Darwin's Dangerous Idea (by Phila)

One of the mantras of climate inactivism is that polar bears will simply adapt to climate change. The fact that this theory is usually advanced by people who question the reality of climate change and the utility of polar bears should give you some idea of how sincere it is.

At any rate, it looks as though polar bears are indeed adapting:

Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.

Starving bears will occasionally attack humans, too. The inactivist response is straightforward: if this is how polar bears are going to behave, why shouldn't they die out? The possibility that they might adapt to the loss of their natural prey and habitat means they shouldn't be protected; the fact that they try to adapt suggests that we're better off without them.

It's funny how the basic concepts of evolution inspire pious horror from social conservatives when they're taught in schools, and shouts of "amen!" when they're used to justify nudging some inconvenient species into extinction. The besetting sin of "Darwinism" is supposed to be its amorality; meanwhile, the idea that polar bears have value in themselves, either as created beings or as members of a fragile ecosystem that we don't fully understand, is cast aside as quasi-religious sentimentalism at best. They attack evolution as a justification of eugenics, and then embrace eugenics as a justification of economic and foreign policy. Like Jesus Christ, Social Darwinism must be martyred in order to triumph.

Curiously, it's the evolutionary viewpoint that tends to provide the moral seriousness here: you won't find too many biologists who contemplate the loss of large or small species without fear and trembling; their eye is on the sparrow, as the saying is. This, I suspect, is the only aspect of evolutionary science that right-wing ideologues truly view as "dangerous."

Read and Copy (by Phila)

Be it known:

The Bush administration has overturned a 22-year-old policy and now allows customs agents to seize, read and copy documents from travelers at airports and borders without suspicion of wrongdoing, civil rights lawyers in San Francisco said Tuesday in releasing records obtained in a lawsuit.

There's not much I can -- or should have to -- say about that. What I find really interesting here is the evolution of this practice.

[T]hose policies were first enacted by President Ronald Reagan's administration in 1986, in response to lawsuits by U.S. citizens who were questioned and searched after returning from Nicaragua. President Bill Clinton's administration refined the policies in 2000 but made no major changes, Sinnar said.

In other words, these policies had their origins in the political harassment of US citizens, at least some of whom were undoubtedly providing humanitarian aid to a country whose democratically elected government was under attack by the Reagan administration, on the grounds that it posed an existential threat (Nicaragua, you'll recall, was only "two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas").

Clinton left the policies more or less intact. Now, Bush has expanded them. Previously, there had to be "reasonable" grounds for seizing and copying documents. Now, it's simply a matter of autocratic whim. This is a good example -- if we needed another -- of how Democratic administrations postpone, rather than reverse, the slide into authoritarianism. It's conceivable that Obama will reject these powers, and dismantle them. It's even more conceivable that he won't, which ought to (but probably won't) give conservatives pause for thought.

You can read the FOIA documents on these policies here.

Bitch magazine and the feminist press (by Skylanda)

Nearly ten summers ago, I was taking - of all things - a 101 level chemistry class at a junior college in San Francisco. I struck up a conversation with the gal on the lab bench across from me, and over some foggy lunches and breaks between cram sessions, we talked about all kinds things political and passionately personal. One day, she brought me a magazine and told me she thought I’d like it, should give it a read.

The magazine was Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. I was intrigued. I read her two back issues cover to cover. I started buying it on the newsstands when my meager budget allowed. Though the rhetoric was familiar (and sometimes off-base, and sometimes trite…ya know, like any other publication out there), it put to print opinions that I’d had myself, thoughts that I should have had, and insights that I never would have come up with on my own.

I didn’t agree with every writer published in their pages, and one time I disagreed enough to fire off a snappy reply to the email address listed under the letters-to-the-editor section. One of the editors herself wrote me back and we proceeded to engage in five or six back-and-forth emails debating the topic at hand (which concerned - I kid you not - whether the infamous lesbian kiss on Ally McBeal was a step toward or away from adequate, accurate representation of lesbians on primetime). At the end of our exchange, though we animatedly disagreed, she told me she liked my style and asked if I would be interested in writing for them some time? And so Bitch magazine became the first media venue to ever put my name in print. In the intervening near-decade, I was a regular contributor until the demands of work put a crimp in my minimally-paid extra-curricular activities.

