Can this country survive...?

[Bigmack]

I just finished reading Matt Taibbi's piece about the State Attorneys General plans to settle with the banksters for pennies on the dollar.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/attorneys-general-settlement-the-next-big-bank-bailout-20111005

These days, I generally feel lower than a snake's navel about what's happening in the corporatocracy I live in, so the idea that the bastards will wiggle out of any meaningful penalty for their greed and stupidity simply adds to that feeling.

The question I keep asking myself is: Can this country survive...?

We're so heavily invested in Empire... an Empire we can't afford... that we apparently can't back out.

Our economy, which used to be based on broad prosperity and consumer spending, is now based on a two-tiered income situation that precludes much in the way of mass consumer spending.

Our jobs, which used to be manufacturing, are now lower-paying service jobs. We sell lattes to each other.

The financial corporations that used to drive our economy have made such poor business decisions that they endanger the economy of the developed world.

Our politics has become so bizarre that creatures like Bachmann, Palin, and Perry are somehow mainstream.

Our representative bodies represent the worst abusers of power and money.

I'm believe that we don't even have enough money or credit to spend our way out of this.

I've been around for a while... I lived thru Vietnam and Nixon, fer crissakes... so I've seen this country in some tough times, but nothing like this.

How do we get out of this situation?

[lunatica]

1. Countries survive but empires never do

And many countries who were previous empires aren't doing too badly now. This time though, the entire world is on the brink of something that will change things for everybody. And it's beginning to get painful.

Let's hope we can steer some of the changes to benefit humanity.

[Cool Logic]

2. "How do we get out of this situation?"

Demand that our Representatives uphold their oaths of office, or replace them with those who will.

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

[Andy823]

3. Yes I agree

And make damn sure the republicans don't regain the WH and control of both houses of congress, or there will be not hope. All they want to do is take us back to the Bush agenda of "deregulation", and privatizing everything so the rich can get richer, and the rest of us suffer.

[Cool Logic]

4. Why do you think 1% of the population controls 38% of the wealth?

Answer: Because our legislators let them have it...and by default, they too, become part of the 1%.

In every case that has been used by the statists as an indictment of the free-market and as an argument for a government-controlled economy, it was determined that the transgressions were made possible by government intervention in business.

The evils, popularly ascribed to "big corporations" are not the result of an unregulated markets, but of government power over markets. The villain is not the businessman; rather, it is the legislator.

Crony capitalism is not free-market Capitalism. And while private free-markets are not immune from immoral and/or unethical business practices, their market relations are voluntary--people are not forced to deal with one another. On the other hand, in a government-controlled market, coercion and force are standard operating procedures, e.g., the government forces us to buy ethanol.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/01/ethanol-lobby-finds-friends-foes.html

[The Doctor.]

14. There is 'too much government power over markets'? Really?

"The evils, popularly ascribed to "big corporations" are not the result of an unregulated markets, but of government power over markets."

So corporations are blatantly breaking the rules, not because they aren't being properly regulated, but because the government has too much power over the market?

Your tone is austere and practical, your words are nonsense.

The closest you can come to supporting such an assertion is at your link? That's it? Excerpt;

Senators Supporting Ethanol Subsidies Reap Riches From Corn Interests

<...>

These senators each collected, on average, $5,000 from bioengineering and agricultural chemical company Monsanto, $4,100 from farming giant Archer Daniels Midland, $1,600 from the National Corn Growers Association, $1,200 from ethanol producer POET LLC and $200 a piece from Growth Energy and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

Finally! They can all buy a private floating island and retire from their lives of graft and corruption!


One the one hand, you are correct in suggesting that the market is influenced by legislation, but that you can in the same stroke suggest that it is not the lack of regulation (which has legislative roots) which is responsible for bad corporate behavior just isn't... logical, is it?

[Cool Logic]

16. Hey Doc, how are ya...? You said... "So corporations are blatantly breaking the rules,..."

The problem is that powerful and well-connected corporations don't have break the rules. For the rules were most likely written in K=Street offices, by former legislators, who represent the aforementioned powerful corporations.

Meanwhile, businesses without "connections," the ones who are not "blatantly breaking the rules," can only watch as their well-connected competitors gain an unfair advantage and in some cases, put them out of business. When the government becomes one's corporate partner, it can bring to bear all kinds of special dispensations, tax breaks, mandates, and subsidies to which other companies have no access, something we have certainly seen at GM and GE.

In the case of Solyndra, not only did they get public financing, but their customers got enormous tax breaks and subsidies from Federal, state, and local governments to buy their products. However, manufacturers of solar panels that do not have friends in high places (e.g., Solaria, Recurrent Energy), have to work harder to compete with companies that the regulators favor.

A free-market economy, is not controlled by the rich or by the poor; rather, it is controlled by the simple law of supply and demand. That means the regulations are the same for everyone. However, when the market is tightly-regulated by the powerful, it is not the best companies that win; rather, it is the companies with the best lobbyists.

Not only is it logical, it is a fact of reality.

Edited to address your comment on ethanol subsides: It is not logical to market a product that consumes more energy during the manufacturing process than it generates when it is used as fuel. Ethanol also generates more CO2 on the front end than it reduces when used a supplement to gasoline. Thus, ethanol would not exist in a true free-market economy.

However, it can and does exist in your over-regulated economy and consumers do not have a choice, they are forced to buy it.

As I previously mentioned, private free-markets can be affected by unethical business practices, but since free-market relations are voluntary, people are free to choose to opt out. But in a government-controlled market, one in which the regulators pick the winners and losers, people are forced to support the regulators "chosen ones."

