Monday, March 23, 2009

Goodman and Krugman, feminist perspective, and letting Geithner fail

Amy Goodman had Paul Krugman on Democracy Now! today, and they talked about the Geithner plan--or as Krugman calls it, "cash for trash."

I actually discovered something about Paul Krugman in this interview that I didn't like, which was only inevitable. He supports NAFTA vehemently...something that I guess I was too young to know that he supported. It makes no difference in what he says on NAFTA, I suppose.

Suburban radicals don't support NAFTA. His beard still rocks though.

Questions. People need to start asking questions. Why will a toxic asset suddenly be worth more in the near future? Who's to say that investors will want to buy them in the first place? Why are we even proposing a plan that punishes taxpayers more than investors in the worst-case scenario? Why do we insist on letting the market play a part in the solution?
A couple of coments from the comments section of the most recent Tom Tomorrow cartoon on Salon.com:

I think the invisible hand

Is very visibly jerkin' us off..

The Invisible Hand is wacking off...that's what got it in trouble

Yup...and we're all going to go blind because the Invisible Hand did it way too often, against the wishes/demands of his nanny, i.e., regulations.

This sexual metaphor can be taken further too. With the times so tough, many women are turning to the sex industry as a last resort for joblessness. Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville gives a great analysis of this, and brings up the masculine-centric aspect of the mainstream media's coverage of this crisis:
In a good economy, choosing to work in the sex industry as a last resort isn't nearly as acceptable as it is when the entire country is shit-toiling (except the men dropping thousands of dollars on strippers and porn). But now that the economy's in the toilet, it's acceptable for women to sell their bodies even if they don't really want to!
Fianancial crises suck and they make my head hurt. I'm going to sleep. But I leave you with more from Salon:
But all the Sturm und Drang expressed hither and yon about how the Obama administration is damning us all to a decade or more of economic doldrums by not pursuing immediate bank nationalization today is just a bit overwrought. The U.S. economy is not going to stop shedding a half-million jobs a month if we nationalize Citigroup today, instead of two months from now. We are deep in a recession and it will be quite a while before we crawl out of it. Two months of caution do not mandate a "lost decade." Indeed, we will know in a matter of months whether the Obama administration's current efforts are gaining any traction, and if they aren't, then there will be no other alternatives. Perhaps the smartest thing that Geithner's critics could do is just step aside and let him fail.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot--happy belated sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War!

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