Furthermore, this is an election year, and Congress is set to go home and resume campaigning at the end of the week. So a plan to save the economy and bailout the financial firms that got us into this mess will be hammered out very hastily in the heat of emotion. And, like the Iraq war vote, decisions made this week will haunt us for years.
The amount of money at stake is staggering. $700 billion is more than the cost of the war in Iraq to date, more than the entire 2009 budget for medicaid and medicare, more than the 2009 budget for social security, and just under the 2009 military budget. It represents $2000 for every man, woman, and child in the country--above and beyond what we already pay for the actual services of the federal government. And for what? To keep us all from being damaged even more than we have already by the irresponsible business practices of the financial industry we are bailing out.
The great majority of our leaders failed us in the Iraq authorization vote. They made political decisions based on the emotion of the moment. Let’s hope they do better this time. If this deal does not go far enough to reign in the unfettered business practices that got us here, then our leaders must have the courage to walk away. This time, the administration cannot be given a blank check. The deal must provide strong oversight and powerful safeguards against future crises, or we must be willing to say, “No deal.”
]]>There are dozens of things that could be done. But the most important is to shift values. Franklin made it prestigious to embrace certain bourgeois virtues. Now it’s socially acceptable to undermine those virtues. It’s considered normal to play the debt game and imagine that decisions made today will have no consequences for the future.
He is, of course, correct, but the difficulty is knowing how to change values. We can state our values and identify our chosen virtues, much as Franklin did, but merely calling for a kind of behavior does not always do the trick. Values often follow behavior, rather than the other way around. We acquire many virtues by practicing them. Parents model truthful statements, hard work, and thrift, and they reward us for following their lead. Our modern problem stems from those instances—and there are many—when our behavior is molded by commercial and technological developments, and a new and less virtuous value results.
Take, for example, pornography. Once a very seamy commodity consumed by only the most depraved members of the community. To find it you had to go into parts of town most people preferred not to visit. Then came the VCR. With the introduction of videocassettes that could be watched at home in privacy, many of the social barriers were removed. Distribution took a further leap forward with hotel and home cable systems, and finally, the internet really brought pornography home. The result is that, despite our highly religious society (compared, for example, to Europe), pornography has become much more acceptable than it was thirty years ago. Jenna Jameson has written a bestselling book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, and the line between acceptable celebrity and unacceptable celebrity has been blurred. Porn has come out of the closet, driven not by a change in values but by a change in technology. Behavior that is popular begins to appear normal. Today, only child pornography is truly beyond the pale.
So the problem with thrift is that debt is the new pornography. Actually the two have come along together. The introduction of credit cards, 800-telephone numbers, home shopping channels, and the internet have served to eliminate many of the natural barriers to indebtedness. We live in a consumer society that depends on spending and has made it easy to act impulsively 24-hours a day. Popularizing thrift as a virtue is important, but unless we also find ways to encourage virtuous behavior, we are unlikely to demonstrate those values. Brooks’ column—and the report upon which it is based—make many good suggestions, but we also need to acknowledge the powerful effect of the contemporary marketplace on our choices to spend and save. If we can make it easier to show virtuous behavior, the change of values Brooks seeks will follow.
]]>I have known and admired the Clintons for decades and I have no doubt that Hillary could do an excellent job as Vice President. But this current spectacle illustrates why he should not choose her. Hillary and Bill Clinton are masters at claiming the public limelight even at the expense of larger public purpose. Media attention puts her unflagging ambition center stage and his unbridled (although sometimes misdirected) charm on full display. Were Obama to make her his Vice President, she would turn the tables and make him her President, just as she has turned the tables this week and transformed his remarkable victory into her audacious dare.
And leave aside whether $14,000 in 1985 was really such a shockingly low salary for someone recently out of college — in inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s about what we pay entry-level editorial assistants today at The Weekly Standard.The next few comments are admittedly ad hominem, so if you are offended, skip to #4.
Question: On what date (and at what time) will Hillary Clinton concede the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States to Barack Obama?
Possible dates: May 20, 2008 through Never.
Time: to the minute with a reference time zone.
Where do I vote?: in the comments below.
What do I win?: BRANE (bragging rights and nothing else).
“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.
The pledge sought to preserve the status of traditional early-voting states and bring order to an unwieldy series of primaries that threatened to accelerate the selection process. It was devised to keep candidates from campaigning in Florida, where the primary is set for Jan. 29, and Michigan, which is trying to move its contest to Jan. 15.
Today Hillary is sending out an email urging her supporters to tell the DNC to "count every vote." The real political decision is Clinton's appeal for a do-over, something she would never do if the candidates' delegate counts were reversed.
By the way, the next time McAuliffe makes his "political decision" statement, it would be nice if somebody—anybody—in the media challenged him on it. It took me all of 30 seconds to find the quote above.
Why is the Fed taking action (or promising to take action) now? First, consumer anger about credit cards has been building for some time, and the subprime lending crisis has drawn attention to the problem of predatory lending generally. Second, I suspect the Fed is also responding to criticisms that its recent bailout of Bear Stearns was a big, expensive move that served the upper end of the economy—Wall Street investors—and did little for consumers who happen to be really hurting as real estate values plummet, gas prices skyrocket, and a recession looms. So here was an issue that has suddenly become rather uncontroversial, and the promise of action now might polish the Fed’s image with consumers. They might have waited to make this announcement until the end of the year, when the details of the regulations “could be” finalized, but the Fed needs some image enhancement now.
Rep. Carolyn Mahoney (D-NY) expresses considerable skepticism about the seriousness of the Fed’s resolve. She has recently introduced a Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights in the House, and she is undoubtedly concerned that the Fed’s actions will take votes away from her bill. Worst case scenario: regulatory bills do not pass through congress, and the Fed’s actions end up being an inadequate response to the problem. A reasonable concern.
What is the least surprising aspect of this story? You guessed it, the credit card companies object.
]]>The Bush Administration has mastered the art of the fake response. Sometimes in the life of those in power, events demand an answer. There is trouble in the land, and the people look to their leaders for help. But President Bush and his group are advocates of small government and free markets, as a result, often they don’t really want to respond. In these cases they give the impression of caring by responding with BS. (See philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit)
Sometimes, if a response to a problem can serve his interests, the President responds with real, authentic policies. Examples include: tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bankruptcy reform, and the recent Wall Street woes. Fake policies include Katrina, the entire field of international diplomacy, the environment, and, most recently, the economic problems of the poor and middle class. Billions of dollars in loan guarantees—real money—is instantly moved into place when needed by the top end of the economy, but those who are losing their jobs and homes are still waiting.
]]>Clinton's campaign took big hits over her Bosnia amnesia at the end of last week, and many of those surveyed in the early days of the Quinnipiac poll would not have been affected. All of the respondents in the PPP poll had a chance to hear about the Bosnian flap.
]]>In a statement that comes close to being a lie, McCain said yesterday “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.” In truth, he seems only to believe half this statement. As documented later in the same article, McCain supports the Fed’s recent move to provide $29 billion in loan guarantees to support the Bear Stearn’s bailout. So, either the Bear Stearns episode was not a bailout in McCain’s view, or rewarding those who act irresponsibly is fine, as long as they are wealthy investment firms and not mere citizens who are struggling to keep their homes.
]]>The not-so-subtle message is that the two men are the same. Have the same views. Images have powerful effects, and I think we need to be very careful how we use them. (I thank Lori Blinderman for pointing out this feature of these images.)
PS I note that the photos now seem to have been removed from the TPM story.
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