As I’m sure you know, last week Barack Obama added a salary cap provision to the next round of bank bailouts that would limit the pay of any executive at a bank receiving TARP money to half a million dollars a year. The right-wingers immediately started shrieking “Socialism! Socialism!”, but at this point those people have reached the level of slime mold in terms of credibility (and that’s insulting the slime mold). Since Obama said it was a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition, Bank of America decided it was more important to continue to plunder their depositors’ money for things like bonuses and Super Bowl parties and so they won’t have anything to do with the next round of bailouts.

Meanwhile, the New York Times had the unmitigated gall to run this article in Sunday’s paper about just how hard it is for the average millionaire to eke by on half a million dollars a year in New York City. Why, a chauffeur alone costs anywhere from $75,000 to $125,000 a year! And Wifey simply MUST spend $35,000-$50,000 on two or three new frocks to wear to all those ghastly social events millionaires must attend. Not to mention the $4 million summer house in the Hamptons, the $20,000 vacations twice a year (sun in the winter, skiing in the spring, dahling!). How ANYONE could expect a person to barely scrape by on half a million dollars is simply a NIGHTMARE.

My friends, I have the perfect solution:

If it was good enough for Marie Antoinette, surely it is good enough for these people.

A few links about the neverending clusterfuck we have gotten ourselves into economically:

Harvard professor and darling-of-the-right Niall Ferguson gave this interview to Vanity Fair, where he asserts that the United States really has no choice but to walk away from its colossal foreign debt, because the only other option is complete collapse. He makes a few other salient points along the way, most notably that China is also completely fucked because of us and can’t really do anything about it economically, but absolutely has the upper hand on any diplomatic disputes that might arise for a long, long time to come. Coincidentally, he’s plugging his new book The Ascent of Money, which he says he planned to have published just as the entire world economy fell into the shitter, since that’s a GREAT way to sell books.

But it looks like he’s not talking out of his ass on this. This article on a financial news website called Seeking Alpha offers pretty much the same conclusions as Ferguson’s, albeit in more technical financial jargon (via Polymeme). The whole damn country is about to miss its mortgage payment, and when that happens you’ll be using your 401(k) statements for toilet paper. So don’t go calling Cash4Gold.com just yet.

Meanwhile, I think a lot of people are still trying to pick their jaws up off the floor over the reports of $18 BILLION dollars being handed out to Wall Street executives using our precious “bailout” money. Not to mention the daily stream of stories about banks spending millions on stadium naming rights, the BofA CEO with the multimillion-dollar decorating bill, and other such rubbing-your-nose-in-it shenanigans. At The Seminal, contributor Chris Edelson did a little quick math to come up with some of the other things we could have done with that $18B besides piss it away on the bailout. For example, the S-CHIP bill, which was passed by both houses of Congress last week (and was vetoed TWICE by George Bush) will add $32 billion per year to a program that already costs $25 billion per year. The bailout bonus money could have paid for that increase for two years running without the increase in cigarette taxes which will be the funding mechanism.

Now, some regular visitors here don’t much like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but I think he’s one of the best representatives any state in America could ask for. Like a lot of us, Bernie is simply PISSED OFF about the bailout and the flagrant contempt with which the Wall Street criminals are raping this country. Last week, Bernie sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry “Gutless Wonder” Reid demanding that the Senate begin investigations into the disbursement and use of TARP funds. President Obama’s “salary cap” proposal is a first step, but a laughable one when you consider the scope of the fraud being committed, and nothing short of an investigating committee with a freshly-sharpened guillotine is going to have any real impact.

Regular readers know that I have posted a couple of times about the economic disaster as it has played out in Iceland, and you probably heard that the government there fell, as well as the story about the new prime minister being a lesbian (which, like Obama being black is all well and good but not particularly relevant at this moment in history). But next on the chopping block is Latvia, where rioting nearly brought down the government last week. The problems in Latvia are strikingly similar to those in Iceland, but a compounding issue for the Balkan country is that a third of the population is Russian, and they are agitating over what they call discrimination against them. That, in turn, could give Russia an excuse to cause trouble, if it so chose.

And while those two cold northern countries are struggling, so is the “Las Vegas of the Arab World”, Dubai. Unlike Iceland and Latvia, though, Dubai’s troubles all come from their overheated real estate speculation. This post at The Daily Clarity outlines the heart of the problem, which has manifested itself in the rapid departure of hundreds of ex-pat workers and businessmen who were fueling the Dubai land grabs. They point to this Times of London article about the recent phenomenon of luxury cars being abandoned at Dubai’s international airport by businessmen getting out while the getting is good. I’m actually a little surprised that American businessmen haven’t started pulling the same shit, but maybe they’re waiting for those bailout bonus checks to clear first.

“Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.” — Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young

Not that I’m one for Biblical allusions, but if the “sweetened” bailout rescue bill isn’t the modern equivalent of 30 pieces of silver for Judas, I don’t know what is. We can only hope that the senators who voted for this bill follow Judas’s example and off themselves out of shame. The re-vote in the House is still not quite guaranteed to pass, but seems a lot more likely to now that the journey to the Dark Side is complete. My House rep is still saying he’s going to vote against it, but they really only needed to pick off those 12 Republicans, and it appears they’ve done just that.

Here in Massachusetts we get to see a lot of political advertising for New Hampshire campaigns due to the lack of media outlets in New Hampshire itself, and in the close race between Republican incumbent senator John Sununu and perennial Democratic challenger (and former governor) Jean Shaheen, the attack ads are coming fast and furious, mostly from the “527″ groups. One ad for Shaheen points out that Sununu has been a supporter of privatizing Social Security (right along with George W. Bush and John McCain, though the ad only mentions Bush). “Imagine what would have happened to Social Security in the last few weeks if Bush and Sununu had gotten their way…” the voice-over intones.

Well, maybe they just did. Writing at Dangerous Intersection, contributor Tim Hogan says he took the time to read carefully through the 450 pages of the “rescue plan” and he thinks that there’s a provision in the bill which will allow Hank Paulson to privatize Social Security by fiat:

In Section 118 of the House bill under “funding” the bill said “the Secretary [of Treasury] may use any authority granted under Section 31 of Title 31 of the US Code to fund the bailout.”

I “Googled” “Title 31, Section 31 of the US Code” and came up with how the government funds itself. But, included in that Title 31, Section 31 was a provision for the Secretary of the Treasury to issue obligations equal to the monthly payments needed under Title II of the Social Security Act.

So I “Googled” “Title II of the Social Security Act” and it seems those are the payments to the elderly recipients of such funds, among other things.

Secretary Paulson apparently could have deemed the monthly obligations payable under Title II of the Social Security Act to be those obligations which fund the bailout.

I haven’t seen anyone else raise this red flag yet, so I am not sure if he’s simply making an inference based on the loose way the relevant part of the U.S. Code reads, or if this is indeed a serious hidden gotcha. I would not put it past the Bushies to make a play like this, but I really can’t say with any confidence that he’s right; I surely hope to hell that he isn’t.

Of the 25 senators to vote against the “rescue plan” Wednesday night, one of them was Bernie Sanders, whom I have been lauding somewhat regularly and now get to do again. Prior to the vote, Sanders contributed this post to the Huffington Post, outlining exactly why this plan is a complete travesty of legislation and offering more details about his alternative plan that he is sending to Secretary Paulson along with the petition I mentioned the other day. Here is a video clip of Sanders speaking on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday night..

John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all voted YEA on this bill. So much for “Change you can believe in” and “The Original Maverick”.

Please, please, PLEASE keep the pressure on your own House representatives to vote NO when this revised bill comes up for a new vote.

The firing squad is too good for some of the assholes in the United States Senate. The Senate has decided to vote on the bailout bill this evening to try to sway the House to re-vote on it before the end of the week. And guess how the “leadership” has sweetened the pot to get those pesky Republicans and balky Democrats on board….

First, a great big old $149 BILLION tax cut for millionaires and corporations so that they won’t have their feelings hurt because no one loves them any more.

Second, over $100 million in earmarks to a wide variety of pet projects on both sides of the aisle, ranging from mine safety equipment to NASCAR race tracks.

I’ve been cruising through some conservative blogs, since they’re the ones shrieking about the earmarks today, and they all seem to be conveniently overlooking the tax cuts, but it was clear from the Today Show appearance by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Minority Whip Roy Blunt that this was the outstanding demand that was going to draw in enough Republican votes to pass the bill in both houses. One way or another, these motherfuckers are going to find a way to line the pockets of their cronies.

As a sop to the people calling for more relief for the average person, there will be a temporary increase of the FDIC insurance to cover up to $250K in bank deposits, but my guess is that if you have a quarter of a million dollars just sitting in the bank, you’re probably not an average person.

