Speculators, regulators, and treasury officials all gaze anxiously into their magic eight balls as a message becomes distinguishable: “Signs point to that we are fucked.” Banks fail, homes and pensions are lost, and as the economy spirals into what may be its terminal crisis, panic grips financiers and helots alike. Bush and McCain provide comic relief to the spectacle. The former, in a statement that will eventually be considered among his most absurd, opines publicly that “Democratic capitalism is the best system ever devised.” Devised? By whom? All for the best in this best of all possible worlds. McCain, on the other hand, continues his campaign by pretending not to, supposedly returning to Washington to deal with the financial crisis, even though he is the last person one would want behind the curtain, pulling the levers that have at any rate ceased to provide even the semblance of control over a system of world capital that has reached a velocity that threatens to send it off the tracks. Congress quibbles about moral hazard while those who comprehend the extent of the crisis, if not its nature, make desperate calls for bailout funds, hoping that enough liquidity will prime the pump of valorization. Some observers on the left (those who haven’t capitulated to pragmatism and joined forces with the lion tamers at the Fed) understand the rescue plan as socialism for wealthy speculators at the expense of the working class. While it is undoubtedly true that class relations will determine the “winners” and “losers” in the newly emerging configuration of global capital, this interpretation rests on the assumption that capitalism will survive the crisis, an outcome that is by no means certain. What seems clear is that governments have begun to roll the dice at the table where they once placed side bets, desperately wagering future GDP on the attempt to kickstart the motor of valorization that sits stalled on the tracks, staring into the headlights of the collapse bearing down on it. Government’s greatest hope may be to control the rate of contraction, or postpone it until preparations are completed for population control and suppression of dissent. Even now, U.S. army brigades are preparing for “Homeland tours,” training for crowd control by adapting techniques developed in Iraq, flouting the Posse Comitatus Act while touting repression as the “most noble mission.” Even if the rescue plan succeeds, it seems to merely prolong the definitive crisis of capital. The abolition of the labor/value doublet is more urgent then ever: if capital is allowed to reach dizzying new heights it will only increase the damage of its fall when the valorization of value comes up hard against its internal limits.
1 comment:
Its crazyness. Wall street investment bankers are saying that free trade and capitalism is dead as we know it. But not because of the collapse, but because of the suspension of short sales on finaicial stocks. I am more convinced than ever that no-one at the top has a clue about anything.
I am a bit wary of this term of "world capital." Then again, I dislike the terms world government and international law as well, not liking the idea that some unelected body in the Hauge could make fair, just, and culturally relevent decisions for me and my culture that would be anything buy ethnocentric. I tolerate the federal government as a very necessary evil. But its a bloated tick that badly needs to be removed from the skin. I swear, what will be the begining of the end for individual rights and freedoms is "free" healthcare (gives the government a "right" to meddle in our lives, like the Australian gov does with its citizens) and seatbelt and helmet laws. I am deadly serious. Really, think about it. When a government thinks it has the right to tell a supposedly free adult that they have to wear a seatbelt or a helmet, who knows what will be next.
You are hard to read. Sometimes you seem very cynical, but other times, a humanist. Maybe because all cynics are crash burned idealists. Its hard for me to believe in any order for "the "greater good" (aka whatever the mob read in PEOPLE magazine that weekend).
Congress cares nothing of any so called "moral hazard." Is so OBVIOUS its laughable. The democratic party controlled congress has managed to have a approval rating that is twice as low as President Bush's. The last few years, and probably the next few will go down as their parties second greatest failure (I leave the first for personal preference). Pelosi and her feeble minions see this as an opportunity to gain positive public opinion, and a little respect. The republicans meantime are so confused as to what a republican is and what they want, that they cant even form coherent sentances.
The way I see it, there are two ways to do things. You do the bailout, hoping to slow things down to a managable rate. Or you let things go. A crash of this magnatude in the financial sector has the ability to drag down almost every other sector with it. Some people think that is what is needed. I dont know, as its hard to know how far this could reach. We are all to blame. The left for the idea that everyone should have a house, who cares if they cant pay for it. The right for allowing it though a conservative controlled congress, clinton for signing the deregulation. The Mob for the "pick a payment" morgages they agreed too, the banks for GIVING IT TO THEM, the bank executives for the greed that caused them to make so many, many dangerous investments, the government for the billions in aid we waste on the world while we cant even take care of our own country and natural resources, and my poli sci professor for the daily dose of "you guys know that bush, mcain, and palin all say NU CULAR instead of you NUCLEAR, right?" instead of TEACHING!!!! the morons in this class who hang on to every world he says like it is gospel (oh my, im so new/different/liberal/nonlikeyou/special, but could you get me some starbucks and fill up my ford excursion).... Whatever, I still have my live of the land in the mountains shunning all civilization plan to fall back on.
As for the brigades on the "homeland tours." I dont know why the pentagon announced it they way they did (first time a military unit has....) because they have always slotted assets this way, never just publicly. I thought the deal was to assist in a katrina like situation. But who knows. I doubt in the stoploss/GWOT military that they would have much sucess using most regular units against US civilians.
I really doubt there is actually is any solution. I dont think a re-evaluation of labor (as little as I understand what you/postone/etc... are proposing) will change anything. There are always people on top. They will always become greedy. Anything else requres a degree of selflessness that does not exist in humane nature in enough consistancy to be stable, or such little reguard for the individual that I think I would prefer to die in the global slum left by the death of capitalism.
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