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Today's Stories April 14, 2008 Michael Hudson A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers Patrick Cockburn A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior Paul Craig Roberts Petraeus Sets Up Iran Joanne Mariner Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?   April 12 / 13, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates Patrick Cockburn Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr Mike Whitney Want to Save the Economy? David Yearsley Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire Robert Fantina Bush's Brand of Morality Conn Hallinan Another Defining Moment in Iraq Bill Hatch In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture Ramzy Baroud The Basra Battles George S. Hishmeh Back to Square One Ron Jacobs The New New Left in Latin America Nikolas Kozloff Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires Charles Thomson The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit Alexander Billet The Disney-fication of CBGB Missy Beattie Huffing and Puffing to Failure David Michael Green America's Jones for War Seth Sandronsky Education Entrepreneurs Prairie Miller Meeting David Wilson Jeffrey St. Clair Booked Up Poets' Basement Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves Website of the Weekend Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights   April 11, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy Wajahat Ali Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz Sharon Smith Let Them Eat Ethanol! Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem Alan Farago Eating South Florida Dave Lindorff On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China George Wuerthner Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program Christopher Brauchli Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals Website of the Day Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video   April 10, 2008 Mathieu Vernerey Tibet for the Tibetans! Elizabeth Schulte Slavery in the Fields David Macaray Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake Ashley Smith The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr Peter Morici Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth Jacob Hornberger The Military's Distintegrating Family Life Harold Austin Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs Website of the Day Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos   April 9, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts The Fading American Economy Winslow T. Wheeler Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings C. Hand Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera Paul Krassner Sex and Violins Paul Wolf Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years Wajahat Ali Alien Invasion! Karyn Strickler Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox Dan La Botz Confronting the Economic Crisis Eric Walberg The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop Robin Millenthal Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy Website of the Day Conservative Nanny State April 8, 2008 Mike Whitney Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free? Nikolas Kozloff Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal Greg Moses Migrant Detention in South Texas Joshua Frank The Other Military Draft John Ross Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS Michael Donnelly Hillary's Western Swing John V. Walsh Why Obama Lost Massachusetts Jeff Nygaard Health, Security and Mandates Bill Piper Last Shot for a Bush Legacy? Sen. Russ Feingold Legal Representation and the Death Penalty Website of the Day Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later   April 7, 2008 Ishmael Reed The Irish Black Thing Harry Browne Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported Uri Avnery Tibet and Palestine Lenni Brenner Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven Ayesha Ijaz Khan America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy Robert Fisk Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free Edwin Krales Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role Chris Genovali Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests Website of the Day LA Artists Against War   April 5 / 6, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Did the Elites Want MLK Dead? Ramzy Baroud There are No Checkpoints in Heaven Ralph Nader Runaway Bailouts David Yearsley How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down Saul Landau Sex Politics in America Paul Craig Roberts The Petraeus and Crocker Show Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot Seth Sandronsky Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig John Ross La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing Robert Fantina McCain, Republicans and Family Values David Michael Green Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad Missy Beattie McCan't Patrick Bond Vultures Circle Zimbabwe Dr. Susan Block The New American Pot Dealers Phyllis Pollack The Stones Meet the Press Adam Engel The Boobus in the Lie Jeffrey St. Clair Booked Up Poets' Basement Diamand and St. Clair Website of the Weekend Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop     April 4, 2008 Dave Lindorff The Night I Heard King Had Been Shot Greg Moses Missing King Ron Jacobs Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr. Alan Farago Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine Alison Weir Funding Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel David Rosen Rape as an Instrument of Total War Robert Weissman The Unrealized Dream Jacob Hornberger Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It? Jackie Corr Hillary and Obama Head for Butte Carl Finamore Taking On United Airlines Laray Polk We Are All Dith Pran Susie Day Advice for the War-Torn Website of the Day Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait   April 3, 2008 Peter Morici The Deepening Recession Joe Bageant The Audacity of Depression Andy Worthington Cleared But Still Detained: The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia Nikolas Kozloff Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America Rannie Amiri The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy David Macaray More Labor Strife in Hollywood Stephen Lendman Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice Website of the Day The True Face of Da Vinci?   