In a reply to a comment that I made on Booman’s post A Kaleidoscope Vote, Booman responded by calling me a “Jacobin”.
Here is the phrase to which he was responding:
Fuck it. Whole hog plus postage. Let the goddamned thing fall and then maybe we will be able to start over clean again.
And here is my response to both his position and the position of the bailout supporters in general.
Read on if you are interested.
Or…just go turn on your TV and then go peacefully back to sleep. If you do so you will certainly be in the majority.
Jacobin, eh?. Another cant word.
What is a “Jacobin”, exactly?
From Wikipedia:
In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794), but even at that time, the term Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of revolutionary opinions. In contemporary France this term refers to the concept of a centralized Republic, with power concentrated in the national government, at the expense of local or regional governments. Similarly, Jacobinist educational policy, which influenced modern France well into the 20th Century, sought to stamp out French minority languages that it considered reactionary, such as Breton, Basque, Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian, Franco-Provençal and Dutch (West Flemish).
Yup.
That’s me alright.
What bullshit. The degradation of the use of the English language is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of modern American culture.
I am not a “Jacobin”, Booman. I am not even a revolutionary as that word is most often used. I am simply observing the root cause of the ongoing collapse of the United States and proferring the only solution that I can see.
Cold turkey.
Why cold turkey?
Because credit has become an addiction here in America. Up and down the system, from the largest institutions (government, the corporate world) right on down through to the individual.
I posted something here a week ago called Cold Turkey Or Reheated, Microwaved Big (Freddie + Fannie) Mac?. As is most often the case here on the middle class leftiness blogs with something that posits a difficult solution…one that might deprive cosseted white bourgeois lefties of some of their cherished luxuries…it sank off of the list like an anvil dropped into a vat of tepid jello.
In it I wrote (among other things):
I am now hearing endless blather from incompetent hustlers about how we must “…preserve the credit system of this great nation or we face disaster!!! Without credit, no one will be able to get loans to start businesses that run at a loss!!!”
Or something like that.
The usury-based American business model is in a shambles. “Credit” is an addiction. Big credit or little credit. Just like your next door neighbor who was too fucking stupid and/or too fucking strung out not to borrow more than he can pay …or just like yourself, God and Mammon help you…so have the corps made the same, weak set of errors.
This sort of information is not exactly news y’know.
Wake the fuck UP!!!
—snip—
Stopgap measures…although it’s about 1000 to 1 that stopgaps are all we that are going to see until a real economic hard rain cames pissing and pelting at our doors…stopgap measures ain’t gonna work.
Just like American Big Pharma medicine, they will only mask the symptoms while simultaneously further damaging the organs of the society that are supposed to clean its system. And if Obama wants to be elected…always supposing, of course, that he is aware of this problem…he can’t do shit about it. About the buyout. Errr…I mean bailout. Why? Because as soon as he says word ONE about anything even remotely resembling a cold turkey solution, the media favor that he has so assiduously and successfully cultivated WILL BE GONE IN ONE MASSIVELY SPONSORED MOMENT.
Bet on it.
So it’s clomp clomp clomp we go, into the valley of economic death and may God have mercy upon our souls and upon our bank accounts as well.
Have fun…
I will.
Why?
Because I have so little to lose.
Yup.
Lucky me!!!
Later…
AG
Yup.
Lucky me.
What’s in YOUR wallet, Booman?
I do not use that advertising lick lightly. Have you noticed how many of the recently collapsed financial boondoggle corps were the ones with such cute little advertising campaigns?
WaMu, Wachovia, AIG?
I cannot WAIT for those lizards at Geico and “What’s in YOUR wallet?” Capitol One to fall.
Hype runs the usury business, Booman, and those who are too fucking media-hypnotized to see the essential falsehoods behind the entire system resort to the devolved use of language…like that lame “Jacobin” meme…to protect their precious sleep from a ude but inevitable awakening by the simple ABCs of mathematical reality.
You cannot borrow more than you can pay back.
Duh.
Not forever.
Either you go broke trying to pay it back or the entity from which you borrow goes broke when you cannot pay it back. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and then from Marvin to pay Peter and then from KillBill Corp. to pay Marvin and Peter and Paul and then from China to pay back all four of them simply is not going to work, and the sooner that we realize this simple fact, declare some form of large scale bankruptcy and go on about the business of recovery the better off we will be.
It’s simple math, Booman, and the pronouncements of all the little economics professor hustlers in the world cannot defeat the fact that 1+2+3 does not equal 17.
Sorry, but there it is.
It’s not even about “Let it all fall and fuck the motherfuckers!!!”, Booman. I feel people’s pain at this hard reality. Hell, to some degree I share it, although I am no longer very much invested in the corporate usury scam. My business is so tied to economic conditions that you could chart my earnings over the past 30 years, place that chart over the ups and downs of our national economy and it they would match each other on a week to week and even day to day basis. I feel it every day that something happens. In my wallet. People don’t go out to listen to live music…which is how I make about 85% of my meager monies…when they are scared. When 9/11 hit NY, I simply didn’t work much for almost a year and a half. Why? No one felt much like celebrating. So it goes. I got a lot of writing and practicing done.
Jacobin?
My royal Celtic ass!!!
Just a hard working, 14th generation American, hoping that we will once again manage to get back down to our economic and cultural roots.
