Wise sayings

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In Free-Market America, money spends you!

Concerning pawns and corporate theft

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Hasbro Corp., heir to the Parker Brothers board game portfolio, was in the news this week for a group-participation publicity stunt having the goal of stimulating sales of back stock and endless permutations of new, special-edition merchandise to shut-ins.

If I cared about this, I'd say that cats do not belong on the Monopoly board. Prowling the estate to ambush rodents and squirrels, yes. Purring in your grandmother's lap, swaddled in her paisley shawl, sure. (On YouTube? Hell no!) I'll interrupt myself by adding that the Monopoly board is no place for a Scotty dog, either. And, too, I'm not so partial to the battleship. The animal kingdom should be represented on the board by, say, a lead-based vulture and a water moccasin.

Predictably, intrepid journalist types will eat up an "exciting campaign" like this, and in the current particular case may even pretend to look for deeper social meaning:

Consider the kitty cat’s victory as both an expression of what economics should really be about – supporting our ability to do what the heck we want with our time – and as a vote of confidence in our national need to relax a bit.

True. Economics should really be about doing "what the heck we want". For instance, packing a Glock 17 in a tavern, or not paying any taxes to support the amenities of US citizenship, or paying your lawmaker's campaign committee to help make sure minorities and old people can't vote in the next election.

Monopoly is a game that transforms bloodthirsty, exploitative conduct into cute fun. And a good time is had by all! (Boomp boomp!) The domestic clothes-pressing iron has, on at least one documented occasion, been used as a weapon of cold-blooded murder (by a killer cartoonist!). And so, both as a symbol of the forced domestication of modern females and the weaponization of consumerism, the iron befits the Monopoly board well, being equally at home on Baltic Avenue, Boardwalk, or in Jail.

Personally, I think there's a much more fascinating story about Monopoly that isn't widely known. We could argue that an economic monopoly is corporate theft through application of The Law Of The Jungle. But one author argues with dead certainty that the board game Monopoly is theft---that is, it became private "intellectual property" through an act of theft from the public domain.

According to this outstanding article I read in Harper's a few months ago, called "Monopoly is Theft," the "official" history of the game began in 1933, "invented" by "an unemployed steam-radiator repairman and part-time dog walker" named Charles Darrow. It's a stirring saga of an irrepressible entrepreneur and a scrappy-but-failing board game company, except (as author Christopher Ketcham informs us) it's not true. One obvious problem with the corporate history of Monopoly is that the game had already been around for 30 years, under a different name---The Landlord's Game---but very similar design:

The game’s true origins, however, go unmentioned in the official literature. Three decades before Darrow’s patent, in 1903, a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie created a proto-Monopoly as a tool for teaching the philosophy of Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Monopoly began life as an "open source" educational tool for teaching people the economic philosophy of a 19th century socialist! And the objective of the game was to thwart the monopolist, not to become one. Then the game was shoplifted from the public domain by Depression-era capitalists, and eventually mutated into such lucrative niche varietals as "University of Illinois Monopoly" and "Rockopoly". The article is quite long, but really informative and captivating if you have any interest in economics, intellectual property law, or American history. I definitely recommend printing the article out, in full, preferably on your company's laser printer.

Image retrieved from http://www.slowfamilyonline.com/tag/landlords-game/, reproduced here for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Pauper wages

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I saw the video embedded below linked on Eschaton by one Avedon Carol (an Atrios confederate who lives in Merrie Olde England). I'm certain it's worth 13 minutes of time to anyone who tiptoes around an inner dread about America's future---especially the health of the economy for ordinary people and the outsized influence of excessive wealth on public policy.

The "hook" for this interview is that the marginal income tax rate on top earners during the Eisenhower administration was 90%. I'm certain that fact would shock the vast majority of Americans today, especially with a general knowledge of how prosperous America was during that era. As you watch the video, consider whether Michael Hudson's words, as alien as they are to the conventional wisdom today, are relevant to your everyday status as a wage-earner, provider, and citizen.

