|
this kind of problem explains why i keep going to the level of ideology to make sense of what's been happening.
what was the framework that enabled the conservative wing of the american political monoculture to advocate dismantling regulations, that made the opposition between "government" and "markets" seem sane, that enabled people to seriously believe that "growth" is a constant and on that basis to systematically underestimate/undervalue/undersell to themselves and others risk?
what on earth, in the face of the entire history of actually existing capitalism, enabled the conservative wing of the american political monoculture to make the claim "markets are rational" with a straight face, and even more bewildering, how was that taken seriously?
because outside this general ideological framework, none of this makes any sense.
and if you say "there are nice people out there" then you have even more reason to look for an explanation--what enabled these "nice people" to buy into the conditions of possibility for a fiasco of this magnitude?
i don't think it's a matter of "insufficient oversight"--i think this is an expression of the lunacy of the whole of neoliberalism, the whole of the worldview that's dominated the american political climate since the reagan period concerning the nature of capitalism.
the current outlines of the bailout plan are obviously flawed, and they won't be passed in the form they've been discussed since thursday night. i don't expect anything before congressional hearings scheduled for wednesday.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|