the american economy has relied on consuerm credit to assure its general functionality since 1945 or so---so long as the organization of the american economic system in general was coherent, or could be understood as being a position where coherence was assured for the foreseeable future, then the question of allowing debtors recourse to bankrupcy was fine in that bankruptcy could be seen as an individual situation or collection of them and not as a signal of trouble in the system itself.
the structural transformation of the american economy away from its nation-state based variant, has been going on since the early 1970s. the right of course has nothing to say about this, because they put themselves in a position of cherrleading for capitalism no matter what--so their programs have in the main been about denying these transformation or working to institute ideological positions that woudl function to preserve the bases for conservative ideology on top of structural changes that they can say nothing critical about. but these changes have gone on and continue--the last quarter trade figures offer an interesting example of this, the differeing interpretations of them from the states and elsewhere, one focussed on textile industries exclusively because they were still trying to work within the nation-state to redress economic damage being done to them, the other looking at the spaces of american heavy indsutry as reflected in these figures.
there will come many points, and i fear with increasing frequency, where behind the smokescreen of conservative ideology, you will see choices being made that show how the right actually plans on dealing with teh social consequence of these transformations in teh overll organization of capitalism: forced to choose between preserving corporate interests and those of people, corporate interests win every time. the redit insdustry faces real problems if the social consequences of this new form of capitalism systematically undercuts the ability of economically marginal (and not-so-maringal) folk from paying. better to trap them, to eliminate escape routes. betwee to fuck over people for the greater corporate good. thsi the way things really work in the states.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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