Oooh, nuance!

And now, we take a short break from discussing the election to talk about the economy.

As "The Critic" used to say, "It STINKS."

In an eerie echo of President Herbert Hoover in 1930, during a Presidential campaign against Roosevelt, following the stock market crash and collapse of numerous smaller banks, Paulson recently appeared on national TV to declare “our banking system is a safe and sound one.” He added that the list of “troubled” banks “is a very manageable situation.” In fact what he did not say was that the US bank deposit insurance fund, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has a list of problem banks that numbers 90. Not included on that list are banks such as Citigroup, until recently the largest bank in the world.

The statement is hardly reassuring. The California savings bank, IndyMac Bank which was declared insolvent a month ago was not on the FDIC list a week before it collapsed. The reality is the crisis created by “securitizing” millions of home mortgages into new financial instruments and selling the packages to pension funds and investors is unfolding like a snowball rolling down the Swiss Alps.

Indication of the lack of control is the statement just weeks ago by Paulson that “financial institutions must be allowed to fail.” That was two weeks before Paulson went to Congress to ask for “Congressional authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” As I noted in my recent piece, Financial Tsunami: The Next Big Wave is Breaking: Fannie Mae Freddie Mac and US Mortgage Debt , those two private companies insured some $6 trillion worth of home mortgages, half the entire US mortgage debt. Paulson defended the request by calling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae “the only functioning part of the home loan market.”

That comes back to the statement about a “sound banking system”. Can we have a sound banking system where the only functioning part is literally insolvent—its debts greater than its assets?

As we say in the banking biz, YIKES. Isn't it amazing how no one in the corporate media is talking about how serious this situation is? Guess they don't want a run on the banks on top of everything else. You know, high gas prices, high food prices, lack of jobs, adjustable rate mortgages coming due, retail store chains closing all over America...

What? You haven't heard about these closings? Well, here's a partial list from the same article. By the way, 70% of the U.S. GDP is now based on consumer spending.

Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide.
Eddie Bauer to close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.
Cache, a women’s retailer is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide
Talbots, J. Jill closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.
Gap Inc. closing 85 stores
Foot Locker to close 140 stores
Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
Levitz - the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.
Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.
Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores.
Home Depot store closings 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.
CompUSA (CLOSED).
Macy's - 9 stores closed
Movie Gallery – video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery
and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental
chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.
Pacific Sunwear - 153 Demo stores closing
Pep Boys - 33 stores of auto parts supplier closing
Sprint Nextel - 125 retail locations to close with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.
J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are all scaling back
Ethan Allen Interiors: plans to close 12 of 300 stores to cut costs.
Wilsons the Leather Experts – closing 158 stores
Bombay Company: to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
KB Toys closing 356 stores around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
Dillard's Inc. will close another six stores this year.

One would think that both presumptive presidential nominees would be talking about how we can resolve these matters. Well, at least one would expect Senator Obama to do so, since Democrats have a natural advantage on that issue.

One would be wrong about that.

In a sobering aside, readers should not expect any serious economic remedies for the crisis from a President Barack Obama. Obama’s National Campaign Finance Chairman is Chicago real estate billionaire, Penny Pritzker, who is heir to among other things the Hyatt Hotels. It was Pritzker together with Merrill Lynch ten years ago who first developed the model for securitizing “sub-prime” real estate, the trigger for the current Financial Tsunami crisis.

So, Obama is getting his financial advice from the person who helped create this disaster in the first place.

Wonnnnnnnnderful.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's shadow is growing. Yesterday, she penned a remarkable Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, which made clear to the Republicans that she understands their policy of Disaster Capitalism all too well - and that she will dedicate the rest of her political career to fighting it.

Who would you trust with the economy the most - John McCain, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton?

I'd like to see some polling on THAT issue.

For those of us who were old enough to be aware of what was happening during the Jimmy Carter years, we remember how difficult they were in many respects. OPEC tightened the screws and forced a gas crisis. Jimmy Carter appeared on TV wearing a sweater and told Americans to turn down their thermostats. A speed limit of 55 miles an hour was imposed throughout the United States. We had to wait in long lines to fill our tanks, and could only go to the gas stations on certain days depending on the first letter of our last names. And yes, there was the dreaded: Stagflation (which technically began in 1973, during the Nixon/Ford years).

