The Way We Are Now—Coming to a Bad End?
by Clyde N. Wilson
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It looks like the economy is in for hard times and that we plain folks are facing a decline in our standard of living. But you can be sure that the politicians and financiers who got rich creating the disaster won’t have to cut back much. Some of the junior brokers may fall off the gravy train, but the big boys won’t hurt. Neither will politicians, federal employees, and affirmative-action beneficiaries. It will be mostly working people who sacrifice for “our” country.
But it does appear that popular protest has slowed down the “bailout,” as it did the illegal immigrant amnesty. It is almost enough to make you think “American democracy” actually works. But, of course, the expedients of the Hamiltonians in siphoning wealth from the people are inexhaustible.
A people whose most revered monument is to a corporate lawyer and politician in an armchair—i.e., a saint of greed and chicanery—are almost certain to come to a bad end.
The purpose of education was long thought to be transmitting religion and culture and training young men for leadership. It all started down hill around the turn of the 20th century when the U.S. education system was taken over by people with the delusion that they could control us and make the world better through their superior wisdom.
All things considered, I would rather not be a member of an “indispensable nation.”
By “indispensable nation” they seem to mean the American kleptocracy being steadily invaded by a Third World population. Apparently we are indispensable because our leaders have delusions of omnipotence and are armed with nuclear weapons.
A people who think “diversity” is more important than continuity and stability are almost certain to come to a bad end.
I’ll be glad when the elections are over and the stock market settles down. Then we can get back to really important things like basketball.
At first American leaders were selected for distinction recognised by the people. Then they were selected by political managers for their appeal to the people. Now they are selected by marketing experts skilled in gulling consumers.
Cloud with the silver lining. They say with the slower economy only half a million illegals settled in the U.S. last year, a record for recent history.
Another, even bigger, bailout. Ain’t capitalism a wonderful system!
A people who lost their republic to a plutocracy a century and a half ago and still haven’t figured it out are likely to come to a bad end.
Early Americans faced the task of building a new society out of a wilderness for themselves and their posterity. The challenge for later Americans is to find some way to survive among “the wretched refuse of the earth” and their posterity.
Repeat after me: The Bush family and the neocons were brought to national power by RONALD REAGAN. Keep repeating every day until you are a fully recovered Republican.
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1 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 26 September 2008:
Until they pardon every shoplifter and chicken thief in this country, not a penny for the Masters of the Universe. OK, maybe food stamps.
Remember all the prattle about “moral hazard” if we help out the poor slobs who bit on the hook of teaser rates? Sauce for the ganders, sez I.
I grew up in New York and live in California, but I remember with nostalgia the bumper stickers from the Carter oil shortage days–”Let the Yankees freeze in the dark.” Let the investment bankers get real jobs cutting grass and stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.
“Once i built a railroad, I made it run
I made it run against time
Once i built a railroad, and now it’s done
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
“Once i built a tower way up to the sun
Of bricks and morter and lime
Once i built a tower, and now it’s done
Buddy can you spare a dime?”
Of course, if I remember my history, the Great Depression ended when a patrician demagogue led us into a war.
One more song that’s been running through my head:
“This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
“Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
Ill never look into your eyes…again
“Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…strangers hand
In a…desperate land . . .”
2 Comment by MAP on 26 September 2008:
With the economy collapsing and Washington itching to seize more power, folks are worried and angry. What we need now is the one thing guaranteed to serve as a distraction and cause an immediate surge in patriotism and flag-waving: A good war. Uh… wait a minute…
3 Comment by Tito Perdue on 26 September 2008:
Caps on executive compensation? Sure, but only if made retroactive to 1950.
4 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 26 September 2008:
Rather than a Hamiltonian coup, this debacle smacks more of the Jacksonian Democrat-engineered Panic of 1837, which caused the pauperization of large numbers of farmers (esp in the South) and left Andy Jackson’s slave-owning friends with the lion’s share of productive lands. The ordinary Joe was stuck with the dross that was left over or toiled out his life as a a semi-serf sharecropper.
