Moody’s Gets Moody
It seems that Moody’s, one of the insightful bond rating services that notoriously rated Wall Street junk AAA in the years leading up to the crash, is finally getting tough. Not with the banksters, though, but with the US, UK, and other governments, who, according to this infallible oracle, face structural debt that must be addressed, even at the risk of damaging such irrelevant minutia as “social cohesion.” Naturally, the countries in the worst danger are the US and UK, and the ones across the world in the most trouble are those that embraced Reagan/Thatcherism most ardently; Moody’s cryptically mentions the socialist, redistributive “Nordic Countries” as those in the best shape to hang onto their AAA ratings, tiptoeing around the “why” of this mysterious phenomenon that would appear to fly in the face of 30 years of economic orthodoxy.
What was it that made the US and UK, who both have slavishly followed the Randian model of creating a capitalist paradise, soon have to start shopping for the governmental equivalent of payday loans to finance basic services? Could it be the feudal extremes of wealth and poverty that strain the social safety net and choke off public investment to further enrich an overclass of wealthy layabouts? Could it be reckless and unpaid-for military adventurism? Could it be the rampant anti-unionism that has gutted society’s bedrock, the strong middle class? Could it be the dominance of the Murdoch press? Nah. The answer of course, is that “social cohesion” is going to have to be flushed down the toilet so the rich can keep up with the, uh, other rich. The smart money is in riot gear and more prisons.
I think this explains why the economic right is doubling down so in its misinformation campaigns; they see trouble coming and are desperate to lay the blame anywhere other than where it belongs. It started during the Bush years, when any fool could have seen that the upward transfer of wealth and incontinent military spending was going to create a fiasco; the government quietly, and later proudly, began creating a repressive infrastructure that would be needed to keep an increasingly two-class society from boiling over. Of course, the multiple wars, the loaded, Nazi-tainted term, “Homeland Security,” the routine and savage attacks on dissenting politicians and members of the press, and the explosion of extrajudicial spying and detention called to mind der Fuhrer a bit too much, so ol’ Jonah Goldberg was at the ready with his farcical piece of nitwit propaganda, “Liberal Fascism.” Why not?
Then, when the Bush economic policies produced just the disaster that any sentient being could have predicted, and no amount of wingnut prosecutors and rigged voting machines could stem the tide of popular revulsion at the theft that had been committed, Plan B was implemented after the 2008 elections. Fox News hired essentially the whole propaganda arm of the defeated administration and gave Glenn Beck his chalkboard, and Liz Cheney, William Kristol, and Dick Armey, among others, fired up their newly minted government in exile to make sure that the most larcenous of their policies would be aggressively marketed to dumber Americans, most of whom worked in the media.
Since the elections of 2006 and 2008 had made clear the unwelcome fact that even No Child Left Behind hadn’t made Americans quite dumb enough yet to vote themselves into serfdom, they had to de-emphasize somewhat the gay-bashing and bible-thumping in favor of going all in for plutocracy, which was what really mattered all along. Thus, the teabaggers were systematically riled up to equate government sanctioned theft by the wealthy from everyone else with “freedom,” and the handily packed Supreme Court was forced to fast-track its plans to tilt the playing field further toward the luxury boxes with the notorious and audaciously misnamed “Citizens United” decision.
Bringing up the rear, typically, was ol’ Texas, which rightly perceived that this book learning thing was getting out of hand, and had to rush through new “academic” standards for textbooks. The wingnut charlatans on the board, some of whom had already been sent packing by the voters, had neither the time nor inclination to obsess over creationism, abortion, and such, and instead stuffed in such blatantly desperate measures as sanctifying Reagan, “free enterprise,” and the gold standard, a gesture that proved unintentionally revealing… Who cares about murdering babies when money is involved?
Count on the right to leap on Moody’s threat as the latest justification for further cutting taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, while sticking the rest of us for more and taking away what measly services we still receive from them. In fact, Rep. Paul Ryan’s little proposal does just that, while further increasing the deficit, to boot. What would Moody’s think of that idea? Better yet, what would Ingrid or Sven think? Not much, I’m betting.
What was it Claude Rains said about seeing gambling going on in plain sight in “Casablanca”?
That’d be, “Shocked, shocked.”
A great turn of phrase, ‘Hag!
Probably because I get so much practice saying a variation on the same theme. You couldn’t find dumber people than Cokie Roberts, Brian Williams, David Gregory, Tom Friedman, and on and on at a danged nursery school, but there they are. I at least give the Foxies credit for knowing what they are doing.
Roberts, Williams, Gregory and Freidman – What a quartet!
Last summer, I took my daughters on the NBC visitors’ tour at Rockefeller Center in NYC. On the way up the elevator to the news room, the tour guide mentioned, as an aside, that “Brian Williams is an extremely intelligent and inquisitive newsman who spends hours personally researching and preparing his evening news report.”
