[kj] Killing joke and Communism

B. Oliver Sheppard bigblackhair at sbcglobal.net
Wed Aug 22 18:44:20 EDT 2007


Brendan wrote:

> Conspiracy theorists like me might suggest that some corporations knew

> that they would be protected from the fallout of the subprime mess they

> helped engineer with their "liar loans" by the Govt bailing out the banks

> etc...in effect the people's money being used to bail out the

> organisations that scheisted them with loans they could never afford in

> the first place...

Brendan & others--




This is a good take on it all from Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel
& Dimed (which also became a documentary) and the book _Blood Rites_,
avout the history of human warfare and what rives humans to war:


SMASHING CAPITALISM

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2007/08/smashing-capita.html


Somewhere in the Hamptons a high-roller is cursing his cleaning lady and
shaking his fists at the lawn guys. The American poor, who are usually
tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class,
suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial
system. Incredibly enough, this may be the first case in history in
which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system
without going to the trouble of a revolution.

First they stopped paying their mortgages, a move in which they were
joined by many financially stretched middle class folks, though the poor
definitely led the way. All right, these were trick mortgages, many of
them designed to be unaffordable within two years of signing the
contract. There were “NINJA” loans, for example, awarded to people with
“no income, no job or assets.” Conservative columnist Niall Fergusen
laments the low levels of “economic literacy” that allowed people to be
exploited by sub-prime loans. Why didn’t these low-income folks get
lawyers to go over the fine print? And don’t they have personal
financial advisors anyway?

Then, in a diabolically clever move, the poor – a category which now
roughly coincides with the working class – stopped shopping. Both
Wal-Mart and Home Depot announced disappointing second quarter
performances, plunging the market into another Arctic-style meltdown. H.
Lee Scott, CEO of the low-wage Wal-Mart empire, admitted with admirable
sensitivity, that “it’s no secret that many customers are running out of
money at the end of the month.”

I wish I could report that the current attack on capitalism represents a
deliberate strategy on the part of the poor, that there have been secret
meetings in break rooms and parking lots around the country, where cell
leaders issued instructions like, “You, Vinny – don’t make any mortgage
payment this month. And Caroline, forget that back-to-school shopping,
OK?” But all the evidence suggests that the current crisis is something
the high-rollers brought down on themselves.

When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is
Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take
a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford
realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned
enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure
out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth,
even at the company’s famously discounted prices.

The sad truth is that people earning Wal-Mart-level wages tend to favor
the fashions available at the Salvation Army. Nor do they have much use
for Wal-Mart’s other departments, such as Electronics, Lawn and Garden,
and Pharmacy.

It gets worse though. While with one hand the high-rollers, H. Lee Scott
among them, squeezed the American worker’s wages, the other hand was
reaching out with the tempting offer of credit. In fact, easy credit
became the American substitute for decent wages. Once you worked for
your money, but now you were supposed to /pay/ for it. Once you could
count on earning enough to save for a home. Now you’ll never earn that
much, but, as the lenders were saying – heh, heh—do we have a mortgage
for you!

Pay day loans, rent-to-buy furniture and exorbitant credit card interest
rates for the poor were just the beginning. In its May 21^st cover story
on “The Poverty Business,” Business Week documented the stampede, in the
just the last few years, to lend money to the people who could least
afford to pay the interest: Buy your dream home! Refinance your house!
Take on a car loan even if your credit rating sucks! /Financiamos a
Todos! /Somehow, no one bothered to figure out where the poor were going
to get the money to pay for all the money they were being offered.

Personally, I prefer my revolutions to be a little more pro-active.
There should be marches and rallies, banners and sit-ins, possibly a
nice color theme like red or orange. Certainly, there should be a vision
of what you intend to replace the bad old system with—European-style
social democracy, Latin American-style socialism, or how about just
American capitalism with some regulation thrown in?

Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis; already, the
government has rushed in to soothe the feverish markets. But in the long
term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor
cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that
foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London
and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less
like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.





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