Bush promises to spend the day trying to convince lawmakers to hand over all our money to the same thieves he’s been giving it to for the last eight years.

McCain and Obama are both returning to Washington to vote on the measure (both of them have indicated that they will vote “yea” — big fucking surprise there). Biden will also be on hand to vote in favor of the bailout, too. After all, most of those big banks are chartered in Delaware, and Biden has long been a big supporter of giving the banks whatever they want. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, will be hiding from Katie Couric before she asks her some other super-tough question like “If Bill has three apples and Marsha had six, how many apples do they have in all?”

Meanwhile, who’s the only guy in the House of Representatives asking the tough questions? It’s Dennis Kucinich, of course. Here he is on Monday during the roll call on the bailout:

If candidates were trading cards, I would give you 10 Barack Obamas for just ONE Dennis Kucinich. We need a guy like this leading the Democratic Party, NOW.

Lastly, a reminder to one and all to contact your senators RIGHT NOW and let them know you oppose this terrible legislation. The congressional websites are all being hammered this week, so your best bet is to make a phone call to your senators’ local offices rather than to try to send e-mail. I was able to get an e-mail through to John Kerry, who is unfortunately toeing the party line on this deal, but it took quite a long time to do so. And don’t let up on your House reps, either, because this bill is likely to wind up right back in their laps within a day or two.

Yesterday, the Republican leaders in the House all came out from the vote on the bailout bill and tried to blame the defeat on Nancy Pelosi for making partisan remarks at the last minute. You have to give them credit for trying, but that was more transparent than Saran Wrap. Well, here’s her speech. There’s no doubt that it wasn’t the best time to stand up and point fingers, but it’s not like she was making anything up out of thin air (like the people who pulled the figure of $700 billion out of their asses). It made the Republicans look incredibly petty and whiny at the worst possible time, and Barney Frank got in one of the best comeback zingers of all time (you’ll have to listen to Cenk Uygur for about a minute into that clip, but he makes a decent point too). By this morning, though, even the Republicans were willing to go on TV and say that her speech had nothing to do with it.

But Jeebus H. Tittyfucking Christ On A Pogo Stick, the partisanship has to end. There’s no doubt that the bill they brought to the floor was bad — even Pelosi and Frank were willing to say it was a stinker, but as the leadership of the House they had to make the effort. Voting the bill down was without a doubt the best thing that could have happened, because it lays bare the lie that the proposals from Paulson and the administration are anything short of plundering the wealth of the citizens of this country. When the far-right and the far-left (such as we define “right and left” in our political spectrum) wrap around so far that they touch and agree on an issue, then you have truly failed at whatever you were trying to achieve.

What went mostly unnoticed while the House was fighting over all this is that the Federal Reserve did an end-run around them anyway and pumped $630 billiion into the banking system. How did they do that? They borrowed money from the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank. Well now that’s the thing to do when your entire banking system is failing due to unsustainable debt — borrow a little more money from someone else! So now all this cash goes into the system to ease the credit crunch, which is what we’ve been told for the last week was the whole point of the bailout in the first place. And guess what? The stock market is rebounding from yesterday’s big dump! (although the credit market remains locked up)

So the time is NOW to throw out the bill that Barney Frank had to bring to the floor yesterday. There is still a LOT of opposition to the idea of a bailout whatsoever, and with the Fed dumping all that cash to quiet things down, it only shows up the TARP as a ploy to let the banks off the hook and stick the public with the consequences. Below the fold, I give you the complete text of the New York Times Editorial Board’s remarks from this morning’s edition:

After nearly eight years of voting in virtual lock step with President Bush on everything from tax cuts to torture, House Republicans decided on Monday to break ranks on the survival of the nation’s financial system.

The rejected bailout bill that was on the floor after a weekend of hard negotiating was objectionable in many ways, but it was a Republican-generated bill and was improved from the administration’s original version. Sixty percent of House Democrats voted for the bill, enough to easily pass the measure if the Republicans had not decided to put on their display of pique and disarray.

The question now is whether the stock-market plunge that followed the House’s failure to lead — and a renewed credit freeze — will be enough to get the 133 Republicans who voted against the measure to change their minds. And, more important, whether the damage that the no vote has inflicted is readily reversible.

Republican no votes were rooted less in analysis or principle than in political posturing and ideological rigidity. The House minority leader, John Boehner, conceded as much: “While we were able to move the bill drastically to the right, it wasn’t good enough for our members.”