April 2, 2008 Diane Farsetta Indian Point on the Potomac Harry Browne Bertie Ahern Laid Low by Secretary Wajahat Ali The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer George Wuerthner Open Season on Wolves Col. Dan Smith The Militarization of America Philippe Marlière The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism Steve Early A Purple Uprising in Oakland Bernard Chazelle Saving the American Left Reza Fiyouzat Bowling in Hell   April 1, 2008 Jeff Leys Fracturing the Peace to End the War Thomas P. Healy Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg Winslow T. Wheeler When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense Budget Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz New Deal Nostalgia Patrick Irelan Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels Andy Worthington The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani John V. Walsh The Shunning of Ralph Nader Michael J. Smith Woolly Mamet Robert Weissman The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old? Dave Lindorff Bush's Defining Moments Martha Rosenberg Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity Website of the Day Support Briana!   March 31, 2008 Mike Whitney Dead on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street Mats Svensson Walls, Tunnels and Daily Humiliations Paul Rockwell Hillary's Lies About Outsourcing Paul Craig Roberts A Third American War in the Making? Patrick Cockburn Sadr Calls for Ceasefire Peter Dale Scott The Showdown Alfredo Molano Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia Peter Morici Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short Uri Avnery Day of the Land, 32 Years Later Michael Simmons The American Bard in New Orleans Betsy Roberts / Karen Orr The Clorox Coup Phyllis Pollack First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones Website of the Day Five Years Too Many   March 29 / 30, 2008 Alexander Cockburn When They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say? Patrick Cockburn Iraqi Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army Mike Whitney Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan Christopher Brauchli The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman and Rev. Hagee William Blum China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics Robert Fantina Iraq Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton John Ross AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's Oil Allison Kilkenny Shady Lending Hits Home Nelson P. Valdés Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context Suzanne Baroud The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making Richard Rhames Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train Christopher Fons Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers Carl Finamore Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump and Consumers Sour Eamonn McCann Hillary Misremembers Again! Missy Beattie Justice and the Monsters of War Fred Gardner Jim Thorpe, All-American Kim Nicolini Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" David Yearsley "All the World's a Hospital" Jeffrey St. Clair Booked Up Poets' Basement Valentine and Ko Un Website of the Weekend Hidden Iraq   March 28, 2008 Saul Landau Growing Dread About Iraq Alan Farago Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy Peter Morici Knocking Down False Economic Gods Andy Worthington Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from Guantánamo Felice Pace Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service Peter Montague Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox! Dave Lindorff The Mumia Exception March 27, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Basra Erupts Binoy Kampmark Free Market Apostates Joanne Mariner "Was George Washington a Terrorist?" Norman Solomon NPR News: National Pentagon Radio? William S. Lind Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq John V. Walsh Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry? Robert Weissman How Things Work Ron Jacobs Meeting Charlie Ehlen Ralph Nader Put Impeachment Back on the Table David Macaray Court Rules Against Grocery Workers John Borowski Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction Website of the Day Going Out for an English   March 26, 2008 Stan Cox The Germs Next Door Sharon Smith Greed Pays: Welfare on Wall Street Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans Matt Vidal So Much for the Self-Regulating Market William S. Lind Operation Cassandra Joe Mowrey The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel Dave Lindorff Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire Ray McGovern Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late Justin Smith Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues Sam Husseini The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media Martha Rosenberg Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs Michael Dickinson Politicians as Dogs Website of the Day The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread   March 25, 2008 Ishmael Reed The Crazy Rev. Wright Corey D. B. Walker The Politics of Jeremiah Wright Linn Washington Jr. Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts Alan Farago The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders Vijay Prashad A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast Joshua Frank A Silver Lining to the Bush Years? Ralph Nader How Public Servants Can Help End This War David Rovics If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring? Peter Morici America's Banks are Broken Dave Zirin Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet David Krieger The Crisis in Tibet Website of the Day Memorializing Iraq March 24, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Blonde Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012 Peter Morici Digging Out of the Recession Uri Avnery Two Americas Wajahat Ali First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison Paul Craig Roberts Inside the Shell Game George Ciccariello-Maher The Coming War on Venezuela Stephen Lendman Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal Christopher Brauchli Possessing Someone Else's Country Cat Woods A Letter to Mom on Obama Stacey Warde Tax Burden Dave Lindorff The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting? Website of the Day Live from the Longest Walk   March 22 / 23, 2008 Ralph Nader Bush Blisters the Truth on Iraq Nicole Colson Can You Afford to Feed Your Family? James Petras The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives Laura Carlsen From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics of Trade Greg Moses Tolerance and the American Pulpit Andy Worthington Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials Michael Dickinson Art on Trial John Ross Bush's Surge Hits Mosul Missy Comley Beattie Killer Economics David Michael Green Happy Anniversary, America! Ramzy Baroud The Coming Uncertain War on Iran Martha Rosenberg Easter Egg Shells from Hell Paul Watson Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos Isabella Kenfield Monsanto's Raid on Brazil James Murren Logging v. Water in Honduras Jacob Hornberger Sex and the Immigration Officer Kathlyn Stone Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance Seth Sandronsky Rethinking New Mexico's History Kim Nicolini Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania Jeffrey St. Clair Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week Poets' Basement Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski Website of the Weekend Merci, McCain!   March 21, 2008 Marleen Martin Land Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on Crime" Peter Montague Run Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not Saul Landau Monroe's Deadly Doctrine Anis Hamadeh Merkel in the Knesset Jacob Hornberger McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic? Khalil Nakhleh Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist? Adam Isacson Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations Kenneth Couesbouc Money for Nothing Madis Senner Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market? Monica Benderman The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay? Website of the Day Stop Foreclosures and Evictions March 20, 2008 Damien Millet / Eric Toussaint The Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks Mike Whitney Winding Up Bear John Ross What Do We Owe Iraq? Dave Lindorff Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up Wajahat Ali Pakistan on Fire Jill Nagle Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism Manuel Garcia, Jr. Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America Dan La Botz Obama's Race Speech Robert Weissman Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API Stella Dallas / Jennifer Matsui Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right Website of the Day The Angry Monk   March 19, 2008 Patrick Cockburn A War of Lies Robert Fisk The Little Men and the Inferno Jeff Taylor Five Years of War in Iraq Ed Ruggero From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai Ron Jacobs Who'll Stop the Rain? Christopher Fons Obama Takes the Race Bait Sherwood Ross In Defense of Rev. Wright Cynthia McKinney An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities Joshua Frank The Kool-Aid That Kills Robert Weissman Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble Walter Brasch It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich Yifat Susskind Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation Andrew Wimmer War Demands Its Due Website of the Day Glimpses of Nature   March 18, 2008 David Price The Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge Paul Craig Roberts The Collapse of American Power Tim Wise Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth Patrick Cockburn One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought Conn Hallinan Afghanistan, a River Running Backward James T. Phillips Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe Uri Avnery The Killing in Bethlehem David Macaray Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement? Marjorie Cohn Beware an Attack on Iran Peter Zinn Obama in New Orleans Dan La Botz The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left Monica Benderman Where are We Going?   