Arianna: Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism

Arianna at Huff Post:

It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.

We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame.

In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.

"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."

But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.

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Bush issues rule letting doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others refuse to offer care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable

So if a health care provider finds Mormons and Evangelical Christians morally objectionable - because she thinks they're going to hell - can she refuse to provide health care? Or does the Bush rule only apply to making Baptist bigotry the law of the land?

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration yesterday granted sweeping new protections to health workers who refuse to provide care that violates their personal beliefs, setting off an intense battle over opponents' plans to try to repeal the measure.

Critics began consulting with the incoming Obama administration on strategies to reverse the regulation as quickly as possible while supporters started mobilizing to fight such efforts.

The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. It was sought by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others to safeguard workers from being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways.

But women's health advocates, family planning proponents, abortion rights activists and some members of Congress condemned the regulation, saying it will be a major obstacle to providing many health services, including abortion, family planning, infertility treatment, and end-of-life care, as well as possibly a wide range of scientific research.

I'm sure Obama will overturn this on day one. Oh that's right, he's trying to reach out to pro-lifers like Rick Warren who think that abortion is like the Holocaust, and that it should be illegal in any circumstance. Well, good thing those women's groups are speaking up about Warren so that Obama knows he can't push them around. Oh, never mind - the women's groups haven't said boo about Warren.

Oh, and this new rule would also permit a bigot to say that he finds you morally objectionable and thus doesn't want to provide health care to someone who's gay, Muslim, or that he thinks AIDS medication is immoral, or condoms, or anything else he pleases. I wonder if this means that a Christian Scientist pharmacist can just sit back all day long and not sell medicine to anyone. Read the rest of this post...

Why aren't the Saudis sending more troops to Afghanistan?

It's a good point. I'd like to see the Arab world own a little of its own destiny here. Whatever your opinion of the first Gulf War, we saved the Saudis' and the Kuwaitis' collective asses in 1991. And all it got us was the, betraying us as members of OPEC, trying to artificially keep prices as high as possible just as we were entering an economic downturn. These people aren't our friends. And if they are, maybe it's time they were forced to prove it. Read the rest of this post...

Caroline Kennedy supports gay marriage

This news happened on Saturday, but I still wanted to bring it up because it's important, and I think says something about Kennedy.

For all the talk of Caroline being new to politics - well, beyond fundraising - she apparently has some backbone that a lot of other Democrats do not. Even Hillary, as gay friendly as she definitely is, isn't for marriage, and we all know that Obama isn't. All the while, the marriage bandwagon is going full steam ahead in New York state. The governor supports it, and the assembly, led by Danny O'Donnell, already passed it.

I used to be of the mind set that, even though I very much support and want marriage rights for gay couples, perhaps we should strive for easier victories first, like passing ENDA, and even getting DOMA and DADT repealed. And in any case, whatever we push for, I actually believed that we should give Obama a pass, for at least the first six months or so, so he could focus on the economy, then we could start talking about civil rights. Now, after the Rick Warren fiasco, after being slapped in the face before Obama is even sworn in, after being the only minority community to be Sista Souljah'd out of the box, I'm rethinking my conservative, more strategic, approach to civil rights.

Playing nice with our friends, giving them a pass, being willing to slow things down in order to achieve more in the long term, hasn't been yielding results. Instead, it's been giving us "victories" like Rick Warren speaking at the invocation, when no other civil rights community is being asked to "suck it up" for the team. We are not rewarded for being good team players, there seems to be no benefit for good behavior, so why do it? If Team Obama wants to put gay rights on the bottom of the pile, then maybe we should raise it to the top of the heap, immediately. Maybe then our community will get a little respect, if only by being a royal pain in the ass until we do. Read the rest of this post...

Wall Street on corporate jet fleet: no comment

What else would we expect from this band of billion dollar beggars? Nothing is ever enough, especially when someone else is footing the bill. Citigroup somehow thinks that people will be impressed that the current CEO Vikram Pandit is reimbursing the company for his use of the private jet, as if this was something anyone else would never do. Drifting a Wall Street giant into nothingness is not what I would consider leadership worth millions in salary and benefits, but then again the board - including Robert Rubin - have not made too many brilliant decisions lately.

Let the commoners who are funding the bailout fly coach.

Insurance giant American International Group Inc., which has received about $150 billion in bailout money, has one of the largest fleets among bailout recipients, with seven planes, according to a review of Federal Aviation Administration records.

"Our aircraft are being used very sparingly right now," AIG spokesman Nicholas J. Ashooh said. "I'm not saying there's no use, but there's very minimal use."

To cut costs, AIG sold two jets earlier this year and is selling or canceling orders for four others.

