Days Of Dancing For Dollars Long Gone

"The 90s may have spoiled us, b!"

That was the great Joan Morgan, in one of a million conversations this past weekend about the economy.

Things done changed since the Cristal-sipping days, back when artists routinely dropped a milli on their videos. But now all of the chickens have come home to roost.

In the late 90s, the dealings in Lower Manhattan partly help make the hip-hop bubble possible. People were making money off making money. And hip-hop made them look good. We made it so that even if you weren't hip-hop, you could go down to Soho--yes, Soho--and buy in.

This past weekend, the one after our economy collapsed, it was clear on the hard cobblestone streets of Soho that our days of dancing for dollars were over. In just the past year, Phat Farm and Stussy's flagship stores have shuttered. Bape, Supreme, and Union's traffic are mostly European and Asian tourists. Even Clientele's clientele is thin these days. Adidas stays in the game by discounting its limited edition shoes and shifting most of its floor space to clothing.

What did they used to say? When America coughs, urban America is in the sickbed. America is long past coughing at this point.

Now the dealings in War-shington could define a whole new era, or lead us back to 1973.

On Sunday, as his old company Goldman Sachs looked like it was ready to leap off the precipice, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went on the morning shows to propose himself as the Monarch of the Economy and to have Congress approve the idea by the end of the week.

When deregulation is your mantra, democracy--the people--cannot be trusted to regulate the market. So Paulson claimed decision-making power above the review of the court or other agencies--"greater powers (over the economy)," according to one finance industry insider, "than even the President enjoys."

When trickle-down is your economic theory, corporations are the only individuals worth rehabilitating. So Paulson proposed a Troubled Asset Relief Program--TARP, as its called--to use $700 billion or more of your money to purchase nearly worthless assets from some of the biggest corporate debt abusers.

There is a hip-hop analogy here: in the Bronx in the '70s, slumlords bought up apartment buildings, then hired arsonists to burn them down so that they could pocket the insurance money. Who was left homeless? Not the slumlords.

With the TARP in place, Paulson and his friends can leave their posts at the end of the year and return to a still-bottoming Wall Street that grazes on lucrative funds from War-shington as real folk continue to lose their homes. Critics call this process nationalizing the risk and debt while privatizing the profit.

Talk about the Audacity of Despair.

That's why finance industry lobbyists are licking their chops over Paulson's proposal. Some news reports suggest that this particular bailout plan was sitting on the shelf for the right moment. Conspiracy theory, anyone?

Conspiracy or not, there are shades here of the Shock Doctrine--Naomi Klein's name for the strategy of free-marketeers and their governments to use catastrophes as opportunities to lay waste to countries while creating secure economic, social, and political Green Zones for the rich. What happens in Baghdad--and Santiago and Buenos Aires and Jakarta and...--eventually comes home to New York and War-shington.

Paulson's TARP proposal locks into place the same lack of accountability and transparency that came to define the Patriot Act, the Iraq War Resolution, pro-torture policy, and more for the entire funny-money economy.

And where was W. in all of this, our fair President? After speaking on the economy for short minutes this past weekend, he presumably retired to the West Wing to continue putting together his favorite things for his Presidential Library.

Yesterday, he sent Cheney out on his first Congressional mission since the Iraq War Resolution. He rewrote a speech to the UN yesterday to reassure the world.
Goodnight Bush, indeed.

I said it a while ago and I stand by it: W. is our generation's Herbert Hoover, the Republican president who led us into the Great Depression. We are now staring down into our own economic depths. The bankers want to make sure it won't be them leaping out of the buildings this time.

But if Paulson's deal is so good to Wall Street, why is the market still plunging? The spin is that markets are now reacting to instability in War-shington. There may be a better explanation.

Over the past decade, corporate hucksters sold a fantasy of pure profit, from Enron through Lehman--one that hip-hop all too often bought in our desire to identify with those large and in charge. But markets cannot function for long on a foundation of obscure financial instruments, accounting shell-games, and corporate lies.

The markets come back down to the people, and perhaps the people are now finding the word now to sum up their judgment.

Enough.

This was originally published at Vibe.com.

Comments

[standforpeace]

I remember the last time I felt pressured to support something that I knew was inherently wrong. It was the fall of 2002, and Colin Powell was standing in front of the United Nations with computer generated cartoons of what a mobile WMD truck would look like. Condi and Dick were screetching about mushroom clouds at every turn. The media was towing the party line with their war on terror graphics and refusal to do any real investigating. And many Democrats were falling all over themselves to line up with the Republicans in an effort to appear tough on terrorists, shore up their commander in chief in waiting credentials, or appeal to swing voters.

Now here we go again. Once again we're being told that the world as we know it will implode if we don't hand over all authority to Bush and his gang. We're being told that the situation is so bad that there is no time to debate, no time to consider, no time to investigate other options. The only solution is to put all of our trust in the very same officials who just weeks ago were telling us that the worst is over. And we're being asked to bail out the greedy bastards that have made billions while working class wages slipped and millions of Americans went without healthcare. And we know that the same foks sounding the alarm now will make a united stand against universal health care labeling it "socialism." WTF!

[Gidster]

Why do we see fit to put failed executives in charge of things that they failed at?
Paulson ran Goldman into the ground and now he wants America to trust him with the entire economy?
No oversight and judicial amnesty means he could write himself a $700 Billion check and nip off to Rio and it would be technically legal.
Haven't we had enough of this Administrations malfeasance? Their greed? Their Corruption?

[tsloan]

Guess we are finally seeing that Shock and Awe we've heard so much about

[DarthVector]

Word.