I am by no means a scholar of economics. I have heard that statement reverberated all over this site, the pundits, even from the financial industry. I saw this wonderful video (posted below) from RSA. The talk is an excerpt of David Harvey. He explains his opinion of the last 50 years of capitalism. His big point is that
Capitalism never solves its crises problems, it moves them around geographically. What we are seeing right now is a geographical movement of that.
The distraction he lays out with "explanatory formats" of financial problems. This is a paraphrase of the video below.
Human Frailty: predatory instincts, instincts for mastery, delusions of investors, Greed.
Institutional Failures: regulators ineffective, gross banking innovation (leading to reconfiguration of institutions)
Obsessed with a false theory: instability of the market.
Cultural Origins: Anglo-Saxon disease, Greece's financial coverage, value of home ownership.
Failure of Policy: to much regulation/flawed regulation
Wage Repression
Credit/Debt Growth
Manufacturing Plummets
So I see this video which, I feel, has a good perspective. And then I flip over to dkos and I see this video:
This leads me to a question republican motives. (not that I usually assume they are of righteous tenor) But we go through the bail-outs, which was initially a bipartisan pill. Everyone didn't want it but they believed it was necessary. Since then, and since Obama was elected the repubs have had quite an extensive campaign to move the blame of fiscal irresponsibility on democrats. Especially those who didn't vote on the stimulus/were not in office. Which is not uncharacteristic before a midterm election in which they are down seats. But this unemployment benefit thing is puzzling me. They don't seem to be rallying the base on this issue, they are acting quite cowardly. It doesn't make sense to me. And now we have this oil spill; in which republicans are living on the edge (as steven tyler would say) of persecuting the oil companies and sucking up to them.
My question of their motives is... if they are to whether this recession with their platforms in tact, and retaining the tea-baggers, is the ultimate goal to inflate the middle/lower class; forcing the 10% unemployed to take jobs they are overqualified for? This way their lobbyists keep their money, the party can keep its power over the base. There are 237 millionaires serving in congress. 99% of the American peope are not millionaires but 44% of our congress are.