March 17, 2008 Pam Martens The Fed's Wall Street Dilemma Sasan Fayazmanesh The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment Nelson P. Valdés The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution Peter Morici The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit Wajahat Ali Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court Since 9/11 Ronnie Cummins Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma Shaun Harkin Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America Ali Khan No Pardon for Musharraf Robert Jensen Beyond Peace P. Sainath Oh, What a Lovely Waiver! Greg Moses Jeremiah was a Bullhorn Dr. Susan Block Advice for Eliot Spitzer Website of the Day No Cowboys   March 15 / 16, 2008 Patrick Cockburn How to Destroy a Country in Five Years Mike Whitney Bearly Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief Ralph Nader Of Laws and Men Robert Pollin It's Still the Economy, Stupid Diane Christian The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer Wajahat Ali Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed Tom Wright / Therese Saliba Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice Alan Farago Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began Greg Moses Raiding the Family Room in Texas Michael Hudson A Grand Global Bargain? Martha Rosenberg Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China John Goekler Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict Uzma Aslam Khan A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack? Oren Ben-Dor The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon David Underhill Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal Fred Gardner The Education of Eliot Spitzer David Michael Green Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have) Rev. William E. Alberts Jesus, Entombed in Heaven Gail Dines It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power David Yearsley Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin Chris Clarke Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs Poets' Basement Anderson, Lodge & Subiet Website of the Day Deviant Art   March 14, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Watching the Dollar Die Don Santina Vichy Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration Patrick Cockburn Iraqi Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons Tim Rinne StratCom Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska Robert Fantina In Torture We Trust Saul Landau Letter to the Presidents-in-Waitings David Macaray Common Myths About Labor Unions Franklin Lamb Is the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon Michael Neumann The One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics March 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Republicans and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America Mike Whitney Meltdown Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze Assaf Kfoury "One-State or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives Andy Worthington Afghan Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story Adam Federman From Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road March 12, 2008 Dave Lindorff Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US R.F. Blader The Spitzer Backlash Yonatan Mendel How to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or "Palestine" Jonathan Cook One State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism Bill and Kathy Christison Fallon and Gates -- At Least One Cheer James J. Brittain Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders Ron Jacobs "All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul" March 11, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts How to End the Subprime Crisis Ed O'Loughlin How Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal Ramzy Baroud 'Unwavering Commitment' to Inequality Kathy Christison One State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine China Hand PRC Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran John Joslin Thank You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette Mike Averko Serb Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide Ben Rosenfeld Gavin Newsom's Kneejerk Plan Thierry Paquot High Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block March 10, 2008 Uri Avnery "Kill A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza Col. Dan Smith Scoring the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond R.F. Blader Why "Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its Sheen Michael Neumann The One-State Illusion: More is Less Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman Did the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio? James J. Brittain Anti-Uribe Protests in Colombia and the World Missy Comley Beattie The Passion of John McCain March 8-9, 2008 Weekend Edition JoAnn Wypijewski The Only Way to Fight the Clintons Mike Whitney Sorting Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America Peter Morici Fed and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets Ralph Nader The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore Jonathan Cook The Meaning of Gaza's Shoah Steve Niva Behind the Israeli Escalation in Gaza Bill and Kathy Christison Crisis over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax Hervé Do Alto and Franck Poupeau Bolivia: Morales is Checked Eric Walberg To Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…? Scott Johnson City of A Thousand Foreclosures Mark Scaramella James Brown's Gate Bill Clinton President Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force Chairman Poet's Basement St. Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson Website of the Weekend Hillary Blackens Barack March 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face Robin Blackburn Question for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'? Saul Landau The Stupid Economy Binoy Kampmark When Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats Chris Floyd Crushing the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire Andy Worthington Spanish Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo Britons Will Potter Before the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word March 6, 2008   March 6, 2008 Vincent Navarro The Next Failure of Health Reform Forrest Hylton High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President Peter Morici Why the Dollar is So Cheap George Ciccariello-Maher Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats John Ross Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars Jacob Hornberger No Standing to Lecture on Justice Paul Watson Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers Dan Bacher Off the Deep End Website of the Day A Katrina Reader Online   March 5, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader) Joanne Mariner After Guantanamo Fidel Castro The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa Christopher Brauchli The Turkish Invasions Steven Sherman Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left Dave Lindorff Busting Bush & Co. in New England James Murren Bombing Somalia Adam Engel Necropolis Now Website of Day Remember Song   March 4, 2008 Wajahat Ali Mumbo Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed William Blum How Could Hillary Have Known? Bill Quigley The Cleansing of New Orleans Ralph Nader The Prince Harry Solution Patrick Irelan Oil and Health in Venezuela James J. Brittain / R. James Sacouman Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America Norman Solomon The War Election Jacob Hornberger Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the European Parliament Mike Averko Kosovo and the Press Website of the Day Tex-Mex Primary   March 3, 2008 Jennifer Loewenstein Gazan Holocaust Alan Farago American Politics and the Faltering Economy Richard Gott Colombian Deaths in Ecuador Wajahat Ali Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup Poll with John Esposito Paul Craig Roberts The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution Robert Weissman When Multinationals Say Adieu Uri Avnery Good Morning, Hamas Martha Rosenberg When Your Meat is a Downer Eva Liddell Leave the Next Dance for Bill Michael Donnelly Will Ferrell Does Flint Website of the Day Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues       Subscribe Online

Apri1 14, 2008 Nothing for Families and Retirees A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers By MICHAEL HUDSON If the move to a Unitary Executive of unfettered presidential power frightens you, America's radical right turn to Unitary Finance should compound your fears--and your debts as well. The financial events of the last two weeks of March 2008 demonstrate that the "economic royalists" and "money changers" whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) drove from the temple of finance have returned to mismanage our economy into dire straights of unprecedented risk--debt creation, euphemized as "leveraging" and "wealth creation." The few checks and balances that remain in the way of the financial sector's increasingly centralized planning, especially at the state level, are being swept aside under the guise of "saving the system." Few Wall Street beneficiaries who use this phrase explain just what the system is. For starters, its political managers are industry lobbies appointed to high managerial and planning positions in the public agencies that are supposed to regulate these industries. Their idea of financial planning is to put a trillion dollars in government agency funds and credit guarantees at risk. This agency funding was supposed to be used to help average American families obtain housing and health care, and to protect their savings and provide for their retirement. Instead, it is being mobilized to support the economy's bankers and financial managers. Indeed, the past few weeks have seen seemingly trillions of dollars committed for war making and bank support. The banking system's free creation of credit, doubling each five years or so for the economy at large, threatens to culminate in debt peonage for many American families and also for industry and for state and local governments. The economic surplus is being quickly absorbed by a combination of debt service and government bailouts for creditors whose Ponzi schemes are collapsing right and left, from residential to commercial real estate and corporate takeover loans to foreign bubble-economy credit. This is the context in which to view the past few weeks' financial turmoil surrounding Bear Stearns, JPMorgan/Chase and the rapidly changing debt landscape. "The system" that the Treasury, Federal Reserve and the New Deal agencies captured by the Bush Administration is trying to save is an economy-wide Ponzi scheme. By that I mean that the business plan is for creditors to lend debtors enough money for them to pay the interest costs so as to keep current on their loans. For the past few years this system has depended on asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds to be inflated by enough to enable debtors to pledge these assets as collateral at a higher market price for more and more new loans. But now that the real estate bubble has burst (and indeed, as stock prices sink), the problem is how to bail out the tip of our economic iceberg that has sunk into negative equity--a condition in which the debts attacked to property exceed its market value. Someone must take a loss--but whom? Normally, it is the banker or investor who takes the loss. But they are now supposed to be "rescued." This is being presented as a return to stability. But it was a system that never was stable to begin with. In fact, for the rescue to work, most Americans will have to own less and owe more, while being told that all this is the path to wealth creation--as if it were their wealth, not that of their creditors. The Bear Stearns/JPMorgan Chase/monoline insurance giveaway to "save the financial system" provides a vivid illustration of how Unitary Finance has developed a parasitic relationship with American labor in its role as pension contributor, consumer and homeowner. The system being subsidized enables the FIRE sector to direct and live off the productive efforts of others--people who make real things and provide real services. Saving Wall Street with a trillion-dollar bailout of bad mortgage debt The bailout started on Sunday, March 16. The government and JPMorgan Chase had reason to be embarrassed about the negotiations, for the details trickled out on the Federal Reserve or Treasury websites and Mr. Paulson's speeches went far beyond just Chase and Bear Stearns. It turned out that on the same Sunday on which he had negotiated the $30 billion Fed bailout, Mr. Paulson started a frenetic ten days orchestrating actions by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and other government agencies to earmark a trillion dollars to re-inflate financial markets for mortgage holders and their associated creditors and speculators. Behind the scenes, as matters turned out, the Bush Administration was mounting a financial surge: It decided to throw everything its mortgage financing agencies could muster to prevent property markets from collapsing on its watch. The surge of support for the mortgage and real estate markets was headed by the two largest U.S. mortgage holders and packagers: the government-sponsored National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. These two agencies were created to develop tradable markets for mortgages that banks traditionally had kept on their own books by buying home mortgages from the banks and mortgage brokers that originated them. This created a vast new demand for mortgages by making them marketable in large packages for institutional investors such as pension and mutual funds. Being implicitly government-guaranteed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to borrow at fairly low interest rates, and sell mortgages at a premium. Demand for these packaged mortgage securities provided an enormous new source of lending. It also turned banks into mortgage originators rather than mortgage holders. Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought more than three-fourths of all U.S. mortgages issued in the fourth quarter of 2007, bringing their holdings to $1.4 trillion. However, the fact that their capital base was under $70 billion--for a 20 to 1 debt-leveraging ratio--led investors to sell their stock steadily over the past year. Rather than insisting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rebuild their capital position, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise and Oversight (OFHEO) did just the opposite. It reduced their capital requirements from 30 percent to 20 percent, and encouraged them to use this increased leverage to pour an extra $200 billion to the nation's mortgage market. Limits on the size of mortgage loans that these two agencies could make were raised sharply in order to help re-inflate the troubled high-cost California and New York property markets in particular. Designed to bring temporary relief, this maneuver threatened to further destabilize matters by simply kicking the can down the road. The same applied to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), set up in 1934 as part of the New Deal. Its insurance fund of about $20 billion backs some 3.8 million mortgage loans totaling $365 billion, for an 18:1 debt-leverage ratio. On Monday, March 24, it promised $400 billion in new mortgage credit insurance. This means that government agencies can use their capital to lend much more money to prospective homebuyers. The FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also will be on the line for any losses, "socializing the risk" to a higher degree than ever before. What was so worrisome about this strategy was that the FHA already was in financial straits as a result of its subprime loans. For the first time in its history it was running a deficit. Over a third of the loans it insured were made by home sellers to new buyers to cover their down payment--enabling homes to be bought without any down payment at all. (Traditionally, 20 percent has been the norm.) This was a brand-new market, barely existing in 2000 on the eve of the Greenspan-Bush real estate bubble. The Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD), Alphonso R. Jackson, told a Senate committee: "These types of loans have pushed F.H.A. to the brink of insolvency." And now it was to double its activities to prop up the real estate and mortgage market. The Federal Housing Finance (FHF) board dutifully did its part to increase the system's debt leverage. It doubled the ability of the 12 regional Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) to leverage their purchase of mortgage securities, from three times their capital to six times, twice the existing debt/equity ratio. The aim was to help them serve their clients, the nation's eight thousand savings banks, S&Ls, credit unions and insurance companies, finance the purchase of $160 to $200 billion new mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The target was for these two agencies to buy up about half a trillion dollars worth of mortgage