No we can't?

Spring runs out and the American republic celebrates its societal strength and political will by regulating tobacco. That'll show the tobacco companies, long past their period of influence, and the diminishing ranks of smokers, primarily made up of the poor and disenfranchised.

Meanwhile, 10 big banks have begun repaying their bailout money to the taxpayers. Their primary reason is not to do the right thing or return to the business of funding productive enterprise. It is to gain the freedom to jack up the compensation of their 25 top executives. Like the Bourbons, the big bankers have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Unlike Big Tobacco, they not only retain their political clout -- defeating an effort to regulate dangerous derivatives -- but seem to largely run the federal government.

The consequences of this are manifold. The institutions that were "too big to fail" should have taught us that they are too big to exist. Instead, they have grown even larger. The secrecy of the Bush administration that led us into the Iraq fiasco has become the secrecy of the Geithner-Summers-Bernanke administration. We have only the tiniest sense of where the trillions in bailout money and "lending facilities" went, or who scratched the back of whom. We know, for example, that tax money went to help AIG repay Goldman Sachs which repaid...? You get the picture. Meanwhile, real unemployment is at least 16 percent, and millions may never regain their old earning power. Some may never be employable again outside of Wal-Mart.

The worst outcome is that the causes of systemic risk that nearly collapsed the economy last October remain. Nothing has fundamentally changed, either about our recent unsustainable practices or our unsustainable future. We may have temporarily stopped our headlong slide down the mountainside. But the Obama White House seems unable to bring the necessary reform to prevent a repeat. Only the size of the distortions from the economic misadventures of the past decade are keeping another bubble from being blown up.

We entered this financial phase of the Great Disruption with income inequality at its highest levels since the eve of the Great Depression. A mild tax increase on the richest Americans will do little to fix this. Deindustrialization of America continues apace, this time under government aegis. Chrysler and General Motors will try again to sell cars few want, instead of being retooled to build transportation for the 21st century. Health care? "Reform" has become meaningless, as advocates of a single-payer system are excluded from the table. So the heartbreak and suffering will continue to spread.

Such are the fruits of the radical reordering of political power in America over the past 30 years. Once, big business was potent, but fundamentally conservative in the proper meaning of the term. It was mostly engaged in making products of real value and its welfare was closely connected to the welfare of the United States. Big business' power was heavily offset by influential labor organizations that represented private sector workers. In either case, money was not as important to the political process -- races were not as expensive, a generally liberal Congress governed and corruption tended to be of the Wilbur Mills variety.

Now transnational companies think of America as nothing more than a market and, if its politicians slip the leash, a menace. They have billions at their disposal with which to lobby; their tentacles have compromised not only the Republican but much of the Democratic party. There's no force that can offset them. The disgust with the Bush years and an appealing young candidate might tip an election. But Democrats, so fearful of their next House or Senate contest, can't govern. The discredited minority not only blocks with discipline, but knowingly or not does the bidding of the powerful interests that truly run the country. It makes the era that William Jennings Bryan tilted against look like sweetness and light.

So we seem stuck. The big issues, from global warming and energy, to rebooting America's competitiveness and stopping the savage exploitation of the health insurers, remain undone. Undoable, apparently. Some right-wing snark claimed that President Obama is continuing Bush's third term, only badly. I'd say it's Bush's third term, only better. Or a third Clinton term, without the drama. Neither is good enough. And yet the people sit idle. This is not surprising, considering that no reform or revolution ever began in the streets. It began with the elites. And in America, the elites are on the same page, from Larry Summers to Karl Rove.

Comments

[Emil Pulsifer]

Excellent post, Mr. Talton.

And I would compare the Obama and Clinton administrations, certainly.

Reforms may sometimes "begin on the streets" in some sense but full-fledged revolutions (as opposed to rioting) rarely or never do. In any case, there is very little political consciousness and still less in the way of organized movements outside of the mainstream; and most of what does exist is tilted toward the right-wing, prepared by years of talk-radio and other propaganda.

There is, at present, no revolutionary vanguard outside the status quo; however, one might conceivably arise within the status quo, but only to better serve the needs of the oligarchy during a time of crisis.

[koreyel]

Jon did you read this article in the NYT?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/business/09hedge.html

It defies imagination: A 40-year-old billionaire who doesn't make anything. Callouses? What are they? Something concrete and substantial? What is it?

Griffin is a billionaire whose contribution to society is pure paper hocus-pocus. More of the same financial tomfoolery. The casino culture bubbling away on pure fumes...

Here is the "money" quote:

"One of the most striking turnarounds has been from the Citadel Investment Group, the Chicago-based firm run by the 40-year-old billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin. The firm’s flagship Kensington Global Strategies Fund was up 20.37 percent in the first five months of this year after plummeting 54.49 percent last year, according to performance numbers sent to investors.

Mr. Griffin is known for his talents in convertible arbitrage trading, which involves buying securities that convert into a company’s common stock while shorting, or betting against, the shares of the same company. That strategy, which brought Mr. Griffin’s investors immense financial pain last year, has gained 19.48 percent this year, according to the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index."

~end quote~

Convertible arbitrage trading? What poppycock. If there was a god he would lift Mr. Griffin from his station in life and put him to work shoveling manure in a barn...

[Buford]

Hello.
Broken record here, saying again that if things aren't changing in meaningful ways, its because things aren't bad enough yet.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Tom Golisano, another New York billionaire, had initially supported the Democrats, but reportedly became angry after they announced plans to raise taxes on the wealthy. So he bought the state Senate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/nyregion/10albany.html