We electrified the guitar

If you haven't, do.

TGIF

Wouldn't mind taking this song out for a beer and seeing what happens, if you know what I'm saying.

The invisible hand of whatever

I doubt that anyone who reads this blog is a big fan of the "Market." Or at least the notion that the Market makes everything better. Still, on a micro level, supply and demand work pretty well. At least for determining what an item is worth. Let's say I "own" a house and I want to sell it. I put it out for bid, and people looking to buy a house tell me what they'd be willing to pay for it. Whatever the highest bid comes in at is what my house is worth at that moment. I've simplified, hopefully not to the point of uselessness.

There are times, of course, when a value needs to be put on my house without the mechanics of the market involved, say for tax purposes. In order to determine the value here, a neutral party, most often from the government, estimates what my house might be worth these days and taxes me accordingly. Now, you could easily argue - and people on the right especially often do - that the government is not neutral, because they have an incentive of over-value my house in order to collect more taxes. We all know that if there is one thing the government loves, it is collecting taxes.

Now the last person who should be relied on to fairly value my house is me, right? Especially in any meaningful way. For tax purposes, I am going to value my house at $4. If I want to borrow money based on the value of my house, then its worth at least $400,000. Right? We all know this.

So someone, anyone, please for God's sake explain the new mark-to-market rules to me. How in the fuck can it make sense to let banks, not the market, not the government, but banks themselves declare what their mortgage holdings are worth? Am I understanding right that banks are saying, jeebus, no one on the market wants to buy our house for anything more than pennies. And then they say, jeebus the government is saying our house is only worth pennies. But the banks want their house to be worth more. They need to their house to be worth more so that no one thinks they're poor and have no assests, so they are going to be allowed to say that their house is worth whatever they think it is worth? And then borrow money based on that value?

This seems like perhaps the dumbest idea ever. And I don't want to go too far down this road, because I am not a trained economist in any way, but isn't this solution (again) designed to get banks lending money to each other? So if one bank tells another bank that it has holdings worth, say, ten million bars of gold-pressed latinum, it can borrow from the other bank one hundred million bars of gold-pressed latinum. And in turn that bank can borrow even more latinum from the first bank! Yeh! Because what we have here is a liquidity crisis, not an exploision of a debt-based housing bubble, a lack of middle-class jobs, stagnant wages, an over-supply of housing (in some areas), individual debt such that it makes semse to lend money to nobody. Those are problems we don't have. Nope, all we have is a crisis of confidence. If banks are not forced (BY THE GOVERMENT!!!!!) to tell people what their actual assests are worth, but are, rather, allowed to make up whatever they want, then we will all be able to see that Bank of America and CitiGroup actually have lots and lots of money and we can all quit worrying and start borrowing and buying each others houses at wildly inflated prices again.

Seriously, someone tell me where I have gone wrong, because I am starting to sound like someone who raves about these things. I feel like I am one step away from advocating a return to the gold standard here and this not a place I want to be.

This is not going to end well

In times past there was a prevailing wisdom that the violence stemming from the drug war equated to just one drug dealer killing another and after they finished killing each other off, things would go back to being peaceful and all would be well— this theory is no longer valid.

Ah, "Moderates"

Looks like we lost Feinstein on EFCA as well. Dig this:

"I think in this economy that what has to happen is that the unions and management get together and try to see if they can work out something," Feinstein said.

Yes, because after management has managed to fuck this economy nine ways 'til Sunday, we need to make sure that they stay in charge of this thing. Wouldn't want to go nuts and make it easier for the workers to have a voice, would we? I mean, I am sure the anti-EFCA forces will be perfectly willing to make some compromises that are good for everyone. And why do I deeply suspect that the compromises will be something along the lines of "stiffer penalties for management when they break the law balanced by stiffer penalties for unions." In other words, more of this crap where we pretend like there is a level playing field and both sides need to work to make nice-nice. Fuck that noise.

Wait a tick

I am trying hard not to think about the fact that it appears that Obama just killed the unionized American car industry, or at least let it die. Trying very hard. I must say, however, that it is disheartening to read this:

President Obama announced Monday that struggling automotive giants General Motors and Chrysler will be given a "limited" period of time to "restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars."

at the same time that I know that the government is spending $970 billion to buy up worthless mortgages in the hope that one day, maybe thirty years from now, they might be worth something (and then we can auction them off for pennies on the dollar!).