Worried murmurs about stagflation are beginning to be heard throughout the country. The latest numbers on unemployment have it at 5.5%, a jump of .5% in one month. Even supply-side ideologues are starting to realize that it is difficult for consumers to consume when they don't have jobs, can't afford to fill up a gas tank ($4.29 a gallon here in New York), have lost their homes, and can't borrow money. Golly!

So that's the "stag" part of stagflation. What about the "flation?"

Cost of living

In recent months, the US Federal Reserve has been slashing interest rates in an attempt to stoke growth.

But analysts believe the rising cost of living, rather than interest rates, should be the US central bank's chief concern now.

"If you want to avoid a protracted recession, you have to make sure inflation doesn't get out of control," said Gilles Moec, an analyst at Bank of America.

"Otherwise, you're going to have a loss of purchasing power meaning consumer spending is going to slow down even more."

The financial bigwigs are nervous. They know that interest rates cannot stay where they are - the only reason they are so low is to stave off recession during an election year. (Unfortunately, the recession is here anyway. They didn't count on the ARM crisis exacerbating the effects of the exorbitant oil price hikes.) After the elections are over, the first thing the Fed will do is to raise interest rates exponentially to counter the effects of the recession. This will, of course, cause consumer borrowing to come to a screeching halt. Your house may be worth only 65% of what it was before, but take heart! Anyone wanting to purchase it will have to pay 25% interest on their mortgage. Yippee! No, I'm not exaggerating - this is how the back of stagflation was broken the first time this record was played.

An effective method of addressing stagflation once it occurs is equally elusive. During the 1970s, stagflation persisted in the U.S. despite the government's best efforts to contain it. The trend was finally broken when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to the point where borrowing was impossible for many segments of the economy, and the country fell into a deep recession.

We are in a hell of a mess. Who can get us out of it?

When Raygun was elected, he simply had the Federal Reserve lower interest rates to counter the stagflation recession, and gave everyone a shiny new credit card, including the Federal Government; thereby postponing sound economic policy until Bill Clinton arrived and raised taxes on the wealthy, regulated the banks, and instated "pay as you go" over the vociferous protests of Republican Congresscritters.

But remember, it took him eight years to do so.

No matter who is elected President in November, I believe that the next four years could rival, or surpass, the worst of Jimmy Carter's greatest hits. It will take a long time to drag the country back from the abyss. We will have to do a lot of things all at once: a New Deal-style program of job creation and infrastructure building and repair; investment in, and promotion of, green energy technologies; bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan (cutting taxes during wartime has been a huge contributor to our economic downturn); an overhaul of the banking and credit systems; and raising taxes on the wealthy to Clintonian levels (at least). All of this will have to be started within the first few months of the President's first term.

Who do we think has the energy, the know-how, the strength of will, and the plan to get all of this done?

That question should be at the top of everyone's list this November. I know who my choice is, and I hope that the best candidate gets nominated and elected...whomever she is.

The Tax Man Cometh!

And so does the Deciderer and his awesome economomic plan. Look, $600!

Too bad there's no place to spend it.

A growing number of bankruptcies among US retailers is set to prompt thousands of store closings, the New York Times will report on the front page of its Tuesday edition.

"The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are triggering a wave of bankruptcies in American retailing," with ensuing store closures "expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country," writes Michael Barbaro for the Times.

Barbaro notes that over half a dozen store chains have filed for bankruptcy in recent months amidst "mounting debt and plummeting sales" and warns that financial troubles are "quickly spreading to bigger national companies."

The Times articles comes amid a slew of reports underscoring America's economic woes. Even presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, who only months ago panned talk of a recession, admitted today that he thought the country was now in one.

Even relatively well-off retailers face troubles. Added Barbaro in the article, such store chains who can avoid bankruptcy "are shutting down stores to preserve cash through what could be a long economic downturn."

It's only just begun, folks.

I do hope that $600 helps you and your family, if you are so "fortunate" as to qualify for the rebate.

