Yesterday noon I diaried here trying to sort out the wild west bailout proposed late Friday by the Secretary of the Treasury. I was looking for, and am still looking for, a solid progressive, sensible (and, yes, pragmatic) response to what is proposed, because what is being offered seems wildly unfair and entirely unconstitutional to my naked, sleepless, caffeine-addled eyes.
I spent far too much of my Saturday here, reading, when I should have been playing with my daughter. I shall try not to repeat that mistake Sunday. (Wish me luck. No, wish HER luck!)
One of the threads which kept tugging at me was Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. The other thread, the one attached to my little girl, keeps asking this: What would you do if you strongly suspected the next Great Depression was about to descend upon you, and those you love? Please jump to a few conclusions over the fold.
Let me start with the Shock Doctrine, which I will operationally define as ramming through policies which would probably not survive careful scrutiny at times of national chaos: 9/11, the Great Depression, etc. (and with the caveat that I've not read the book, though I read its predecessor). Some view this as evidence of conspiracy at the highest levels; I tend to think of it more as opportunism, for I doubt their ability to so utterly manipulate and control events. Whoever they might be, and that's the other problem with conspiracy theories...that, and people talk.
Anyhow.
Let's assume the Shock Doctrine is in play, because it clearly is on some level.
Nothing I have read about this theory suggests the laws of jui-jitsu have been repealed.
Which is to say: Why do not WE use the Shock Doctrine to get what WE want out of this debacle?
First part of the equation: Yes we can. Obama, as the leader of his party, is absolutely in a position to ask for, to demand, to cajole, to insist upon some degree of cooperation, especially in this emergency. And the Democrats do control (in theory) both houses of Congress, through which this legislation must flow. So if we can spontaneously grow a spine -- and have a plan -- we are in a position to force the Republicans' hands, or, at least, to unstrap the hand-grenade they've strapped to the body politic (to borrow another diarist's metaphor) and dispose of it with the least possible damage.
Second part of the equation: What do we want? This is more complicated, since gaining consensus among Democrats is, uh, well...we're Democrats. At a minimum we want a bill with oversight, we want a general agreement that functional regulations and regulatory authority must be included, and we want both Main Street and the Constitution to be protected, to be made whole.
Well. This is what I want, these are the terms under which I will support this bail-out: We use this moment of Shock to break up these enormous corporations, because PART of the problem here is that their simple size has been allowed to insulate them from failure. And if you can't fail, you don't have to try as hard and care as much as those of us for whom the entire notion of a credit line is anathema. We break up the enormous corporations because Bank of America doesn't need to be all the things it is becoming; we break up the large corporations because WalMart simply has too much power; we break up the large corporations because big energy is not the friend of new energy; we break up the megacorporations because they do not pay their fair share of taxes and because their allegiance is to no specific country, much less this one. And because many smaller companies would lead to higher employment. More consumption. All that.
That's my price for going along with a $700-billion bailout.
I understand that the credit markets will go south and people will be badly hurt if this bailout fails. Or, at least, I understand that this is a possibility, the threat underpinning this radical assertion of governmental powers. I'm not positive I believe it, but...at the same time it seems far from certain that this remedy is the final answer to our short-, medium- and long-term financial difficulties. It is not clear to me that the absence of ready credit would, in the long term, be a bad thing, that new modes of commerce would not evolve in the absence of the old modes of finance. But that's all beyond my competence. Well, obviously, all of this is beyond my competence, but that hasn't stopped me from thinking about it day and night.
That said, it is far from clear that this is the final remedy. And doing this virtually precludes the other pieces of our agenda being placed even on the table: health care, poverty, education, the environment...all sacrificed to bailing out a bunch of smart rich people.
So, then, there's the other thing.
My little girl, with whom I must now go play. Get to go play.
Since I have a strong suspicion that we are headed into a long-term spiral of dire financial times, since I suspect many of us share that fear...let us begin a conversation about what things must be done to preserve ourselves, our families, and, yes, our liberties, in these coming times. Not the bloody end times of our religious fanatics, but the hard times which come as the consequence of financial malfeasance, wretched stewardship of our natural resources, and dismal leadership all around.
We are all alone, and we are all in this together
I am tempted, today, to change my signature line to this: Don't make this pacifist buy a shotgun.