I bring this up now not to flash my somewhat dubious qualifications around now that echinde has given me a space as a regular contributor here, but because Bitch is going through a rough patch these days. There’s all the usual stressors on small independent press - low advertising revenues, the flailing fluctuations in income when one issue does not sell as well as the last, a markedly biased increase in postal rates for bulk mailers a few months back - and then there’s the stress of putting out a progressive, incisive feminist mag four times a year while maintaining the editorial cojones to turn down advertising not in line with the mission of the publication. On September 15th the editors ran a home-spun video to plead their case that if they didn’t come up with the cash flow to publish the next issue, the previous would be the last.

The outpouring from readers - new and established - in cash and subscriptions pushed them over their goal in just three days. The fairly spectacular feat of having gathered up some $55,000 in donations in the span of a few days - a few days that coincides with the virtual collapse of the nation’s banking industry and its reverberating effects at home - speaks volumes to the value that a large (and fairly poorly-funded) group of people place on independent press in an era of media consolidation.

Along with the plea for a cash infusion (hey, if the banking industry can call on the masses for a cash hit every so and again, why not a feminist press?), they also opened up threads to take suggestions on how best to proceed in the days ahead. Continue to rely on donations when sales are thin? Change over to an online-only format? Close the doors forever next time the cash flow closes in around them?

Many suggest the middle solution - quit the print business altogether, go to an online-only format to cut costs and maybe even save a few trees. Others decried the lost of yet another indie print magazine (check out the video for a litany of independent magazines that have left the shelves forever in the last year), arguing that online venues are dimes per dozens, and the print format lends a (literal) weightiness to the publication that would evaporate with an internet-only incarnation.

Not that I’m biased or anything, but I gotta agree with the latter. With the advent of teh internetz, it is easy to dismiss print publications as wasteful, needlessly expensive, passe. But the fact remains that this is critique is offered up - often unasked for - only for struggling, progressive indie press. You don’t hear Cosmo, Vogue, Seventeen, or The Economist pressured by readers to junk their newsstand editions for purely electronic versions.

But there’s more to it than that. Independent print media fills a necessary and irreplaceable niche that the internet cannot mimic. It gives corporeal form to the unique and rarely-published views - a form that sits on coffee tables, gets passed around dorms, gets picked up and read again a year later when you dig out the mess of papers accumulated on your desk and find a great issue you’d forgotten about. It plays in the world of the big boys - not the every-page-is-an-open-mike-night world of bloggery and chat rooms (not to dis my very fine host and her excellent blog!), but the world where things get translated on paper that lasts beyond the next crash of a server, or the next time the mag can’t pay the bills to their online host. Print and online media complement each other well, but it is inexcusable that print become the sole domain of the mainstream and the powerful - something that has become alarmingly possible as indie magazines have failed in droves these last couple of years.

And another thing: I suspect that I was not the only young, ambitious gal with a keyboard and a penchant for lengthy commentary on all matters practical and arcane that Bitch started out in the published world. Independent print venues offer openings and vital experience that pave the way for young (or otherwise burgeoning) writers with diverse views to get their name down, get some experience, find their confidence in the craft of the written voice. Without Bitch, I never would have learned the arts of the published word, things like respecting word limits, working with editors whose creative vision might not be identical to your own, and producing creative material under deadline (haha, I can hear the editors laughing, she hasn’t quite mastered that one yet!). I can’t imagine any other venue that would have put my name on feature-length articles on the faith in my skills gained solely from a few letters back and forth to the editor.

So Bitch has pulled through the financial grinder this time - the next issue will go to press on December 1st. But the long-time sustainability of one of the last standing grrlzines (which started as black-and-white, hand-folded photocopies) is still in question. If it’s a venue or a viewpoint that intrigues you - or one that you would like to see stay strong into the future - consider throwing them a couple dollars, or buying a subscription and seeing what they have to say in the coming months. It’s an investment well worth your dimes and dollars.

Cross-posted from my blog Loose Chicks Sink Ships.