5 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 26 September 2008:
Great article, Dr. Wilson. I differ slightly on two points. One, the neocons during the Reagan era were not as foolish and deluded as they are now. The quintessential neocon at that time was Irving Kristol, who certainly was more prudent (if unwise and prejudiced in the Mel Bradford affair) than the quintessential neocon of today, who happens to be his son. Second, the stock market won’t return to normal after the election. We’re in serious economic trouble for years to come.
In that light, consider some stupid thinking from today’s Daily Standard. Guess who neocon economic guru Lawrence Lindsey blames for “getting us into this mess in the first place”? Geeks. That’s right, geeks, with their fancy computer models that somehow screwed up a huge economy. (Larry Ludicrous actually hurls the term “geeks” as an epithet six times in his article, by my count.) This guy has his head deeply buried in the sand.
In an accompanying article, Irwin Stelzer is only marginally less ostrich-like. E.g., “This is not the place to resolve the dispute over whether the non-rich have done well or badly in recent years.” Right, Mr. Stelzer. I guess it’s irrelevant and has nothing to do with the whole mortgage mess.
I regret that Sarah Palin, who knows and understands ordinary Americans better than any neocon, is listening to these fools. While I won’t vote for Obama, I’m beginning to hope that he wins the election. He seems to “get it” a lot better than McCain does.
6 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 26 September 2008:
At least that seated “saint” is portrayed on the most useless coin of the realm. That should count for something. Now just to get that ugly mug off the fiver we need to start a popular uprising to suggest a substitute, my choice is Robert E Lee who will then enjoy wider circulation than US Grant. Hahaha!
7 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 26 September 2008:
@1 Grumpy
Here are some more lyrics
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
Potential H-bomb
God save the queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming
Don’t be told what you want
Don’t be told what you need
There’s no future, no future,
No future for you
God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves
God save the queen
‘Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems
Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid
When there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in your human machine
We’re the future, your future
God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves
God save the queen
We mean it man
And there is no future
In England’s dreaming
No future, no future,
No future for you
No future, no future,
No future for me
No future, no future,
No future for you
No future, no future
For you
8 Comment by TJF on 26 September 2008:
Ken Zaretzke has offered a new term for a treacherous hustler: prudent. I knew there was no conservative movement, no conservative principles, and no conservative mind, when I saw the respect paid to Irving Kristol even by my late friend Russell Kirk who should have known better. Naturally, the Kristols rewarded Dr. Kirk for his kindness by stabbing him in the back when he came up for the Jefferson Medal. It is not a question of foolishness or prudence. These people are unwavering in their quest for wealth, power, and the destruction of Christianity. In one part of his mind, Kristol pere knew the truth–he more than once said that if he could have anticipated the backlash to his hatchet job on Bradford, he would have let him get the appointment. (A strange thing to say for a man who denied any and all involvement.) But poor IK cannot understand the loyalties commanded by friendship and respect and cannot help attacking the only real enemy, which was never Communism but Orthodox Russia. As Norman Podhoretz once said, “I know an enemy when I see one and Chronicles has become my enemy.” Why? Because when RJ Neuhaus and his anti-Christian allies were taking over the Rockford Institute, we refused to play dead.
There is absolutely no point in talking about neoconservatives as if they had any real ideas or policies, because they do not. When Feulner and Buckley let them into the Conservative Movement’s Big (Circus) Tent, they proved they believed in nothing. They never did.
9 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 26 September 2008:
@3 Tito
I just finished the Sweet Scented Manuscript. It was a great read!
10 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 26 September 2008:
Tom Fleming (#8),
It’s possible that Irving Kristol is ultimately a nihilist, with no beliefs other than getting his special piece of the pie. That would certainly help to explain his backstabbing of Russell Kirk. I meant to say only that Irving Kristol was RELATIVELY prudent compared to today’s neocons. I’m judging mainly by their writings; I have no firsthand knowledge (unlike Tom Fleming) of their personal dealings.
If we’re going to denounce the impiously Jewish Irving Kristol, what about the piously Catholic Michael Novak? He has never owned up to the damage that his writings on economic issues–and his failure to identify problems and denounce abuses, except in the manner of a milkmaid tiptoeing to the hayloft–have caused to the conservative movement and thus to the country. Novak, in my estimation, is more responsible for the disasters that have befallen us than Irving Kristol is (leaving aside the matter of progeny, which is not directly relevant). I would add that it’s the Catholic bishops, not the Jewish neocons, who are destroying Christianity in America by tolerating an anything-goes system of marriage annulments. (I converted to Catholicsm in the mid-’80s, so I care about this stuff–I’m not just beating up on the Catholic Church.)