Take note of the term "pauper wages" to roll around inside your noodle next time you hear news about the extermination of the nation's few remaining viable labor unions. To whatever extent Hudson is correct on this topic, it should be difficult for any American worker to understand how he or she will benefit from government-driven downward pressure on union pay and benefits; or from creating trillion-dollar federal deficits by cutting taxes on the wealthiest (and most powerful) Americans.



The gist of Hudson's viewpoint expressed here is that two dominant beliefs central to free-marketeer conventional wisdom are demonstrably wrong. Those two beliefs are that (1) higher wages reduce worker productivity and (2) higher taxation of top earners hurts the economy.

For supporting evidence, Hudson refers to readily accessible data and asserts his credentialed perspective on classical economics as founded by philosophers like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill). And further, he makes an unexpected statement (to me at least) that doesn't sound completely outlandish: that modern free-market "neoliberal" economists have falsely co-opted Smith and his successors while ignoring major aspects of classical economics that don't fit neoliberal ideology. That's an argument I've never heard or read in either corporate-sponsored news media or public broadcasting. In fact, the first hint of that idea only came to me this morning when reading this blog post by Paul Krugman.

As a wildly alternate viewpoint on the timely topic of US wages and taxation---at least compared with Beltway conventional wisdom---Hudson's words express a general and consistent logic to my ears. Nothing he says strikes me utterly at odds with either reason or observable reality, and the sources he refers to can readily be checked by anyone with the time to look at public economic data and read a book or two by the founders of modern economics. You and I don't have that kind of time or intensity, though, so we have to rely on the interpretations of others, and fair argument between alternate viewpoints.

Before this afternoon I'd never heard of Hudson. More importantly, I'd never heard this particular point of view expressed with this level of clarity on the radio or any corporate-sponsored news outlet. On the rare occasions when a genuine liberal or progressive point of view is even examined on air, a competent spokesman for that point of view may not be present in the studio. And meanwhile, the mouthpiece for the standard neoliberal viewpoint---who happens always to be present---is allowed by the moderator to rebut the alternate perspective simply by branding it as "liberal" or "socialist."

It really doesn't matter whether you and I are persuaded by what Hudson has to say here. What does matter is that content providers are deliberately shielding news consumers from important, credible ideas that seriously challenge or even explain away the conventional wisdom that happens to be failing most ordinary working people today.

Businesses do *not* create jobs; please make a note of it

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The title of this post is one of the holiest shibboleths in the rhetorical arsenal of free-market capitalists. I never quite swallowed the associated line and sinker, and about 10 or 15 years ago I slowly started to disgorge the hook. With the stock market and worker productivity continually climbing to all-time highs, I said to myself, why do we so often have unacceptably high unemployment? And why are so many of the jobs that are available crapwork in the food and retail sectors that can't really support one householder, let alone a family? And furthermore, how can anyone claim that burgeoning corporations create jobs when every major acquisition or merger results in 10 or 20 percent of their combined workforces losing their jobs?

This recent Bob Herbert column from the Times is worth a careful read, especially, I think, to people who are confused about economics as reported by the corporate media. Herbert reports on comments by Boston economics professor Andrew sum:

The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.” 

What that means, Herbert says, is this: "Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers." And I'll append Herbert by stating my opinion that small businesses (which officially includes companies employing up to 500 people) are every bit as dirty as transnational corporations. Many do it even in good times by keeping the majority of employees working 30 hours or less, so they aren't entitled to full benefits; and also by basically putting them on call instead of giving them a reliable schedule. Those practices are especially egregious in big box stores and restaurants, based on my conversations with people who work there.

"What a surprising development!" we who have jobs may say to ourselves, going straight for the humorous irony angle. But doesn't this information nevertheless make you wonder why this disconnect between worker productivity and full employment isn't reported nationally at least on a weekly basis by the "liberal media"?

The sure knowledge that businesses do not create jobs --- when it transmutes beyond the point between irony and dawning outrage --- leaves a question in its place to answer. If businesses don't create jobs, then what do they create? Answer: profits for executives, period. It has been moving in that direction for decades, and now we're there. Shit: businesses barely even make anything any more --- they sub that out to the Chinese and the Indians (who of course are rapidly learning to sub the making of stuff out to the Fourth World).

