Sep 29 2008

Eating Shit

(8 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

And that’s a pleasant way to describe the bailout in the works by the corrupt politicians of the United States, these narcissistic, craven sellouts, who couldn’t bring themselves to stop their own country from invading another and killing 100,000s and displacing millions more, who couldn’t stop their military interrogators and gestapo-like spies from torturing thousands. These moral zeros are about to send something just under a trillion dollars to the scions of finance capital. These latter have lived high off the hog, raking in millions, and in some cases billions of dollars, off a pyramid credit scheme, leaving us — the suckers — to pay up for a generation or more when their con finally went spectacularly bust, unraveling into a wilderness of economic “instruments” and “derivatives” so convoluted and intertwined that no one could ever untangle it.

So long, dreams of universal health care. Adios, decent educational system for all. Eat shit, crumbling infrastructure of bridges and roads and public buildings. Die, pathetic human beings flooded by unfixed dikes in hurricanes, or straining for unreachable help in a major earthquake, crushed by masonry, wood studs, and national indifference. (And fear not, fearsome Mars, our honorable military, filled with honorable men and women and rockets and bombs and infrared sensors and shrapnel-stuffed “devices,” will not be touched by the cost of the precious bailout, but expands and expands even unto world domination!)

Selfishness rules the nation now. It always did, but now it sits on the crown seat, so that each and every one of us may walk by and pay obeisance to king god capitalism, untouchable, beyond criticism, beyond repair, leering down on you and me and our bedraggled children, prostrate, struggling to survive.

This is like standing and looking at the long, long sweep of empty seabottom, pulled back by the massive tsunami current, and waiting for cataclysm. They have announced the total bankruptcy of the system, and you still don’t believe you’ll have to pay the bill.

Poor, silly, deluded us.

But no fear, for German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill told us “how to survive” as back as in 1928. Here’s your new bible. Here’s the unbridled truth. Asking the question that ought to be asked, and soon the only question with any relevancy:

What keeps a man alive? It’s his compulsion

to steal and cheat and kick his fellow man in the face.

We have to eat the shit without revulsion

and turn our backs on the human race.

You have to kill your neighbor to survive.

It’s selfishness that keeps a man alive.

Also posted at Invictus

42 comments

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    • Valtin on September 29, 2008 at 00:33
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    A bit strident or raunchy for some. I fear the truth will even look a lot worse than I imagine.

    What matter the circus of the election, when they can hold the knife to your neck any time they please?

    • Edger on September 29, 2008 at 00:46
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    Perfect description.

    Why don’t we invite all those so-called “leaders” to a party on the beach? And show up late? 😉

    • Valtin on September 29, 2008 at 01:05
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    I hope I haven’t offended too many with the language here, and I consider this site a bit more tolerant, also understanding that form and content go together in modern writing. The impact of a strong title is meant to mirror the sense of outrage and injury within.

    This comment is a pre-emptive attack upon my critics. It’s the GWB of comments.

  4. We can’t make globalization go away but when getting fucked by the shaft that is globalization a little grease just might ease that pain.

    It is very popular with working class Americans who know how to do shit and how to get shit done.  I am honored to educate them in the ways, rules, regulations and current workings of globalization and all of it’s parasitic, Satanic glory.

    • Edger on September 29, 2008 at 01:18
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    Most revealing quote of the past eight years.

    From Bloomberg, September 22, 2008:

    “At first, I thought we could deal with the problem one issue at a time,” Bush said. “The house of cards was much bigger and started to stretch beyond Wall Street. When one card started to go, we worried about the whole deck going down.”

    Probably the only thing he’s said that wasn’t a lie since 2000.

    • Edger on September 29, 2008 at 01:31
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    this morning…

    Whenever there is a systemic banking crisis there is a need to recapitalize the banking/financial system to avoid an excessive and destructive credit contraction. But purchasing toxic/illiquid assets of the financial system is not the most effective and efficient way to recapitalize the banking system. Such recapitalization – via the use of public resources – can occur in a number of alternative ways: purchase of bad assets/loans; government injection of preferred shares; government injection of common shares; government purchase of subordinated debt; government issuance of government bonds to be placed on the banks’ balance sheet; government injection of cash; government credit lines extended to the banks; government assumption of government liabilities.

    A recent IMF study of 42 systemic banking crises across the world provides evidence on how different crises were resolved. First of all only in 32 of the 42 cases there was government financial intervention of any sort; in 10 cases systemic banking crises were resolved without any government financial intervention.

    [snip…]

    So this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the financial firms (not just banks but also other non bank financial institutions); with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money.

    [snip…]

    Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.

  7. So, they’re sending me the bill for their recklessness, their champagne and caviar, their gambling debts, the vacations, the jewelry, the houses, and their general excessiveness, and they think I should pay it.  Obviously, I don’t agree.

