Today's Stories

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bailout and the Smell Test

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam

Steve Conn
Made in Alaska: Fear of the Fringe

P. Sainath
The Race Could be Over, But Race Isn't

Gregory Elich
How the Nobel Peace Prize Was Won

Stephen Martin
A Tectonic Shift in Hegemony at the G7

Rev. William Alberts
Don't Blink Twice

Laura Carlsen
The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

Joanne Mariner
The Uighurs Come to Washington

Howard Lisnoff
Left Behind: a Biden Fundraiser and the Children of Holyoke

David Macaray
A Tale of Two Unions

Website of the Day
Six Degrees of Hank Paulson

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 15, 2008

An Alternative to the Triple Failure

Before the Second Wave of Crisis

By JONATHAN M. FELDMAN

The gap between democracy and the financial crisis has its origins in the limitations not only in the present design of the economy, but also the polity and those assumed to offer an alternative to both—“the loyal opposition.”  The fundamentals of any alternative are readily available and resonate with popular will, but the average citizen is unable to secure the representation that they deserve. Instead, we have mass political and economic illiteracy among elites, cults of personality attached to financiers, politicians and even intellectual figures.   

If only members of Congress would read John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash, they would learn how the great depression was linked to the policies they themselves generated: insane belief in destructive financial innovations, “tax reductions with primary effect on the very affluent,” (including those later supported by President Reagan), “the vested interest in euphoria,” leveraging beyond our means, deregulation, etc.  Galbraith suggested in the 1988 introduction to his book, that “there is today, as there was not in the 1930s, a clearly specified government responsibility for maintaining income, employment and a supportable level of economic activity.”  Yet, this responsibility has seriously eroded with rising income inequality, deindustrialization, outsourcing and regressive taxation.   

Galbraith’s formula for avoiding depression is ignored across the board.  How can knowledge and power be so easily separated in contemporary society? The answer must have something to do with the decline in “institutional economics,” a decline which can be traced to the ascendancy of Keynesianism with the great depression and the role which economic and political elites, together with the quantitative turn, have had on the economics profession.  Even though Galbraith was a Keynesian, few followed his embrace of Thorstein Veblen, a key critic of the pernicious role financiers played in reducing the scope of innovative and productive activities.

The Economic Failure:  Rewarding Parasites, Retarding Wealth

The financial crisis as we know was triggered immediately by the popping of the housing bubble.  Why can’t citizens pay their mortgages?  Growing inequality and economic depletion of the middle class has rendered large pockets of the U.S. economy a third world country.  A simple transfer of funds to such persons would have to be repeated every decade or so to avoid future failures and end up with the treasury continuing to print money to compensate for an economy that fails to create real wealth. Training programs do not in themselves create good jobs. The problem is the ability of the economy to generate and maintain good jobs that pay rent and mortgages.  If the government simply tightened regulations and did not lend out money to persons desperate for housing, one might see millions more homeless.  Or, one could see overcrowding in housing that is hardly conducive to “productive workers”. 

Loan sharks sought a fast buck and placed many in jeopardy. Yet, these loan sharks would lack currency and the predatory pricing of credit cards would be irrelevant if the prices and availability of housing were stabilized, if the supply of good quality jobs were maintained, and if we had proper funding for university students.  The present design of the market has failed to produce such alternatives. The markets have rewarded fictional investments, not long-term productivity and job enhancing activities. Housing could partially be de-commodified, as housing activists have argued, through land banks that bought up land and through cooperatives stabilized housing prices. Thus, one key problem is market failure.   

The Political Failure: From the Trojan Horse Society to Extension of the Third World

The political elites will reward themselves even if it means impoverishment of the majority.  A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll says “a majority think that the bailout package will not prevent the economy from going into a deep and prolonged recession–but they turn thumbs-down to another bailout package if this one does not work. Only one in five would support more assistance beyond Friday’s $700 billion package.”  Citizens lack the power vis-à-vis the state and their views have (in the short term) become irrelevant.  Despite popular opposition, Congress is likely to blunder further because of ideological blinders, financial industry lobbying and campaign donations, and the disciplinary system imposed by both political leaders and mythic belief in the stock market.  They may avoid utter failure by using their equity in the banking system, but this is insufficient to deal with much larger, regenerative problems like predatory militarism, income inequality and financial capital decoupled from U.S.-based industrial production.

As others have noted, the bailout plan is partly about the Chinese government asking the U.S. tax payer to pick up the tab left that was handed him by Uncle Sam. Yet, there is something else at work.  Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex—both of which co-opt talent, waste resources and are primed by foreign investors—are also among the main beneficiaries of the citizens’ tax pool.  Taxpayers are forced to pay for these twin Trojan Horses in American society.  The twin Trojan Horses are machines that feed off of speculation and war, leaving behind unemployment, debt and death.   The President and Congress are the farmers and citizens, soldiers and consumers the crops.

The state might play a role in a solution to our multiple crises by investing $100 billion in subsidies for college students, $100 billion for public housing to pay for low-rise garden cities, $200 billion in capitalizing land banks that stabilized the value of housing and made non-predatory loans, and $350 billion in an infrastructure and industrial development bank.  This bank could promote a diverse set of activities including electrification of railways and modernization of tracks, R&D in alternative energy, mass transportation and robotics research.   Not all liquidity has the same political impact, but most established financial experts do not understand politics.