Roaring 20s President Calvin Coolidge is often erroneously quoted as having vacuously said "The business of America is business." Even if had said that, as dumb as it is, it might still be thought to convey a generic fact about American corporate and individual industry. Today, not even Silent Cal's alleged dumb remark can hold water. Because today, the business of American is multi-level marketing schemes. Just like Amway. (Don't call them "pyramid schemes" because you might hurt their feelings.)

Incidentally, here's what calvin-coolidge.org tells us that the 30th president really did say:

The quote is really: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." However, Coolidge goes on to say that, "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence."

And what are we to make of this statement by Herbert Hoover's predecessor:

We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.

The guy sounds like a fucking Obamunist to me! I say we dig him up and lynch him! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The power elites are sissies

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This Balloon Juice page has been hanging open in a Firefox tab on my machine for the past week. I wanted to link to it here for two reasons.

First, the author points out a corporate media meme that should be troubling all of us these days: the idea that us everyday slobs have no business criticizing individuals and corporations who turned the global financial system into a pyramid scheme or whose possibly criminal negligence is responsible for runaway pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, and by extension that the President of the United States --- our First Among Equals --- is an unseemly "bully" for threatening to hold them accountable for their acts. That meme, of course, does not extend to a president's nakedly unconstitutional breaking of international treaties, the instigation of illegal wars, the elimination of habeas corpus on demand, or the bulk wiretapping of electronic communications by innocent civilians --- it only applies to picking on corporations and the man-children who direct them.

Second, the post hints at just how unaccustomed to criticism and populist anger these elites have become after 30 years of The Good Life. There are PR campaigns, executed not only though advertising but by marquee-name news commentators, that scold citizens for "vilifying" financiers and oilmen for the destruction they have sown. Why would the captains of industry bother with such nonsense? Because we make them nervous. They do not like their parasitic livelihoods and lifestyles to be criticized, because they're important people and therefore entitled to anything they wish: unearned income, untaxed riches, unwarranted power, and immunity from accountability. They are nervous because many, many people are beginning to understand that they are parasites out of control. And that they are terrified sissies. There's not a man among them; candy-ass jabronis. Revel in their fear.

With regard to parasites

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Previously on Fifty50 --- last night, to be precise --- I compared the decay of our democratic and business institutions (not to mention church congregations) to what happens when a parasite thrives without any natural regulation and ultimately kills its host (and, a bit later, itself). But I'm not a biologist, so my parasitism similes may lack a certain technical "oomph" when critically examined. And with regard to the aforementioned post, there's a certain awkward mixing of parasitism similes and engineering metaphors. (That's one reason I write an E-list blog instead of textbooks.)

A favorite Big Hussein Otis metaphor for our current epoch is the 1960 George Pal film version of The Time Machine, portraying a future in which the hideous, animalistic Morlock society lures the passive, survival-challenged Eloi population to its underground fortress for the slaughter. [Editor's note: social metaphors aside, this is an awesome family film that every household should own, and is perfect for playfully scaring shit out of any 7-year-old who hasn't been raised on slasher movies.] I agree with BHO's assessment.

The Morlocks are an interesting crew. In a sense they're an apex predator, but they employ what might be viewed as a parasitic ranching strategy. (Again, caveat emptor with regard to my incomplete understanding of natural systems; Fifty50's technical monitors may feel free to help with refinement and nuance.) I say "parasitic ranching" because, if memory of the movie serves, the Morlocks provided no inputs to the Eloi flock --- no management was involved --- but simply exploited the atavistic Eloi response to civil defense sirens.  So the Morlocks might think they're the smartest guys in the room, and they probably are. But someone with a more sophisticated perspective, who incidentally is not in the room, can quickly grasp that the Morlocks do not have a sustainable "business model" for at least two reasons. First, lacking any stewardship of their food supply, the Morlocks are certain to exhaust the herd and consequently starve themselves to extinction. Second, it may be possible for the herd to organically develop a resistance to the parasite --- that is, adapt.