I also hope that this will be the year that people finally realize that Republicans always, ALWAYS screw up the economy.

If so, we could be looking at a huge blue tide in November.

John McCain scares the hell out of me, so I've been keeping fairly silent on Barack Obama, and what I believe are his fatal flaws as a candidate in the general election. But I can't let this latest gaffe go by.

By now, Senator Obama's jaw-droppingly tone-deaf remarks in San Francisco have made it to your ears or eyes, I don't doubt. But I just wouldn't be a campaign-obsessed bloggista without making my own commentary, now would I?

Obama's remarks were made as an explanation of why he is not connecting with working-class Democratic voters in Pennsylvania. I'll just let you read them again, and shake your head in amazement.

Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

First of all, may I just say that I am incredibly sick of Obama's attempts to rewrite history when it comes to the Clinton administration. I was there, Barack. I know how much better it was in those days of peace and prosperity, when our President's biggest failures were private and didn't kill anyone, when we still had a working Constitution and Justice Department, when we actually stopped terrorist attacks before they happened, and when our economy was strong and it was easy to get a job. It was completely different during the Reagan-Bush years, during which I was also alive and conscious and struggling to make it; yet you make it sound as if the economy had steadily downturned from Reagan-Bush, through Clinton, through the Deciderer's reign of error.

In fact, the working class always does better under Democrats. It's one of the real differences between the parties. We know this. And I suspect you may know it too, but you don't seem to care.

Do you really wonder why working-class Democrats over 30 don't vote for you? And why we don't trust you? And why we resent the hell out of you? Here's a clue, Senator - we don't appreciate your smearing the only successful Democratic President we've had since FDR. To put it in terms you might understand, you are destroying our brand for the sake of your own personal ambitions. Gee, you're doing exactly what you and your supporters accuse Hillary of, every second of every day. Projection - it's not just for film booths anymore!

Second, your explanation of why people don't vote for you is nonsensical. I mean, literally - the entire paragraph doesn't make sense. I actually have no idea what you were trying to say when you claimed people are bitter because they can't find work, and then you say that's why they "cling" to God, guns, xenophobia and anti-trade policies? (By the way - that last little bit about anti-trade policies is very interesting. Sounds like you're not so against NAFTA afta all.)

Some Obamans have claimed that Senator Obama was trying to make the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" argument. Well, I've actually read that book, and the argument is not that people cling to their religious beliefs out of bitterness and that's why they vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Do people not know how to use their brains anymore? Will they accept anything Obama says as gospel, no matter how ridiculous?

The essential argument posited by Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" is that movement conservatives (Republicans) have, through a process called "backlash," convinced the working class in places like Kansas to vote against their economic interest and focus their votes on "social" issues like abortion, which Republicans have convinced many people that only they are addressing. He is explaining how states like Kansas went red, when 100 years ago, they were fiery populists and champions of working class values.

Again, this book is about why people vote for REPUBLICANS against their economic interests. Senator Obama was talking about Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, right? These are registered Democrats who are voting in the Democratic primary, right? They are voting for Hillary over Obama, choosing between two Democrats, right? So how in any way do his remarks refer to Thomas Frank's thesis? These people WANT TO VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT. They are not voting for Republicans. Grasping at straws much, Obamans?

By the way, Obama's on his millionth "explanation" of his remarks now, with no end in sight.

Sen. Obama on April 13:

Well, first of all, you know, Scripture talks about clinging to what's good... What I was saying is that when economic hardship hits in these communities, what people have is- they've got family, they've got their faith., they've got the traditions that have been passed on to them from generation to generation. Those aren't bad things.

Oh my. Golly gee, Senator, I'm so glad you feel that religion and family traditions aren't bad things. However, that's not remotely what you said, and you know it. You said that people cling to religion and guns because they are bitter and want to explain their economic frustrations. Enough said. After such an inflammatory statement, why in the world didn't Obama just apologize and move on?

Unfortunately, the only explanation I can think of is because he genuinely feels this way about working-class Americans. Obama is showing us that he is, at heart, an elitist Democrat, the kind of Democrat that Left Blogistan accuses Hillary of being; the kind who wants to unify with Republicans and put them in his cabinet; the kind who is more comfortable with Wall Street than Main Street.