The US autoworker is about to take a giant kick in the metaphorical balls. What makes me cry is that, while I just read a whole lot about how bad Joe Finance has it because he might lose his million dollar bonus at AIG, I imagine I am about to read a whole lot about how Joe Autoworker had it coming because he wanted health care after he retired. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'd also like to note for the record, before we get too far down the fuck road that Obama defended the AIG bonuses because there were in a legal contract, and here he is saying that UAW must again "restructure" its contract in order for the industry to get more bailout money.

Of course, when one looks across the aisle, what do we see? Fuck stick and Lex hero Senator Bob Corker. Here is a guy who looks at a situation where the auto industry is coming to the government begging for money to stay afloat and the government says, sure we'll give you the money, as long as you make some changes to your business (especially if you can figure out a way to fuck your workers, because worker fucking is fun for everyone) and this asshat sees the heavy boot of communism come crashing down on American capital.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said this is a "major power grab" by the Obama administration.

"This is a marked departure from the past, truly breathtaking, and should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise. I worry that in one fell swoop we've lost our moral high ground throughout the global community as it relates to chastising other countries that use strong arm tactics to invade on private property rights," he said in a statement.

God bless the people of Tennessee, but do they really look at the situation with the US auto industry, and one imagines the firing of Rick Wagoner, and see a totalitarian government interfering with the fine, fine businessmen at GM? How can they vote for this guy?

Lord the hate feels good, now I know how Vader felt.

But back to the sadness. Is there anyone who reads this blog thinking Obama is doing well? Are we still cutting him slack? Anyone ready to cut the line? I'm getting very, very close and having a harder and harder time believing that it would have been all that much worse under McCain. Especially when I read shit like this.

Goddammit, I so wanted to have something to believe in.

Follow Up

I'm posting a follow up to my earlier post about that highlarrious "Union Thuggery" video posted on NW Republican. I spent a good part of the weekend posting comments with the fellas over there with Brown Beard and Wobs joining in. Anyone want to help out?

I think I saw that movie

This has to be one...........
the most original thoughts regarding the impact of socialism on society. I would've used it for the benefit of my children had I not already informed them of the LBGT community looking for the perpetual free ride. Information that I acquired as an adult, since I'm not LGBT, had to be disseminated to my children at an early age because I married a closet case that eventually colluded with the gay family court system. My children were able to observe first hand that LGBT children are not "born that way". Kudos on your economics lesson to the economically naive.

Before I Give Myself a Well-Deserved RugBurn

I'm in a horrendous mood: EFCA's fucked, fntsy bsbl is off to a false start, and my worst pangs are wholly unmentionable for the moment. Suffice it to say that the soothing, sleek seal that is the Sea and Cake's Car Alarm isn't even enough to calm my shit down. Whatever, I'll spin it again....

Anyway, all this shit makes Dean Baker's shit-talk-y, sardonic Beat the Press blog even more appropriate than it already always is. No matter how far we've all contorted ourselves in the service of sanctioning and/or "giving a pass" to these or those of the President's this and thats, I think we all do well to keep the raspier raps from Baker, Henwood, Frank and Reed close at hand --- even if it means my recycling new iterations of what're closely-held, nearly 'goes without saying'-y premises.

Par example:

The media are busy perpetuating a myth that the United States has been a beacon of "free market" capitalism. This is a lie. The United States never had free market capitalism and certainly the system in place over the last three decades hardly qualifies.

The U.S. put in place policies designed to transfer income from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. This is most evident now with the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent bailing out the banks. For the last three decades, the banks and their top executives, made vast fortunes using a free government insurance policy called "too big to fail," under which bond holders and other creditors could lend money to the banks knowing that the government would honor their debts if they ever got into trouble.

It is an outright lie to call this a "free market." This is a huge government handout. This insurance policy is enormously valuable and the banks did not have to pay a penny for it. The banks are ardent opponents of free market capitalism. None of them have advocated that they be allowed to collapse.

Crap/Not Crap - Pearl Jam Edition

All questions raised by the comments on the AV Club in a discussion of Pearl Jam's Ten.

1. Crap/Not Crap: STP at their best were better than Pearl Jam.

2. Crap/Not Crap: Mother Love Bone was good.

3. Crap/Not Crap: Screaming Trees were not very good.

4. Crap/Not Crap: Nirvana is a band you can like when you are "like 12 years-old," but Pearl Jam is the music for the true connoisseur.

