Financialization of the U.S.
I am aghast. There I was listening to Larry King interviewing Republican Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, speaking about why she voted no on the rejected financial recovery act and I was in agreement with her. Normally when I hear her speak I grimace and tense up because she sounds like an indoctrinated Republican spin master, lying and misinterpreting any position taken by any Democrat. Yet here I was agreeing with her position and reasoning on the bailout plan.
Her point is that it was a mistake of enormous proportions to give Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson so much control over 700 billion dollars to do with whatever he saw fit supposedly to cure the current financial collapse and credit crisis.
Mr. Paulson is a Wall Street insider having spent his entire career immersed in the Wall Street culture. Now he will be given the authority to dispense billions of dollars and favors on his former colleagues, friends and foes alike, and making decisions who and who does not get treated with favor. He has a mindset that has been inculcated within him that Wall Street should be the main concern of the USA and when they do well, then the country does well.
Who remembers Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson, CEO of General Motors and Secretary of Defense during the Eisenhower administration: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country"? Or perhaps the Al Capp takeoff on that in the song from the Broadway show Li'l Abner , "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA". It illustrated the big business thinking of an individual appointed to a high office in government.
Quoting from Kevin Phillips latest book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008, NYC; Viking Penguin),
Michael
Her point is that it was a mistake of enormous proportions to give Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson so much control over 700 billion dollars to do with whatever he saw fit supposedly to cure the current financial collapse and credit crisis.
Mr. Paulson is a Wall Street insider having spent his entire career immersed in the Wall Street culture. Now he will be given the authority to dispense billions of dollars and favors on his former colleagues, friends and foes alike, and making decisions who and who does not get treated with favor. He has a mindset that has been inculcated within him that Wall Street should be the main concern of the USA and when they do well, then the country does well.
Who remembers Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson, CEO of General Motors and Secretary of Defense during the Eisenhower administration: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country"? Or perhaps the Al Capp takeoff on that in the song from the Broadway show Li'l Abner , "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA". It illustrated the big business thinking of an individual appointed to a high office in government.
Quoting from Kevin Phillips latest book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008, NYC; Viking Penguin),
"Bingeing on debt is reckless, and financialization has a long record of being an unhealthy late stage in the trajectory of previous leading world economic powers. Moving money around instead of making things is always dicey, and the U.S. transformation has been the most grandiose to date."Secretary Paulson's plan is another step along the path to such financialization. Any solution to our current crisis must move us away from financialization of our economy, not move us further along the path to eventual collapse.
Michael
posted by Michael | 1:39 AM
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