11 Comment by TJF on 26 September 2008:
In rereading my comment, I realize that what was intended as a jeux d’esprit sounds a bit smart-alecky, which is no way to treat a valued contributor to Chronicles. Those of us who were friends of Mel Bradford and lived through that dirty episode find it hard to say much good about Kristol and his lackeys, among which were numbered Ed Feulner and George Will.
Kristol I respect as a Machiavellian who used minimum force to achieve his objectives and usually followed the maxim that you catch more flies with honey than with gall. He and his wife made themselves useful to people they wished to use. I usually prefer not to attack their son, because I know of one occasion when he protected me from angry Congressmen demanding to know the name of the program reviewer at the Department of Ed who squelched an evil Holocaust education program. Bill did not tell me of his somewhat courageous action, but his staffers did. Perhaps his greatest weakness is that he believed the piffle his father said in public. Perhaps that is no longer true, but I owe him one.
Novak, whom I used to know a bit and was something of a friend of his brother, strikes me as a sentimentalist who conns himself before he conns others. He has done infinitely more damage because he had a capacity to do good. His ridiculous defense of state capitalism, combined with his misrepresentations of John Paul II’s position–and his censorship of the Pope in 30 Giorni–were despicable and foolish, but probably done as part of an overall strategy concocted probably by the Podhoretzes. My belief in his partial sincerity was undermined when he, like the bumptious and self-important Bill Donahue, sprang to the defense of the editor of Crisis, who had apparently taken advantage of a coed’s suicidal state to have his way with her. The charge was serious enough to cost him his job at a Catholic University (I am deliberately not using names), but Catholics whom he had rewarded speaking fees and European cruises stood up for him. What repulsive people. So my basic point is that I am no longer willing to discriminate among the various types of neconservatives in the same way I would not go through a garbage can picking out the least noxious pieces of rotting meat and vegetables.
12 Comment by TJF on 26 September 2008:
And, ditto to #9: I too thoroughly enjoyed Tito’s book, one of his best I think.
13 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 September 2008:
#4. Mr. Van O. Typically, you blame the current debacle and the Panic of 1837 on Southerners. You appear to completely misunderstand the causes of both events and to be the victim of state capitalist propaganda.
#10. Mr. Z. You have, alas, a point about the Catholic Church’s hierarchy and spokespersons.
14 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 September 2008:
#3 Tito. This is the first I have heard of it, but I am delighted to learn that you have a new book!
15 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 26 September 2008:
Tom Fleming #9
No offense taken. I know you like to express yourself bluntly, as I also do, but I don’t have the personal experiences with “the enemy” that would undoubtedly bring out my denunciatory side.
My main personal experience with Novak is when I was an intern to him for six weeks in the early ’80s (on loan from the National Journalism Center.) I worked with his aide and had essentially no contact with Novak. On the one occasion that I talked to him, at the end of my brief internship, I asked him what books I should read. He recommended only one author: F.A. Hayek. I have never read the guy and do not plan to do so. I have always thought “classical” liberalism is bunk.
16 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 26 September 2008:
Dr Wilson @#13
I believe you’re correct. One only needs to look at the ending of the Second Bank of the United States for the real culprits. ‘Mr Van O’, as usual seething with hate toward Southerners, blames them for something the Whig state-capitalist bankers did. The Jacksonians and Van Buren Democrats were correct.
17 Comment by jack bailey on 26 September 2008:
“The Bush family and the neocons were brought to national power by RONALD REAGAN”. Yes indeed. although Paul Carig Roberts in a recent article claims that the neocons made a run for it until Reagan kicked them out. So perhaps he did so inadvertently.
18 Comment by Tito Perdue on 26 September 2008:
Etienne: Many thanks for your generous comment; I count Chronicles readers as worth, on average, about sixteen times as valuable as the standard sort.
Tito
19 Comment by Tito Perdue on 26 September 2008:
Clyde:
My most recent production is FIELDS OF ASPHODEL, but THE SWEET-SCENTED MANUSCRIPT is just as admirable.
