Meltdown notes: Beware Obama -- and the guy AFTER Obama

Scattered observations on the meltdown...

The zombie banks: Lambert has the best line of the day...

No matter how much blood you pump into a zombie, it's still a zombie.

Suicide: Depression creates depression. The lay-offs have hit males worse than females; thus, there has been a sharp uptick in male suicides. Here's one bit that annoys me:

For some men, however, talking to a therapist is yet another sign of weakness, which means that many victims of the recession -- and the economic troubles that underlie it -- have been loath to seek help.

Therapy is expensive -- a luxury that no-one in parlous economic circumstances should allow (even if offered a "sliding scale"). Moreover, it is usually ineffective. A guy who feels like a failure because he has lost his job doesn't want to field questions about his dreams or his relationship with his parents. Most counselors are smart people who mean well, but they remind me of a guy trying to use a soldering iron to plant trees. You can't do the job with the wrong tools.

Let's play the blame game: Financial Armegeddon draws our attention to a lengthy report by the Consumer Education Foundation, called "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America." From the summary:

This report has one overriding message: financial deregulation led directly to the financial meltdown.

At every step, critics warned of the dangers of further deregulation. Their evidence-based claims could not offset the political and economic muscle of Wall Street. The financial sector showered campaign contributions on politicians from both parties, invested heavily in a legion of lobbyists, paid academics and think tanks to justify their preferred policy positions, and cultivated a pliant media—especially a cheerleading business media complex.

When the states sought to fill the vacuum created by federal nonenforcement of consumer protection laws against predatory lenders, the feds jumped to stop them.

Obviously, the Bush administration wanted the housing bubble, even though pretty much everyone with any sense knew that all bubbles burst. The economy had nothing else going for it. We don't make anything anymore; free market fundamentalism transferred the manufacturing jobs to third world countries.

Cut to Chase: Chase Bank has abruptly changed the terms of their credit card loan agreements, making customers pay 150 percent more:

Then after paying half of it off, um, in December (of 2008) we got a notice that there was a change in terms, and instead of paying 2% per month which was around 400 dollars in December.

Our January payment was a 1,025 dollars, because they were requiring 5% payment. And I called to opt out because every change in terms I'd ever seen on any credit card allows the customer to opt out, only to find out that Chase Bank is not allowing an opt out on this.

Your future in Dubai: If you want to know what will soon hit America, look at Dubai.

As you know, Dubai's wealthy have built all sortsa huge shit, including the world's tallest skyscraper. You know how they did it? In essence, slavery. Peonage, or transparently disguised slavery, is rampant in that country.

Imported laborers routinely have their passports taken from them upon arrival. These workers are then given the most grueling and dangerous tasks imaginable. The workers sleep in camps surrounded by razor wire. They are fed enough to keep them alive. When the job is done, the company they worked for goes out of business, the men are not paid, and the electricity in the camp goes off.

And it's not just construction:

It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport -- everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when -- if ever -- she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.

In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say -- 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.'

As our friend Red Dragon puts it:

Are the rich so disconnected from the rest of the world that they see nothing wrong with the slavery going on all around them and they enjoy it? They prosper from it and they thrive on it.

Is this what happens when one becomes wealthy? You become such a rotten piece of shit that you do not care who or what wipes your ass?

Dubai is also destroying its environment:

"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them -- deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster."

To sum up:

Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

The moral of the story: Dubai is our future. Dubai teaches us just how callous rich people truly are. Unchained capitalism inevitably forges the chains of slavery.

If and when Obama fails, a well-organized propaganda campaign will tell us that socialism has failed, even though socialism was never tried. We will be told -- repeatedly -- that the only solution is libertarianism, a.k.a. Milton Friedmanism. Propagandists always portray free market fundamentalism as the great untried panacea. In fact, it has been tried again and again -- and it has failed again and again.

Free market fundamentalism is not the answer -- unless the question is : What got us into this mess?

I fear Obama. But I fear the guy coming after Obama far more. I don't know his name, but I can give you his job description. He'll be a salesman. He'll be a charmer, as the best salesmen always are. I can already see his reassuring smile, I can already hear his patter, and I can already sense the scheme that lies behind the spiel.

And I know his task: Turn America into Dubai.