I wonder what would happen to our latter-day Morlocks if the Gulf Coast Eloi were to come under the influence of a 21st century Huey Long.

Another editor's note: the publicity photo of Eloi Yvette Mimieux and her Morlock captor, for The Time Machine (1960), is reproduced as fair use for purposes of literary criticism and social commentary. Thank you for your attention to this matter.)

Wise sayings

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Golf balls. Fucking golf balls!

Worst ever?

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Atrios muses that BP may end up being credited with the worst-ever human-caused disaster. Well, I won't necessarily argue about that because it remains to be seen. But take a look at these pictures from The Boston Globe online (as seen on Eschaton, op cit.). Photos 13 and 14 do a good job of conveying the general sense of what's going on in the water and the puny human response to same.

Even ignoring Hiroshima and Nagasaki as outliers, there are some other pretty heavy contenders for the Worst-Ever Human-Caused Environmental Cataclysm Award. Chernobyl, the flower of Ukraine, would certainly be a finalist. But I think it might be hard (for the moment) to top the utter destruction of the fourth largest lake in the world in Uzbekistan, formerly known as the Aral Sea. But still... maybe we can.

U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!

Editor's note: attentive readers may notice that in yesterday's post on this topic I besmirched Russia only half-accurately as the villain behind certain apocalyptic environmental cockups. Neither aforementioned holocaust actually took place on Russian soil (conveniently for Russians), but were instead "a USSR joint." So take my inexcusable journalistic lapse with a grain of morphine.

Let's make the water turn black

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Our finer citizens, many of whom believe that homos cause hurricanes, may need to consider how cute it is to chant "Drill Baby Drill." It's not cute: it's monstrous.

The drip drip drip of analysis (which BP surely knew two weeks ago) indicates that this disaster is on deck to be America's largest water pollution catastrophe, as projected in this NOLA Times-Picayune graph. I think Russia is still way ahead with China a natural favorite in the coming two decades, if that makes you feel any better. And anyway, don't worry: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is "losing patience," so we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So imagine the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with toxic fisheries and black, gooey beaches writhing with dying birds. Then consider the hypoxic dead zone in the northwestern gulf, made possible by petrochemical companies, agribusiness, and luxuriant suburban lawns. Heckuva job, trickle-downers. I wonder if our finer citizens will ever understand that hurricanes are not caused by homos, but by Republicans. (Volcanos, too.)

"To some it might seem creepy what they do."



(Composition by Frank Zappa for a Cousteau Society documentary, via YouTube, performed by Ensemble Modern.)

Reality really *does* have a liberal bias

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Here's a concept called "epistemic closure," which I first heard of in a Paul Krugman blog post the other day. I'm glad to see this being talked about in mainstream media in serious, clinical terms rather than the usual flummoxed mockery that most of us are forced to resort to. The post spins off from another one by a guy named Jonathan Bernstein, which you can read here, but I think Krugman makes the point more accessible without even acknowledging FOX News and the like. Krugman sees epistemic closure every day in elite university culture --- in the field of economics, to be specific:

It’s been painfully obvious since the crisis broke that people at Minnesota, or even many people at Chicago, have no idea what New Keynesian economics is all about. I don’t mean they disagree, or think it’s garbage, they literally have no idea what the concepts are. And that’s why they reinvent 80-year-old fallacies when they try to discuss the subject.

The postmodern conservative separation from reality, whether in the Senate, or the corporate infotainment universe, or the freshwater school of economics (i.e., Friedman and the Reaganomics he spawned), is deliberately sustained by simply shunning any information that does not originate with like-minded people. Ironically, this anti-reality bias destroys one of the sacred free-market shibboleths: the "marketplace of ideas."

On the one hand I find this development quite chilling to contemplate. On the other hand, I think that the mechanics of de-evolution and decadence will take care of this species of hominids (homo ignoramus) well before mid-century. That's the good news; the bad news is that the world suffers immeasurably more than it really needs to in the interim.

So, as in all other things, Stephen Colbert is right.