Five other financial companies that got a combined $120 billion in government cash injections — Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley — all own aircraft for executive travel, according to regulatory filings earlier this year and interviews.

A cross-country trip in a mid-sized jet costs about $20,000 for fuel. Maintenance, storage and pilot fees put the cost far higher.

Many U.S. companies are giving up the perk. The inventory of used private jets was up 52 percent as of September, according to recent JPMorgan data on the health of the private aircraft industry.

A few big U.S. companies have shunned jet ownership. Chip maker Intel Corp., for example, requires executives and employees to fly commercial. Intel occasionally charters jets for executives on overseas trips for security reasons, though.

What would an article on corporate jets be without input from the private jet industry?

"The personal use of these planes is virtually indefensible at this point," said Patrick McGurn, special counsel at shareholder advisory firm RiskMetrics Group. "Once you're on the federal dole, the pressure is going to become immense on these firms to cut these costs."

Private jet manufacturers say the debate over executive travel has been overblown.

"What people don't understand is that business jets are mobile offices," said Robert N. Baugniet, Gulfstream's director of corporate communications. "If time has any value to you, then you'll understand why people use business jets."

Uh huh. I think most business travelers can appreciate the hassle factor of travel, not to mention the inability to work during the long hours of air travel. The issue is not whether you lose time or not, but whether a business can afford such luxury. When you're begging with hat in hand, extravagance should be among the first cuts but no, not on Wall Street. They're much more important than everyone else and they do have a lifestyle to maintain, you know. Read the rest of this post...

Sock and Awe

Can we add other presidents too?

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Wall Street unable & unwilling to explain TARP billions

Lord Paulson's plan may have a few gaps that still need to be filled. Asking for a clear explanation of federal bailout money sounds reasonable and a base minimum, but obviously that's asking for too much on Wall Street.

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion — about the size of the Netherlands' economy — to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.

There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money — not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.

Isn't this the standard for the Bush years? It's the same as Iraq where they think that if you throw billions at the problem, someone will step up and do the right thing, but they don't. This is especially when they have teams of lawyers reading the fine print that doesn't exist. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Warren pulls anti-gay language from his Web site

Deny me three times, Rick?

So Rick Warren pulled the anti-gay language from his church Web site. The site used to explicitly ban gays from membership in the church.



Now the offending language is gone, but you can still find the anti-gay language via Google's cache.

So does Rick Warren now welcome gays, all gays, as members of his church? Or is he simply embarrassed of his views - embarrassed of God's views, per Warren's own admission? And if Warren is embarrassed of God's views, then what is he doing as a public spokesman on religion?

And whose idea was it to remove the anti-gay language? Warren's, or Obama's? Read the rest of this post...

Credit Card/banks lowering credit limits based on WHERE you shop

I'm not sure I understand this. How does a guy with a good credit record, shopping at a store that people with bad credit records frequent, somehow suddenly make the good credit guy a bad credit guy?

Kevin D. Johnson returned from a dreamy Jamaican honeymoon in October eager to check out wedding photos and help his new wife open stacks of beautifully wrapped wedding gifts.

Before getting distracted by the fun stuff, the 29-year-old entrepreneur opened the mail. Johnson’s mood soured when he got to a letter from American Express, saying it had slashed the credit limit on his account.

Johnson was surprised, since he has a perfect payment history and a high credit score. And he was floored by one of the reasons American Express cited: It didn’t like where he shopped.

“Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express,” the letter said. Johnson complained to American Express by phone and letter.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with whether I’m a paying customer or not,” he said in an interview.

I don't want to go there, but per the photo accompanying this article, Kevin Johnson is black. Read the rest of this post...

Howard Dean, shafted

Maybe they thought he was gay.

[I]t's hard not to see Dean as a lesson in how political hardball is played in Washington. Never liked by establishment party figures -- Dean publicly feuded with incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) when the latter headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 election cycle -- Dean finds himself on the outside looking in as a new Democratic administration comes to town....

Dean then made a play to be secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration but was quickly shot down in favor of former senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a confidante of the president-elect.

Dean's confrontational style and aversion to fundraising led to clashes with party leaders (Emanuel among others) during his four years at the helm of the DNC, but, in hindsight, some of his most controversial strategic moves paid off.

Dean was widely disparaged within the party for his "50-state strategy" -- a plan to put DNC-paid staffers on the ground in every state to ensure the party fielded a competitive slate of candidates. Yet, the 2006 and 2008 elections seemed to justify Dean's decision as Democrats won in such states as North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Kansas and Idaho -- places that, as recently as a few elections ago, were considered impenetrable....