[kenny blankenship]

5. Too far gone.

We are falling, but we still have a long ways to go before we hit bottom. Nothing really will change until the monopoly on power exercised by the .01% since the Reagan Revolution is broken. Nothing will break that monopoly but the destruction of the wealth of that elite through their own savage greed and stupidity. If the financial meltdown of 2008 had happened with two more years of Bushler's Presidency to go, perhaps a softer landing might have been possible to arrange. Things would get worse but the anger of the people would elevate a new FDR. Instead we got a Herbert Hoover. The crisis was in bad synchronization with our political cycle, and many Washington Democrats were no less convinced than Republicans that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Reaganomic orthodoxy ruling the country. We got a Herbert Hoover president instead of an FDR and the Hill Democrats can scarcely be told from the Republicans. The two parties came together in the bipartisan spirit of Reaganism, and Hallelujah! the rich were saved. Saved from losing their wealth with all the people they put out of work. Saved from losing credibility and allowed to keep their rank and privileges. With their power and credibility left in tact and unassailed by investigations and prosecutions, they wasted not a moment in reasserting their power and restoring the dominance of their idea that Government and laws are the enemy of a healthy economy and that only they, the financial oligarchs, can create wealth, and that the little people can have some tiny share of it, though it is more than they deserve be it ever so small.

When the rich lose their wealth, as happened in 1929-1932, the magic spell they have put the 99% under will be broken. This time around, it's barely even begun, the visibility of OWS notwithstanding. Thanks be to TARP, and the efforts of President then Senator Barack Obama in getting it passed.

Their wealth comes from the financial sector and its privilege to borrow "free" money from the Fed and make itself rich through miracle of asset inflation (bubble blowing). Since Reagan that is what being rich and getting rich has meant. Even if you were rich before the economy was converted into a bubble machine, you still must play this game along with the hyenas of Wall St. just in order to keep up. That is why they and their flunkies from President Barack Obama on down to the lowly cable network financial reporters guard the financial criminals against investigation and prosecution so zealously. Without it they are nothing. Borrowing vast sums at effectively zero interest rate - a rate that no one else, not manufacturers or even other banks can get - is the source of all the wealth and power that they have enjoyed and accumulated for the past generation. They and their flunkies would throw every last one of you into a furnace to defend this source of power and keep it for themselves. In fact they are doing so right now. The question is how long can they keep on cannibalizing parts of America and burning us for fuel before the woodpile wakes up and realizes that it is US OR THEM.

[pansypoo53219]

6. i need to recommend kevin philips-american theocracy part 1 + 3.

the 3rd section is devastating to banksters + GREENSPAN. we can lay MUCH of this crap at his + georgee's feet. part 1 is excellent as well.

[RevStPatrick]

7. Of course we can survive. We've been through worse.

This is nothing (yet) like the bloodletting that happened in the 1860's.
It could come to that, but we survived that period, and grew much stronger as a result.
The country will survive, the empire will not, and should not.

[Jim Warren]

9. Thanks

for at least a little perspective.

I wonder sometimes what the lay-down left would do in a real crisis, the US civil war era or a Russian winter in the '40s.

[jwirr]

10. We had a political/constitutional crisis then. Today we have an

economic and an environmental crisis. After the civil war we still had all the resources we needed to continue to build our nation up - westward land expansion, oil reserves, coal, plenty of clean water, forests, manufacturing bases, and investors who were willing to invest in the USA. We also had a smaller population and most of it lived in rural areas where they could provide their own food and shelter. Much of the greatness of our nation was yet to come.

Today it is not like that. We have no where to expand unless you want to go live on Mars, the world does not have easily accessible oil reserves, coal is dirty, much of our clean water is gone, our forests are fewer and many of them are diseased, our manufacturing base is in China, and the investors are more likely to invest in China than the USA. Our population mostly live in huge cities that are dependent on products from outside to survive. Not to mention that we have a changing climate that has wiped out the infrastructures of whole areas in days, destroyed crops and starts fires in places merely because it is hot.

Our problems are bigger today by far.

As to survival we will still be here but in what form I do not know: the USA we know? a series of regional governments under the umbrella of the USA? or many smaller regional countries? Who knows.

[NickB79]

12. +1000. Abe Lincoln didn't have Peak Oil and global warming to contend with. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Hopefully, we'll survive and become a member of, rather than the boss of, the community of nations.

But, we'll probably just go bankrupt morally, ethically, and economically and spill a lot of blood trying to hold on to what's not ours.

[yoyossarian]

11. No.

The time to fight against this shit was about 11 years ago.
We don't have anyone with any power on our side.
I'm not very hopeful, to be honest... I think it's all just gonna keep tearing itself apart, while assholes like these guys
offer "solutions" so ludicrous, it must be a joke.

Florida Legislator Wants to Bring Back Dwarf-Tossing
http://www.allgov.com/Unusual_News/ViewNews/Florida_Legislator_Wants_to_Bring_Back_Dwarf_Tossing_111008

Department of Justice Takes Steps to Subsidize California Gangs; Threatens to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries
http://www.mpp.org/media/press-releases/department-of-justice-takes.html

I've come to the sad conclusion that they're all in it together, Reepists AND Dems, and are doing this shit on purpose--after all, we've another 13 months to fill before the next pointless election, and the do-nothing congress and local officials have got to look like they're doing SOMETHING, SOMETIMES... even if that something is standing in the middle of a busy intersection with their pants around their ankles, waving their arms in the air (like they just don't care) and making loud duck noises, for no apparent reason.

I hope for a miracle.
But I'm not very hopeful these days.

[RagAss]

13. Our only hope is to bounce once our ass hits rock bottom.

[Initech]

15. How long did Rome last?