It’s not clear what would be good enough for the Republicans since there was very little talk of substance on Monday after the bill died on the floor of the House. Instead, the Republicans tried to blame their revolt on a speech given before the vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who connected the current crisis to the fiscal and economic mismanagement of the Bush years. It may not have been the perfect moment to say that, but it was true.

Republicans were also upset that serial bailouts represent a rejection of free-market principles. They do. That’s because the free market in finance, unregulated and unsupervised, has failed. And, in its failure, it is inflicting greater damage on an already weak economy.

No amount of amendments to the bailout package will change the administration’s disastrous economic record or erase the manifest failure of the Republicans’ free-markets-above-all ideology.

Since last week, this page has urged Congress to take the time to get the bailout right. Over all, lawmakers have given too little consideration, in public at least, to alternatives to the Treasury’s plan to buy up the bad assets from various financial firms.

In the bill rejected on Monday, the unlimited powers that the Treasury Department had initially sought were curbed, and Congressional oversight was added. But judicial review of Treasury’s purchases was not adequately ensured. The courthouse door was not closed entirely; lawyers could still seek effective remedies for actions that violate the Constitution. But that’s a much higher hurdle than the already formidable barriers in place to discourage lawsuits against the government.

Homeowners were also given short shrift with provisions that mainly urged lenders and the Treasury to do more to help them. That’s unconscionable. The financial crisis is as much a problem for homeowners as for Wall Street investment bankers. Appeals to lenders’ better natures have not worked to bring lasting relief to homeowners. If they are still not working in the coming months, Congress will have to revisit the issue.

Taxpayer protections are also iffy, such as a requirement that in five years, the president must give Congress a plan for recouping any losses from financial firms. What will happen then is anyone’s guess. Lawmakers could decide at that point that taxpayers are the only pit bottomless enough to absorb those losses.

Still, the imperfections in this bill are the result of a democratic process that can be rethought, revisited and reworked. It is better than nothing, which is what some backward-looking House Republicans gave Americans on Monday.

(my highlight about the manifest failure of the Republican mantra of free markets)

Do you see what these people are saying: everything the Republicans have done vis a vis the economy since 1980 (and I would argue since 1968) has been revealed for the lie that it always was. If anything, Pelosi was too light in her assessment, whether it was ill-timed or not.

There remains a problem, however, and the only person I’ve read who has pointed this out is the British columnist Mick Hume writing for Spiked!: We are stuck without any real and workable alternatives to the system we have. In the Thatcher years in Britain, this was sometimes referred to as the “TINA” doctrine — “There Is No Alternative”. Neither the right or the left have been able to put forth a scheme to move forward. Talk has been made about adopting the so-called “Swedish Plan” to address the bank crisis, but that, like the Paulson bailout, is a short-term solution (albeit a far more just and equitable solution than crowning him King Henry).

Yesterday I posted about Bernie Sanders’ general proposal to bring a sort of Second New Deal to bear to address the bank crisis and the depression that could very well stem from the situation. Even that, though, is crisis management and not a larger framework for re-inventing the economic forces that sustain the world’s economy.

For now, I think that is the best that the American government can hope to achieve: to blow away the remnants of almost 30 years of unbridled capitalism and corrupt governance, develop a few critical mechanisms to protect the general public from catastrophic financial failure, and pass an honest and forthright plan to repair the immediate damage to the banking system. That simply won’t happen until the political posturing and outrageous grandstanding by the House Republicans and by John McCain stop.

The bailout bill went down to defeat in the House of Representatives this afternoon, with the Republicans trying to pin the blame on Nancy Pelosi for making a speech that they say drove away Republican votes. It’s good to see that the Republicans still have the presence of mind to try to spin some political points out of the imminent meltdown of the world economy, but I scarcely think that Pelosi’s speech had anything to do with it. The Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it too by voting down this bill. Their sudden insistence on “free market principles” was nowhere in sight as they bailed out Fannie MAE, Freddie MAC and AIG, but now they don’t want to be seen handing over the keys to the gate long after the horses have already left the barn. The fact that the general public is still about 3-to-1 AGAINST a bailout bill probably has a lot more to do with it. Even the Dems didn’t all vote for it, which I think is worth noticing. The leadership needed to pass a bill, so they took the least-terrible set of compromises they could come up with, but they still couldn’t get everyone on board. Dennis Kucinich, for example, voted against the bill. So did my Congressman, John Tierney Here’s the complete roll call.