securities from the private sector this year. The Federal Home Loan Banking system also announced plans to start offering its own "monoline" mortgage insurance against the looming economic downturn at prices way below what private-sector insurance writers were willing to match. The aim is to shore up the nation's crumbling mortgage-insurance coverage at taxpayer expense. Again, the concept of a "free market" is being subjugated in order to socialize the losses for the FIRE sector's big players. The situation is much like the government insurance of beachfront properties against flood damage, paying for a chronically losing proposition at public expense. Of course, a disproportionate number of the owners of those beachfront properties also come from the campaign-contributing class. Gillian Tett of the Financial Times noted that this mortgage insurance subsidy is "likely to trigger further debate about how policymakers are turning to state, or quasi-state, entities to stabilise the financial sector" by addressing "an absence of the market." Instead of shaping the market along less risky, less debt-leveraged lines, it was now another case of the government socializing financial risk at below-market rates. John Price, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank board, claimed that this "is what Government State Enterprises are for.'" In view of the fact that private insurers would charge higher rates, But the government's present plan being coordinated by Treasury Secretary Paulson seeks to avoid letting markets work in a way that would raise costs to Wall Street and hence leave less revenue for homeowners to pledge for debt service. This policy is presented sanctimoniously as lowering the price at which the financial sector "serves" the economy, not as putting it at risk. The most amazing moves were still to come. On March 11 the Federal Reserve created a new Term Securities Lending Facility to extend $200 billion in loans to primary bond and securities dealers against their holdings of mortgages and other packaged securities as collateral. The aim was to rapidly re-inflate mortgages that the free market was pricing as junk, as low as 20 percent of face value. Then came the double bombshell. In a true showing of the green on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, the Fed extended nearly unlimited credit to non-bankers for the first time since the Great Depression. It accepted their toxic mortgages as collateral--dubious assets that "the market" was refusing to touch. So much for "market-based" solutions when it comes to high finance! For the first time since the 1930s, non-banks could borrow from the Fed's loan window against their junk mortgages, apparently at full face value. It was too late for Bear Stearns, but other investment bankers and brokerage houses saw the green lifeline as the Fed opened its discount window to non-bankers, that is, to investment bankers such as Lehman Brothers, in contrast to commercial bankers that are regulated by the Fed. The volume of credit seemed to be unlimited, collateralized by mortgage-backed securities that "the marketplace" was pricing around the levels Third World loans were selling at after Mexico's 1982 insolvency. Labor economist Tom Palley wrote in his March 26 blog: "These subsidies are a travesty. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley are extraordinarily profitable. They also have been the drivers of the worst trends in the American economy over the past generation, pushing excessive CEO pay that has spread like a cancer throughout corporate America, even reaching into universities and non-profits. Additionally, they have pedaled the shareholder value paradigm that has pushed companies to emphasize short-term gain over long-term investment, and contributed to ripping up America's social contract. Meanwhile, their business model has promoted speculation that is behind repeated asset and commodity price bubbles." It is to support this business model that the Fed and Treasury officials seem to be making up new rules on a daily basis--rules that receive only a superficial or perfunctory review by Congress. Critics point out that investment bankers are not subject to Federal Reserve oversight or other regulation. Perhaps even this does not really matter in view of the Fed's extreme non-regulatory mode ever since Alan Greenspan's four-term Chairmanship. Even more important, of course, is the fact that the Fed's new clients, investment banks and brokerage houses, do not serve the middle-class depositors in need of special protection for their life savings. The financial investments being saved from adverse market conditions are ultimately speculative in character. It seems a biting irony that the institutions now being mobilized to bail out Wall Street creditors--the Federal Home Loan Banks to pump credit into the mortgage market, the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgage loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy and package mortgages for bulk resale to institutional investors--were created to help homebuyers, not their creditors and speculators. But bailing out speculators and high finance has now becoming their primary function. This shift has turned America's housing, mortgage and banking agencies upside down. Wall Street of course has welcomed the capture of these New Deal and post-1945 institutions. But their doctrinaire ideology has accused Glass-Steagall, Social Security, and most recently Sarbanes-Oxley regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as leading down the road to serfdom. Politically, such bailouts require an ostensibly humanitarian cover story. They need