I read politics everyday and I don't remember reading even ONE quantifiable, major success, other than marginalizing and demonizing anyone to the left of John McCain.

Oh, I have one accomplishment from the Obama Administration: they managed to make George Bush look resolute and principled.

I hate to admit it aloud, but I've had the same thoughts.  But not because we need a a new foundation, but to show folks what would have happened if we allowed the banks to go under.

They seem to think that because they paid their union dues that money is guaranteed no matter what.  It's not as simple as you get back what you put in.  What you put in has to be invested in order for everyone to be paid.

and here neatly summarised is the mother of all moral hazards.

without reliable good faith and respect for a social pact, this is the counterfeit printing press that got away with it since the great depression, because the raw materials were abundant enough to indulge a growing population with the most profligately wasteful and ecologically destructive lifestyles this planet has ever been asked to endure.

corporations with the rights of people, but none of the inhibitions or responsibilities real people have to cope with, were able to corner and manipulate macroeconomics, invent cowboy casino capitalism, and dumb down the populace with enough chemicals to believe that the worldview from within the media hologram was a, no the correct and only rational, sensible one.

while corporations were ripping and whipping commodities out of the ground, water and air, some of the profits were sprinkled on the old, through their pension funds assisting blowing up the various bubbles that characterise boom'n'bust economies, rigged to be that way to facilitate more plunder of the commons by the few at the expense of the race's very future.

by this arrangement all were made complicit in the imperial over-reach, by the simple human need for care and attention in one's dotage.

all were thus invested in rooting for leviathan, for simple dignities that were provided more or less for free by societies with less material goods, but still alive to their humanity in ways most westerners, born entitled to privilege, have left by the wayside, conditioned by the last few generations' attainment of powers, most notably nuclear, whose existence was undreamed of for the relatively static preceding centuries.

it's a lot harder to make someone see a simple truth if his livelihood and sense of honour depend on his turning a blind eye.

this is why it's so hard to wake up a slumbering populace to reality, because to do so would bring the whole temple down, the psychic earthquake would shake confidence in the system many ancestors and family members have died, hearts pumped with patriotism, propaganda, and simple faith in leaders, to protect.

and without confidence, the whole ball of wax can melt so swiftly, as the last crisis intimated.

so confidence is peddled as a given, yet many are looking into the abyss of a penury whose bite has been slowly forgotten since the times just before our living ancestors were born.

until this gordian knot between corporations, (willing to betray the very workers who for generations built their wealth), and the paid servant millionaire club who do their political bidding is severed, why would this situation change until the last blood diamond, the last cancer nostrum, the last bucket of oil, the last broken child worker's sweat has been transacted into some uber-ghoul's profitable enterprise? the mightiest armed forces in history are standing behind the institutions that stand for that, while making noises that claim much more noble and lofty goals.

what would be the sword sharp enough to do so?

perhaps enough humans awakening at once, their will focused, and their ignorant, narcoleptically apathetic patience exhausted, demanding the investment of their and their childrens' lives be directed into bettering peoples' lives starting at home, instead of worsening others' abroad, earning their rage as blowback, then punishing them for that, etc etc?

building, even using little old chinese ladies' life savings if necessary, a world built on co-operation, and win-win solutions, clean energy production, efficient, sustainable infrastructure? could that common sense be universal enough to get effective agreement even between peoples of utterly inimical ideologies?

i'm betting yes, no need for pitchforks, just clear consensus.

bring it on.

 

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." Peter Ustinov

As a result of prudent management and the stabilization of the financial system, the expected cost of the TARP program has dropped dramatically. While the Administration projected a cost of $341 billion as recently as August, it now estimates, under very conservative assumptions, that the cost will be $117 billion--reflecting the $224 billion reduction in the expected cost to the deficit. The proposed fee is expected to raise $117 billion over about 12 years, and $90 billion over the next 10 years.

So, he saved the financial system, got most of the money back, and the stock market is back from losing nearly half its worth.  He also saved the American car manufacturing sector.  So, where's the love?