[lbo-talk] Discussing the Crisis/Bailout

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Mon Oct 6 20:37:31 PDT 2008


On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:18 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 6, 2008, at 4:10 PM, Mark Bennett wrote:
>
>> I ask seriously: if financial capitalism is about to
>> blow itself up, why would any leftist want to stop it from doing so?
>> Because it will cause the working class pain?
>
> Yeah. You want to drive the unemployment rate to 12% or more? With no left
> at all with even a pretense of picking up the pieces? That's not politics -
> it's nihilism.
>

On this I think most of us agree. I think the main argument goes like this.

Pro Bailout) When you are about to burn to death, you can't be fussy about the rescuers being serial rapists.

Anti Bailout) But they are not actually pulling us out of the fire. We'll get fuck up the ass and still roast as quickly as they would without it.

The people saying "burn baby, burn" are a really tiny minority - because the babies that will burn are not all metaphorical.

BTW - Krugman was on Maddow today, arguing that the bailout is not working. He thinks we need to move to straight equity purchase to recapitalize just as a matter of staunching the bleeding, without any illusion that that will be enough. He seems to be muttering about Obama stepping into the Presidency earlier than Jan 10th because we can't wait that long, so this is apparently not a moment of political realism for him. Does that level of wishful thinking indicate that he thinks 1929 is coming in the next few weeks in spite of the 700 billion dollar bailout?



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