I thought it strange that the tour guide was putting in such a big plug for Williams. But then later when we passed the next tour group in the hall I heard their tour guide tell them, “Brian Williams is an extremely intelligent and inquisitive newsman who spends hours personally researching and preparing his evening news report.”
NBC does intensive programming – both on and off the air.
They have to, ever since that time he “corrected” some Democratic politician by saying, “But cutting capital gains taxes INCREASES revenue,” as though it weren’t the opposite of true. They all get paid too much to be worth a damn.
And then there’s Brooks who’s so appalled at the Dems in the Senate for being mean and rude and groupish for using reconciliation to pass HRC. Oh, the horror!!!
Oh, God… My NYT sits unopened; no wonder I’m still in a good mood.
I had to smile about his comment, too.
Bad, bad Democrats. How dare they trying to get something done!
Classic Brooks…. More in sorrow than anger, he laments that Democrats, as usual, suck, using lies to support his contention. I can’t believe that guy has a job.
Here’s a Fresh Air link that explains what was going on in the Wall Street Ponzi scheme. The major problem was incentivising Wall Streeters to make stupid decisions for themselves and all their subsequent victims. We absolutely must not allow Dodd, Congress and WS to dilute financial reform. To do so will inevitably result in an even worse recession or depression in the near future. WE IGNORE THE OLD ADDAGE “Fool me once…” at grave peril.
NPR’s Fresh Air: How A Few Made Millions Betting Against The Market “Writer Michael Lewis is the author of Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, and The Blind Side, books with vastly different subjects but a common theme: outsiders with innovative ideas who find astonishing success. Lewis’ newest book continues that narrative. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine chronicles the 2008 financial collapse through stories of the people who realized what was happening to the U.S. economy while it was happening — and then made vast fortunes by betting against the markets.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124690424
Here’s a link on a discussion today on the Dylan Ratigan Show:
DR Show: Eliot Spitzer, Arianna Huffington, Phil Angelides discuss financial reform legislation, how collapse of Lehman Brothers contributed to the economic crisis, what practices should change and should Wall Streeters be charged with fraud.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#35899097
According to the Texas ” Bored of Education ” ( but Thrilled with Indoctrination ) we’re all Calvinists now. Get ready for the rollout of the new ” Divine Right of Arbitrage Managers ” theory on the running ( ruining ? ) of society and super efficient economics of flush-up as opposed to tricle-down. They never peed on us anyway.
Way back in the late 80′s, I remember a local columnist writing about the uneasy alliance between the religious and economic right, “Henceforth, Jesus will have an official position on passive real estate depreciation.” It was funny at the time. Now, not so much.
here is a funny one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/daily-show-takes-on-finan_n_502357.html
Unfortunately, a complete diagnosis of the national lunacy is beyond the power of a single Hag, even one as savvy, and as jaundiced as ours. I dream of a single vast building, vaster even than the Pentagon, somewhere between Salt Lake City and Reno. Perhaps in the Great Bonneville Salt Flats, as seemingly insubstantial as the rest of the mirages there, as inaccessible as Mont Saint-Michel at high-tide, an eternal impediment to going too fast. (The one downside to such a remote and inhospitable, i.e. Utah, location is that decent beer would have to be imported at great expense.)
Over the main portico there’s a motto, Dum Spiro, Spero, perhaps, or Oderint Dum Metuant. Inside, thousands of white-coated and earnest researchers compile the latest bits from sources as varied as Think Progress and Benedict XVI’s latest Encyclicals, from LIndsey Graham’s flatulence to Generalissimo Petraeus’ laconic advice to emperors present and future, searching diligently for trends in the national pathology as they merge and separate, ebb and flow, always keeping one eye on the incoming craziness, and the other on the clock.
Surely this is where we ought to send our best and brightest, hoping someday to reap a solid return on our investment. Call it the Department of Corrections — an anti-Ministry of Truth, if you will — dedicated to the sole purpose of recovering the fragments of a civilization which most of the country seems hell-bent on either forgetting or destroying.
Here the dream ends. I wake up, and discover that all we have is the Internet — as fluid as mercury, as evanescent as morning fog. Oh well…I guess it will just have to do.
That dreamscape is quite Leibowitzian.
The white coats had better watch out for Bradbury’s firemen.
Yeah, it’s true. A lot of my dreams are physically informed by the science fiction I read in my earlier teens, even if the content comes from weightier tomes, most of which — although not all — I read much later.
William, I’ll settle for the internet and now think of it in terms of your dream.
Thanks, WT… Your comment got me going on my new post; I’d been feeling both overwhelmed and tongue-tied by teh stoopid here lately.
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