A source familiar with Dean's 2004 presidential campaign and his DNC chairmanship argued not only that the former governor's presidential bid lay the technological foundation for Obama's successes but also that the chairman's unbending enforcement of the primary rules -- stripping Florida and Michigan of their delegates and their meaningfulness -- played a large role in Obama's victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton. "I guess it proves that no good deed goes unpunished," the source said.

Dean joins John Kerry and Wes Clark in the "why aren't they in the administration" category. Read the rest of this post...

Why is Rick Warren's work on AIDS in Africa, a mostly heterosexual disease over there, indicative of his love for American gays?

I've been scratching my head for several days now, trying to figure out why practically every news story about Rick Warren explains that he's not anti-gay, and in fact quite progressive and moderate, because he's worked on AIDS in Africa. Well, bully for him. But there are two problems there:

1. I'm not African; and

2. AIDS in Africa is a predominantly heterosexual disease.

There's a reason that evangelicals work on AIDS in Africa. Because that way they don't have to deal with the "gay" ick-factor. And even better, as Jesse Helms once said - Helms was also a big fan of working on AIDS in Africa - the African AIDS crisis is especially affecting a large number of children, the "innocent victims," as Helms called them.

So, yes, right-wing bigots like to work on AIDS in Africa because there's no major homo component to the disease over there, and even better, a number of the "victims" are "innocent," unlike the "guilty" AIDS sufferers in America who are g-a-y.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad for anyone who wants to help the AIDS crisis in Africa. But spare us the condescending crap about how Rick Warren is a friend of gay Americans because he works on a heterosexual disease in a continent far far away. Read the rest of this post...

Obama appoints global warming experts

As the NYT editorial notes, one advantage of having Obama in office (in spite of his embrace of homophobes) is that global warming will finally get its due.

Like Mr. Obama’s earlier appointments — in particular Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, to run the Department of Energy — these choices solidly affirm Mr. Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.

The broader point, though, is what they say about his appreciation for the processes of science. That was not much in evidence in the Bush administration, some of whose appointees edited and suppressed scientific documents to serve the administration’s political agenda.

As Ms. Lubchenco observes, identifying a problem is not synonymous with solving it. But Mr. Obama has at least surrounded himself with serious scholars of some of the most critical issues of our times.

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Iraqi shoe-thrower says he was tortured in prison

Perhaps. On reading this story, something just didn't sound right. But then again, it's Iraq. I hope the media can get to the bottom of this. Maliki is claiming that the shoe-thrower sent him a letter admitting that "terrorist" asked him to the throw his shoe at Bush. Uh yeah, right. Though the letter, if it really exists, is a troubling sign in and of itself. Who writes a letter admitting guilt after their in jail in countries like Iraq? Often people who are tortured. Read the rest of this post...

Monday morning open thread

Well, it's below zero in Chicago... how I ever walked to school is beyond me. We lived just shy of the boundary for getting the bus to junior high, so I got to walk 1.2 miles every day to school, and 1.2 miles back home, every day l for two years in the dead of Chicago winter. I have no idea how I did it, because honestly, I don't remember it being that bad. Anyway, this week we still have the Franken-Coleman race in Minnesota going strong, and the Rick Warren controversy won't be dying down any time soon. I assume we'll probably hear more doom and gloom about the economy, just in case we're not freaked out enough already. My annual Christmas cookie making with the nieces and nephews should take place tonight or tomorrow morning - don't worry, you'll get photos. And with that, on with the day. Read the rest of this post...

Shoe thrower creates 100 jobs

That's more than Bush has created!

Their deployment as a makeshift missile robbed President George Bush of his dignity and landed their owner in jail. But the world's most notorious pair of shoes have yielded an unexpected bonanza for a Turkish shoemaker.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Orders have come mainly from the US and Britain, and from neighbouring Muslim countries, he said.

Around 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq, while a US company has placed a request for 18,000. A British firm is understood to have offered to serve as European distributor for the shoes, which have been on the market since 1999 and sell at around £28 in Turkey. A sharp rise in orders has been recorded in Syria, Egypt and Iran, where the main shoemaker's federation has offered to provide Zaidi and his family with a lifetime's supply of shoes.

To meet the mood of the marketplace, Baydan is planning to rename the model "the Bush Shoe" or "Bye-Bye Bush".

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Mugabe's newest wave of terror

This is why someone needs to usher him out of Zimbabwe today. He's the healthiest looking 84 year old I've seen and has no plans to go anywhere, any time soon, so cut a deal and let the suffering people of Zimbabwe live in peace. The former breadbasket of Southern Africa has become a wastebasket, with cronyism, torture, death squads, cholera and starvation. Bringing Mugabe to justice would be great in an ideal world but at the moment, no one can afford another day of his brutality.

