Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Which they did, but doesn't stop some people from going on about how much money was "given" to the banks.
1/3 of the ARRA was tax cuts. I'm struggling to remember exactly what form those took, but this site (no idea what it is) says that there were withholding tax cuts and some other stuff, in addition to unemployment benefit expansion and additional SSI payments. There was actually money spent - not loaned - to give to the little guy.
Should it have been more? In my view, preferably more actual spending rather than more cash, but that's primarily because when you build a bridge or a wind farm you both get to pay the workers and wind up with a bridge or wind farm. |
I’m not one of those saying the banks were gifted money. I fully realize that they were merely failed businesses which deserved to collapse which were given lifelines thousands of other businesses failing at the same time were not.
That’s really the rub with 2008, isn’t it? Those who are supposed to die and be eaten by their betters were instead given a do over on terms which allowed them to steal even more assets at crazy low prices, watch them reinflate due to lax monetary supply, and then make new fortunes on the appreciation. The little guy, even the mid sized to large businessman, was only invited to this party via the stock market, where he often wound up buying shares in the same would-have-failed-entities. That’s a dry assfucking for Main St. is what that is.
It’s always been a somewhat rigged game. But it was so naked this time around, no one could refute it.
This shit, the drug war, institutional racism, Citizens United, all of this crony capitalism... It’s not a theory. It’s no longer something we can credibly dispute. This country’s got no legitimate authority on which to demand respect except for force. It’s “wise” to assert populism peaks volcanically and quickly fades. This round of it started in the fallout from the housing collapse, became overt in 2009 with Santelli’s “tea party” rant, and has now culminated in Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders raising the highest levels of campaign cash on the backs of this message: The Establishment is weak and corrupt and needs to go.
And where the media could unify to stanch that sort of message in the past, today’s media is atomized.
I’d put Geithner next to Gingrich in the list of People Responsible for the Freakshow. And I don’t see this Freakshow ending any time soon. This appears to be Populism 3.0 in a 10 stage cycle.
ETA: And what was Geithner’s genius after 2008? Continue policies that encouraged bank consolidation. And regulate the little banks just like big ones. A better recipe for an even more extreme TBTF mess, and a dearth of lending on Main St, couldn’t be conceived. But it can’t happen again, right? A madman in the Oval and a crazy spike in oil prices similar to 2005 could never create another 2008...