5. Crap/Not Crap: Pearl Jam were not "really" grunge.

6. Crap/Not Crap: "Grunge" is just a media word that has no real meaning.

7. Grunge is most closely related to: a.cock rock, b.metal, c.hardcore, d.punk [sure indy rock should be on the list, but that's not the way the AV Clubbers see it]

8. Ten was part of the soundtrack of: a.middle school, b.high school c.college d. not terribly familiar with the album

Fantasy Baseball is a Metaphor for Similies

Well, Jesus fuckin' Christ, it's fntsy baseball time again. It's a time for Wobs, ex-OG personage Dave3544 and I, among a coupla-three chums from other walks of la vie, to engage in a months and months-long exercise of nervous clicking, scannning etc. It's a time for clunky nicknames and profane poetry - not unlike that of the OG, come to think of it - and a generalized, sports-y anxiety that you'd do well to taste for yourself.

What's that, you say? Not a fan of "baseball"? Well good for you, snob! 'Thing is, that has nothing to do with this. We need you kids.

Go here to sign on. League ID = 220900
League = Skin Kin 2009
Password = 'readyondayone' (remember the Hillary for Prez campaign? EZ does.)

Like eating a pound of chocolate

One of the ideas floating around about how to "fix" EFCA so that it is more palatable to one or two Republican Senators and some "liberal" "progressive" "vehemently anti-union" business owners is the idea that unions would be allowed equal access to the workplace when conducting organizing drives.

This sounds like a good idea, but is not. Let me tell you why.

1. It solidifies the "captive audience" meetings that we are currently fighting against. We think these are bad things. The employer should not be allowed to force its workers to go to propaganda meetings as part of their employment. We mean this for anti-union meetings, political meetings, religious meetings, or anything else. When the employer buys eight hours of work, that's what they buy, not eight hours of someone's life.

2. "Equal" means whatever the employer wants it to mean. The meetings with union organizers will be held in the basement, with no coffee, no donuts at 8:45 am on Monday. The meeting with the bosses will be held in the conference room with coffee, danish, and maybe, for those Friday afternoon meetings, with beer.

3. No matter how much time the union is given, it will not be equal. The union might have half-an-hour. The employer has the next seven-and-a-half hours in the day. We cannot win the captive audience game, so we shouldn't play it.

It is not a level playing field now and never will be, we shouldn't make it easy for the bosses to pretend like it is.

The motherfucking lid blown off of EFCA

All I can say is that

I was unaware of the negative consequences of EFCA when I wrote in support of it in the past. All I can say is that I put my trust in a certain individual who I, apparently, should not have trusted. In the future, I will do my own research before endorsing this type of thing.

This Fox News story is the tragic tale of a small plant in Indiana that suffered through an organizing drive conducted by the UAW. These factory owner asshats actually let their employees decide whether to organize a union via Satan's preferred method - card check. I think we can all see what's coming (we all watched the video, right? That makes it easier to see what is coming). Two! At least two people were harassed by some union THUG. We'll one of the women mentions that he was always there and she seems like she didn't like it, but she doesn't actually say that she was harassed. The second woman is pissed because people knew she was against the union and see seems to have been harassed by her co-workers, but still UNION THUGGERY PROVED!!!

And here's the sickening thing. At least 50% of people at the plant signed a card. A union was formed. Some percentage [at least 30%, although the story keeps vague about all the numbers. Maybe so that no one has a better idea of how this really works] of workers asked for a vote. The vote was held and the union was decertified. See how horrible EFCA would be? Union THUGS can harass people, intimidate them, and force them to sign union cards that they don't want to sign. Or, at the very least, card check would create more situations where it is easy to manipulate a story to make it seem like this kind of thing could happen.

And then what happens when these union THUGS!!! get their union by threatening to kill anyone who doesn't sign a card? What happens to these poor, frightened people? Well, they are forced to sign a petition to the National Labor Relations Board asking for an election. After some mandatory employee meetings, some video watching, saying goodbye to some longtime colleagues who were total dicks throughout this whole thing, and hinting to your bosses that your spouse is looking for work, you get to vote on decertifying the union. The similarities to Communist Russia cannot be overlooked.

Thank God the fine folks at NW Republican are on top of this stuff. I doubt very much that I will be falling for whatever Lex pushes on me next time (unless it is shiny.)

TGIF

For Lex, cause he's there.

Wow, Did We Just Lose EFCA? That Was Fast - In a Slow, Painful Way

*** Card check’s death? Did the legislative battle over the Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a. “card check”) end before it truly began? GOP Sen. Arlen Specter’s decision yesterday to oppose the bill, even though he voted for cloture on the measure in ’07, dealt a blow to organized labor, denying them the 60 votes they need to end debate -- even if Al Franken ends up joining the Senate. We can tell you this: The White House appears to be happy (but very quietly so) to have this debate out of the way. No doubt they were for it. But it was always more of a Biden cause than a Barack cause. At this point in time, with everything else on their plate, sticking a finger in business’ eye wasn’t something the White House was looking forward to. Would Obama have signed it? Yes. But he doesn’t have to worry about it now, at least maybe not until 2011.