I was in your town a few weeks ago, but after dialing the wrong Clyde four or five times, realized Providence didn’t want us sharing a cup of coffee.
Tito
20 Comment by Tito Perdue on 26 September 2008:
Tom:
Thanks, Tom. These later books would not probably have been issued without your great review of some years back.
Tito
21 Comment by NGPM on 26 September 2008:
“At first American leaders were selected for distinction recognised by the people. Then they were selected by political managers for their appeal to the people. Now they are selected by marketing experts skilled in gulling consumers.”
Sex appeal is highly regarded by the public. We get the leaders we deserve, and a free people is only “free” if they can handle it. We won’t be “free” much longer.
The only good that will come out of this is the discrediting of democracy and “human rights” once and for all.
22 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 26 September 2008:
#15 Hayek
Hayek is pretty good on some of the illusions and impossibilities inherent in socialism (and socialism “lite”), and why socialism so often turns into bloody tyranny.
Hayek’s difficulties derive from what he shares with socialists–the notion that we can reason our way to a New Improved, if not a Perfect, society.
Whatever one thinks of Novak, Kristol, etc., Hayek’s in a different league and worth your time. The Road to Serfdom, at least, is not as soporific as one might think on hearing the word “economist.”
23 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
“The challenge for later Americans is to find some way to survive among “the wretched refuse of the earth” and their posterity.”
When, in an informal discussion with some students at the student union at the college where I sometimes labor, I challenged the Immigration Act and Nationality Act of 1965 and the changes which it had wrought, a young lady, a history major with the rank of senior, rather irately “pointed out” to me that I was positioning myself against the very intent of the “Founders” who had, according to the young lady most erudite, created our nation for immigrants, i.e. the wretched refuse of the earth.
There ensued a discussion which lasted the better part of two hours and which might well lead one or two students, likely not the aforementioned young lady whose spirit was not demonstrating a teachable moment, to these Chronicles threads and to some books which I suggested, books written by some of the scholars who lead this site.
24 Comment by Robert Bruce on 26 September 2008:
Hayek is a god compared to either Novak or Bill Kristol. For the most part, those guys are just hacks, whereas Hayek actually is a true critical/original thinker.
25 Comment by Jon I. on 26 September 2008:
#21 NGPM
“Sex appeal is highly regarded by the public.” An excellent and sad observation. How else would we have known who Dana Perino is?
Another great article Mr. Wilson. Your wit is unmatched compared to the “social commentaries” of any columnist I have read since maturing throughout my experience with “higher education.”
26 Comment by NGPM on 27 September 2008:
“The challenge for later Americans is to find some way to survive among “the wretched refuse of the earth” and their posterity.”
Americans can complain about Third World immigration, but once it started, they accomodated it and kept asking for more. Instead of insisting the illegals be chased out of the great city centers, Americans kept moving further and further away and outwards, achieving a remarkably unrealistic disparity (i.e., in terms of commute time) between what was required of a semi-rural lifestyle and their need to go to their jobs in the cities. Then, they hired service contractors who in turn employed illegals as gardeners and cleaners.
It is true, this invasion provoked and accelerated the destruction of the last vestiges of American community life, but materialistic middle classmen were all too willing to co-opt it into their daily routine. I certainly don’t celebrate the new demographics of this country or look forward to their eventual unraveling in the next few decades, but even if we did manage to send them all back, I wonder whether there is enough of the old place left to salvage anything worthwhile.
27 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 September 2008:
#19. Sorry to have missed you, Tito, but there are a lot of us rednecks named Clyde in the phone book.
28 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 27 September 2008:
@19 Tito
“Dwelling place of most of the shades in Hades according to Homer, the bard who sang of the age of heroes. Asphodel was an ugly weed with a pretty name, a grey and ghostly plant suited to an Underworld inhabited by bloodless wraiths.”
Pardon my ignorance, but I’m government school educated and I had to go to an on-line encyclopedia to retrieve the above quote. But I like what I see, please let us Chronicles readers know of it’s relesae date.
PS I met your neighbor in Montgomery AL at a rally supporting Judge Roy Moore. Nice young fellow. He seemed surprised to find a fellow reader.
