Well, the economy is still crash-diving. The Dow is down again–this time by more than 300 points–despite the $85 billion loan to AIG by the Fed. We’re about 3,300 points lower than we were when the Dow hit its high point at around 14, 000.
Let’s see: Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and now AIG. The Fed has helped these entities, but it’s let Lehman and Merrill, Lynch go down the toilet. I guess they weren’t “too big to fail.” Thank goodness for corporate welfare, however, because those businesses that have been rescued can rebuild and look forward to more prosperous times (we hope).
The presidential election should be in the firm control of the Democrats, but it isn’t. Everybody I talk to–nurses, Quik Shop clerks, retired professors, Federal agents (well, one–my son-in-law), the guy at the office-supply store, the owner of the local Dunkin’ Donuts franchise–wants to talk about the economy. My little informal survey (as well as the newspapers that I read) tells me that people are scared stiff, fed up, yet ever hopeful that something, somehow can be done.
But while the Fed has put Band-Aids on the problem, it hasn’t addressed the underlying wound: the lack of useful oversight and regulation of Wall Street. It’s a great irony that big businesses have successfully lobbied an all-too-willing Congress and the past four administrations to lessen oversight and regulation, only to have to beg for government intervention when their free-wheeling ways haveled to lousy business practice.
So it ought to be the Democrats’ election, since they can point to the last eight years of Republican incompetence on economic matters and, truthfully, not have to take much of the blame for the wreckage. But can Obama and Biden come up with some sexy sound-bites to attack the Republicans? Can they become political attack-dogs, like Sarah Palin, and convince the American people that they have a better way for the future?
They certainly ought to be able to, especially in light of McCain’s confusion about the whole economic situation. (“Economics isn’t my strong point,” he has admitted. “I don’t know much about economics.” I believe you, John.)
But this election might not depend on what the candidates say about the economy. It might well boil down, as McCain political adviser said, to the personalities of the candidates.
Duh! Of course! Where have I been? Didn’t Reagan win because of his good looks, his friendly, lopsided smile, his cheerfulness, and his embodiment of the Western Cowboy? And wasn’t he pretty good at snide put-downs of the Democrats. (We won’t talk here of his racist Southern strategy.) How could any Democratic candidate, no matter what kinds of plans and ideas he had, compete with the larger-than-life Myth of the West, by an actor who had played the part in many movies, no less, and looked good riding a horse?
And now: I was reading Joe Klein in Newsweek this morning in the doctor’s office, and he pointed out that Sarah Palin has the same Myth of the West thing going for her. I was barely able to get the gist of his idea before the doctor called me in, but the gist was enough. The Alaskan Frontier! An independent, gun-toting, God-fearing woman who can insult the Democrats with a smile and govern Alaska while caring for five kids.
Obama is not going to look good riding a horse. Joe Biden isn’t going to claim that he knows how to field-dress a moose (though he can slice up a political opponent with a barbed remark). So forget about ideas and plans and policies and issues and diplomacy and all that government stuff. We’re in the realm of myth and archetype and tribal emotions.
The Democrats might still pull this one out of the fire. After all, things are going to get worse on the economic front, which is the number-one issue (“There you go again!”) in the country. But they’d better get some catchy sound-bites and a few sexy slogans. I think that the Sarah bounce is already starting to fade–a little–but she’s going to do a lot of damage in the Western states, in Florida, and in the South. No matter that she’s an air-head. The Republicans for a long time have been smart enough to know that a dumb candidate doesn’t matter. And the Democrats have been dumb enough to think that a smart candidate does matter.
—–I wrote the above paragraphs a few hours ago, before I discovered that the Dow had, by the end of business, actually dropped by nearly 450 points. That drop, along with the bad economic news that will inevitably continue, has just erased the Sarah factor, I think. Neither McCain (who can’t draw a crowd alone) nor Palin (who can draw a crowd but not say anything of substance) can explain away the last eight years of criminal incompetence in this administration.
I’m saddened to see my modest teacher’s pension go into the toilet, troubled profoundly to see the hard work and savings of my children half-destroyed, shocked to realize that my brother’s life of hard work and honest business success have been knocked down, and angered beyond words that my country’s wealth and prestige have been pissed away by a sneering, perpetual adolescent who set out to show the world how tough he is, a paranoid vice president who knew how to manipulate him, and a compliant Congress led by Republicans bought off by Big Business. Pissed away by businessmen who couldn’t even succeed when they rigged all the rules in their favor. Pissed away by politicians who sold their shriveled souls to lobbyists for steak dinners and rides on the corporate jets. Pissed away by every special interest that wrote the laws that the corrupt politicians were willing to pass to continue in office and mouth the ideology of free markets that have rarely been free because of the special interests who make up the rules in their own favor and call them truth. And pissed away by the angry voters who bought into this debased ideology and put the rascals in office.
The economic question is now not Are we in a recession? It’s Are we going to go through another depression? The world markets are panicked. Henry Paulson is proceeding by guesswork, without a rational plan. The Federal Reserve chairman is almost out of options. There is, in fact, almost no leadership in this administration that can meet our economic problems.
Well, the Bush people wanted no oversight, no regulation, no transparency. Leave it all up to the free hand of the market. Now we see what happens when the market goes unchecked.
Tags: Economy, election, stock market
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