It’s not hard to find a lot of well-qualified people who are ready to line up and say that the original Paulson bill was unacceptable, but even the “compromise” bill worked on over the weekend has seen nothing but tepid support. At this stage, not passing the first thing to hit the floor is probably the best thing that could happen. Another bill will have to push a little bit more, even if the Republican reluctance is a cynical ploy. The weak-willed and useless Democratic leadership should be looking for something more than an overnight solution, since they’re going to be the ones still in control of Congress after November. George Bush has achieved the one thing he set out to do: set the whole world on fire and then sneak out the back door to let someone else handle the hard part. Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, et.al. won’t have the luxury of walking away.

Last week I mentioned that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was calling for a completely different approach to this crisis, and now he’s elevated that call to the status of an actual petition. Sanders’ petition acknowledges what many of us believe will happen: the arrival of a significant depression to rival or exceed the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s. And, borrowing from the way Franklin Roosevelt acted to alleviate some of the personal misery that befell so many people, Sanders’ proposal is simple, direct, and aimed at the average person, not the Wall Street arbitrageur whose portfolio shrank from $400 million to only $350 million. His proposal is thus:

1. Ensure that middle income and working families are not the ones who are paying for this bailout by
* Imposing a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue over five years;
* Ensuring that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
* Requiring that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the taxpayers’ assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Taken together these three provisions will substantially reduce the likelihood that this bailout will end up on the backs of average American taxpayers.

2. Include a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect our must vulnerable families from the very difficult times they are experiencing.

3. Repeal the disastrous de-regulatory legislation that facilitated this crisis.

4. End the danger posed by companies that are “too big to fail,” that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.

The first point addresses the reality that it is the rich who stand to benefit the most from any bailout plan. As a society, we must stop enabling the rich to steal again and again from the pockets of the middle class. There are many calling for a flat tax that would similarly place the burden of financial obligation on those who have benefitted the most and manage to contribute the least due to tax loopholes, legislation that favors the wealthy, and other systemic iniquities. I think the surtax described here, temporary and focused on the wealthiest, is a better idea.

But it is Sanders’ second point that needs the most support. Economic recovery WILL NOT HAPPEN by saving the fortunes of the wealthy. As a society we have to disabuse ourselves of the warped view that we have adopted toward the distribution of wealth. It may have worked for a few of decades after the Second World War, but since the 1980s the concentration of wealth into such a tiny percentage of the population has become pathological. We are going to pay the price for that as businesses start to go belly up over the next year or two, and we are not well-equipped to do so. The fedferal government can and should prepare for the mobilization of unemployed workers in a second New Deal that seeks to restore the infrastructure of the nation, reinvest Americans in their own communities, and create new structures for business in the future than are less dependent on the failed model of credit capitalism.

Sign the petition, but take it to the next step and communicate this to your congressional representatives, particularly if they voted for the bailout today. Congress CAN do something if they aren’t rushed by the Bushies to take any deal they can get. We need a good deal, a new deal to move forward.

It is a damn good thing that the Bush Administration chose to announce their agreement to pay the $700 billion ransom demand made by Wall Street over the weekend. If this had happened during the work-week, the pressure on Congress to Just.Do.Something. would have been overwhelming, especially after Ben Bernanke used the “nuclear option” on Congress to tell them just how serious this problem is. And, given that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bend over for Geroge Bush more than a Greenwich Village tranny during Fleet Week, they would have gone along in a snap. But the weekend gave every pundit known to humanity a chance to take a deep breath, sort out the details, and come to the conclusion that the bailout plan, as proposed, is FUCKING WACK.

If the Bush bailout plan were put into place without modification, you might as well cancel the November election, because Hank Paulson would be the de facto Ruler Of The Free World. With a blank check, zero accountability, and virtually unlimited authority to do whatever he wants to the American economy, and thus by extension the entire world, he might as well declare himself King Henry the First and be done with it. It was apparently not enough to hand over a trillion dollars to Halliburton, not to mention $9 billion (UPDATED: make that $23 billion) IN CASH to the gang posing as the Iraqi government, but with less than six months remaining in their administration, they needed to make sure that Paulson’s buddies on Wall Street got their welfare checks AND the option to buy up all the failing banks in America at a deep discount.

