Thursday night I was joined by the brilliant Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine,” to talk about the current economic Shock Capitalism that is taking place right now, thanks to Bush and Paulson’s 700 billion dollar plan to bail out Wall Street. And all the wealthy free-market conservative CEOs that drained Main Street for ungodly sums of money until all the financial institutions began to crash and burn are cheering. Bush’s base is comprised of these CEOs and they pulled off the ultimate “complexity scheme” on the American people. Naomi hits on some very important ideas during this twenty minute interview.
Klein: But I think that it’s important to stress that this is money that could be used for actively preventing foreclosures. They could be using this money - a fraction of it - to keep people in their homes. They could be stimulating and rebuilding the fundamentals of the economy by investing in infrastructure, public works projects, a green-style New Deal - all of the investments that are so desperately needed. New technology, investing in the real economy and getting away from this casino economy. And because they want to throw all this money at Wall Street, that is money that will not be available for those real investments.
Say goodbye to Universal Health Care if McCain is elected. John and the House Republicans are now trying to pull another scam on the American people ,which is another tried and true method that conservatives use. As Digby says: They run as Populists, but govern as Aristocrats. It works all too well. It’s a wonderful scam. Now, I’m not saying that a deal shouldn’t take place, but a cautious approach should be paramount. As Krugman says: The Dodd-Frank changes make the plan less awful, mainly by creating an equity stake… Also, the oversight means that Treasury can be prevented from making the plan a pure gift to financial evildoers. If the plan looks not-awful enough, I’ll be pro. But I won’t be cheering - I’ll be holding my nose.
Klein: And they all knew it. They all knew it and they were making money as fast as they could based on their belief that they would get bailed out. Because it is entirely consistent with the Bush administration over the past 7 years. One of the other big lies floating around is this is somehow a departure from the way the Bush administration usually does business. It’s not a departure; it’s just a change in the direction of the flow. This is what they have been doing for 7 years: transferring public money, public wealth, into the hands of private crony contractors. And now as their final act they are taking the bad debts of the corporate sector and transferring them to the taxpayer. There is no aberration here; there is no big surprise. This is entirely consistent with everything they’ve done.
For instance, where the heck did this $700 billion figure come from in the first place? A Treasury Department spokeswoman told Forbes.com this week, quote, “It’s not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number.” A really large number? That’s the calculus among our nation’s leading economic theorists and managers? We just need a ton of money; we don’t know how much, just make the pile really tall? Isn’t economics a science? Not reassuring.
Just think about that figure. They pulled it out of thin air. Here’s the interview. (full transcript below the fold)
(Read the rest of this story…)
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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