However, I must say that Obama is not MY kind of Democrat, and I think most Americans are starting to understand that his promises of "change" are just empty slogans. I'm confident that in the coming primaries, Americans will state their preference loudly and clearly.

Barack Obama and his illusions of inevitability will begin to fade away, starting April 22nd in the Pennsylvania primary. And I hope and pray that the Super Delegates will soon be asking, "What's the matter with Barack Obama?"

is a brilliant, timely and practical answer to the financial crisis we find ourselves in today. Ready for swift action, the Treasury Secretary has promised immediate relief to homeowners and accountability for predatory lenders and other bad actors.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

April Fool's, darlings. No, Bush's plan, even if it were structured to be effective, would not be put into place until...

well, take a wild guess.

Paulson proposed the broadest restructuring of federal regulatory institutions in 75 years with a call to merge agencies and redraw lines of authority that in some cases go back to the Great Depression. But the plan would put off for years any attempt to create new regulations for the streamlined system to enforce. [emphasis added]

As a result, even if the new structure were eventually adopted, it would do little to prevent a repeat of the current crisis or something similar, the Treasury secretary acknowledged.

Well, then, what would be the point of this legislation? C'mon, I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

First, the core of the plan was devised more than a year ago to reflect Paulson's -- and the president's -- conviction that the U.S. must lighten regulations on its financial industry or risk losing business to foreign financial centers such as London and Hong Kong.

But the proposal is being unveiled after the sub-prime mess, the housing meltdown and sliding financial markets left tens of millions of people poorer and more pessimistic.

It is also subject to the judgment of a Democratic-controlled Congress in no mood to give financial firms more leeway.

"We must restore the trust and confidence of investors and consumers," Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said in a statement. "That trust has been shattered -- not because regulators did too much, but because they did too little."

Here's my favorite thing about the Bushies and their ilk: They're so freaking predictable. Just put everything they propose through a Bush-to-English dictionary, and it will come out thusly:

"It'll make mah corporate cronies a hell of a lot richer and, just cause we can, make working-class Americans poorer. Ah love bein' Preznit! Heh heh."

Enjoy the first day of April, everyone, and don't get Fooled by the Bushian doubletalk on the economy.

For Jeebus' sake. Enough with the interest rate cuts already!

Once again, the willful blindness of the free-market worshipers is absolutely astonishing.

If you are going to have a market-based economy, you have to assume that people will continue to consume. A lot.

But what if people have no money?

What if the cost of living and wage increases do not keep up with each other? Like, say, what if the price of oil quintuples in a nine-year-period, affecting the costs of essentials like gas and food, but real wages either increase only slightly or actually DECREASE? And then what if your ARM mortgage payments suddenly go from $200/month to $2,500/month? And then what if you don't have health insurance and your son gets hit by a car? And then what if your company is "downsized" and you lose your job?

Let me ask the free-market orthodoxists - like Alan Greenspan - how's that gonna work out for us?

"The crisis will leave many casualties. Particularly hard hit will be much of today's financial risk-valuation system," he wrote.

[Translation: No, mortgage companies, it's not safe to loan $800,000 to people who make $40,000 a year. No one could have anticipated...]

While insisting that current risk management models and econometric forecasting methods remain "soundly rooted in the real world," he said risk management can never be perfect.

"It will eventually fail and a disturbing reality will be laid bare, prompting an unexpected and sharp discontinuous response," Greenspan said.

[Translation: The shit's gonna hit the fan.]

He added, however, that he hoped one of the casualties from the worst U.S. financial crisis since World War Two would not be the spirit of broad self-regulation within financial markets.

Well, OF COURSE. Don't let the fact that deregulated markets led to this crisis cause us to, um, regulate the markets!!!

Look. The fact that we're even listening to this man on finances is a symptom of our national illness. It's like coming to the doctor who gave you heart attack medicine when you had arthritis, and expecting him or her to suddenly be competent to treat your problems. We simply cannot give up the idea that trickle-down economics works.