29 Comment by Andrew G. Van Sant on 27 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson
One of my cousins is named Clyde. His middle name is Raymond. His son is Clyde Raymond IV. We’re hoping that young Ray will continue the family naming tradition when he gets married and has a son. (To avoid confusion, each generation alternates going by Clyde or Ray.) I’m funding a Chronicles gift subscription for Ray, who was a Young Republican when a student at the Milwaukee School of engineering. He was kicked out of the organization when his father defeated the favored Republican candidate for a local council seat while running as an independent.
My wife calls us readnecks. She still doesn’t understand that we’re proud to be called rednecks.
30 Comment by Tito Perdue on 27 September 2008:
Etienne:
The book came out last July. I was especially proud of the superlative review provided by Derek Turner in the spring issue of his Quarterly Review.
31 Comment by Paul D. Alexander on 27 September 2008:
Something I read elsewhere …
* * * * *
Two great truths: (1) All empires eventually fall;
(2) Those who stand to lose the most from the fall are always the last to recognize truth # 1.
* * * * *
As Oliver Cromwell said, “Trust in God and keep your powder dry.”
32 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 27 September 2008:
Prof. Wilson: You will find an admirable summation of the causes of the Panic of 1837 and the results for poor whites in the book “Bitterly Divided” by Prof. David Williams of Valdosta State University in Georgia ( a Southerner with ancestors in the CSA). Briefly, the Specie Circular Act sponsored by the Democrats and Jackson in 1836 required payment in gold or silver to buy confiscated Indian lands in the Southeast (no banknotes allowed in accordance with Jacksonian ideology). Poor farmers had little access to specie and little collateral for loans. Loan applications plunged and small banks failed in droves. The resultant depression halved cotton prices and drove farmers in debt into bankruptcy. Their land and other properties were repossessed and sold at auction to wealthy slave-owners. The ideology that provoked this crisis is by no means a strictly Southern one as the Democratic Party of the day was also strong in the North and Northwest (a fact that frustrated Lincoln’s ambition to win a seat in the national Senate).
The similarities to the current crisis are obvious.The present credit crisis has created a gigantic opportunity for those with liquid capital (much of it gained from profiting on the original bad loans) to snap up bargains while the taxpayers foot the bill for the losses. Capital is siphoned away from those with modest means and directed toward those who have profited from the dubious dealings in the first place.
33 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 September 2008:
#31. Mr. Van O. What you say about the effects of the Specie Circular has some basis, though as usual you cast it as some sort of conspiracy of your imaginary “slave power” to impoverish non-slaveholders. Your view of history seems to require ascribing every bad occurrence to Southerners—simply the old long-exploded abolitionist paranoia. Jackson’s hangers-on were simply interested in getting rich, not in impoverishing others, and they were not all Southerners. There is a fallacy in looking at the effects of the Specie Circular alone without reviewing the history that preceded. It begins with Jackson’s veto of the National Bank renewal, allegedly on hard money grounds. Yet the evidence is substantial that the veto was actually maneuvered by New York banking interests who were constrained because the National Bank was effectively restraining their excesses of fractional reserve banking. The Bank renewal being vetoed, Jackson was then persuaded to withdraw illegally the federal funds from the BUS, where they were to remain by law for another two years.
He had to go through three Treasury Secretaries before he found one who was willing to violate the law, and he was censured by the Senate for his illegal action. Then Jackson’s administration began to parcel out the federal funds to various private banks
with no system of regulation or review except the needs of political patronage. The real effect of this allegedly hard money move was to allow a bunch of private banks, on the basis of their federal deposits, to engage in an orgy of fractional reserve banking, flooding the land with worthless paper. (Worthless to everyone except the original producers of the paper.) You cannot blame this on Southerners, who certainly played a much lesser role. It was politics rather than class war. The Specie Circular was Jackson’s belated effort to correct the situation he had created. It had the natural effect of contracting the previous boom, to the harm of many people, not just Southern farmers.