From My Notebook by Anthony McCarthy

Just wanted to say that this is not most definitely NOT what I had in mind

When I said that faith in the social sciences didn’t provide the left with as firm a foundation as history and learning from experience I didn’t expect to read this a few days later:


Peter Michaelson: Think Economics is Bad -- Take a Look at Psychology

Just one example of modern psychology's disservice involves its marginalization of Sigmund Freud. He discovered that we all experience everyday situations through the dynamics of transference, projection, identification, displacement, defenses, and denial. These factors influence our capacity for self-regulation of behaviors and emotions, and also affect to what degree we're being rational or irrational. Thanks to modern psychology's refusal to accept the importance and the truth of these psychological tenets, only a small minority of Americans can see and understand the operations of these dynamics in themselves. This limits our intelligence and hinders our evolution.

Counting the eclipse of Freud and his more cockamamy ideas as a very positive development, I want to make it clear that I’d never advocate a return to that mythology. What it would do to women, lesbians and gay men alone would be a complete disaster. Two words, Woody Allen. Enough said.

Field Guide To Total Jerks: a series, perhaps.

1. People over the age of 12 who make “Kids on the short bus,” “jokes” are being total jerks. “Adults” who say those kinds of things are bigger jerks than teen jerks who might grow up someday.

The smug 30 something guy who said it yesterday within the hearing of a disabled child came about as close to getting my fist in his mouth as anyone has in forty years.


If The Republicans Use The Impending Collapse

as a political tool, Democrats in the House and Senate should put it in their laps and let the thing go. We can't give up the next four years anymore, we've been giving up terms of office to this kind of blackmail for too long. If McCain and his fellow political gamesters don't explicitly, publicly and loudly sign on, let them take the blame for the consequences.

Debate Commentary. Sort of

I watched the first presidential debate last night (it's after midnight as I type this), the one McCain almost canceled, the one he was supposed to be strongest in because of his foreign policy expertise. Those were the expectations, then: That McCain would have an easier time with this debate than the following ones but that he had been throwing odd temper tantrums all the preceding week and it wasn't quite clear what that meant for his preparedness.

The substance of the debates was not terrible, actually, because the questions were substantial. Obama's answers were considerably better on the economic questions, though both candidates failed to realize that anyone who proposes cutting public spending when a major depression looms should probably be hung and quartered, never mind that most people don't understand how important NOT to cut public spending is in such a situation. To give you a simple example: Suppose that we do get a major recession and that lots of people lose their jobs. Is that the time to cut back on unemployment benefits, hmh? And how would cutting back those benefits affect the ability of people to go on consuming that some other workers could keep their jobs longer?

On other economic questions Obama showed very good preparedness (including pointing out that the high U.S. corporate tax rates don't mean that U.S. firms pay unusually high taxes, rather the reverse, because of all those loop holes the tax laws have, many of them voted in by McCain). McCain was mostly into talking about earmarks, a problem for sure, but not one which is driving any of the evil engines in this economic crisis. So Obama won the economics section in substance.

Now who won the foreign policy section is something that I sort of missed, because I started watching all that other crap. Remember the 2004 debates? And the post-debate debates about who won? And how we were suddenly told that Bush did really well in them because he turned up and looked prezdential? Even though Kerry was much better prepared, he came across as boring.

So I tried to see how people might actually rate this debate on the prezdential measure, and to me that measure appears to be very much a silverback measure of aggression and putdowns and taking hold of the debate without actually grabbing the other guy's throat. And on those grounds I thought McCain did better: He interrupted more, he yelled more, he belittled Obama a lot, he used lots of soundbites which had little to do with the topic under discussion. That seemed to be how the winner was determined in 2004. That was how prezdential was determined then.

I'm happy to say that I seem to be wrong (at the time of writing this, anyway). The rules for deciding on how one wins these debates have changed (or I never got them right in the first place) and most Independents (the crucial focus market here) thought that Obama did better. I'm very glad to hear that, because he certainly was better on the substance in the questions I paid attention to. A lot better.

"The Hammer of God" (by Suzie)

       Looking for analysis of the debate, I stumbled upon an NYT review of this tour by Malleus, an Italian trio whose posters depict naked women as deviant and demons.