Why can't we? Well, because if we did, we'd have to admit that "Fuck you, I've got mine!" is not a basis for society, and that yes, we ARE responsible for our neighbors.

I believe that fundamentally, we Americans are a generous people. But we also have our beloved myth of American self-sufficiency, which has been metastasized by corporatists into this malignant tumor of libertarianism. It has caused us to build walls between ourselves and our fellow Americans. The poor are poor because they're lazy. There is no more institutionalized racism in this country. Everyone has health insurance through emergency rooms. Taxes are "stolen money." You get the idea.

The truth that very few in the punditocracy will admit even now, is that we need the New Deal. We need it all the time, and it is the only basis on which our democracy will work. We need to invest in people, not corporations. We need to provide a social safety net. We need to invest in the arts and in education. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and invest in alternative energy. We need to leave Social Security alone.

Sorry, conservato-fascists, your way doesn't work. You can take your ball and go home now.

The adults are taking over in 2009, and we will clean up your mess yet again. But don't expect us to let you be in charge of the playpen until you've grown up.

We've learned our lesson, and this time, I hope it sticks: or we may never recover from the NEXT Republic Great Depression.

They've returned to their tax-and-spend ways!!!!!!! ZOMG TEH FREE MARKET!!1111!!

The Senate on Thursday rejected the idea of renewing many of President Bush's tax cuts as all three major presidential candidates interrupted their campaigns to cast their votes. The House approved a budget blueprint that would raise taxes by $683 billion over the next five years.

The Senate did embrace Bush reductions aimed at low-income workers, married couples and people with children.

The House budget plan would provide generous increases to domestic federal programs but still is designed to bring the government's budget back into the black by letting all of Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. That plan passed the House on a 212-207 vote with Republicans unanimously opposing it.

The Senate voted 99-1 to extend the cuts for some workers as well as couples and parents. Senators voted 52-47 to reject a move to extend tax cuts for middle- and higher-income taxpayers, investors and people inheriting businesses and big estates.

The votes were mostly symbolic, but they put senators in both parties on the record for when the tax cuts actually expire in three years.

Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, voted for the full roster of Bush tax cuts. Rivals Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., both voted against them.

The Republic worship of the failed Bush tax cuts is not just lock-step ideological, but also selfish. Most of them are multimillionaires and don't want to give up that sweet, sweet extra cash.

Notice that, despite the bloviatings of the free-market pseudo-intellectuals, it is really not that hard to understand economics if you want to. For example, no other president, besides our oh-so-beloved Deciderer, has cut taxes in a time of war, because war means unprecedented amounts of expenditures on weaponry, active duty troops, and in this day and age, overpriced mercenaries and other "support services" for our men and women in arms. The total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations is now projected to be $3 trillion. [Must...not...yell...AAAAACK!...]

So here we have the U.S. suddenly incurring large expenditures, while at the same time DECREASING REVENUES by drastically cutting taxes on the wealthy. A seven-year-old child could have told Bush that this was a very bad idea, bound to destroy the Clintonian surplus (which he had hoped would be a slush fund for emergencies) and create a massive deficit. We have been forced to borrow from the country that attacked us on 9/11, Saudi Arabia, to try and infuse cash into our empty coffers, as well as China, the country that sells us poisoned toys and toothpaste. Yes, we are now heavily indebted to countries that have either actively or passively been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And they say the economy has nothing to do with national security!

I'll leave all the Ponzi scheme speculation of the super-deregulated banking and mortgage industries for folks like Atrios and Paul Krugman. My point here is that I'd rather be a tax-and-spend Democrat, than a borrow-and-spend Republic. The government has to spend money no matter what we do. Why not make it pay-as-you go?

It's the economy, stupid. And as usual, John "McCaca" McCain and the Republics are on the "stupid" side.

Wow. $600 per person - in MAY at the earliest - from Our Great Deciderer-in-Chief! That will surely:

• Bring down the price of oil, and the price of everything else that is affected by the price of oil;
• Stop the U.S. from spending $2 billion a week on the never-ending occupation of Iraq;
• Help people pay off their ARM's whose interest rates have suddenly ballooned to 25%;
• Create jobs for the unemployed or under-employed; and
• Prevent illness-related bankruptcies.

