Chickens Have Come Home to Roust

Sorry to my core readers that I have not blogged in a couple of days. I am being hit with difficult news on all economic sides (I have a feeling I'm not the only American) and I am both in frantic survival mode and a bit depressed. Which brings us to today's post:

"A free economy governs itself"

"There is no need for the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] because corporations will fund public art"

I was feed these lines by an influential and once close relative for much of my life. And I bought it. I had closet conservative tendencies as I lived openly as a liberal.

Cut to Thursday November 14, 2008; the twilight months of an eight year stint of George Bush (and Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc.). I turned on my computer to find out that I had just lost my third of four jobs in less than two months.

Okay, rewind. Why do I have four jobs? Reminds me of the video clip of our Commander in Chief talking to Nebraska resident Mary Mornin, an American in her late 50s, working hard to raise three kids – one mentally challenged — back in 2005:

MS. MORNIN: That’s good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)

So, like many Americans, I need to work more than one job to get by. I WAS actually doing just better than getting by... just. But that has all changed now.

So now I am left with one part-time job, which I understand is better than many. I am still grateful I have an 80% job with decent benefits, a job I love waking up for every morning (and yes, though I only 'go to the office' three days a week, I do work this job just about every day. I read some ignorant dribble in the right-wing online hate site NewsMax.com about how teachers hardly work. Shows just how much their writers really know about the world).

So I'm calling bullshit on the Reagan trickle-down, free market, laissez faire system that I have been told for most of my life is best for this 'land of the free.'

This from the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch Weekend Edition:

Voluntary Regulation Doesn't Work, SEC's Cox Says

By Rex Nutting

Last update: 10:32 a.m. EDT Oct. 23, 2008

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Financial regulators made "fateful mistakes" that helped drive the global financial system to the brink, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in congressional testimony Thursday. Cox said he and other regulators have learned many lessons, chiefly that "voluntary regulation does not work." Cox urged Congress to fill "regulatory gaps" that are still putting the economy at risk. "The lessons of the credit crisis all point to the need for strong and effective regulation, but without major holes or gaps." Cox said Congress should appoint a select committee to address the challenges of regulation on a comprehensive basis.

This from the Guardian, Friday October 24 2008:

The former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has conceded that the global financial crisis has exposed a "mistake" in the free market ideology which guided his 18-year stewardship of US monetary policy.

A long-time cheerleader for deregulation, Greenspan admitted to a congressional committee yesterday that he had been "partially wrong" in his hands-off approach towards the banking industry and that the credit crunch had left him in a state of shocked disbelief. "I have found a flaw," said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."

It was the first time the man hailed for masterminding the world's longest postwar boom has accepted any culpability for the crisis that has engulfed the global banking system.

During a feisty exchange on Capitol Hill, he told the House oversight committee that he regretted his opposition to regulatory curbs on certain types of financial derivatives which have left banks on Wall Street and in the Square Mile facing billions of dollars worth of liabilities.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan.

Now I have relatives and friends who's retirements and savings are in great jeopardy and many I know are loosing jobs or seeing their friends and workmates loose their jobs. And I keep reading about the multimillion dollar 'golden parachutes' executives are getting as they leave their failing companies. Somewhere in here lies the new definition of the American Dream.