While obviously raising a collective middle finger to both the gallery system and such concerns as “the politics of representation and gender,” Malleus has such a facility with graphic styles and cultural references that it far transcends the usual limitations of commercial art.

       In other words, it's OK to make money off sexism if male critics like the art. I wonder what Capt. Hammer might say. 

Please Welcome

Skylanda! Many of you remember her excellent guest blogging series on various aspects of the health care system. I'm very happy to tell you that Skylanda will join Suzie, Phila, Anthony McCarthy and myself as a more regular feature on this blog. Well, as regular as her hectic work schedule allows. Be prepared for a post from her in the near future and other posts later on, usually towards the end of the week. Welcome, Skylanda!

This is also a good time for me to express my gratitude and appreciation of the rest of the gang: Suzie, Phila and Anthony McCarthy, all sharp and original thinkers, good writers and careful researchers. I'm truly blessed to have them write here, especially given what I pay them for it. Heh.

Caring for the underdog (by Suzie)

          At night, as my Chihuahua sleeps at my feet, I sometimes steal a peek at Chihuahuas on the Web. I came across this photo of LeClaire Bissell, M.D., a founding member of Chihuahua Rescue and Transport. She died last month.
          What a fascinating woman she was! She pushed for women's rights and LGBT rights. She pioneered the humane treatment of drug and alcohol addiction, especially among women. The Florida Commission on the Status of Women honored her, and she won the Elizabeth Blackwell Award for her contributions to women and medicine.  She rescued injured wildlife. And she was a big supporter of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton for president, according to donation reports. "Her answering machine said, 'If you’re a Democrat, you may leave a message.' ”

           Here's more from the Island Reporter: “I think the most extraordinary thing about LeClair was that she did things because they needed to be done,” said Kate Gooderham, who knew LeClair from the local National Women’s Political Caucus. “No limelight, no applause, no kudos — she saw a need and filled it. I really admired her dedication to her beliefs. She truly put her ‘time, her treasury and her talent’ into the things she cared about.” 

          May women like this inspire us all.

Bloggers vs. journalists (by Suzie)

           A friend sent me a 2006 review by Emily McMackin of the book “Infamous Scribbers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism” by Eric Burns.

Taking his title from George Washington, who complained during his presidency of being “buffeted in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers,” Burns explores an era in which opinion ruled newspapers, and journalists didn’t hesitate to use crude language, baseless accusations or character attacks as weapons to make their cases.

          Sounds a lot like some bloggers and TV commentators today.

          It amuses me that journalists and bloggers snipe at each other because they have much in common. For starters, it’s not bloggers vs. the media. Any blogger who hopes to reach a lot of people is part of the mass media (but often not the MSM, or mainstream media.) There are a lot of journalists and former journalists, like me, who blog, and I’m sure some bloggers would be happy to be hired by the MSM. (I’m waiting to be hired by the FSM.)
         Speaking of hiring, one difference between bloggers and journalists is the latter generally works for someone else and gets paid, while most bloggers do not. As employees, journalists may go against their own judgment to do their boss’s bidding. Rarely would a boss say: “I hate this politician and I want you to go after her." Usually, it’s more along the lines of: You’re working on a story you think is really interesting, but the publisher hits a pothole, and so, you get pulled off your story to write something on potholes. Or, you’d like to spend months investigating a story, but your boss needs to fill the paper, and so, you spend your days on stuff you consider less important.
        The influence can be subtle. You may get praised for one story, but get criticized – or simply get less praise – for another story. Journalists who want to keep their jobs or get ahead look for ways to please their bosses. Some of these same influences affect bloggers. Bloggers may want to drive traffic to their sites. They may want to please their regular readers, other bloggers, people who might give them a job, their Aunt Bess, whomever. A guest blogger may want to please her host.
        Another difference between bloggers and journalists is that the latter get training specific to the profession. Some of us took journalism classes in college or got a degree in journalism. (I have the coveted BJ degree – a bachelor’s of journalism, not science or arts. And yes, there were jokes aplenty.) But many others did not get training in school; they got their training on the job, as do bloggers, for the most part.