It won't? Oh. Then I guess I'll just put it in the bank for the next time I have to fill up my tank or put food on my family.

I have to say, I think most people knew this crash was coming. I knew back in August, and I'm just a dumb opera singer. But in a weird way, I'm glad this happened now. I'm glad that people see that when Republics are in charge, this is what happens to the economy - and these are the types of solutions you get - because I think the Rovian plan was to try to stave off disaster until 1/20/09, and then blame the Democrats for the Bush Recession/Depression. Na. Ga. Hopin.

I don't think the American people are going to forget those pathetic little checks at the voting booth in November.

It's the economy, stupid.

If you are not an economist, and you want a concise explanation of what Atrios calls "Big Shitpile," let Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect explain it to you. (Thanks, Dad, for bringing this to my attention!)

The article is remarkable not only for its clarity, but for its framing. New Deal good! Free-market fairy tales bad! Amazingly, regulation is not the worst thing that can happen to an economy, and just lowering interest rates does not magically infuse the system with high-value cash. Who woulda thunk it?!

To me, Business as an entity is like a child experiencing its "Terrible Two's." All of a sudden, "NO!" is the only word the child seems to be able to say. Although the Terrible Two's are difficult for parents, they are also a crucial time for setting limits and imposing discipline. Is the child intrinsically bad? Of course not, but it needs to learn morality. Without the proper guidance, it will develop not into a responsible member of society, but instead into a spoiled, selfish brat. (Of course, that may happen despite the best efforts of the parents, but that doesn't mean the parents are excused from trying.)

And that's where conservative economic policy (what Kuttner calls "free market fairy tales") fails us. Business is not intrinsically bad - in fact, it can be very, very good. But Business has no moral compass - it exists purely for profit. Without strong limits and regulation, it will become an anti-societal force, and that's just what has happened.

The conservative movement has been very, very good at selling the idea of unregulated markets by hooking it to the mythos of the American cowboy. He's out on the range, striking out on his own, no one to tell him no, singing "Don't Fence Me In." How oh-so-very-manly! Like Robert Kuttner, we liberals need to re-frame this debate. The free-marketeers are not cowboys. They are the robber barons; the triple-chinned fat cats who light their cigars with $100 bills; the guys who take your hard-earned pension and use it to buy hundred-foot-yachts for their buddies.

Nobody likes those guys.

Coming into the final, torturous days of the awful reign of the Bush Cabal, I've been thinking that the entire enterprise can be summed up in three words: Bait-and-Switch.

Hasn't every single endeavor they have engaged been a bait-and-switch? Case in point: The "War on Terror."

The Bushies declared war on a feeling, then went into Afghanistan and failed to catch Osama bin Laden. That was the bait. At that point, Americans had accepted the "war on terror" frame, so they simply switched the frame to include Iraq. To this day, you'll hear Bushies and other war defenders claiming that Iraq is a central front in the war on terror.

Same thing with the tax cuts. No president in history has ever cut taxes in a time of war, and there's a good reason - because war costs a lot of money, especially if you're planning to outsource and privatize every aspect of it. (At this point, 40% of our war budget goes to private contractors.) But never mind - the Clintonian surplus was bad, and debt was good. So Bush screamed from the high heavens that he had just made American living so much more easy and beautiful by cutting our taxes. Remember when you got that refund check in the mail? Wow, free money from the government! Bush is teh awesomest preznit evah!

That was the bait. But what Bush and his cabal really did was to switch the true tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans. It turned out that check in the mail was just an advance on next year's refund - a fact which was quite deliberately obscured by the Administration. Now, in the interminable sixth year of our long national nightmare, the dollar is weaker than the Canadian dollar. Meanwhile, rich Americans are becoming richer, while working Americans are poorer, have less health insurance, and are losing their houses. And as for the Clintonian surplus, well, do the words "Trillion-Dollar Deficit" mean anything to you?

But what is his solution for this economic crisis? Making the tax cuts permanent! As Atrios would say, Wheeeeeeeeee!

It's all in a day's work for the Bait-and-Switch Administration.