to be presented as a subsidy not to banks and other wealthy creditors, but to debtors. This means that the "ideal" (that is, most smoothly hypocritical) bailout takes the form of new credit to pay banks and other bondholders and mortgage holders enough to keep the debt bubble afloat. That means enough more credit to keep it growing, at least by the amount of interest that must be paid. The result is a true road to debt peonage. It is much more destructive--and certainly more real--than the imaginary road to serfdom that Hayek and other anti-government ideologues envision. While these free-enterprise boys wring their hands and denounce government power, their sponsors realize full well that when government steps back, the financial sector moves in to fill the vacuum. The banks and money managers become society's planners and resource allocators--in their own short-term interest. This interest leads them to oppose laws protecting, labor, consumers and debtors. This means that the "freedom" at issue is a one-way favoritism for employers, monopolistic privilege and creditors. What these vested interests mean by the "road to serfdom" is an economy managed by hands other than their own, an economy protecting the workers, consumers and debtors whom they seek to victimize. No money left for Social Security and health insurance after the real estate bailout? The American public may justifiably be puzzled by how the government can seem to come up trillions of dollars for foreign wars and banker bailouts, but so little for them. The United States is spending an estimated $3 trillion for an illegal war that has made us less safe, and $1 trillion so far to rescue bankers in a way that is destabilizing the economy. But it can't seem to secure health care or retirement security for all Americans. On Tuesday, March 25, fresh from providing a trillion dollars to underwrite the financial and real estate sector, Mr. Paulson revived the Bush Administration's pretense that there is no money to pay Social Security. Yet "fixing" Social Security--if indeed there is a problem (which is no means certain)--would be relatively easy. Merely restoring the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans (those earning over $414,000 a year) to the high 30-percent tax rates of the 1990s (nowhere near approaching the 94% top marginal rate of the 1940s, or even the 70-percent rates of the 1970s) would provide 46% more than the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the Social Security shortfall. The Administration does not acknowledge such inconvenient truths, or do the reporters who simply pass on its handouts to the mass media. The claim that there is no prospective funding to meet the government's Social Security and Medicare obligations was rendered blatantly incredible in the last week of March, which saw the five-year anniversary of the Bush Administration's war in Iraq. As its death toll to U.S. soldiers reached 4,000, newspaper accounts across the country reported the calculations by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz that the war's cost has reached the $3 trillion mentioned above, taking into account its legacy of interest charges and medical treatment for the more than 25,000 troops that had been wounded or had post-traumatic and other psychiatric stress disorders. (Mr. Stiglitz recently updated his analysis to say $3 trillion is a conservative number.) Five years, four thousand lives, and three trillion dollars for the war--but no money for Social Security and Medicare! Did Mr. Paulson not feel just a little bit discomfort in claiming with seeming urgency that Social Security funding would be exhausted in just over another thirty years, by 2041? Medicare is supposed to be in even worse shape, having accumulated enough wage set-asides to last only until 2019, due largely to rising health costs--which the Bush Administration refused to control by negotiating prices with the drug companies, among others. The historical road to serfdom is that of debt peonage to a financial oligarchy concentrating wealth in its own hands. Contemporary anti-government "libertarianism" creates a vacuum that the financial sector moves to fill. The problem for society at large is that finance finds its major gains to lie not in raising living standards, but in promoting a free lunch for its customers--while turning corporate profits, monopoly rent-seeking and real estate price gains into a flow of interest to itself, by advancing the credit to finance the purchase of these assets and privileges. There is only one way to reverse this evolution toward debt peonage. That is to scale back existing mortgages, especially for properties with negative equity, to reflect the plunge in property values today--admittedly under distress conditions, but nonetheless real constraints on the debtor's ability to pay. Once the principal was reduced to realistic levels, adjustable-rate mortgages would be replaced by fixed-rate mortgages. The problem with this solution is that to the financial institutions, the housing crisis is not their problem. Their blame-the-victim attitude holds it to be the mortgage holders' problem--and now increasingly the taxpayers' problem. This perspective on how to resolve the housing crisis can only succeed by creating a populist rhetoric for public officials to use in promoting financial interests as if all this is in the best interest of homeowners and other debtors. Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world's first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich's Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com

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