        Some journalists have expertise in other areas, such as science or economics, but rarely can they match the expertise of a blogger who comes from that field. 
        Journalism has all sorts of rules and theory, from objectivity to direct quotation. But this information isn’t secret. Bloggers are welcome to learn, use or discard what they want.
       Journalists complain that bloggers make no attempt at fairness. But bloggers are similar to columnists, commentators, editorial writers and others in the MSM whose job is to express opinions. In return, bloggers complain about bias in journalism. Some biases are expected. If a commentator is supposed to provide a Republican viewpoint, you can expect him to be biased in that regard. If he's not hired to be biased against women, then there's a problem. To me, that's the bigger problem: people who think they're being fair, and are unaware of their biases. 

       In journalism, attempts at fairness often amount to quoting people with different opinions. As a character in Absence of Malice said: “You don't write the truth. You write what people say.” (Then bloggers comment on it.)
       Journalists complain about bad writing on blogs, and vice versa. Journalists complain about the lack of editing on blogs, but editing in journalism seems to be getting worse, as staffs shrink.
      Bloggers criticize journalists for acting like a pack and writing the same crap over and over, with little insight or investigation. Journalists say the same thing about bloggers. Actually, it’s a problem for all of us. Let’s say a newspaper publishes a story that is incorrect or distorted. The Associated Press spreads it throughout the MSM. Then a bunch of bloggers have at it. They ay cut through the B.S., or contribute to it.
       I think the best thing about blogs is the increase in ideas, opinions and experiences. In many ways, bloggers reflect the earlier days of newspapers before the rise of monopolies, corporate ownership and the myth of objectivity. People who might not otherwise be heard can now express themselves online.

         Nevertheless, people with time, money, education, writing skills, etc., are going to have an advantage. And, for some unknown reason, white male bloggers get a lot of attention.
         I discussed this on Magda’s Speak Freely radio blog, and she brought up crowdsourcing in journalism. This runs the gamut of a newspaper asking readers to submit their favorite cookie recipes to TPM asking readers to sift through government documents. As the MSM cuts staff, it seeks more information, writing and photography from people who don’t work for it. And some of those people are writing blogs.

Wow.

Just wow:

In a panicked atmosphere and amid flaring tempers, Democrats and some Republicans announced before the White House meeting that they had the outline of an agreement, but GOP leaders refused to sign off on it. Liberal and conservative interest groups railed against the bailout, while business groups insisted that Congress pass the plan with all speed, warning that tight credit already is sharply slowing business activity.

At the White House, Republican leader John Boehner expressed misgivings about the plan, and McCain would not commit to supporting it, people from both parties who were briefed on the exchange told the Associated Press. In the Roosevelt Room after the session, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to withdraw her party's support for the package over what Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal, according to the New York Times.

There is little doubt among economists that a recession has begun. The question is how deep and long it will be, and that depends on whether the bailout plan, if it passes Congress, works. Another possibility is a long stagnation like Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s, which followed a similar real estate market collapse in that country.

Either way, the nation faces what Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen, an expert in financial panics, calls unavoidable consequences.

These could include big budget deficits, higher taxes to service that debt, higher interest rates and more-strictly regulated banks that will lend more cautiously. "We've had a decade of relatively successful economic growth and have been living beyond our means," Eichengreen said. "Now we'll have a decade of the opposite. It's payback time."

Maybe credit markets would recover on their own, as some believe, or maybe they wouldn't. But few in Washington really want to find out.

On the other hand, few in Washington want to be the ones who authorized the bailout, especially on their own. Remember that the people who gave us the initial rude draft proposal are from the Bush administration. Now the Republicans in the House pretend to have nothing to do with those people.

Here's another story about the same events.

Deep Thought For The Day - Again

When what you really want is a huge slice of a cake aptly named "Chocolate Orgasm" a tiny bowl of fat-free yogurt with fresh blueberries Will. Not. Do.

Caribou Ken

If Sarah Palin was a male governor from Alaska, do you think that she would be treated the same way she has? Would this imaginary Sam Palin be taken to task for his ignorance on foreign politics (coughGiulianicough) or for his weird fundie ideas (coughHuckabeecough)? Would Sam Palin be called Caribou Ken after the penisless boyfriend of the Barbie doll?