Wise sayings

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It is awesome when the stock market surges on the prospect that healthcare reform will fail, but it's an abomination when the stock market retreats because there's talk of restoring bank regulations that, if the Republican Congress and Clinton hadn't dismantled them, would have prevented the current U.S. economic depression.

Trashy little friend of the business world

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As seen on Atrios, Scott Simon's "friend from the business world, Joe Nocera," clearly demonstrates the odious nature of celebrity journalists with some intervention by a blogger named Matt Browner Hamlin. Nocera believes it is right and proper that there should be two different kinds of contracts for each of the nation's two principal social castes (i.e., Masters Of The Universe and All The Rest Of Us Slobs) --- one type that is sacrosanct versus another type that is merely a short-term serving suggestion to trick the rubes.

What a trashy little whore a man must be to write such things for open consideration by the general public. When celebrity journalists and pundits are not held accountable by their publishers for spreading lies or demonstrably ridiculous opinions, they need no credibility in order to earn a giant payday. It makes a guy wonder why the New York Times keeps people like that on salary.

I'll bet Joe Nocera is the type of person who thinks he's too important to wash his hands before returning to work. Absent gloves or hand sanitizer, never shake hands with a trashy little whore of a man. And if he touches you anyway, consider chopping off his hands. Thus Sprach StuporMundi.

Families: our most important resource

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Overheard last Saturday on the second level of Bergner's, Market Place Mall, Champaign, IL. Dramatis personae: a Mother, Upholstered with Fast Food; a Daughter, Inflamed with Desire.

Mother: No!
Daughter: Why? I don't have any!
Mother: Put them down before you break them!
Daughter: Whyyy?!? I don't have any!!!

One legacy of our insect Republican overlords

It's this: the hollowing out of the federal government and the military services by outsourcing core public services to mercenaries. Embassy protection had always been the responsibility of the U.S. Marine Corps. The guys who work for outfits like ArmorGroup North America (AGNA) are paid reams more of the green stuff than leathernecks and soldiers. And the outfits they work for don't provide these essential services out of patriotism: they're duty-bound to make as much profit as possible for the flagship corporation --- in this case "Wackenhut," which sounds like a name that would be given to one of the inhumanoid demons scrawled and splattered into existence by Ralph Steadman (see upper left).

This variety of heist has to be obvious to everyone in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. It's justified by the baldfaced lie that the business sector does everything more efficiently than the government. In fact, the only thing the business sector does more efficiently than government is pillage the U.S. Treasury on behalf of corporation executives. I'll award an aluminum-plated Gordian Knot for the first MBA who can convince me that a corporation can provide highly trained and disciplined security personnel, loyal only to the defense of the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, for a lower price than the salary and benefits of a U.S. Marine.

It should go without saying that the situation at the embassy in Kabul is a completely logical and predictable outcome of using mercenaries to perform inherently governmental work, and it is intolerable that the Congress and the White House should allow this situation to persist for even another day.

Editor's note: the portrait of "Sir Wackenhut" (my nomenclature) is by Ralph Steadman, copyright owned by him or his masters. Fair use is claimed as the image is used here solely for purposes of social commentary and education, for no profit to anyone.

Suggestion for California libertarians

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Attention California tax resisters: if you don't like Government, then next time a wildfire starts to melt your vinyl siding, call Nancy Reagan.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed your imbecile-of-a-governor's awesome garage sale this past weekend. Don't worry: the 14% wage cut he forced on state employees probably didn't apply to the firefighters (especially not the ones who died Sunday while you were still congratulating yourself about your brand new $10 government surplus office chair).

Just dream of it: state-maintained Highway Patrol cruisers and BMW cycles for thousands under book value --- everything must go. Haha --- LOLROFLMAOGTGBRBZOMGZ! Extra, extra --- read all about it! Illiterate eurotrash governor sells off anything a sociopath might want to pick from the twitching corpse of his own state government, pennies on the dollar for the savvy shopper, courtesy of the state's impoverished public schools, colleges, and diseased poor people. Hey, wait, I've got it: let's call it The Great American California's Fire Sale!!! Government sux, destruction rulez!!!

