nancylebov | Outliving the US: the comments

The other day, I asked whether people expected to outlive the US, and got some very interesting replies.

The most noticeable similarity was that no one expected anything good to come of an end to the US, which probably supports the idea that the US is very stable.

tahkhleet posted a substantial core dump about politics and the state of the culture. I'm feeling rather swamped. This is unfair. Overloading people is *my* job.

Still, I'm going to pick out some bits. However, I recommend reading the whole thing.

Is Obama genuinely that awful? I'm disappointed that he isn't prosecuting those responsible for torture (and NPR did a bit about how he used the word torture before he was elected, but has dropped it since then). Is he letting *everything* important slide?

I'd have thought he's at least smart enough to take a lesson from what Katrina did to Bush's reputation.

Two "do my homework" questions:

Are his foreign policy advisors really all hawks?

How did he handle things when he was a community organizer? Did he get useful work done?
Slightly different angle about the financial elite: One of my friends believes that credentialism is part of the problem. The most likely way to get one of those very well-paid jobs is to be totally focused on the exhausting work of getting the right degrees. Aside from

tahkhleet's point that only someone who's got bad values will be willing to do the work, getting the credentials means being totally focused on incentives rather than paying attention to the larger system.

Back to my pov: Having a system which makes room for competence is a very subtle problem. If people are totally shielded from consequences, whoever is good at social climbing will get the rewards, and the quality of work goes to hell. If there is too much effort to make sure the right thing is done, people game the measurement system, and the work goes to heck.

Genocide: I've been wondering for a while whether I'll see a nation commit auto-genocide (over 75% of population killed). It just seems as though people go nuts that way occasionally, and people are much more dependent on infrastructure than they used to be. Still, I don't know that the elites are dreaming of wiping a lot of the rest of us out, though worries about overpopulation can be read that way.

For purposes of this discussion, it isn't necessary that the elites would actually benefit from genocide, just whether enough of them strongly believe they would.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tahkhleet.livejournal.com

I'm curious what you have to say to my rebuttals. I'm more than curious why you're accusing me of having "expected miracles of him". I didn't mention that at all. I didn't imply that. In fact, I had a deep sinking feeling when he and McCain won the nominations. "Oh great, whatever happens, one of those illegitimate offspring of unclean canines has to win the election now." However, I figured at worst he'd be a Ulysses Grant, a worthless patronage dispenser and genially corrupt. He has far exceeded my expectations. I'm calling him on how he keeps saying he's changing the paradigm, he's fixing the country, and he's making it worse.

From:

heron61.livejournal.com

I've read reports by a fair number of people (including a few progressive economists) that if the initial bailout hadn't been done, the US economy would likely have literally collapsed. The current economic plan isn't perfect, but it's keeping that from happening, and I'm seeing a number of important bills (such as one making labor unions far easier to form) working their way through congress, and Obama has said he will vote for most of these. In any case, I do not understand economics sufficiently well to comment on the current measures beyond a clear awareness that much of the media hype about "the government giving money to wallstreet fatcats who will use it to buy yachts" is utter nonsense.

The point of the various measures is to both keep money flowing in the US economy and to make various business investments look appealing to the people in a position to make them, because if these investments don't look appealing, then they won't be made, and the US economy stands no chance of recovery.

As for Iran, unlike most recent presidents, Obama is actually talking with Iran. Not only don't I expect war, I expect lots of tough talk to appease the many right-wing morons that infest the US, combined with actual efforts at diplomacy, which seems to be what we're seeing. Obama is clearly very cautious, which is annoying, but on many things I'm not prepared to say he's wrong.

From:

tahkhleet.livejournal.com

...You're looking at it wrong.

He did NOTHING fundamentally different from Bush. He shilled for the bail out while Bush was in office. The bail out bill that included provisions like "nothing that happens through this bill can ever be the basis of criminal charges". And then Geithner acted pretty much like Paulson. Part of why I'm castigating Obama is he sold himself as the candidate of CHANGE! and that's the best he could do?

While the pitchforks, tar and feather crowd are idiots, the level of criminal behaviour going on right now is STAGGERING. I'm not saying "oh they're rich, they're vile, let's lynch them for being successful while we're not". I'm saying they're criminals who have to be prosecuted and Obama is playing King Log while it happens.