These are not comfortable questions for a liberal goddess to ask, especially given Palin's bad platform and the way she is being used by McCain for nefarious ends. Indeed, both the Democratic presidential primaries and the presidential campaigns have been unpleasant moments for me, because I had underestimated the amount of free-wheeling and jokey sexism that still prevails in this country and because I see the term "sexism" itself cheapened and mutating into something that has no meaning at all.

So who are we to thank for these odd gifts, us feminists? There's lots of thanks to go around, layers and layers of sexism, if you wish, and it's extremely difficult to look at the mess and point a finger at one point to say: "There!" Extremely difficult and also frightening, because my attempts to follow the chains lead me to point my finger at all sorts of people I otherwise value. Including some feminists.

Sigh. This is not a pleasant writing assignment.

Let's start from today and Sarah Palin. She is a woman, the governor of Alaska, an ex-beauty queen and a very right-wing Republican who likes to hunt and wants Alaska turned into a gigantic oil refinery. There are many reasons why McCain might have wanted to have her as his vice-presidential candidate, including the fact that McCain is sorta boring and Obama is not, but the major reasons she was picked was a) to satisfy the right-wing base of the party (which does not love McCain) and to take advantage of the lack of women in the final Democratic ticket. Had Obama picked a female vice-presidential candidate McCain would probably not have done so. I understand the political games being played here, including the idea that McCain can pick up votes from women who wanted to see a female vice-presidential candidate.

Was McCain's choice a sexist one? What does "sexism" mean in this context? If it means that he might think of women as all the same and that any one woman could be picked for his ticket to appeal to that mass of womanhood, yes, I think that his choice was sexist. I doubt that the imaginary Sam Palin would have been on McCain's ticket.

If, on the other hand, "sexism" means something like the assumption that no woman can ever rule over men then McCain is obviously not sexist.

Let's remove one layer from this argument and ask a slightly different question: Did McCain want to benefit from the societal sexism with his vice-presidential choice? Here the answer must be a resounding YES. Oh, yes. Imagine the riches of that choice! It's really quite masterful, the pun intended. The choice offers liberals and progressives a very narrow space in which to attack Palin without attacking her on grounds which will uncomfortably echo in many women's minds as something they, too, have experienced in their own lives.

As an example, take the argument that Palin is unqualified to be the vice-president. She may well be unqualified, depending on the terms one uses to define the necessary qualifications. But then "unqualified" is the usual excuse women get when they don't get promoted or when they don't get a raise. If a firm is accused of sex discrimination what do you think they use as their defense? The woman was unqualified or a bad worker. Yet McCain chose someone who cannot be allowed to give interviews because she is not ready to give them yet.

That's a double-whammy, my friends. If Palin succeeds in getting McCain elected, great. If Palin fails to get McCain elected, all the Republican anti-woman people can point out how terrible the idea of picking (randomly picking, mind you) a woman in the first place was. And all the time the liberals and progressives and feminists, even, are hammering away at Palin as unqualified, as a bad mother and so on.

It's enough to drive a goddess to drink. Then add to that the idea of Palin as MILF (a mother I'd like to fuck). The idea is to pick a woman partly on her looks because it might give McCain the votes of men who think through that narrow head only and because the idea to have a pretty woman in the office is not uncommon among the old school sexists. Well, all that is sexist, true.

But so is the response to that trick from the other side of the political aisle. Too many progressives and liberals think that talking about Palin's body is the way to attack the Republican ticket. Yet, once again, many women have had their bodies loudly discussed while walking down the street and even poked by those assessors of female charms. Sometimes those experiences are scary enough to create triggers which can later be pressed by the lightest of sexist jokes...

The bottom layer in all these layers of sexism is naturally based on actual societal sexism. Sarah Palin is only the second female vice-presidential candidate in the United States and anything that is being said about her will be filtered through that fact, whether intended or not. Hence the possible damage to all women when she is kept hidden from the press (women are easily-wilted flowers even when they kill wolves from helicopters) and the often expressed idea in the media that Biden must treat her with kid gloves lest he be accused of sexism. But of course the reverse options would offer equal scope for sexist interpretations.

Now do you see why I hate writing about this particular topic?

