Let the games continue!

BBC reveals the road ahead, MORE SHOCK DOCTRINE from your friendly Chicago School of Economics fools (h/t Naomi Klein)

Obama pledges ‘jolt’ to economy

US President-elect Barack Obama has promised the rapid implementation of a multi-billion-dollar package to deliver a “jolt” to the ailing economy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7747289.stm

I have always mainytained that the University of Chicgo merited the Carthage treatment….

Please pass the salt.

The Republican victim’s families have received a setback when Judge Baltazar Garzon’s inquiry into Franco’s reign of terror was thwarted in deference to the surviving fascist followers.

Hopes fading for Franco’s victims

In the week that marks the 33rd anniversary of General Francisco Franco’s death, Steve Kingstone has been speaking to two men who have very different opinions of the Spanish dictator.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/pro…..740569.stm

Good morning, pups. Life is good. Bobo is off today. Mr. Herbert is flying solo today. In “Not a Moment Too Soon,” he says we’re never going to get out of this economic fix if we can’t swing open the doors to millions of new jobs. At long last, we are about to have a president who gets that.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and there’s a selection of bagels with cream cheese. The weather is being nuts — it was 34° yesterday morning, it’s 56° now. Which may explain why almost everyone you meet is sniffling and sneezing… Have a great day.

UofC does lots of good stuff (outside of Economics)

Good Morning! Thanks for reading the NYTimes op-ed pages so we don’t have to. Last night while watching the local news, a commercial break had four back to back negative ads against Martin. Are you getting the anti-Martin ads as much.

They’re appalling. I hear them all day long on the radio at work too, from a variety of organizations, each one more misleading than the last. I started yesterday with my nagging campaign to get everyone I know (well, other than Republicans, of course…) to remember to vote.

It’s 34 here. Quite balmy after the weather last week. Those who are awaking up north have the same cold drizzly rain that we had yesterday. I’m off to HD to buy paint for a small hallway. That’s my job for today!

Off to the salt mines…

Mornin,
drear’ and brr-gloom is the rainy report here

WJ this morning
7:30am – Greg Ip, The Economist, U.S. Economics Editor
8:00am – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Former Sr. Policy Adviser to McCain for President Campaign
8:30am – Gene Sperling, Center for American Progress, Senior Fellow
9:00am – Newspaper Articles & Phones
9:30am – David Enrich, Wall Street Journal, Banking Reporter

Citi and AIG don’t have unions. GM/Ford/Chrysler do. See the difference?

Obviously Citi and AIG are “too big to fail” because mega bonuses for the well deserving already wealthy are at stake, whereas loss of millions of jobs from GM/Ford/Chrysler going under – serves them all right for wanting a living wage. Its the Randian ratfucker way.

The $700 billion “bailout” of the financial industry in the hands of bush/republican hacks is the republicans’ farewell-to-power-for-now parting rape of the average American and drowning of America. After 20-Jan-09 republicans go into full swing tear down Obama mode.

8:00am – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Former Sr. Policy Adviser to McCain for President Campaign

thanks, Elliott. That guy’s always good for a laugh or two.

It warms the cockles of my heart that the Saudi royals and their Citigroup got two bailouts from the American people. Hey, they’re poor! Spit.

Detroit-”The Motor City”-has been in decline since the early 1960’s when social/economic tremors first reached the viewaable surface and the cracks appeared across Michigan,Indiana and Wisconsin car manufacturing centers.

The demise of Kaiser-Frazer,Packard,Hudson and Nash in the 1950’s led to closing of Studebaker in 1966 and also the trickle of imports rising ever higher during late 1960’s and upward from the early 1970’s.

That was the manufacturing and market decline part of the story for American legacy automakers. What happened to City of Detroit because of social and economic change and auto manufacture decline is another part of the story.

Over at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com this past Sunday(11-23) Hilzoy had a piece on Detroit titled ‘Desolation’ which illustrated just one small part of Detroit’s steep decline since the 1970’s. There are a set of photos in that piece that show and tell of a school building and the neighborhood that surrounded it and the complete devastation that has come to it.

It is profoundly moving to see in these images of that school building the vivid fall down that has overcome Detroit. I encourage anyone with a interest in American social fabric to take time to pull up Hilzoy’s piece ‘Desolation’at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com and view this photo set and read the story of this school building and the vanished part of Detroit it now forlornly stands alone in.

What is happening today in United States in late 2008 has roots going back to what began and happened to Detroit some forty years ago regarding American automobile making,jobs and social/economic history. Take the time and check out Hilzoy’s piece on just this one piece of a now desolate and lost part of Detroit and America.

Swim’s up
I need more hot choc’late

The problem I see with these bailouts is that they fail to demand that those bail out change their way of doing business – their “business model”. Coming to the taxpayers and saying we need help is also say we fucked up.

So part of the fix is to deal with the fuck up. Cut the waste for starters. You need to make the operations lean and mean. No big salaries and shareholders – the “owners” of the biz are going to have to anti up and throw some of their OWN “$upport” into the biz. A radical idea? Let’s see… I know that big biz uses debt financing for almost everything, but mom and pops need to scrape together assets, mortgage their home, forgo their salary, raise the money to STAY in biz or to perhaps get some new machinery or “stuff” for their business. Corporate shareholders are in the game the same way. Their biz needs cash – THEY need to help out. it’s not a one way deal where all they do is get dividends. Consider it negative dividends.

And this doesn’t even address the core biz practices. Mr Banker… you want OUR loan, then drop YOUR interest rates to OUR people, the ones who are “giving” you the bailout. You want OUR money to get you out of the dumpster… then quit the high risk gambling practices – no CDS no bundling and trading securities, no derivitives. You stick to your core biz of lending money WITH collateral to sensible biz concepts or qualified home buyers. You make your money on the spread of interest paid and loaned. . That’s a bank. THAT is too important to fail. The trading operation is NOT banking – that division must go.

Same goes for Motown – build sensible cars, that are not fuel hogs and cash cows and unsafe and we will assist you and the people will buy your products. STOP the waste and sell of your corporate fleet. Why exactly can’t you fly commercial? How about sharing one plane for all you guys? How much flying are you doing? Let’s audit that operation.

Support is fine, but not throwing our money at irresponsible businesses who keep at doing the nasty things they have done for decades. Change you MUST… or you won’t get our help.

Teh Swim is up

Detroit failed top be forward looking in their products and did not innovate and resisted demands for safer vehicles. They failed to even contemplate the end of cheap oil since they believe that they need not look beyond a decade or two and oil looked like it was never ending.

They were dumb and suckered americans with their image marketing. Same rubbish as the american dream which “drove” everyone to buy a home because… it was the american thing to do – or the unamerican thing to NOT do.

See: the Century of the Self

It explains how we have been manipulated by marketing in ALL aspects of our lives.