{"id":2049,"date":"2008-09-16T02:00:34","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T07:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2011-06-06T15:30:09","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T19:30:09","slug":"humming-loudly-fingers-in-ears-the-subprime-mortgage-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/economics\/humming-loudly-fingers-in-ears-the-subprime-mortgage-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Humming Loudly, Fingers in Ears: The Mortgage & Credit Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Fe Bongolan, my writing colleague and longtime Planet Waves reader. Fe is one of the most politically aware people I know, and I’ve asked her to join us among the Planet Waves bloggers to help cover the delicate election of 2008. Today she is offering her thoughts on the failure of two of the most powerful investment banks in United States history, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. She lives and works in San Francisco. You can reach her at editorial -at- planetwaves.net. — Eric Francis<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

IF YOU’RE one of those folks who pulls up to the gas station trying to decide whether to fill up or to buy the milk and eggs you need for the week, then the message of today’s news about the Merrill Lynch\/Lehman Brothers crisis should prick up your ears.<\/p>\n

This week, we’re walking in on the heels of the meltdown of the country’s largest brokerage firm, Merrill Lynch, which had to sell itself to Bank of America for $50 billion in order to avoid bankruptcy, while the fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, is filing for Chapter 11.<\/p>\n

Now, I am normally not an alarmist, but when the President holds a press conference asking for all to remain calm and continue with confidence that the markets will sort this all out, you’ve got the hint that the sense is as of now, the proverbial merde<\/em> is hitting the fan.<\/p>\n

The chill, from Main St. to Wall St. as well as Pennsylvania Ave., is bigger than what they let on. This crisis has been coming. We’ve seen hints of it this year.<\/p>\n

Jerome\u0412\u00a0a Paris<\/a>, (blogname) energy banker and international blogger (who blogs regularly on Daily Kos on geopolitics and economics), calls it The Anglo Disease<\/a> and defines it as the following:
\n<\/p>\n

The Anglo Disease is the label I have been using to describe the current situation, whereby too much debt has made the financial sector dominant, and starved the rest of the economy of oxygen — and not-so-coincidentally transferring massive wealth from the working classes to the very rich.<\/p>\n

This is what we’re living through today: an unsustainable model of monetary-only growth bumping against physical reality, and guess what: physics wins. Every single time. Thus $150 oil, $4 gas, stagnant wages and Will-E-Coyote real estate markets.<\/p>\n

It\u0432\u0402\u2122s a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise, and one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crises.<\/p>\n

There is no easy solution to today’s crisis. It is not a crisis of regulation, or of subprime, or of security or of inflation. It’s simply a crisis of greed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The looming debt crisis that’s staring our country in the face comes during an election year where the corporations and the Republican ruling party are desperately trying to keep power by keeping up appearances, that the water spilling into the hull of the nation’s ship is nothing more than a figment of your imagination. As Donald Luskin, financial adviser to the McCain campaign says so reassuringly in his Washington Post op-ed<\/a>, we should “quit doling out that bad-economy line.”<\/p>\n

In other words: everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Move along.<\/p>\n

They want you to trust that the financial sector, which has been managing the billions in profit income in a monetary-based economy, STILL have your best interests at heart. And remember, these are the same people who President Bush was proposing to manage our Social Security fund, just a few years ago.<\/p>\n

I’m not so sure the current circumstances of monetary-only economy will hold up any more. Too many people whose lives are grounded in reality-based economics are hurting still and now in growing numbers. Surprisingly, we are yet to see the storming of the castle. We’ve been kept busy and dumb by a collection of interests who are vested in making sure you aren’t aware that they’re fucking up with our money and the nation’s economy. But that day of reckoning may be soon.<\/p>\n

Remember, this is the party of the President who, after 9-11, said we should go shopping. Today, choosing the analogy of “chickens coming home to roost,” the drumbeats signaling a collapsing economy are growing louder, while our friends on Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and in the offices of the RNC, are still humming loudly, with fingers in ears<\/p>\n

— Fe Bongolan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Fe Bongolan, my writing colleague and longtime Planet Waves reader. Fe is one of the most politically aware people I know, and I’ve asked her to join us among the Planet Waves bloggers to help cover the delicate election of 2008. Today she is offering her thoughts on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[258,259,52,244,257,117,260],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}