by Azaroth | January 27th, 2009
One reader writes:
“Az, I see you spouting off about political issues from time to time. Specifically you mentioned a few things about bailouts, but you didn’t expand too far. I don’t have time to keep up with this stuff, so..
What’s the deal?”
Well reader, I’m not the best one to be spouting off or expanding on these issues. If I were you, I’d check out a political blog. This is, or is supposed to be, a game design blog. Although lately it’s turned into an “IPY/slash/Darkfall Good Or Bad??” blog.
Remind me to get back to some real game design topics. That’s my passion.
Although, like most people, I do other things. I love hockey, for instance. So I make a post about it here and there. I’m Canadian, I’ve played the game since I was six years old, I can’t help it.
Politics, though. Well. I mostly comment on a very special area of politics called CRIME. That’s where your question fits in.
Crime is a fairly major area of politics, so I suppose calling it a political discussion is valid.
As I see it, the situation is, at its crux, very, very simple. It’s called theft. Supposedly these massive corporations all made a lot of bad decisions on the exact same date at the exact same time (which I’m sure can be explained to you with a lot of double talk, if anyone cares to), and now “require” billions and billions of fucking dollars to stay afloat.
These dollars are your tax dollars, if you didn’t know. So basically, in a capitalist system where companies are allowed to do absolutely anything they want to take as much money from you as possible, they supposedly failed. But fear not, because even though they failed, you’re giving them your money anyway. It’s just not voluntary, and you don’t get anything for it. And instead of going toward social programs or medicine or whatever several billion dollars could go toward.. it’s going to prop up massive corporations.
Why do people buy it? Because it saves jobs.
Supposedly.
After all of these layoffs, you’ll all get your jobs back. And there won’t be more layoffs. Etc.
Well, even if that were true.. why not just take the billions of dollars and give it directly to the employees? Why does it need to a CEO’s ferrari slash underage taiwanese hooker fund?
Well, it doesn’t. But it’s theft, so that’s how it’s happening. Theft usually works like that.
My girl Naomi Klein does a good job explaining a few things:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/17/naomi_klein_on_the_bailout_profiteers
There’s a transcript and a video of the interview. It requires an attention span, sorry. But here are a few snippets.
“We were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality,” Klein stated. “But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this. … Essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, ‘We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the Great Depression.’”
Then there’s other aspects of this that are borderline illegal. We found out that in the midst of the crisis, the Bush—the Treasury Department pushed through a tax windfall for the banks, a piece of legislation that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the US government. Many tax attorneys who were interviewed by the Washington Post said that they felt that the way in which the Treasury Department went about this by unilaterally changing the tax code was illegal, that this had to be—this had to include Congress. Congress only found out about it after the fact.
we were talking about Henry Paulson’s original three-page proposal, the $700 trillion stickup, where he basically said, “Give me $700 trillion. Don’t ask any questions. I can never be challenged by any arm of government or any court of law.” Now, that aspect of the bailout was supposedly dealt with, and we were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality. But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this, because they’re afraid of causing a run on the banks
There’s another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there’s another $2 trillion that’s been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don’t really know who they’re handing the money out to, because, apparently, it’s a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations—I think they are—but they’re saying that they won’t disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.
“If the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans,” stated Klein, “there’s a very good chance the taxpayers aren’t going to be getting this money back. … So that’s why we’re calling this the ‘trillion-dollar crime scene’ or the ‘multi-trillion-dollar crime scene.’”
So, we find out that there has been this backdoor, illegal tax break handed over to the banks. And, by the way, Amy, this is an example, a classic example, of what I call disaster capitalism or the shock doctrine—right?—where the banks had been pushing for this tax break for many, many years, they weren’t able to get it through during normal circumstances, but in a crisis they push it through the back door when everybody is focused on—well, at the point that they pushed this through, which was September 30th, this was the worst of the economic crisis and people were focused on the collapse of Lehman, and they were focused on the fact that they couldn’t get the bailout legislation through. So nobody even noticed this until it was too late.
“This crisis isn’t over,” Klein warned, “and the same people who justified this bailout, who clamored for this bailout, are the very people who are going to turn around and say to Barack Obama, ‘We can’t afford for you to make good on your election promises. We can’t afford universal healthcare.’”
Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.
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Nice post Azaroth, I especially liked the beginning where you clumsily paraphrased a clumsily assembled conspiracy theory.
I was wondering if you could explain the “bailout” packages being discussed in the remainder of the modern world? American examples are always so bland.
Tell me about IPY and Darkfall plz.
He waited, and he pounced!
That was ALMOST my advice to you.
Almost.
That you’re still waiting around looking for opportunities to pounce because I insulted Darkfall is a bit of a disturbing insight into your psyche, of course.
But if you’d like to point out which part of what I said was conspiracy theory, I’d love to debate that with you. Because, and I apologize to break this to you since you’d like it to be if for no other reason than to attack me personally and totally miss the point of the entire discussion and the effect of this situation in any picture bigger than your own MMO fanboy grudge – but it’s not.