The New Bailout Deal

All bipartisan! Love it. Here's the gist of the changes from the initial monster draft:

Those principles will include improved oversight of the program, as well as a plan to phase in the $700 billion investment in stages, while still assuring the administration a virtual free hand for at least the first $350 billion.

There is a greater emphasis on efforts not just to relieve Wall Street firms of their bad debts but also to help homeowners threatened by foreclosure. Companies that benefit from the plan would be expected to limit pay and severance packages for their executives, and community banks are expected to benefit from a new $3 billion tax break as a result of their stock losses in the government takeover of the two mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

So it's not as bad as the first kidnappers' demand. They only get half of what they asked for with no strings attached and they have to work a little harder to hide the golden parachutes for their CEOs. And to throw out a few crumbs to the homeowners who are going to lose their houses.

But on the whole the deal worked very nicely for the financial markets. Yes, I know that I should write about how great it is that the deal was changed at all, and it probably was because ordinary people of all stripes said very clearly and loudly that they would not be mugged by highway robbers, even if the latter wore Prada. So take that as written. I'm not ready to make nice.

Price Discovery

This is fun stuff. Paul Krugman writes on his blog about the newest reason for the suggested bailout: Price Discovery:

A sneaking suspicion

So now the whole rationale for the plan is "price discovery": we're going to throw lots of taxpayer funds into the pot because that will let us find the true values of troubled assets, which are higher than the fire sale prices out there, and so balance sheet will improve, confidence will return, etc, etc..

So I just did a Nexis search trying to find out when Paulson and Bernanke started talking about price discovery, which we're now told are at the core of the plan's logic. And the answer is …

Yesterday.

I can't find any use of the term, or even a hint of the argument, until yesterday's Senate hearings.

One possible explanation. It wasn't until yesterday that they realized that it would actually be necessary to explain themselves.

High finances are not my field of expertise, so I may be very wrong about all this, but I thought the markets are all about values as set by the markets, not by some horrible government bureaucrat. So it looks like the plan was to pay more for the assets than they are currently worth. We'd be the ones paying that "more."

Do read the rest of Krugman's post. Heh.

Out Of Touch

I turned the radio on and happened to catch the exhortations of a past CEO of General Electric. He was so very adamant! We must save the markets now! Before it is too late! And never mind all that other stuff! Main Street (the ordinary chumps) has been in bed with Wall Street (the rich) for centuries and the sexually transmitted diseases are shared. So there! Pay up, chumps.

That's my translation of what he said. But how very out-of-touch the rich are with the rest of us. Humility is not a concept that is in fashion among the rich, I guess.

And Here Is David Letterman

On McCain canceling his appearance at Letterman's show because of the financial markets crashing. There's a video n all. (Including some rather nasty sexism and ageism; one of the lovely gifts of the 2008 presidential campaigns.)

Not sure how canceling the first presidential debate (which McCain also wants to do) or the campaign or hiding your vice-presidential candidate is helpful for the management of the financial crisis, because McCain is not exactly an economics genius (as he himself has admitted). The financial gnomes can work on the crisis while McCain does other stuff. Well, they could if the will to work was there.

Today's Immensely Deep Thought

Forbes.com:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Hee!

Once Upon A Time: Free Market Fairy Tales

Once upon a time all markets were unregulated and we lived in paradise. Any dairy farmer could sell you milk without horrible government regulations. If the milk had some water added to it, well, the farmer needed to make a living, and watered milk went much further. So did flour with sand added to it to make it heavier when the price for flour was by pound. And of course the scales the sellers used to weigh their products were their scales.

Now why did I call all this a paradise? Because there were very few markets in those days, most people grew what they ate on their own land, and those who did not learned over time to tell the honest farmers from the dishonest ones and the latter couldn't make a living from adulterated produce for very long. Their names were known to everybody and people soon learned not to buy from strangers who passed through the villages on market days.

Or perhaps I called it a paradise because the people got together pretty fast and decided that unregulated markets were not a very good thing, after all, that at least the scales used for measuring should be provided by some unbiased party, that their accuracy should be measured and maintained, and that those who watered the milk they sold or added sand to the flour they sold should then be tarred and feathered themselves?