You didn't seem to read what I said though. "Money flowing" is the cycle of credit. If the bailout bill didn't or shouldn't promote that then _what was the point of spending the money_? You say it was important to prevent banks going under. But we went way way beyond the point of keeping various banks from going insolvent. Like, here's the problem.

We have banks A, B and C. they've lost 50 cents of every dollar their depositors have, this means they can't make the withdrawal requirements for operations. By law, they should be shut down. Now, we say "no no, very important to keep them open. So we'll lend them 30 cents on the dollar to get them back into being able to stay open. And they'll keep lending, and eventually they'll earn back the money they lost and they can pay us back".

Except the banks aren't showing any signs of making the money back. So in the end, the banks will lose 50 cents on the dollar, plus however much more money they lose _after_ they burn the 30 cents on the dollar the gov't "loaned" them...and after whatever point the gov't finally throws up its hands and says "ok, you're not competent to manage your depositor's money".

Maybe you're thinking "but the dominoes effect of derivatives or the stock market impacts will hurt people too much". This isn't going bankrupt by a few cents on the dollar. This is not some technical accounting rule causing undue stress. This is catastrophic malfeasance. All the money the banks have is retained profits (almost nothing) and the depositor's funds. When a bank buys a worthless investment with a depositor's money, it has essentially allowed the seller of that investment to rob the bank's own depositors. Often, (for example, with AIG as they close up operations) there are obviously kickbacks involved as the bank and the asset seller split the profits. They push the depositor's money out of the bank and replace it with a worthless or radically overvalued asset.

This isn't some weird financial mistake. It was ROBBERY. The banks all sold these wortheless/overvalued investments to each other through subsidiaries. It was understood "I'll buy your worthless paper if you'll buy mine and we'll both take the profits home one way or the other". Between that and kickbacks, it was a giant vacuum cleaner connected to the depositor's accounts. Now the system is too low to function and they get the govt to let them continue as normal. The top 8 banks who got $160 billion for their banks REFUSED to describe how they had changed operations in response to receiving gov't money!

From:

tahkhleet.livejournal.com

Btw, these wonderful, hard working bankers? These competent financial wizards we believe have so much talent that their current troubles are just "misfortune that we need to intervene to protect them from?" They are so irresponsible they lobbied for the repeal of the Glass-Seagal (sp?) act. This was the act passed after the Depression which said a bank may not hold its operating reserves in stock. That is critical A bank has to have money on hand to pay depositors who want some of their money back. The banks said "well, money sitting around doesn't earn us anything. We'll buy blue chip stocks, and we can earn a little bit from capital gains and dividends!" The problem with this is that if the stock market suddenly crashes, those stocks become illiquid. You can't sell them. But people are MORE likely to want their money. And when the law requires a bank that doesn't honor a depositor's demand for their own money, that bank must close. The Act was a very reasonable realization that no matter how painful it was for a banker to have idle money around, there had to be a fair bit of it on hand, because emergencies and crises aren't scheduled on the banker's calenders.

It was a total NO BRAINER and they lobbied successfully to repeal this act. and yes, the same thing that happened in the Depression happened again because of it.

From:

tahkhleet.livejournal.com

Are you aware the President Bush made a commitment to Israel that if they go to war with Iran, the USA is AUTOMATICALLY at war with Iran? Are you aware that Obama has UPHELD this commitment. He may have put in his little fig leaf "if Israel's survival is threatened"...but tell me, since he's said he agrees Iran shouldn't have nukes, if Israel says "we see them getting to close to nukes, we have to do something" what IS he going to do? He might surprise me...but he left the door open to follow Bush' policy and all his rhetoric leads me to believe he will go to war. He chose a hawk cabinet for that reason.

It doesn't matter if Obama is talking with Iran. They have made it clear they want nukes, no matter what. Israel has made clear they will attack Iran, no matter what, if Iran gets nukes. Israel just elected a kingmaker party in its Knesset which is a bunch of RACISTS who say that all Muslims need to be expelled from the entirety of Israel. Israel is steadily marching toward war.

And I'll get into "doing the homework" on the cabinet but oh, the other commenter is SO wrong on that score.