But carry on, cupcake.
I really do enjoy being reminded that there’ll always be at least one slobbering troll lurking around if you ever decide to share your opinions in public.
And hell, your shtick is unique enough around these parts at this point that you may actually get the attention you so desperately desire from me. Soon enough though, I’m sure you’ll be lost in a cacophony of stupidity from people like yourself and you won’t be unique or interesting enough for me to bother getting the flyswatter out.
And that’ll really be too bad.
Oh sorry I sometimes forget that American television doesn’t often share news from around the world, and I guess in the storm of Darkfall posts swirling around you’ve not read international news.
But it would seem it is in fact a global problem. Too much money was lent out, and investors didn’t investigate where their money was going. OMG HELP ITS A BUSH CONSPIRACY, I’D BETTER POST A LINK TO AN INTERVIEW FROM OVER 2 MONTHS AGO TO PROVE!!!
It’s good to see the US might start applying some IOSCO standard regulations though- it might help you ignorant American pigs from fucking up again.
Anyway, DarkFall is going to be so sweet. Imagine how gay it will feel having spent an eternity working on your stupid barbie doll characters which can’t be hurt or stolen from while you drive around on your barbie horse smoking a massive Ken manhood moaning about how much fun everyone else will be having now that an MMORPG which is actually cool is coming out.
gay porn > IPY
The funny part is that I don’t really think you understand what a ridiculous second rate troll you are.
Also, I’m no longer going to allow you to post the same link in every thread on this site.
Have any of you guys seen the new Dragon Ball online? Looks pretty cool… just putting that out there.
“Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.”
That’s just a load of… If this is a parting gift to from Bush to his various supports, then please do elaborate on why Obama is spending even more money.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/12/obama-team-talks-tap-remaining-bailout-funds/
Really, it’s not quite that easy. It’s a question about if US should continue to be building cars, or if cars should just be bought from the asians from now on. Then what will the americans produce, where will they get their jobs?
Here’s a good article where Pat says it as it is.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan/china-s-path-to-world-power.html
That’s a load, dude.
“Our jerbs!” isn’t valid. Take the TRILLIONS of dollars and give those auto workers a living wage the rest of their lives for not working.
Then what the cunt does it matter where we buy our cars from?
I also never said Obama wasn’t a crook. He’s a motherfucking politician. He’s not black. He went to Harvard Law and he spits $1800 wine into silver buckets with fat rich white men at night after signing over lucrative arms contracts that pay out inordinate amounts of your tax dollars.
I think Obama being elected was the worst thing that could have POSSIBLY happened, and I stated that openly. I would have rather seen McCain get elected – because people would have gotten pissed off, and maybe they would have done something about this situation.
But as it is, Obama is hailed as some sort of saviour and given all the truth in the world to fix everything because he’s black. After the frustration the country felt from eight years of Bush, I couldn’t have strategized a move better than putting Obama in for a bit to appease people.
But yeah, he’ll keep handing out bailout money and shit. I never said I was Republican, I never said I was Democrat. I never said I was anything. I don’t side with politicans – because they’re all criminals and I hate every last one of them.
The point is, it’s not a bush problem, as was suggested.
Yea the job point is valid. Look, just paying Joe six pack for not working is not the same as paying him for working so that something is produced.
It’s not possible to have a country that just buys every service or product it needs from abroad. This is the real problem, the dollars going one way to asia. There is no way of competing with asian production, their currency is undervalued, they earn 20 times less, they work twice as much, and they have zero environment or safety concerns.
What does it matter if the man is black or not, he’s just a product, a front. I wanted to vote for Paul, but if there is gonna be an asshole in the white house it might as well be a black asshole. May teach some people that evil, greed, doesn’t have a colour. It’s not a white problem, nor is it a black problem.
No need to worry, I suspect people will be pretty pissed in 4 years :).
If you can be bothered, read Mr. Buchanan’s article. Really sums it up, imo.
No, but you’re falling into the same assumptions that our resident troll did.
I never once mentioned the name Bush.
Ms. Klein did. Because that’s what her book is about.
I didn’t. I was making a broader point. But because someone else said something that I quoted in relation to a broader point doesn’t mean I said “GEORGE BUSH THIS AND GEORGE BUSH THAT”. Far from it. As I’ve demonstrated, I’m an equal opprotunity hater.
And the job point is VERY valid. What’s more valid is HOW valid it is to pay him for something that isn’t produced. In THIS situation, that means we can pay him more, for longer, and it means that the bailout money isn’t going to rich CEOs and business families for…
What reason again? Didn’t we already establish that there was no point to that?
So yes, while there is certainly a more eloquent solution than giving them welfare on steroids – the point is what it is. The bailout money that’s going to “save jobs” is MOSTLY going to the taiwanese hooker fund of rich businessmen.