The Smirking Asshole Effect

It's Two-Part Quiz Time! Please answer in a short essay format (25 words or less). Because I know you're lazy, I'll provide the answer for you complete with background information available to you at click of a mouse!

Q1. What do you get 40 years after your state elects a smirking, reactionary asshole to be its Chief Executive Officer?

A1. An ungovernable state that recently had an economy larger than all but six nations on the planet.

Q2. What do you get when you cross a smirking, reactionary asshole, the American Medical Association, and President Barack Hussein Obama?

A2. Health insurance racketeers backstabbed by the AMA.

Last post on AIGFP

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People with more expertise and better analytical skills than me have gotten to the heart of the AIGFP Bonus Baby Affair, as I understand it, much more directly than I was able to. So this will be my last word on the AIGFP bonuses, at least for this week.

My concern about a retroactive targeted tax on the unethical bonuses, such as the one passed in the House today, would be its constitutionality. According to this authority, a Harvard law professor named Laurence Tribe, a tax of this sort could be crafted to comply with the Constitution. However, the first and only commenter on the Atlantic article in which Tribe is quoted suggests some chilling hypotheticals that could emerge from such a legal precedent, causing me to rethink my position on the Bonus Baby tax.

So here's an alternative approach I'd like to see, which differs somewhat from my previous suggestion. I'd like to hear President Obama say something along the lines of "OK, ya know, fuck it --- keep your bonuses. You're gonna need every cent of them when we turn the Justice Department, the SEC, and the FBI loose on your asses to fine out exactly what you've been up to for the past 10 years. And Geithner, Summers: clean out your desks by close of business tomorrow and return your keys to the four huge Secret Service brothers who will escort you to the parking lot."

Nothing will change until RICO Act investigations are initiated and the institutions of our Reaganomics-based phony economy are dismantled with extreme prejudice, brick by brick. At the moment, the count on Obama appears to be 0-2, and he's already fouled off a few. I really hope he's just presenting the illusion of impotence to fake us all out, just for dramatic effect before he pounds one out of the park.

Update before I'm done writing: OK, statements like this "Geithner is doing an outstanding job" shit from Obama on Jay Leno tonight are making me nervous. Fouled another one off; count remains at 0-2....

Drop in a bucket

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LuMac wonders aloud (email-wise, at least):

I... wonder what this relatively little (dollar wise, not symbolic wise) spat is distracting us from.

He is referring to the "mounting populist backlash" about the AIGFP retention bonuses that were given to executives after they had already bolted from the organization. I take his point, but I don't think the dollar amount of this corporate stunt-looting exhibition is relevant, and likewise I don't think it will really distract us from issues that schmucks like this want us distracted from.

First point: I agree that the dollar amount of the bonuses is trivial when compared with a trillion dollars or two. But in the case of a bankruptcy, a broken contract, a burglary, shoplifting --- whatever --- the law doesn't make many distinctions in how the loser or the guilty party is treated based on the amount of property involved. There are distinctions between "petty" and "grand", and undoubtedly some other ones I'm not aware of, but I find it unlikely that the courts are often admonished to look the other way because the value of property involved is trivial. No: these Bonus Babies are in fact being awarded mindblowing amounts of money for a highly visible and destructive failure in competence and ethics. If we're going to make financial comparisons, these bonuses amount to 10, 20, or more years of income even for a family earning $100,000 annually. The idea that the Bonus Babies are contractually entitled to these awards should be declared officially ludicrous by AIG shareholders and all parties who hold effectively void AIG contracts or the worthless "investment products" created by AIGFP. It is highly unlikely that the IRS, the Justice Department, the SEC, etc., could not find a large handful of airtight legal reasons to "abrogate" the AIGFP performance and retention bonuses; all they need are some facts and figures to wave in front of a few warty, sweating bankers sitting on card table chairs under bright lights.

Everybody knows that the most spectacular robbery of all times is unfolding in front of us. The U.S. Treasury is being looted by people who have mounds of money and influence that they simply assume they will get their way in the end. And why not? It now appears that people in Obama's Treasury Department and the Senate are complicit in granting these toads whatever wish is their command.

