The Hoover-Palin Ticket
And the winner is ... Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him--the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan Revolution heralding a new era of small government, which turned out to be nothing more than a fig leaf for legalized corporate crime. The hero of the hour is FDR, as the essential wisdom of his New Deal is now embraced by most Republicans as well as Democrats.
Roosevelt's legacy was acknowledged Monday when GOP presidential nominee John McCain absurdly accused his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, of advocating policies pursued by Herbert Hoover, the Republican incumbent whom Roosevelt defeated in 1932. While clueless GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin prattled on at the same rally about Reaganomics and getting government out of the way of business, most other Americans noticed--and are grateful--that the federal government now directly manages many of our biggest businesses in the all-important financial sector.
The banking bailout is pure FDR at his big-government best. Greedy bankers are being taken to the woodshed and read the riot act: If they behave, then they will once again have the opportunity to be filthy rich--that's the American way.
As McCain put it Tuesday: "I will begin by making certain that the $700 billion already committed to economic recovery is not used to further enrich the very people and institutions that invited these troubles with their own reckless conduct."
Yes, McCain finally gets it: "I will not play along with the same Washington games and gimmicks that got us into this terrible mess in the first place. I am going to Washington to fight for you." I didn't check whether this performance made it into the "Moment of Zen" in "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," but it should have. "I am going to Washington" is a classic proclamation of stupidity that assumes the rest of us are unaware of where McCain has been these past three decades.
The "gimmicks that got us into this terrible mess in the first place" were made legal by the passage of radical deregulatory legislation that McCain, as much as anyone in Washington, enthusiastically supported. Those gimmicks--hybrid instruments, credit swaps and so on--were codified in laws pushed through Congress by Phil Gramm, the man McCain esteemed so highly that he chaired the then-senator's 1996 presidential campaign and then chose Gramm to co-chair his 2008 run for the White House.
No one in Washington had a clearer warning of the dangers of those games and gimmicks than McCain, who, as one of the Keating Five, ran interference for the savings-and-loan swindlers of an earlier era. But McCain did not personally share in the financial misfortune of those who lost their life's saving in the S&L meltdown; his wife, Cindy McCain, had an inside track with Charles Keating and made more than a million bucks participating in Keating's swindles before the financier was dispatched to prison.
Instead of learning the harsh lessons of the S&L debacle, McCain plunged ahead, crusading for even more extreme deregulatory measures that dismantled the financial safeguards FDR had put in place to prevent another Great Depression. McCain, as much as anyone, is responsible for the decriminalization of the reckless conduct that he now attributes to Wall Street: "We will learn from this crisis to prevent the next one, with much stricter oversight. No more wild over-leveraging, no more liabilities concealed from the public and from shareholders, no more bundling of assets to maximize profit by assuming insane risks. Those days are over on Wall Street. With new rules of public disclosure and accounting, my reforms will make certain those betrayals of shareholders and the public trust are never repeated."
Why not begin with a reversal of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Gramm sneaked into an omnibus bill only hours before Congress adjourned for the 2000 Christmas recess, codifying "Legal Certainty for Swap Agreements"? Or that act's Title IV, which explicitly exempted from regulation the new gimmicks (which McCain now condemns) by forbidding the government to "exercise regulatory authority with respect to ... an unidentified banking product which had not been commonly offered, entered into, or provided in the United States by any bank on or before Dec. 5, 2000 ..."?
Over the last eight years, McCain has consistently opposed all efforts to modify the legislation that gave the bandits the keys to the banks. It's McCain who is the Herbert Hoover in this presidential race.
Robert Scheer is the editor in chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."
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Think we should ask ourselves why the stock market is so volatile and I think Californiadreamer has it about right. Brokers and investment firms don't believe any of the infusion is going to make any sort of difference and if credit is needed there will be few institutions willing to risk giving credit and many unwilling to apply for credit. For example, there are going to be thousands of second semester tuition bill going out to people who once had a solid 401K but who no longer have anything close to that. Where are they going to get the funds to keep their children in college? And because we are a credit-junkie nation there's no help coming from the credit cards; banks also may be unwilling to lend even if they have not YET been affected by the money crunch. Most of the rest of us think we just have to hold on tight to what we have, and maybe for some time; therefore, we aren't buying any more than is absolutely necessary. Friedman said on This Week that the last time the price of oil "cratered", in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. The prediction is that oil prises will continue downward. What worldwide event could possibly occur on that sort of scale? The other question is can either man now a candidate serve this nation as FDR did during the depression? I do not see that, especially believing that the depths of this recession have not been plumbed.
