How Bad Is It?
Bill Moyers Journal has a the transcript of a discussion of the current state of crisis featuring Simon Johnson and Marcy Kaptur.
Simon Johnson is a British economist, a former official of the International Monetary Fund, the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management, and one of the founders of the blog, The Baseline Scenario.
Marcy Kaptur is the long-time Congresscritter for northern Ohio, who sits on all the right committees [Appropriations, Budget, etc.] in the House. Her district is one of the most foreclosed areas of the country.
Lambert at Corrente has two Elizabeth Warren videos, in which she explains in her clear professorial style how the economy has been eviscerating the middle-class.
Elizabeth Warren is the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that is monitoring the bank bailout, as well as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
6 comments
listening to the bill moyers show right now. i developed a minor case of hero worship for marcy kaptur when she made her stay in your homes speech, but now i’m completely a member of her fan club [she’s a cosponsor of hr676 too].
She has her areas of conservatism, but for the moment she is in line with what people need, and realizes what crooks large banks and insurance companies really are. Her district is in the Rust Belt, so she is well aware of how worthless promises from corporations are.
the nice thing about true conservatives is that they do live in the reality-based world. many of the people who have lately shown good sense on the financial meltdown and/or health care — marcy kaptur, sheila bair, elizabeth warren, anthony weiner, eric massa, for example — are actually fairly conservative. it’s just that they’re smart, while the people who have been going around calling themselves conservatives for the last 30 years are whackos.
.-= last blog ..[for reference] =-.
The only seeming requirement anymore to be a conservative in the US is to listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican. Policy and programs are totally irrelevant to the label any more.
People have forgotten that LBJ, Carter, and Clinton all balanced the Federal budget when in office, while every Republican since LBJ has run deficits. Somehow that gets lost in the screaming.
Over on one of the economics blogs (Calculated Risk, I think) they posted a graph of job losses as a percentage. The current job losses make this the worst recession for ordinary people since the Great Depression — and it isn’t done yet, unless you work for one of the top four banks and can thus print your money on demand by picking up a phone and calling Geithner.
The Rude Pundit’s reactions to recent revelations is despair. I can’t say that I feel much more optimistic, given that the victims of the current broken system — the average Americans who are losing their jobs, their homes, their lives — defend it tooth and nail to enable their abusers. Only complete and utter national disaster, as in, people dying in the streets, is going to change things… and I fear, not for the better, since the F word raises its head then and we have no more FDR’s.
– Badtux the Economics Penguin
It was Calculated Risk, and it gets even more depressing in February after they adjust the starting point.
All this crap about turning the corner is bogus. If you don’t have jobs, you don’t have a recovery. There is no credit to take up the slack, because people maxed out their credit during the 2001 jobless recovery. You can’t outsource all the jobs and expect to bounce back, it isn’t going to happen.
We need the FDR recovery plan, the parts that worked, and we have needed it for over a year.
People have forgotten the Bonus March, and the riots, and a lot of other unpleasantness that went on in the 1930s. It has been buried, but we will see it again.