Fears are mounting in Zimbabwe for the lives of more than 40 opposition officials and human rights activists who have been abducted as part of a renewed crackdown by the regime in Harare. At least two more members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have disappeared in the past week, along with a freelance investigative reporter.

"The abductions are increasing and it now seems to be happening nationwide," Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman,said yesterday.

The operation, codenamed Chimumumu according to sources in the army, aims to eliminate political opponents and remove human rights monitors. The kidnappings follow a pattern familiar from the past two years of political intimidation, where key middle- and lower-ranking officials are "disappeared" in an attempt to terrorise or destabilise opponents of the ruling party. Among those taken in the past month are Chris Dlamini, the head of security for the MDC, and Jestina Mukoko, the director of Zimbabwe Peace Project. The ruling party and security services have denied any part in the abductions.

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China, India not ready to fill US spending gap

What country really even wants to try and fill those shoes? Even if they wanted to neither has the capacity at this time. In a few years, perhaps, but definitely not now. An acquaintance ran a Western Wal-Mart-like store in an emerging market and while the growth numbers were impressive, the individual checkout stats were horrid. Families would dress up the kids in their Sunday best to push a virtually empty cart around the air conditioned store and look at what was on offer. The average checkout was about the same as your average American might have at a 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes or a coffee and pack of gum. This particular emerging market was a few years behind India and China building a middle class spending machine on par with the US or even Europe takes decades.

They were supposed to keep the good times going: Prakash Shetty, caught recently thumbing through "Singh is King" DVDs at a mall in India, and Zhu Xiaolin, who enjoys cute Adidas sportswear and Body Shop cosmetics in China.

But how far can Shetty and Zhu, both 26, and other Asian consumers go to save the groaning global economy? Just how many Buicks, Barbie dolls, Wrangler jeans, waffle fries, kiwi lip balms and plastic thingamajigs are they willing or able to buy?

Not enough, it turns out.

Much has been made of the power and promise of Indian and Chinese consumers. Each country has a rapidly growing economy, rising incomes and more than a billion people -- many of whom have yet to burn through a single credit card or experience the joys a washing machine can bring.

China will be the world's third-largest consumer market by 2025 and India will be No. 5, ahead of Germany, McKinsey & Co has predicted. As U.S. sales swooned this year, emerging markets were the sole bright spot on many balance sheets.

But such heraldry obscures a painful bit of math: U.S. consumers still buy more than five times as much as Indian and Chinese shoppers combined. And despite rambunctious growth, revenues from India and China have barely softened the blow of declining sales in the developed world -- even for companies that have chased after rupees and yuan most aggressively.

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Corporate American cuts back on matching 401K investment

I've written about a few of these examples (comparing them to the disgraceful and greedy bonus policies on Wall Street) and while I don't like the cutbacks, it's also understandable. Cash is again king as banks limit their easy lending policies so businesses are doing what they have to do to maintain enough capital to survive the recession. The upside to this period is that Americans will hopefully step back and take a closer look at the excesses of the credit economy including the obscene glorification of CEOs and increasing gap between those executives and the rest of America.

Taking a short term hit can be tolerated (except for the selfish prima donnas on Wall Street) when there's an expectation of change for the better in the future, but with our four years of mushy middle coming, there's little to suggest any substantial change will be forced on America's corporate culture. People need growth but stability for the sake of their retirement plans but they also need answers to the three decades of falling middle class take home pay.

For workers, the loss of a matching contribution heightens the pain of a retirement account balance shriveling away because of the plunging stocks markets.

“We are taking a beating,” said another FedEx mechanic, Rafael Garcia. “In a year, I lost $60,000 of my 401(k). You can’t make that up.”

To many retirement policy specialists, the lost contributions are one more sign of America’s failure as a society to face up to the graying of the population and the profound economic forces it will unleash.

Traditional pensions are disappearing, and Washington has yet to ensure that Social Security will remain solvent as baby boomers retire and more workers are needed to support each retiree.

The company cutbacks may mean that some employees put less money into their retirement accounts. Even if they do not, the cuts, while temporary, will have a permanent effect by costing many workers years of future compounding on the missed contributions. No one knows how long credit will remain scarce for companies, or whether companies will start making their matching contributions again when credit loosens and business improves.

“We have had a 30-year experiment with requiring workers to be more responsible for saving and investing for their retirement,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School. “It has been a grand experiment, and it has failed.”

What better way to work out of this failure then to hire the the conservative free marketers who brought us here in the first place? This is hardly the change any were voting for in November. Read the rest of this post...