Lame Obama, Lame Geithner
Obama’s stimulus package was voted by the Senate in a different form from the House’s version yday. So the House and the Senate will have to spend days bargaining over a common plan. It’s $800bn and it’s finally fiscal, not monetary like all the good money wasted ’til now. But it’s hard to get one’s hope up in terms of social fairness and redistribution. As the Senate was voting, BHO was asked by a Florida unemployed about increasing unemployment benefits. The body language of the black prez showed acute embarrassment. He said they’ll be increased by just $100 a month, while the guy had proposed automatic income supplements for whoever loses her/his job or is forced to take a drastic cut in pay, so to make her/his previous income whole.
Later, i saw Geithner’s testimony. He wants to give yet more money to banks “to restore trust and the flow of lending”. He came up with a vague plan for a bad bank with public and private money to absorb toxic assets. Same faulty approach of last year’s TARP program. I mean GoldmanSachs Paulson and Wall Street Geithner differ in the fact that at least the latter wants private capital to chip in in the mess it created. But hell, it’s still money with no strings attached, and it doesn’t put a value on these assets (think McMansions in the Nevada desert: how much are they worth now?).
Only nationalization of banks and socialization of credit will get us out of the slump, while undermining the power of those who got us into this mess. Eurobankers stay incredibly arrogant, viz. ackermann in germany or mazzotta in italy. These greedy dumbsters will hoard all the public money they receive and keep lending at penalty rates. Damn it, let’s make élites cough up this cash for social spending. The $10 trillion which, one way or the other, are being thrown at the parallel banking system and stimulus plan amount to more than $1.400 that could be given to every human on the planet. And most of these folks would spend this money instead of hoarding it.
Also no progressive policy is sustainable without restrictions on capital movements. The era of financial globalization ended in misery and indignity. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again. A minimal social plank for the left in europe and elsewhere could be:
- basic income and living wage
- socialization of credit
- taxation of wealth
- controls on capital movements and fixed exchange rates
- deficit spending on environment, culture, education, community empowerment financed by money creation
Let’s unite on March 28 and April 1st against financial capitalism. Let’s do a joint Mayday to make’em pay.