    In a fair world (there’s a laugh) the first thing that would happen is that the assets and income of those who screwed up would be seized so that they could make good on their debts. What was left after that might be a “bad debt” and would have to be carried by whoever was owed the money (which is not me).  It’s only in crazy world where they get to keep the Rolex and the Escalade and the beach house, and I have to pay the tab as if it were mine, as if they wrote a rubber check to me that they don’t have to pay on.

    Does giving nearly a trillion $$ of my money and yours in exchange for their worthless assets solve the problems?  Hardly.  I’m not finding anybody who will say affirmatively that it will.

    Maybe both your titles are too mild for what’s happening.

    • TST on September 29, 2008 at 03:31
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    we have another “bend over and grab your ankles” situation going on with very little media coverage.

    A few paragraphs from Chalmers Johnson:

    On Wednesday, September 24th, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)

    One of America’s greatest authorities on the defense budget, Winslow Wheeler, worked for 31 years for Republican members of the Senate and for the General Accounting Office on military expenditures. His conclusion, when it comes to the fiscal sanity of our military spending, is devastating:

       “America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period; our Navy has fewer combat ships; and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for these major forces are older on average than any point since 1946 — or in some cases, in our entire history.”

    This in itself is a national disgrace. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on present and future wars that have nothing to do with our national security is simply obscene. And yet Congress has been corrupted by the military-industrial complex into believing that, by voting for more defense spending, they are supplying “jobs” for the economy. In fact, they are only diverting scarce resources from the desperately needed rebuilding of the American infrastructure and other crucial spending necessities into utterly wasteful munitions. If we cannot cut back our longstanding, ever increasing military spending in a major way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.

  9. diaries like this one — yeah, trust the experts — please give them a piece of your mind…

  10. I have absolutely no problem with your title.  I’m all for calling a spade a spade.*  There is absolutely no reason to pussyfoot around with the reality — we are being forced to eat shit.

    Your descriptiveness of this current “theft” is poignant, painful reality.  Thank you!

    Will be on the phone this a.m. to do some screaming!

    *(and I mean cards for anyone who might think otherwise)

  11. The Fiscally Insane Bailout Bill Might Not Pass — Here’s 5 Reasons It Shouldn’t

    The scheme would force taxpayers to absorb the pain, while Wall Street execs reap the gain.

    There was news Sunday afternoon of a congressional deal to bailout Wall Street fat cats with $700 billion of taxpayer cash (you can read the draft legislation here). Though the deal negotiated between congressional leaders and the White House is better than what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally proposed early last week, it remains an insulting atrocity, having omitted even basic aid to homeowners, bankruptcy reforms and any modicum of future financial industry regulation. Now, the New York Times reports that the Democratic leadership may not have the votes to pass this bailout. So without further ado, here are the top 5 reasons (in no order) why every single member of Congress — Democrat and Republican — should vote this sucker down. Please feel free to copy and paste this post into an email to your congressperson. They are deciding right now — let them hear your voice.

    [Here is just one reason alone]

    2. Experts on both the left and right say this bailout could make things worse

    Primum non nocere is the latin phrase for “first do no harm” — the priority principle for any EMT working on a sick patient. It should be the same priority for Congress at this moment — and a growing group of esteemed experts on both the Right and Left are insisting that this bailout bill could make things worse. Here’s a review:

    The Washington Post reported on Friday, almost 200 academic economists “have signed a petition organized by a University of Chicago professor objecting to the plan on the grounds that it could create perverse incentives, that it is too vague and that its long-run effects are unclear.”

    NYU’s Nouriel Roubini, the visionary who had been predicting this meltdown, says “The Treasury plan (even in its current version agreed with Congress) is very poorly conceived and does not contain many of the key elements of a sound and efficient and fair rescue plan.”

    Harvard’s Ken Rogoff, a Former Federal Rerserve and IMF official, insists that the prospect of this bailout is, unto itself, taking a manageable problem and making it into a more intense crisis. He says that credit is frozen primarily because banks want to avoid dealing with other banks that might drive a hard bargain, and instead would rather wait for free money from the government. Without the prospect of that free money, Rogoff suggests that credit would probably begin moving again, if slowly.

    Dean Baker of the Center on Economic and Policy Research says that spending so much cash so quickly on such a poorly conceived plan could have the effect of making it impossible to fund economic stimulus that is the real way out of this mess. “Suppose the Paulson plan goes through,” he writes. “It is virtually certain that the economy will weaken further and the number of foreclosures and people without jobs will continue to rise. This is the fallout from a collapsing housing bubble…When families respond to their loss of home equity by cutting back their consumption it will deepen the recession. In this context it might prove very important to have the resources needed to provide a substantial stimulus. [and] there is no doubt that this bailout will make further stimulus much more difficult to sell politically.” . . . .

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