This is Ilargi's intro to today's post over at The Automatic Earth.
First of all, I don't want to deny anyone the right to a party. Still, as I said yesterday, I have the feeling that many people think that the higher the price-tag, the more the event will be enjoyed. I know from my own experience that this is not true. The best parties are the ones that come with the most spontaneity. In the case of Washington these days, spontaneity is nowhere to be found. We have to party, we must, because we are so desperate for change, because we need so badly for some person or some event to give us hope.
That's why we will party, for instance because Bush is gone, and we can project all bad things on the man, so the future looks cleansed of all evil, and we can in turn project all good things on the new man. To achieve that goal, we willingly forget that the foundations for the economic downfall that stresses us so much and feeds the grinding need for hope of any kind, were laid to a very large extent under a Democratic president, not under Bush. And that would still be alright, what lies in the past cannot be repaired, what's done is done and we need to do the best we can in the future that starts tomorrow.
Yes. Right. But. The core of Obama's economic team is formed by the very same people who under Clinton were responsible for the policies that made it possible for the financial system to incur the losses that are devastating our societies today. The policies directly responsible for the unparalleled and unprecedented debt levels individuals and societies find themselves in on the eve of tomorrow's inauguration. Now, I like to believe, and I like to hope, as much as the next person. But that doesn't mean that I will believe that the same cabal that gutted the legislative principles which kept the banking system from preying on the common people, will all of a sudden do a U-turn and save the system from the very damage they themselves did to it a decade ago.
If people want me to believe that sort of thing, I get an awfully eerie feeling about the slogan "Change We Can Believe In". I want more than faith from, and in, the crew that is supposed to save the world from gut-wrenching disaster. I don't just want to hope that they can accomplish that. But I'm not getting anything more than faith and hope, than religion and great expectations. It's not just that Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who were singularly responsible for the disastrous 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, are now back in their power saddles. There's also the fact that many of the representatives who voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley are still around. When it comes to doing what is needed, I don't trust these people, I have no faith in them, and they wipe out all the hope I may once have had that there will be a change I can believe in.
In the past while, I've been criticized a lot for saying things like this. Expressing doubts about any religion's building blocks is of course always a risky venture. In belief systems, the truth is self-evident, there is no need for proof. These reactions make me feel like I’m taking a favorite toy away from a whining toddler, who has no idea that the brightly colored object with the soothing sounds that (s)he’s contentedly been sucking on contains a highly toxic and potentially lethal brew of dyes.
We can all cheer our throats dry if Obama closes Guantanamo Bay, the hell-hole that will linger for decades around the planet as the true image of what the United States of America stands for. If we have some cheers left in us, we can rejoice if the president activates a bunch of windmills or pays for a pack of destitute former GM workers to pave roads their cars no longer drive on.
But that is not where out main problems are. They are in the financial system, in the economy, in debt, in unemployment, in foreclosures and in general in an irreparably broken American Dream. And when it comes to these, the main and most urgent problems, all we have to show for ourselves is hope and belief, dashed even before the get-go moment by the appointments of the wrong people in the most crucial positions, as well as the announcements about taxpayers’ funds that will soon be used for the same purposes, just in even higher amounts, that $8 trillion have so far been thrown at, in the worst imaginable policy failure, so bad that the term criminal will hang over it.
Believe, hope and party all you will. Just take a moment to wonder if perhaps the price for the festivities will be far higher than the $50 million you have seen in the media. The news coming out of Europe today is terrible. RBS lost 66.57% of its value in one day. That is our present, and it is our future. Believe what you will.
Ilargi's previous posts on the election of Barack Obama can be found here:
The Man Who Bankrupted America?
The Name is Bonds. Obama Bonds.
Bittersweetness
Y O'Bama