Frankly, I doubt that many Southern planters had that much hard money to spend on the public lands. Those who had to spend were mostly Yankee capitalists. Study the earlier Yazoo Land frauds, in which Philadelphia capitalists bribed a Georgia legislature to sell them the state for almost nothing. A reformed state legislature’s effort to abrogate this corrupt swindle was ruled illegal by the Marshall Court on grounds that the state could not impair contracts. This was good Hamiltonian/Yankee capitalist policy. The Panic also effected merchants and manufacturers, closing banks everywhere, and destroying the price of cotton. Some economists believe that a large influx of Mexican silver also played a role. The present day situation also, has tro go beyond the mortgage crisis to the profligate federal policies that preceded, that were allegedly intended to help poor minorities. At any rate, it would be a real stretch to blame the current crisis on Southerners rather than the govt. and Wall Street, but I am sure you will find a way.
34 Comment by Leo on 28 September 2008:
I’m not sure of the exact terms of the bail-out (as many of you call it) or the buy-out(as I hope to call it).Nevertheless two cheers for Alexander Hamilton.There can be no challenge to his patriotism and his great contribution to the survival of the newly independent United States.Hamilton has become like Chamberlain…an Orwellian “Goldberg” for all our hatreds.Hamilton was an American nationalist when there was still the hope of an American nation.He died long before the issue started to become impossible.Today’s Wall Street is chock full of profligate frauds but don’t confuse these maggots with the great men of American industry and finance of the past.Two cheers for Hamilton and Morgan and Mellon(remembered fondly by my elderly immigrant relatives)and Ford.Some of you need to show the same historical sobriety toward that “Hamiltonian/Yankee” past as you do to our Southern past and all its controversies.We screwed this up in 1965 more than we ever did in 1865.
35 Comment by MAP on 29 September 2008:
Leo @ 33: Any system that enriches the few at the expense of the multitudes will never gain my appreciation. Further, it was not a system created out of mutual consent, but one imposed by war, coercion and dictatorship and, therefore, totally at odds with the very principles upon which this Union was founded. Theft is theft, no matter whether the thieves reside in England or in New York.
36 Comment by MAP on 29 September 2008:
Mr. Van Oosbree, with all due respect, why all the contempt and hatred of the South? We here in the South have been relentlessly insulted, invaded, murdered, stolen from, destroyed, denied our rights to self-government, subjected to a hundred years of third world, abject poverty, reduced to third class citizens…Yet I don’t encounter in the South this same blind hatred and contempt for those who did all this to us. I have long wondered at this.
37 Comment by Ray Olson on 29 September 2008:
MAP @ 36: I am mystified as to where you see hatred for southerners in Mr. Van Oosbree’s remarks. I for one am grateful for the responses he’s elicited from Dr. Wilson, because it adds to my understanding of American history during a period that fascinates me but of which I’m lamentably ignorant.
And, Dr. Wilson, I don’t see in this exchange of remarks even a hint that Mr. Van Oosbree thinks the South responsible for the current financial mess.
I have an abiding though distanced affection for the South, by which I mean that I highly value southerners’ music and literature, in particular, but have only once been able to see any of the South (with TRI in Charleston, S.C.). Still, I occasionally think southerners can be prematurely testy.
38 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 29 September 2008:
Dear Prof. Wilson and MAP: I am puzzled that you characterize me as anti-Southern when I specifically stated that the ideology to which I objected was a country-wide phenomenon with Southerners as its principal victims. Of course, the present crisis is not the fault of any particular class or section but has multiple causes and perpetrators arising from the current degeneracy of our political and economic institutions. For instance, Mr Steve Sailer has some excellent articles on his blog about the “diversity” aspects of the current credit crisis. I commend to it to those of you who are interested in the ways ideology can cause otherwise intelligent people to endorse disastrous policies.
39 Comment by MAP on 29 September 2008:
My observation of the housing debacle as it unfolded (for whatever it’s worth. I’m no economist and have never had the slightest interest in the subject. And I’ve yet to see anyone report what I saw.)