(from First Read)

I am really, really trying to avoid saying something about Arlen Specter's recurrent personal health struggles.

And I'm really glad to hear that those centrist Dems are off the hook for having to stand up for the labor movement.

Question: If this defeat is real and irrevocable, has it done more to dampen my (already flimsy) faith in the Dem/Labor alliance, or my faith in actually existing organized labor en general?

Question 2: Does anybody anywhere believe we can advance to a filibuster-proof majority by 2011?

('Better crawl back into the earthly comforts of my current undisclosed location, before I go ahead and join a Trot faction or the Air Force or some shit....)

You see the twist is that no one even knows any more, man

In short, it was an offer that no capitalist speculator could ever refuse.

Which reminds one of the scene from the film, The Godfather, in which the corrupt politician woke up with a bloody dead horse's head in his bed. It's a scene once again played with gamblers, corruption and politicians. Except this time there's a twist: It's the taxpayer that will wake up with the dead horse's head.

- Dr. Jack Rasmus, Professor of Political Economy

Author: Epic Recession and Global Financial Crisis, forthcoming Palgrave/Pluto Press, 2009

Which reminds me of the scene from the film, Red Dawn, where the father is standing behind the fence in the concentration camp and he screams "Avenge me, boys! Avenge me!" Except the twist this time is that it is the American taxpayer standing behind the fence and we're shouting "Screw the capitalist pigs! Screw 'em even if it means the complete disintegration and destruction of our society! A new world will rise from the ashes of the old!"

Which reminds me of a song I once sang.

Which reminds me of that scene on the show, The Simpsons, where Homer is at the Hullabalooza and there are two slackers watching him catch a cannonball in his stomach and one of them says "Oh, that's cool" in that way that slackers have and the other one asks, "Are you being sarcastic, dude?" And then the first one says "I don't even know anymore, man." Except this time it is everyone who reads this blog who doesn't know what the hell to think about the bailout because on the one hand screw the fucking capitalist dogs, but on the other hand it would be really nice not to have our nice little lives destroyed by a depression.

National Review blawg re: EFCA 'compromise'

Over at the Corner, the "Committee for a Level Playing Field"'s proposal scores something like a "not not not crap," which supports the OG consensus that the Starfucks/Whole Shit/CostFilth troika is more in league with the NAM/US Chamber Of Commerce camp than with everybody the crap else:

The three companies' compromise bill rejects both of EFCA's most noxious elements — card check (or abolition of the guarantee of a secret ballot) and mandatory arbitration. What it does include is an assurance of greater access for unions to a firm's employees during a unionization election, and increased penalties for employers who break the rules. Their proposal would be much less harmful than EFCA, but at the same time it unnecessarily concedes the false premise that the reason for unions' decline is procedural rather than substantive — i.e., fewer workers feel the need to belong to them.

Some will criticize these three companies for catering to their latte liberal customers (at least in the case of Whole Foods and Starbucks) and using this as a public relations exercise to show that they are the good guys. And this may be in part true, but it could have been much worse. There were fears, when this alternative was still under development, that it would include some form of card check.

I don't understand what was so great about it

LGM is running a series of posts comparing Brad Delong's optimism about the Geithner plan with Krugman's pessimism. LGM doesn't add a lot, so this is merely a hat tip.

I find myself in the Krugman camp, mostly due to the influence of Dean Baker. I believe that housing prices in the US were wildly overinflated and that many millions of people will continue to struggle to pay their mortgages and then won't when they lose their jobs. Loans will not be paid back. Toxic assets are not currently undervalued (I didn't realize people we arguing this! I am slightly horrified. I guess I need to follow more links.) The way out of this recession is not through reinflating housing prices. God no.

As I always say though, happy to be shown I am wrong.

One thing that makes me think Delong is deluded (Chris Matthews ha!) is his belief that the hedge fund managers who are planning to buy the assets and manage them to eventually recover their value are supposedly not going to fuck it up because they have $30 billion of their own scratch in the game. Somehow this incentivizes them to not fuck it up.

Q: Why is the government making hedge and pension fund managers kick in $30 billion?

A: So that they have skin in the game, and so do not take excessive risks with the taxpayers' money because their own money is on the line as well.

Q: Why then should hedge and pension fund managers agree to run this?

A: Because they stand to make a fortune when markets recover or when the acquired toxic assets are held to maturity: they make the full equity returns on their $30 billion invested--which is leveraged up to $1 trillion with government money.

