“If the market is ultimately driven by fear and greed, then we had fear in spades.”
Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist, Charles Schwab & Co.
“We have an economy driven very much by access to credit.”
Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist, Charles Schwab & Co.
“Consumers have been running on fumes, using their homes to finance extravagant lifestyles.”
Christopher Thornberg, economist, Beacon Economics.
Those quotations appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in an article about how the U.S. debt crunch has started knocking knees throughout the world. Why? Because our subprime lenders and creditors have been selling debts we take on as securities to investors. Basically, our lenders have become middlemen and find someone else to back our risk for a profit. I’ve heard some people describe it as a Ponzi scheme, but it’s really just the byproduct of a national housing bubble, and a surefire sign that we definitely were in one, no matter how wishful the thinking was.
The big problem is that we’ve been trading in risk which, as a grade schooler learning about nouns can tell you, is not a real thing, but an abstract idea. It all makes me believe the words of my brother-in-law’s father, a man with an M.A. in economics:
“All economics is voodoo economics, it’s based on nothing real.”
I wonder what the presidential candidates think of it, not that I’m particularly pleased, especially with the Dems.
Right from the get-go, I’d been stumping for John Edwards because he made an example out of booking smaller, less expensive and more intimate appearances, and actually talking policy with real people. Leave it to him and Dennis Kucinich to be the only ones talking labor when speaking at a forum organized by the AFL-CIO. Of course, Edwards supported North Carolina becoming a “Right-to-Work” state (which means the state outlawed unions), but he still spoke to the issues at hand. And too bad Kucinich has been the laughing stock of left-wing polls.
I’d been sensitive to the issue ever since growing positively livid over the trash lockout in the East Bay. To wit, Waste Management, the largest trash pickup company in the country, had been reportedly spending $600,000 a day to illegally lock 500 Teamster employees out of their jobs, even though the union hadn’t even decided to strike. Nine cities went without trash service for a month. If the employees had been paid a fantasy salary of $80,000 a year, the bill for each day would have come to $110,000, so this wasn’t even really about the money.
Even Bill Richardson had been impressive, if hyperactive, in terms of ideas. He’s got a good sense of two things we desperately need: foreign policy and the environment.
But, oh dear. Then came the gay thing, and things turned ugly.
The Human Rights Campaign, a moderate gay rights organization, and Logo, a gay cable network, put on a forum for the all candidates. All the Republicans declined, but most of the Dems showed up, and what did they do? Even worse than skirting issues important to the group that invited them, Obama, Clinton and Edwards all came out and said they opposed same-sex marriage.
Edwards said his faith made him do it, but he’s working on separating his church from his state.
Clinton said she said she didn’t support same-sex marriage so she could be for civil unions. She even said she supported the Defense of Marriage Act because it was a tactical tool to defeat a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Get it? Me neither!
Obama joined the other two in pleading to us, just don’t call it marriage.
Richardson said he didn’t think it was attainable.
Only Kucinich and Mike Gravel said they supported same-sex marriage.
Joe Biden and Chris Dodd couldn’t attend, but Dodd wrote responses to the forum’s questions on his blog. He’s strong on nondiscrimination and healthcare but also doesn’t support same-sex marriage, and says it’s an issue for the individual states.
They might as well have called me “Macaca.”
Same-sex marriage is an equal rights issue. It’s plainly covered under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, yes, while marriage is a state issue, it’s still federal until we can get it out of things like joint filing of income taxes and settling estates. Then again, civil marriage itself is a big problem, but maybe I’ve just never loved anyone enough to mix church and state, and take them to a probate lawyer. Isn’t it romantic?
No wonder so many Americans feel so powerless: both the economy and political system are betraying us. When that happens, we can always depend on other pieces of Americanness. I like mine fried.
The Yellow Menace craves a bucket of fried Americanness. You can contact him at theyellowmenace1@gmail.com.
August 11, 2007 at 10:04 pm
The father of your brother-in-law made a wonderful statement…i can see now that voodo, like economics, is all in our heads! However, i still question whether or not voodo is real because if it was slighltly so then i’d be a very rich man.
August 12, 2007 at 10:06 am
And The Walls Came Down.
All The Way To Hell ….
Ah the crumbling of our fine, fine nation.
So much for equality and liberty — both pretty well down the toilet thanks to both parties and the people who vote for them.
Is there anything RIGHT with the USA right now? Anything we haven’t managed to ruin?
No, really. I’d like to know. I’m grasping at straws here.
August 12, 2007 at 3:44 pm
So, the subject of the article was worked out backwards from the (admittedly phenomenal) title of the piece, right?
August 12, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Steph: I think a lot does go right in this country, but I think our narrative thirst for conflict tends to drown those things out in favor of controversy. I will definitely write about things that go right.
August 12, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Monkmunk: (Done in the voice of Maxwell Smart) Would you believe I wrote the piece first.
August 13, 2007 at 12:36 pm
The fun of economics is that it’s a phantom construct (for the most part) that has real-world impacts. And I think a lot of the economists out there tend to treat it purely as a mathematical game that can be ‘won’ (in mathematical terms) without thoughts for the human factor that eventually pulls up anchor and says, “Bye, guys. This is stupid.”
Also, your links appear to have had some kind of voodoo worked on them such that they link to your wp-admin folder.
August 13, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I’d like to point out that Richardson said at that forum that he believes being gay is a choice. Watch the video again.
August 13, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Jason L.: No need. I’m well aware that he said he thought being gay is a choice, and that he admitted he was uncomfortable getting into definitions games with things he doesn’t fully understand.
It really doesn’t matter whether being gay is a choice or not, queer people of all sorts are still a significant population that is not afforded equal rights. Under the current argument, saying that someone is born gay legitimizes it, it makes it O.K., it gives people an excuse to say someone is “normal” — because somehow choosing it is unacceptable. In that case, couldn’t you just please everyone else and not do it?
And the answer is no.
August 20, 2009 at 7:56 am
It boggles my mind how divisive issues such as same-sex marriage can be. So much so that politicians will do anything to avoid taking a stance for fear of alienating voters or some times take a stance that is at odds with the rest of their platform.
I think part of the problem is that in politics, popularity matters, and until its realized, like you say, that same-sex marriage is an equal rights issue (ie not up to the whims of the majority), it will fall victim to the games of politics.