Do your job; collect your pay; buy what you need and go about your fucking business.
Simple, eh?
Yeah.
Right.
WaMU!!!
We did it after the bust of 1929 and here it are, about 80 years later. Same game, only bigger.
MUCH bigger.
Can we do it again?
We shall soon see.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
If you support the continuation of this usury bubble…please tell me why?
I am DYING to know.
Really.
And if you do not…make your voice heard!!!
Please.
AG
Our country is one big usury bubble, surely.
When it pops, it’ll take us with it, period.
AG, can’t believe I’m writing this but, you’re are no longer alone.. Several, including Mr. Issac, the former FDIC chair, observe the Rescue plan does not address the underlying core problem nor will it avert defaults and foreclosures.
The system should be allowed to be cleansed. We’re only prolonging the pain and the poor gets poorer as the rich sit comfortably in their McBunkers.
This plan will be funded in the multiple of trillions as did the Iraq war – in slices – first with a down payment of $810 billion as the FDIC seeks unlimited borrowing. The plan was loaded with permission for more shenanigans and more tax breaks but the Sanders’ millionaire tax amendment was defeated.
So very bizarre that this should be in WSJ:… the quote below sums up my angst, exactly.
Up Next –
The Irony: Who will be blamed for the Hedge Funds, their fancy products demise?…. Santa Claus?
Hedge Fund Implosions Starting
It’s the end of an era of Arrogance and death of the $USD
It’s a quad: $1,140 trillions
$596 trillions of unregulated OTC derivatives plus another $548 trillions of listed derivatives mean we’ll print until Hell freezes over.
RSVP to The Mugabe Club.
Sarcasm is a dying art form. < sigh >
AG
Gilroy, a Jacobin is someone who insists on tearing down the old system completely so that a new system may arise. In the context of the French Revolution, that meant chopping of the heads of the king and queen, and instituting a reign of terror, aimed mainly at royalists. It also meant terminating the feudal system.
They failed and wound up supporting Napoleon and undermining the Republic.
Your favorite front-pager, Pat Lang, adopted the term to apply to neo-conservatives of the Michael Ledeen school. Basically, old-school Trostkyites converted to Italian-style fascists. Regardless, these groups, whether from right or the left, feel that contemporary society is hopeless. It’s either morally flawed or unsustainable or both. Therefore, they do not mind taking actions to bring about a collapse of the system, they welcome a collapse because only through creative destruction can a new, just society arise.
You are a Jacobin. Or, you’re acting like one anyway.
I want no beheadings…hell, I do not even particularly want punishments for the guilty. LET them eat cake for all I care.
Nor do I believe that all of contemporary society is hopeless.
Remove the corporate control of media and this society would blossom inside of a year or two. Re-educate people regarding the necessity of credit as a baseline for the economy…convert to cash instead of speculation, essentially, and make the system work on a “If you’ve got the cash, you can buy it. If you don’t, you have to save up for it” basis…and things would begin to even out.
It is your unfortunate position…which I will admit you share with most of the movers and shakers in this country…that “the system”” in place is the one in which you live.
Betcha you owe, Booman. Betcha everyone you know owes too. Big time. For their house, their car, their little Italian vacations…all the so-called “necessities” of a good middle-class sleeple’s life.
It is YOU who are threatened by my position. You and millions like you.
Well…never fear, Booman. What I want will not come about. Not the way things are set up now it won’t, anyway.
Y’see…what you SHOULD be fearing is what happens when your little system comes crashing down. Which it decidedly will do unless the inflation of this credit balloon is checked thoroughly and immediately, something that is simply not going to happen if we bail the inflators out. They will continue playing on house money, setting aside whatever they think is prudent for the time when the game really ends.
YOU know…like the massive Bush land holdings in Central and South America?
I want to prune the tree before it overgrows and dies, Booman.
You are a real freemarketeer. Not the conservative kind who only believes in the power of capitalism, but rather the “progressive” kind who not only believes in the power of capitalism but is willing to pass laws that support it even when it fails.
I think that you are wrong.
And short term, I believe that your viewpoint will prevail.
Long term?
Let us pray that Obama has the tenacity of Teddy Roosevelt, the political ability of FDR and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln.
He’s going to need all of those attributes and more if this bubble is not going to be allowed to burst on his watch.
Watch.
AG
Can a Bailout Succeed?
That’s the problem in a nutshell. (Unfortunately, googling doesn’t turn up the source of these quotes.)
I blame Nixon for taking us off a metal standard.
Plutonium.
Do business with us on our terms or else.
Or else take the chance that we will blow you up real good.
That’s the way America’s game works when taken to its (il)logical conclusion, and it has been that way at least since Vietnam.
In the back of the minds of all national leaders lurks the image af U.S. nuclear subs just sitting there on the bottom of whatever part of the ocean is closest to their bailiwick.
Just ‘a sittin’ and ‘a waitin’ for that fateful order.
Bet on it.
AG
Actually, Gilroy, I am debt-free. Debt-free and dirt poor.
But, I’ll tell you what. What I’m advocating for are two main things. And they are related.
If we don’t get some credit flowing, we’ll be fucked right now, not in the indeterminate future. Same thing is true if McCain wins.
The math is easy. Buy some time and win this thing.