries it — whoever tries to re-impose regulations on these bond insurers, banks, lenders and corporations — what dastardly, vicious, well-financed opposing forces will they confront?

Happy weekend!

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  • Nanotyrannus

    The whole idea is to place it outside the realm of accountability. Naomi Klein makes a similar point when she says that the next President, Democrat or Republican, will find out upon taking office that there is this massive parallel economy over which they can exercise no control. She was probably referring to the disaster economy, but I think the changes that come after disasters reach into every segment of the economy.Any time any part of the government tries to exercise any kind of oversight or regulation, the industries involved show up on the scene with money and then Congress backs down, the whole effort torpedoed by a few Representatives or Senators that say “yes yes yes” to endlessly financed lobbying.It will take, literally, a revolutionary idea to get control over it. It will take a President and Congress and Judiciary fully cooperating with each other to seize control of this economy. It would not be easy. Presidents get to nominate judges that interpret the law the way they want that they then leave behind to favor their ideology for years. Industry finances campaigns of legislators that will legislate in their favor. Administrations control the actual oversight and regulation, and often ignore the law while not performing their duties.It will require statesmen like we’ve never seen before. Do we have any Jeffersons or Washingtons left among us?

  • Matthew Claypool

    To understand the current situation all you have to do is look at Argentina about ’99-’01. Thanks to Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics the country was systematically dismantled and liberated of its wealth. There was a rich class who weren’t tied to the land, and there was everyone else at the mercy of the decisions made by the rich (sound familiar). Thanks to IMF and World Bank terms on loans to the government, Argentina’s jobs were sent out of the country and once the nation was near abject poverty the rich rule makers left in an exodus too.Currently we have an administration who has never cared about anyone but the super-rich, miraculously finding itself in the position to give away all the money in the country and then some. What are the terms on the loans that we are getting? And why is Bush insisting that the automakers (who actually produce a product that can be sold–our nation does still produce a few things besides greenhouse gases)not get a sweet heart deal when the people who caused the problem, and don’t have anything to show for their “work” at the end of the day, got 1400% more money after Bush insisted they be bailed out immediately.American capitalism is a broken philosophy. Someone always has to lose for someone to win. That’s just not a sustainable way of living, and it’s a terrible way to spread peace.I don’t expect Bush to ever understand this. How could someone who’s gotten through his entire life on nepotism and affirmative action understand that there are consequences to one’s actions.Obama should do us all a favor and perform one last extraordinary rendition before shutting the unconstitutional program down.