This kind of thing has been happening for decades, but somehow it has never initiated a critical mass of public fury. Mike Milken became the first superstar performance artist of financial fraud during the '80s, and the son of a sitting vice president --- Neil Bush --- was up to his eyeballs in the savings and loan collapse in the late 1980s. Financial crime sprees have been swept under the rug for 30 years, and I never sensed significant public outrage about it. But never has the pure cause-and-effect of it been this naked, and never has the economic collateral damage aproached these levels (with more to come, surely). One hopeful sign, to me at least, is that even the corporate media may be losing its ability to obscure these facts now, possibly because there are legions of unemployed, underemployed, and just plain scared and angry people who have ample time to watch Stewart and Colbert every night, and are motivated to make noise about it.

Second point: I don't believe that Bonusgate (let me be the first to use the term, thank you very much) is going to distract many of the key stakeholders in the U.S. economy for very long. I don't remember a more unstable political or legal situation since the Watergate era. The current epoch differs from 1973 because there is a large, educated, highly motivated segment of the population with powerful research and communication tools. The public was never in such a strong position to pressure both their elected officials and, even more importantly in my opinion, the corporate press. Information wants to be free: if the media don't release it to the public, then it will find its way to us (and eventually the media) via independent web-based journalists and bloggers. And I don't mean bloggers like me --- I mean bloggers who are working economists, attorneys, IT specialists, and reporters.

How to pay AIGFP bonuses and live happily ever after

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I wish I could take credit for the following brilliance, but in fact it came from one Lucious MacAdoo or someone very much like him.

We're told that AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) is contractually obligated to pay almost half a billion dollars in bonuses to AIGFP execs and other "key personnel", and that there is nothing Uncle Sam can do about it even though the U.S. Treasury owns 80 percent of the corporation's necrotic corpus. Josh Marshall took aim at that concept today with bullshit detector blazing. Meanwhile, NPR dutifully spent the day explaining to us rubes that not even the federal government can force a corporation to "abrogate" a contract. (Inexplicably, NPR did not tell us why it's possible for a corporation to abrogate its contracts with unions and pensioners.)

Enter Lucious with a fine idea, possibly overheard from his own id: force the AIGFP execs to accept their bonuses in the form of the "innovative financial products" they created. In my opinion, this would represent the most elegant solution to any problem ever conceived since the dawn of human history. Think of how easily these wizards could sell their bonus portfolios at huge profits on the unregulated open market for financial derivatives, then spend the proceeds on goods and services crafted by American workers who, early every Saturday morning, spring out of bed and drive to big box stores to purchase massive amounts of swag using credit cards that are readily available with no questions asked.

No point in "bipartisanship" [updated]

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Now that Democrats have sleazed up the economic stimulus package with regressive GOP measures, such as tax cuts targeted at the wealthy, Republicans have predictably withheld their support of it completely along party lines in the first House vote. The linked article predicts that at least a few Republicans will vote for the parallel bill in the Senate. Democrats need to stop worrying about Republican support now; they need to worry about voter support in the next round of national elections.

Maybe congressional Democrats will surprise all of us by using some strategy, brains, and guts now. One move that would demonstrate those qualities might be to strip all compromises they previously made with Republicans out of the stimulus package when it goes to the conference committee. Compromising with modern Republicans is ridiculous... unless its for the purpose of laying a trap to show that Republicans lie about bipartisanship and will do anything to prevent the majority party from rehabilitating the economy. Democrats should hit all the blab shows pounding on the theme that Republicans wasted almost 2 weeks extracting compromises on the stimulus package in bad faith solely for purposes of obstructing the new political majority in this country. They should explain that all compromises made with Republicans in the stimulus package now have been overcome by events, and that Democrats will restore the bill to its original intent in order to jolt the economy back into action in ways most aligned with the national interests.

I did not vote for Barack Obama or Dick Durbin to be bipartisan... unless it is part of a cunning strategy to be highly partisan on my behalf.

Updates: Maybe --- who knows???