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Vertaal:
              Niet meer Winkel tot u daalt
Vrijdag, 28 November, 2008
Door Ruth Conniff | De zwarte Vrijdag is slechts weg een dag, en het niet kijkt goed voor detailhandelaars. Een voor-paginaverhaal in de New York Times, „Om de Giften van Kinderen, Mothers Do Without te kopen,“ beschrijft een tendens vanaf winkelen verantwoordelijk voor een 18.2 percentendaling in de kledingsverkoop van vrouwen van een jaar geleden. De mensen houden Kerstmis in bedwang binge, kopen minder, onthouden zich van giften, en over het algemeen vermijden de bodemloze kuil van consumentisme die onze economie drijft. Dat zou voor die van ons goed kunnen zijn die om zich vrijwillig van het rattenras bij de wandelgalerij geven terug te trekken. Niets koop daar zet Dag ook gebeurt de Vrijdag na dag dankzegging-A van het nonshopping die wordt georganiseerd om het uit te spreiden te zijn woord dat, als Adbusters - http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd - het, „? slechts unidirectioneel s om de instorting van deze proef op mensen te vermijden van van ons op de Aarde van de Planeet: wij moeten minder verbruiken.“ Maar het is ook een teken van de ontzettende vorm van onze economie. Hier is het raadsel van de financiële afsmelting: wij allen leven in een wereld die door onhoudbare te besteden van brandstof wordt voorzien. Elke dag er zijn nieuwe verhalen over hubris van de laatste decennia van financiële boom. Lang profiel van Gevoede stoel Ben Bernanke in de Newyorker beschrijft hoe hij en andere discipelen van Alan Greenspan weigerden om de huisvesting te zien borrelen zelfs zoals de economen zoals Dean Baker van een dreigende instorting van de hypotheekmarkt waarschuwden. Michael Lewis heeft jaren documenterend corruptie en stompzinnigheid aan Wall Street doorgebracht. In een huidig stuk op portefeuille. Com, vat hij de redenen voor de instorting van Wall Street, in hoogst leesbaar proza samen: „Aan deze dag, blijft de bereidheid van een Investeringsbank van Wall Street om me honderdduizenden dollars aan verdeelinvesteringsraad aan volwassenen te betalen een geheim aan me. Ik was 24 jaar oud, zonder ervaring van, of bijzondere rente in, het veronderstellen van welke voorraden en banden zouden toenemen en welke zou vallen. De essentiële functie van Wall Street is kapitaal toe te wijzen? om te beslissen wie het zou moeten krijgen en wie niet zou moeten. Geloof me wanneer ik u dat I hadn vertel? t de eerste aanwijzing. I? D nooit genomen een boekhoudingscursus, stelt nooit zaken in werking, had nooit zelfs besparingen van mijn te leiden. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous.” Much of the last several decades on Wall Street looks preposterous now. But the bankers and their cronies in Washington, including Greenspan, were convinced that the housing boom, lax credit, and oceans of easy money would never dry up. Unfortunately, some of the intellectual architects of unfettered recklessness and speculation are getting key jobs in the Obama Administration. As Bill Greider puts it in The Nation, “A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page . . . I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward. . . . Virtually all of his leading appointments are restoring the Clinton presidency, only without Mr. Bill. In some important ways, Obama’s selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.” The economic crisis calls for massive, bold action, not pouring money into firms that now have the temerity to pay out the taxpayer-financed bailout money as dividends, which is what they are doing. Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, who helped create the lax regulatory environment that led to this crisis, as well as the bailouts that followed, can’t be counted on. The problem confronting Obama and, one hopes, the more thoughtful and less tainted members of his economic team, is how to address the crisis in a way that helps the people at the bottom of the great pyramid scheme of our economy, rather than just wasting more money on bailouts for the mismanagers at the top. Meanwhile, even if there is a certain amount of understandable schadenfreude for the Wall Street titans and auto company execs who are taking a beating from members of Congress and the public, they are pulling a lot of innocent people with them on their way down. I was struck by two recent stories in The New York Times. One, a business section article of several days ago, quoted a leading labor economist on how the UAW would have a hard time justifying its generous retirement and benefits packages for laid off autoworkers in the current economic crisis. The other, a front-page piece in the National section on Michigan, described a state so hard hit by the auto industry’s woes that “desperation” has spread to every sector of the economy. Some 20 percent of Michigan residents now rely on some form of public assistance. The logical outcome of the economist’s argument seems to be that even more people should be on the dole in Michigan. Just as unemployment benefits dry up for millions of laid off workers, the UAW is taking a beating for its support for the auto industry bailout and the perceived fat-cat status of union members (not management CEOs who flew to Washington on private jets, mind you, but the line workers who continued to get health care and retirement pay after being laid off). There is a danger that the worse off people are, the easier it is to stir up resentment toward the unions and members who benefit from basic security won by the labor movement. The collapse of manufacturing and the mismanagement and shortsightedness of the auto industry have driven Michigan into the ground. The rampant greed and speculation on Wall Street have destroyed the housing market and left us with a lot of poor people facing home foreclosures. To make matters worse, a race-to-the-bottom mentality — that if some people are suffering, no one should have job security or health care benefits– is toxic. If that sort of sentiment, often stoked by the right, grows, it will only make the rest of the country look more like Michigan. There’s a lot to think about while you are not out shopping on Friday. How do we build a more sustainable, humane, and just economy? And how do we push an Administration loaded with the architects of the current disaster to do the right thing? Have Your Say: No More Shop till You Drop Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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