Today's Stories

September 27 / 28, 2008

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

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

Weekend Edition
September 27 / 28, 2008

Crack-Up at the Big Casino

Hank-ering for a Bailout

By RICHARD RHAMES

“Section 8:
Decisions by the [Treasury] Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

-- Proposed Bush-Paulson financial bailout legislation

“Wall Street bet that the government would rescue them if they got into trouble. It appears that bet may be the one that pays off."

-- Sen. Richard Shelby, (R - Alabama)

In 1929, as the Big Casino’s bad bets tanked, the show-biz trade paper Variety famously employed a theatrical metaphor proclaiming in its banner headline, “Wall Street lays an egg.” The yolk’s on us again, it would appear.

To pay for today’s egg dump, Treasury Secretary “Mr. Risk” Paulson, proposes that congress pass a three page bill worked out over the last 6 months by Hank and the administration’s other Wall Street alumni/shills. He warns that the bill must be kept “clean”--- unblemished by conditions or reciprocity: A straightforward gift. He insists it not be “punitive.”

While poor women with children are subjected to stricture and sanction in order to receive a block of surplus cheese, or a token less-than-subsistance sum from government, the Ponzi schemers must be respectfully coddled and further enriched by an obsequious population. We are to lay $700 billion on their gilded altar and then back away bowing and scraping as we go.

Based on the testy reaction of the normally supine and servile Senate Banking Committee at Tuesday’s hearing with Paulson/Bernanke however, it appears that vast popular outrage may have temporarily stiffened vestigial spines in the apparently spineless political class.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown told the financial Bushmen, “I don’t think a single call to my office on this proposal has been positive. I don’t believe I‘ve gotten one yet of the literally thousands of emails and calls we’re getting. Part of this reflects outrage by taxpayers making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 a year bailing out people whose country club memberships cost many times that...”

Recently economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggested a few “conditions” that ought to be attached to any Christmas-in- September presents. Baker regularly comments on the structural failures of economic policy and reporting on his Beat the Press Internet site and in frequent op-eds published both here and abroad. Years ago he was warning of the inflating housing bubble, the blizzard of unregulated “innovative” financial paper that attended it, and the societal pain that would ensue when what went up came down.

Interested readers can find a link to Baker’s suggested conditions at his web site. I caught up with Mr. Baker by phone and digi-gizmo. He was kind enough to respond to a few questions:

RR) One of your constant objections to press coverage of economic issues is that, presented without some context, the numbers involved are essentially meaningless to most people. Paulson is demanding a $700 billion gift to the financial sector. How should we understand that number? Is it enough?

DB) “It's 100 times what was needed to extend SCHIP for a year. It's about $6,000 for every family in the country. It is real money. It is likely to be enough to keep the financial system from collapsing. It will not be sufficient to prevent a recession.”

RR) Some are suggesting that one aim of the bailout is to keep housing values from returning to their constant 100 year levels --- essentially propping up real estate prices and keeping the bubble partially inflated. Would this be good public policy?

DB) “The country has no interest in an unaffordable housing policy. High house prices are a transfer from those who do not have homes to those who do. I can't find a good argument for this sort of upward redistribution of wealth.”

RR) You've called for the public's getting an equity stake in the bailed out firms (proportional to the size of the public's "contribution"). Is this potentially like lashing the public to the Titanic's deck?

DB) “Not really. Many of these banks are likely to go under. In that case, the government will take a loss, but the purpose of the intervention was not to make a profit, it was to keep the financial system operating. In cases where we lend money to a bank that does well, then the government will have a substantial stake.”

RR) You've recommended something like a Tobin tax on stock transfers to help fund the Wall Street rescue. The Conyers HR 676 single payer health care bill proposes a similar levy. What is a "Tobin tax?" Might it be an idea whose time has come?

DB) “It is a small tax on the transfer of a financial asset like a stock, bond, future or option. For example if we tax a stock trade at 0.25 percent (the rate in England) and have scaled taxes on other assets (perhaps 0.02 percent on an oil future), we can easily raise $100 billion a year. This could easily finance this bailout and leave money in future years for programs like health care.”

RR) You'd condition the bailout on the democratization of the Fed's board, and making subsequent legislation filibuster-proof (i.e. based on simple majority rule). Please explain.

DB) “We often have legislation pass that is filibuster proof. A budget measure passes every year under this rule. Similarly, most trade agreements have also had this fast track status. As far as the Fed, the argument is that monetary policy should not be conducted by people who are not accountable to the public. As it stands now, 5 of the 12 people who determine monetary policy are appointed by banks. The banks should have no special voice in the conduct of monetary policy.”

RR) Is the press up to the task of usefully reporting events at this historic moment?

DB) “They have been way behind the curve. Most importantly they do not point out that this crisis was entirely foreseeable and is the result of a housing bubble that would inevitably collapse. It also neglects to point out that most of the leaders in the effort to "fix" the problem (e.g. Bush, Bernanke and Paulson) played major roles in creating the problem.”

Thanks to Dean Baker.

Richard Rhames is a dirt-farmer in Biddeford, Maine (just north of the Kennebunkport town line).

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