You know it’s a bad idea when even such Republican lickspittles as William Kristol go on record in the New York Times as calling it a duck. I have been collecting links all morning to the various and sundry politicians, pundits and other bloviating gasbags and here’s the lineup I have so far of people who have said the bailout is a Bad Thing:

• Paul Krugman called it “Cash For Trash”
• Robert Reich says no blank check without some conditions, and even has a suggestion for a totally different sort of plan
• Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders offers a proposal that warms the cockles of my sclerotic pinko heart: Make the rich pay for the bailout, bring back strict regulation to the financial sector, and stand ready to roll out a Second New Deal to rebuild American infrastructure and put millions to work. (In a perfect world, I would be voting for a Kucinich/Sanders ticket come November…)
• Speakng of Kucinich, he has picked up on Krugman’s “Cash For Trash” line, and says he will introduce a counter-proposal to distribute the remaining good assets of the failed banks to each and every American citizen to the tune of the $2,300.00-per-person figure that has been bandied about as the per-capita cost of the bailout.
• Meanwhile, Kucinich’s chief economic adviser from his primary campaign, University of Missouri Professor Michael Hudson, spoke about the crisis in this interview last week (pre-bailout announcement) with DemocracyNow.org (video here if you’re interested). He doesn’t even think the AIG bailout is a good idea…and he’s right.
• This post at DailyKos has a quick roundup of punditry, including Krugman. Even the Wall Street Journal isn’t too keen on the plan
• Politico.com’s round-up adds University of Chicago School of Business Professor Luigi Zingales (who wrote the 2003 book “Saving Capitalism From The Capitalists”), Mitt Romney’s financial adviser Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw, Time Magazine’s Justin Fox, annd Conde Nast Portfolio writer Felix Salmon.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times is one of the few places where you’ll read anything good about the plan, and even their recommendation is lackluster, and some of their columnists are even less certain about it all. Then there’s this moron writing in Time, who seems to think it’s 2002 all over again by declaring us the “United States of France” for even SUGGESTING a bailout plan.

Then there are the side effects to consider:

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal, is quick to point out that while Hank Paulson is shoveling out the contents of the U.S. Treasury to his former co-workers at Goldman Sachs, John McCain STILL thinks it’s a good idea to deregulate the health insurance industry the same way he voted for deregulating the investment banks over the last 25 years. And let’s not forget that McCain LOVES the idea of creating private retirement accounts instead of funding Social Security, so that we can hand over our hard-earned money more efficiently to Wall Street.

At least Barack Obama isn’t ready to hand over all the money so easily, but he isn’t exactly stepping up to the plate yet either. The Boston Herald reports that he spent some time this weekend meeting with Warren Buffet, Larry Sanders, Paul Volcker and a bunch of other Serious People to get a better handle on the situation and maybe come up with something. But, seriously, Barry, you need to pull something out of your ass that isn’t just some rhetorical flourish on top of a wishy-washy do-nothing plan like the rest of your platform. Somebody tell me again why you think he’s better than McCain, because I still just don’t feel the love for him that you do. Running on “I’m not John McCain” isn’t much of a change, you know.

Much has been made of this e-mail from an unnamed Democratic congressman who isn’t too happy with the events of the last few days. He’s ready to vote for anything that “…would serve no useful purpose except to insult the industry, like requiring the CEOs, CFOs and the chair of the board of any entity that sells mortgage related securities to the Treasury Department to certify that they have completed an approved course in credit counseling… That would just be petty and childish, and completely in character for me. I’m open to other ideas, and I am looking for volunteers who want to hold the sons of bitches so I can beat the crap out of them. I think he’s on the right track myself, but over at MetaFilter the user named “Pastabagel” has a very salient reminder about spreading the blame for all this around. While I feel the Congress-critter’s pain, Pastabagel has a very valid point: we gave the Democrats back the majority to take care of this bullshit and they have let us down immensely. Republicans and Democrats alike need to be thoroughly beaten with sharp and pointy objects for their complicity in this clusterfuck.

And the general public? Well, we’ve been enjoying our bread and circuses, of course. The Pew Research Center’s weekly analysis of news content says that in the week of September 8-14, which is the week before the market tanked and people started to get nervous, 42% of all news coverage was devoted to some aspect of Sarah Palin, with nearly 25% of that coverage being about the “lipstick on a pig” comment, while the crumbling economy got 4% of the newsmedia’s attention. Forty-two fucking percent of their seemingly limitless time thrown away on some white-trash “hockey mom” who can “see Russia from her house”, while the millionaires line up for their bags of money taken directly from our pockets. We, the people of this country, also deserve a full measure of blame for this. And we’re going to get it. Soon.