When McCain's son Andrew's bank Silver Star failed McCain and the main stream media were silent about the connections that McCain and his wife had invested in Silver Star but were able to walk away with profits rather than losses as many were left to contend with. It's so 1980's savings and loan all over again and no one in the media is bothering to highlight this.
McCain also got some pretty preferential treatment to instal cell towers on his ranch that don't help to serve the community at large and Palin got a sweetheart deal on the construction on her home by the contractors who built the ice rink in her town. When is someone in the media going to question McCain and Palin on their corruption?
If you look into the details of the bailout, you'll find that Paulson has already given the store away to the banks, but it wasn't enough.
Why not? Because the ongoing costs of the Near Eastern wars are poisoning the economy. All the money that's wasted there is not available to stimulate the domestic economy.
Of course, Bush and McCain would keep those wars going until the country is completely bankrupted.
If Obama wins next month, he can stop the wars and start rebuilding the economy, at the cost of considerable economic dislocation as the military-industrial complex winds down. That has to happen sooner or later, as we simply cannot afford to keep these wars going, just to justify the existence of the MIC.
As of today 10/15/08, the market has not bought into the credit bailout because they are looking ahead to the coming recession. There might be credit available but who is going to borrow it.? As the economy goes deeper into the tank, I wonder if the bailout will be seen as a final plan by bush to use fear and innuendo and outright lies to bail out the banking industry while the real economy sinks into a recession. As did Hoover and FDR, now Obama will have to create jobs to put money into the economy to get it jump started. Building roads, repairing infrastructure will be worthwhile job creators. Start developing a green collar economy. But make sure the money for this is coming from the corporations and get a Democratic congress to write and enforce stringent new tax laws. The super rich will still be super rich with increased taxes. Making the USA a more egalitarian socieity will send a message to other countries that we are changing from the role of master of the world to a more honest relationship. Perhaps this will send a message to other dictatorships that they too must help the people not the ruling oligarchs.
I really wonder how many have looked at Hoover's record before repeating the misplaced common "wisdom".
As a starting point, suggest a quick read of Murray Rothbard's famous article trashing Hoover as the intellectual father of the New Deal.
After that, Harris G Warren's book.
What were some of the things HH did?
(1) Launched a govt works/construction project to provide jobs.
(2) Jawboned the electric industry into starting a similar construction project.
(3) Negotiated a pact between big business, big labor and agriculture. In return for moderating wage demands (labor), big business promised not to fire people.
(4) Pushed trhough a tax cut.
All steps out of the Kenysian playbook.
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Yeah, David Kennedy's "Freedom From Fear," Pulitzer-winning Oxford History of 1929-45 examines the Hoover Administration and also claims he got a bad rap. In fact, it says many of FDR's first moves had been tried by Hoover who couldn't get them through Congress. Even Harry Truman during his tenure, bidding for national health insurance and all, sought out HH's advice & participation on world hunger. HH may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even W knew to say, "Not on my watch."
There is a theory that the GD was a series of three shocks
a) irrational exuberance in the US domestic economy
b) return to the gold standard by major countries
c) protectionist policies than followed in the wake of the gold standard as well as the lingering effects of the ww1 reparattions and repayment to the US of Allied war debts
Hoover did too little too late. Hoover road a wave of deregulation and lowered top tax rates that led to the bubble and the great depression.
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But, If I believe what I read, Hoover is perhaps too much maligned.
It's a very interesting read about Hoover, with amazing similarities to our current situation.
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Didn't FDR close the banks, so that they could determine which ones were good. Later, he reduced the wages of DC government employees. What a guy!
Yes, there was a "bank holiday". And when the banks that he approved opened, they seemed to be good ones with good control on every level and that helped people believe that FDR knew what he was doing; it seemed the economy was saved.
Of course one could say that his time in Washington was an out of body experience. While his body was there his mind was off in the nether world of Reaganomics and it's still not clear if he has come back - since he still advocates the supply side mantra that tax cuts will solve all economic and social problems. My impression is that his Hover reference is simply another way of underscoring that belief while taking on the mantle of high minded reform. It is another act and about as sincere as his protestations against negative campaigning - the idea sounds nice but which he will never really embrace it.
Past is prologue.
A vacuum awaits the Hooverites.
I'm voting for FDR-bama.
We also must remember one of FDR's greatest contributions was WW2. :)
Ya, it took Democrats to win that war too!
Putting a stop to Fascism is a very Democratic thing.
Its ironic that the hatred that bush has for FDR, and how he tried to destroy his policies are being vindicated with this economic mess that bush put us in. Bush has shown how much America needs FDR's policies.
Hmmmm...ap
Please do a little reading before you post such foolishness.
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Knowledge is power, dear. Educate yourself.
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