So it goes. Over time the nature of markets changed, but those early lessons about the dangers of completely unregulated markets were not totally forgotten, and when they were deaths here and there reminded us of the need for some oversight and some rules. Indeed, it was pretty obvious to most thinking people that the widening distance between the seller and the buyer and the increasing complexity of the products that were being traded required regulation and oversight more than ye-olde-worlde village market days. The latter had more information about the sellers, the buyers and the products, after all, and less scope for a truly callous criminal to harm people.

Such a nice and soothing fairy tale I'm telling here. Boring enough to put you all to sleep. Sadly, such boringness was not to be for ever. One day the forces of free market capitalism rose up again, full of injured fury over the lost opportunities that millstone of regulations around their necks had caused, and this time people HAD forgotten about the reasons for oversight and rules. Or enough people had forgotten about them, because the rules and oversight had worked to make the markets relatively safe places to trade in.






So here they ride to war, the free marketeers. It is about thirty years ago, and you can read about the reasons for markets to be free, everywhere. Chile, Argentina and so on, all are going to be saved from the evil grasp of the government. Later Ronald Reagan rises as the leader of the troops, so fatherly and handsome, ready to squash the evil government before it has had time to "help" you. And Americans listen to him and look around and don't see adulterated pet food or fish with mercury or any other great hazard to their daily lives and they decide that Reagan is right. Who needs a disgusting government, anyway?

Not the financial markets, that's for sure. They're the ones who are taking all the big risks and they deserve the rewards, too. Time for some personal responsibility, my friends! Time for an ownership economy!

What comes next? The Bubble Eras, my charming and discerning readers. First the high tech bubble, then the housing bubble and the war bubble. They were like soap bubbles, so beautiful and iridescent in the affluent and calm sunlight of the nineties. No government dared to breathe too hard on them, of course, because they would burst and the trick was to make them burst only with the next administration. But the markets were mostly free! Just for you and me! Mmm.

And here we are again: Once upon a time (now) the markets are free and unregulated again, luxuriating in all that space to make things better for one and for all. Sure, infant formulas have melamine in them in China (because melamine registers as nitrogen in measuring devices and nitrogen is used as a cheaper proxy measure of protein and infant formulas must have protein to give a good price for the makers). Sure, the financial markets are largely trading in the big shitpile. Sure, various food items recently on the markets gave people salmonella or killed pets. But all that is just an obvious and necessary by-product of the important jobs unregulated markets do. Besides, don't the markets self-correct once enough deaths take place? They do.






So what is the moral of this little fairy tale?

Rep. Marcy Kaptur Gets It

Via Avedon at Eschaton. Make sure to watch Kaptur's proposal at the end:





Two comments of mine: First, cast your minds back to the time when the bankruptcy reform bill was debated. Isn't it interesting how differently people in financial trouble are treated when they are rich? Second, we need a real and unbiased discussion about what needs to be done and when. I believe that something will have to be done now that the financial markets have been allowed to grow so large that their demise will tear through all our safety nets, but that something is not what we have been told so far by the Bush administration.

Snake-Eye Observations

1. How I feel about what I write (its importance or how much it took out of me to write or the passion I felt) and how the writing itself then lives or not after its birth seem to have no real relationship with each other. Frequently some throw-away comment turns out to be important and equally frequently something I've slaved over for days drops like a stone into a sullen pond. It's very weird and of no interest to anyone but another blogger, probably. Still, I probably should have written about the importance of female role-models in more explicit terms than I did in that polling post below.

2. The American system of political campaigns hones and sharpens the candidates, true, but only into being good campaigners. That has nothing to do with how well they later govern as we have learned during the last eight years. And so much of that system is truly laughable: Consider the comment I recently heard that Palin will do fine in the debates because expectations about her are low. So if one student in a college class is expected to fail but manages to pull C-level work in a test and another student is expected to get an A and does that, we are now to decide that the student with the C is the best in the class?

3. If it indeed is true that people don't vote on the basis of issues but on the basis of how they'd like a candidate in bed or by the bar counter or at the barbeque, well, I'm afraid that democracy then doesn't have quite the advantages it has been assumed to have. Or rather, we should select a double set of presidents, one for the looks and feel-good stuff and another for the actual work. The latter person could even be smart!