Many opinions exist about what the themes of the 2008 election will be. KKKarl thinks it will definitely NOT be about Iraq. Rudy Giuliani appears to be running on the "King of 9/11" platform, lately claiming, in an unbelievable display of hubris, that he was at Ground Zero as much as the rescue workers were (apparently, they were only there 29 hours!). But what if George Bush's disasters in foreign policy and national security are NOT what the American people are most concerned about in 2008? What if it's, once again, the economy?

Certainly there are signs that the plight of ordinary, non-billionaire people is finally trickling up to Wall Street. (I've always thought that economic indicators trickle up, not down, but then, I've got a degree in French and Music, so what do I know?)

Specifically, the practice of predatory lending reached epic proportions in the heady days when Alan Greenspan lowered the federal interest rate to .5% to protect his boy Bush from the consequences of cutting taxes in a time of war. Mortgage companies, seeing that people could not afford to live where they wanted and needed to, took advantage of human greed and lack of education about financing, and approved them for mortgages that could not be paid after the balloon payment, or after the Fed raised interest rates for the umpteenth time to stave off inflation, or many other variations on the same theme.

Unfortunately, even greedier banks bought these "sub-prime" mortgages, and expected that the loans were reality-based. They weren't, and the reverberations are being felt throughout the country.

From Raw Story:

Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. says customers are "running out of money."

Earlier this week, consumer juggernauts Home Depot and Wal-Mart reported softer than expected earnings.

[snip]

In Los Angeles, economic concerns hit close to home.

Anxious customers of Countrywide Bank jammed its phone lines, branches and website after the nation's largest mortgage lender -- which owns the bank -- announced it was facing problems from a credit meltdown.

"Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest home-loan company in the nation, sought Thursday to assure depositors and the financial industry that both it and its bank were fiscally stable," wrote the LA Times Friday. "And federal regulators said they weren't alarmed by the volume of withdrawals from the bank."

"The rush to withdraw money -- by depositors that included a former Los Angeles Kings star hockey player and an executive of a rival home-loan company -- came a day after fears arose that Countrywide Financial could file for bankruptcy protection because of a worsening credit crunch stemming from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown," the paper continued.

"At Countrywide Bank offices, in a scene rare since the U.S. savings-and-loan crisis ended in the early '90s, so many people showed up to take out some or all of their money that in some cases they had to leave their names," the Times added. "Bill Ashmore drove his Porsche Cayenne to Countrywide's Laguna Niguel office and waited half an hour to cash out $500,000, which he then wired to an account at Bank of America."

"It's because of the fear of the bankruptcy," Ashmore, president of Irvine's Impac Mortgage Holdings, which escaped bankruptcy itself recently by shutting down virtually all its lending and laying off hundreds of employees told the paper. "It's got my wife totally freaked out. I just don't want to deal with it. I don't care about losing 90 days' interest, I don't care if it's FDIC-insured -- I just want it out."

I believe that by the time the Presidential election rolls around, we will be drawing down our forces from Iraq already. Certainly the surge cannot continue at its present levels past April 2008 without serious risk of breaking the Army altogether. And we know that the House has already passed a bill that echoes that deadline, although it requires the troops to be almost completely gone from Iraq by then.

Even if Bush can hold the line until he leaves office, the American people know that every Democrat running has promised to get us out of that quagmire. So really, Iraq may not be the issue in 2008.

As for national security issues, Americans are already favoring Democrats over Republics. After all, 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, and it's quite obvious that his approach to keeping us safe - the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war - is not working in any way, shape or form. Where's Osama bin Laden again?

Yes, it seems very likely that the Clintonian wisdom of the 90's will come into play once again in 2008, but this time with a twist. Maybe this time, Republics will vote their interests, instead of blindly following whomever shouts the loudest about God, Guns and Gays. Maybe America has woken up to the fact that Republics cannot be trusted with their money. And maybe we will finally realize that when we can't put food on the table, when we're working three jobs ("uniquely American!") and never see our families, when we are losing our homes and our health due to unregulated corporate malfeasance and greed...then we cannot be a free society.

Maybe it really is...The Economy, Stupid.