Q: Why isn't this just a massive giveaway to yet another set of financiers?

A: The private managers put in $30 billion and the government puts in $970 billion. If we were investing in a normal hedge fund, we would have to pay the managers 2% of the capital and 20% of the profits every year. In this case, the private managers' returns can be thought of as (a) a share of the portfolio's total return proportional to their 3% contribution, plus (b) a "management incentive fee" of (i) 0% of the capital value and (ii) between 0% (if the portfolio returns 3% per year) and 9% (if the portfolio returns 10% per year)--much less than hedge-fund managers typically charge. the Treasury is only paying 0% of the capital value and 17% of the profits every year.

Q: Why do we think that the government will get value from its hiring these hedge and pension fund managers to operate this program?

A: They do get 17% of the equity return. 17% of the return on equity on a $1 trillion portfolio that is leveraged 5-1 is incentive.

Oh, is that how it works? If they didn't stand to make so many billions they just wouldn't really put the ol' brain power to it, but with billions in profit on the line, they will really get the juices flowing for us? I mean wtf? And aren't these the same McGenuises that just screwed the pooch? Were they just not trying before? Isn't it traditional that when the US gets in financial trouble it "hires" the best and the brightest for $1 a year? [How 'bout we call them dollar-a-year men? Brilliant!] See, the thinking here is that people don't need the incentive of billions in profits derived from government-backed leverage in order to save the American economy. If the American economy is saved, they will make money along with everyone else. If it is not, then no one is making money. It is already in their interest to help save the economy.

For all of these reasons, this plan looks exactly like a big gamble using leveged government dollars wherein the only people who will end up making any money will be the Wall Street finaciers who just happen to have one of their own in a position of power.

And I am off my rocker here, but why the fuck is Krugman not part of this administration? Let's offer him billions to help us out here.

Primary Text from......wow, Dean Baker!

t r u t h o u t | A.I.G. Bonuses: Class War in the Media

Of course, the bonus money is relatively small change in the scheme of things. The same people who think it's fine to give incompetent financial company executives multi-million dollar bonuses are busy crafting plans to hand several thousand times this amount to the same crew in their latest bailout scheme. They are saying that if this plan doesn't go through, the economy will be wrecked.

Just to be clear (because the media won't tell you), the people who designed this plan are the same people who wrecked the economy. Before anyone even thinks of supporting this plan, they should get a clear answer from Bernanke, Geithner, and the rest of the crowd to the question: "When did you stop being wrong about the economy?"

Fuck Starbucks, Fuck Whole Foods, Fuck Costco

Costco, Starbucks, Whole Foods Present Alternative Labor Plan - washingtonpost.com
(H/T: AP):

As business and labor gird for battle over legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize, the debate could be transformed by a "third way" proposed by three companies that like to project a progressive image -- Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods.

Like other businesses, the three companies are opposed to two of the Employee Free Choice Act's components -- a provision that would allow workers to form a union if a majority sign pro-union cards, without having to hold a secret ballot election, and one that would impose binding arbitration when employers and unions fail to reach a contract after 120 days.

To all our readers who aren't necessarily immersed in the labor movement: this is an attempt to get you, the highly-educated, conspicuously consuming progressive, to identify with these corporations against unions, workers, rising wages, workplace democracy, and something like a for-real check on corporate largesse. At this point in the Employee Free Choice Act debate, y'all's hearts and minds are endlessly more important than those of us laborite nerds. If you don't feel like this Employee Free Choice Act has been defined to your liking on this blog or elsewhere, or if you would like some specific, anecdotal illustrations of how the present process of forming a union is tailor-made for employer intimidation, please say so. Point blank: this bill is the last best chance for workers -- and I am including anybody who works for wages, here -- that we will see during the Obama administration, let alone whatever Jindal or Udall or whatever-the-shit administration will follow.

Nobody reading this blog loves coffee, Ryan Adams cds, organic produce, fake meat products and cheap Ric Flair dvds more than me; but never mind what they're selling, eh? It's what you're buying. The US Chamber of Commerce is betting that NPR fans and Gen X ur-hipsters identify more with their latte store and its liberal arts semiotics than they do with the folks who brought us the weekend -- which side are you freaks on? Are you primarily a consumer of steamed milk or a worker, like other workers, who figures 40+ hours a week of whatever-the-fuck merits economic security and, shucks, the right to do your job and have a say at work without fear of employer behavior that can be alternately arbitrary, patronizing, charitable or cruel, but which is always, as it stands in the non-unionized workforce, damn near unfuckwithable?