Manufacturing was fleeing the country, leaving a wake of unemployment in its path. We started into a deep recession, when the high-tech bubble took hold and masked the reality. When it burst we started into another recession (which I sensed was really a continuation of the former. Jobs were still in China and India. And many more were going). 9/11 intensified the situation. W, new to office, with Greenspan, dropped the interest rate to almost inflationary which created the building bonanza and put millions to work in everything from construction to finance to insurance (not to mention government: building permits, sewers, schools, etc.) They even pressured the lending institutions to make home ownership more available to minorities, but I didn’t know that at the time. Its possible W thought the boom would last till he was gone from office, but alas. In fact, six years ago I told coworkers what would be the outcome and that the entire charade would fall back on Fannie Mae and Freddy Mack. Now, I ask: If an economically uneducated ignoramus such as myself could see this, what are the chances of some of the highest paid economists in the world, employed by the Bush administration, not seeing it as they claim? I smell a skunk! The situation can only grow worse. Those millions the boom employed are employed no longer.
40 Comment by Leo on 29 September 2008:
MAP…what?I’m not exactly sure what system you refer to…it is not the historical United States.Whatever our faults,we did create the wealthiest people on earth and easily the greatest middle class.Our people still eat well,live long and drive cars.Maybe you need to get out more…the American poor live better than most of the planet.Based on those facts,I give up on ever “getting your appreciation”!If you want to bash business owners like me for the cathartic experience..well,right on,dude but don’t bite the hand that signs your paycheck.
41 Comment by MAP on 30 September 2008:
Leo, I meant no insult, nor anything personal. The topic was the Hamiltonian system of the Whigs/Republicans that was imposed as a result of Lincoln’s war, a system that works to the benefit of the well connected few. Despite what you believe it has done for us, it operates on the same principles that led to the Revolutionary War. A marriage between the central government and wealthy corporations for the sole benefit of this marriage is at odds with the root causes of the Revolutionary War and the Union that arose as a result of the secession from the crown.
42 Comment by MAP on 30 September 2008:
Leo, having reread your post and the nasty tone in which it was composed, I should add that I know you not at all and owe you exactly what you owe me: Absolutely Nothing!
43 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 30 September 2008:
When I visited Wall Street years ago (the only time) they showed me the old church round the corner where Hamilton is buried, and pointed out that the brokers and financiers put fresh flowers on his grave every day.
44 Comment by MAP on 30 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson, that’s funny. I’m sure they consider it a shrine, Ha, ha!
45 Comment by R. Scott on 30 September 2008:
Leo,
Despite the economic “success” of the current system, the truth is closer to MAP’s understanding. The ongoing debacle of our banking system is the logical result of the fiat money system we undertook almost a century ago when we removed our currency from the gold standard and made it illegal to make contracts in gold and silver. The system which allows the banking cartel (the Federal Reserve) and the government to pass the costs of devaluing (inflating) our currency onto average working Americans is apparently one of which you are unaware. Advances in technology and productivity combined with the increasing debt of the middle and working classes has masked the ill effects of fiat money for decades, but the inflationary chickens have come home to roost. Our system steals the wages and savings from Americans through inflation and increased taxation. Our system protects the affluent through the limited liability laws which allow the reckless and criminal behaviors of the business and government classes. When disaster strikes politically, financially, or other, you can always count on the system to declare a national emergency, wrap themselves in the American flag (in the spirit of bi-partisanship, of course), and then pass the costs onto the rest of us. These costs are paid for not just in money, but in liberties and lives as well.
So while you smugly dismiss any critique of the system in your Limbaughian and Hannityesque ways , please keep in mind that the current system from which you currently prosper is leading us down the road to fascism. Every national emergency is used as an opportunity to consolidate power and every consolidation of power means fewer will prosper.
46 Comment by John Willson on 30 September 2008:
The Church Clyde talks about is Trinity Church, Wall Street, and commands the entire property, much of which it owns. Trinity may be the richest single parish in the US, of any denomination (it is Episcopalian, of course, and its money props up that disintegrating church). When one considers that Trinity was not only Hamilton’s parish but also had to give permission to have Wall Street become the very first electrically illuminated street in the world, one senses its position in the Episcopal-financial-governmental complex. I was once sitting on a bench near Trinity early on a weekday morning and beheld the subway (Twin Towers version) disgorging tens of thousands of earnest financiers heading at a fast pace for the Wall Street opening. I was struck by the women, grim, moving fast, all wearing high-priced running shoes under their business suits. None of them, I assure you, would have known who Hamilton was. That would require a sense of place, and of history.
47 Comment by MAP on 6 October 2008:
R. Scott @ 45. Excellent summation of our predicament.