As many have now noted the rational solution would be to rally around “Green Collar Jobs,” demilitarization, reindustrialization and infrastructure investments.  This alternative banking system could also lend workers and local communities funds to purchase now-devalued stocks in their corporations (like G.M., Ford and Chrysler) to enhance decision-making power vis-à-vis management.  All could be paid for by taxing the rich and cutting back the multi-billion dollar military machine, but that itself would require not simply unilateral budget cuts, but disarmament plans (to leverage cut backs in multiple countries), changing U.S. foreign policy to embrace peaceful diplomatic engagement, and converting defense firms from their addiction to government spending.  The environmental movement should push for disarmament, but many in the movement have made the Pentagon their ally, thereby becoming patrons of the system which brought us the financial crisis.  Who holds such individuals to account?

Alternative investments, of the Green Collar variety, are hard to realize when the government’s leaders, in concert with a large swath of Wall Street, is burning money and wrecking the currency. As C. Wright Mills noted, The Power Elite joins the military, political leaders and the business class. Instead of supporting citizen wealth, vast swaths of the American public are treated by economy and state like a third world country. Cities like Camden, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan might qualify for an IMF loan or perhaps they should appeal for aid from Cuban doctors, Venezuelan low cost fuel, or European Union economic development aid.  Will parts of the U.S. become economically aligned with what the far right calls “rogue states” or “Old Europe”?

The deindustrialization of the U.S. and rule of oligarchs has pushed large segments of the population into the Third World camp.  The present financial crisis has produced for the erstwhile home owner a problem akin to a third world debt default. Financial medicine men got a free ride to sell fictitious cures.  Any attempts to create a real economy against the wake of a speculative bailout must confront the fact that the “bailout” amounts to an economic draft.  American taxpayers can propose alternatives, but they are weighed down by the federal tax to support Wall Street. This limits the share of real capital to do something useful, but should have a downside for elites. Unlike the military draft which Bush avoided through the surge, conscripting thousands of immigrants, Iraqization of the war, and the multiple tours of duty for troops, the ability of the Bush regime to displace its failed policies to others finally came to an end. Thus, in addition to market failure, we have a central problem of state failure.

The Loyal Opposition’s Failure: From the Economic Draft to Debating Movement Design

If the military draft was a key engine of the original antiwar movement, why can’t the economic draft serve the current oppositional movements?  After all, according to philosopher Immanuel Kant’s “perpetual peace” thesis, taxes like military service potentially link the citizen to the state and thereby hold it accountable. Can we simply expect a solution to the failures of the market and the state to come from the loyal opposition?  Does that opposition function better than our other institutions?  The present financial crisis, like the blatant election theft in 2000, presents an opportunity for social movements to mobilize millions of disgruntled voters.  There has been wave after wave of crises which the Left or authentic liberal and conservative small “d” democrats could have exploited by rallying around an alternative agenda. 

The problem, however, is that our social movements are badly designed.  Their charters and vision are so limited that they are putting out yesterday’s fires.  Look at their homepages and compare them to today’s headlines.  You will often see a yawning gap.  If management schools sometimes debate failed management strategy and political science departments analyze failed government policies, there are too few fora to debate the limits of alternative movements and sectors.  If our choices inform democracy’s foundations, then the absence of discussions about choices (and the alternative design of the loyal opposition) will and have sabotaged democracy.  Repeatedly the design decisions are made in the progressive equivalent of a smoke filled room.  A premium is placed on symbolic and ad hoc protests, petitioning the state, and fear mongering.

One reason for faulty designs of the alternative sector is that social movements have been captured by NGOs and 501C3 organizations which in turn have been disciplined by the market (through less enlightened foundations) and the state (through petitioning established fiefdoms in Congress) and appeals to the narrow filter of ideological space (through the established media).  The public is atomized by the hoarding of mailing lists, posturing over policy product differentiation, identity and symbolic politics, or postmodern absurdities.  Sometimes we see coalitions that rally greater numbers but advance the lowest common denominator. Sometimes the only persons handing out political literature in the street belong to the lunatic fringe. Hence, to market and political failure, we have social movement failure, or a failure in civil society and the “third sector.”

Social Innovation as an Alternative to Failure: Towards a new Reinvestment Politics

Alternatives to these failures would require an alternative to the established or dominant practices in the worlds of the market, state and loyal opposition. There are of course exceptions to the rule defined by the triple round of failure.  There are some productive industrial companies, like California-based Haas Automation, Inc., which designs and successfully manufactures computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools.  There are politicians, like Dennis Kucinich, who try to educate the public about alternative paths and institutional breakdown.  There are social movements and non-profit organizations that link truth to power or (power to truth) and a growing movement for media reform.  These fragments could generate an alternative to the present condition in which we appear largely powerless in the face of the alternating spectacle of Wall Street meltdown, Executive fumbling, and Congressional sabotage plans.  Of course, they would need to do something different that might mobilize far greater numbers than before.

We need alternative institution building, to create pools of collective economic power, and strategic targeting of local politicians to advance a democratic procurement agenda through cities and states. We need an alternative civics education and accountability systems to hold both branches accountable and build networks within the alternative economic, political and media spheres.  We need social innovations that provide alternatives to the faulty designs in economic, political, and social movement life. We need a national teach in on how politics actually works, the state of the economy, and what real wealth production in an economy actually means.  Trade unions and progressive institutional investors, perhaps influenced by student and faculty activists, could expand their investment in cooperatives and new technology start ups tied to sustainable technologies.  One could make the leap from a “divestment movement” from military contractors to a “reinvestment movement” in an alternative economy.  University administrators, faculty and students ought to re-examine how their investment portfolios have been used or misused by Wall Street.  Perhaps, they (like cities and states) could deposit some of their funds in banks that actually created jobs rather than destroyed them.  This campaign could link the floundering peace movement to the financial crisis and a concerned public of tens of millions.

Jonathan M. Feldman is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economic History at Stockholm University.  He is a member of the Economic Reconstruction network (www.economicreconstruction.com).

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