the bush speech, which succumbed almost immediately to the classical state of emergency style trope, right down to pinning the origin of all this on an influx of "foreign money" which was tied to a previous state of "safety and security (for capital)"...the continuum of entertainment and infotainment was not broken for long by this, however. i am not sure if you noticed that this particular speech was not accompanied by the usual panels of network talking heads who sit around a table and tell you what you just heard.
the claim of course is that this is now an economic state of emergency, that the interests of the particular sector of the holders of capital have managed to become identical with that of all socio-economic sectors and actors within them, one big happy donut in danger of eating itself.
and then there was that touching professional of faith in "free enterprise" proffered as a kind of mea culpa i guess.
apparently, not everyone agrees with the cowboy george:
Quote:
Germans Receive Bush Speech Coldly
By ERIC PFANNER
PARIS — Transatlantic sniping over the global financial crisis intensified Thursday after President Bush cited an influx of foreign money into the United States as one of the root causes of the credit crunch.
Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, countered in a speech in Berlin that the conditions that gave rise to the current turmoil in the markets were allowed to develop because of a reckless pursuit of short-term profit and huge bonuses in “Anglo-Saxon” financial centers — along with a lack of political backbone to stand up to what he characterized as bankers’ greed.
“Investment bankers and politicians in New York, Washington and London were not willing to give these up,” he said. “The financial market crisis is above all an American problem”
The long-term consequences, Mr. Steinbrück added, could be serious for the United States. “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system,” he told the Bundestag. “The world financial system will become multipolar.”
In its tone and emphasis, Mr. Steinbrück’s diagnosis differed markedly from that offered on Wednesday night by President Bush in a speech to the American people. Mr. Bush cited “serious negative consequences” from a credit bubble that was inflated for more than a decade when “a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad.” He said the inflow of foreign money was driven by the attractiveness and security of U.S. financial markets to global investors.
Economists say U.S. consumers’ appetite for spending has made foreign investment necessary to finance the deficit in the U.S. current account.
The comments on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to be intended to underline contrasting positions on the response to the financial crisis.
Mr. Bush used his televised address to try to rally support for a $700 billion rescue aimed at getting banks to start lending again. The Bush administration has urged European and Asian policymakers to follow with similar measures, a call that leaders elsewhere have generally rebuffed.
Mr. Steinbrück reaffirmed Berlin’s opposition to any large-scale bailout of the financial system in Germany and across Europe, saying any intervention should be aimed at deal with specific problems. Germany has stepped in to help certain banks affected by the credit crisis, like IKB Deutsche Industriebank.
He said the German financial system had weathered the storm better in part because it is anchored by universal banks like Deutsche Bank, with operations that span everything from consumer lending to investment banking.
On Wall Street, the last two big independent investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have taken steps to move toward such a model as the crisis deepened with the collapse of one of their smaller rivals, Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Steinbrück said that as a result of the crisis, European banks would play a greater role in the world financial system, along with sovereign wealth funds based in Asia and the Middle East. He also called for greater regulation of the financial system, as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France did earlier this week.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/bu...26eureact.html
meanwhile, barney frank was on cnbc saying that there was a deal close to being finalized in the house....based on the ridiculous bush bailout proposal, but not identical with it. for example, i do not think the provision that appointed the secretary of treasury to the role of Master of the Universe answerable to No-one at Any Level will remain...
on the other hand, between the bus-speech and the german reaction you can see something of the ideological Problem neoliberals are still trying to navigate: separating the implosion of the derivatives sector from a systemic problem, make it over into something conjunctural through versions of the "bad apple" theory or through the "malign consequence of foreign influence" theory (the fifth column within capital flows, you see)...the inability to deal with ideology-driven problems, the refusal to see systemic issues because the ideology is not an ideology, but rather a faith in "the free enterprise system, which is the best system god has yet created" or some such trash. behind that, a refusal to acknowledge a significant blow to the united states as hegemon--first militarily, now economically.
meanwhile, from the inverted world of the right, there comes this letter from the republican study committee, which effectively argues that the problems in the derivatives sector and credit sectors are the result of regulation and that the way forward is even less of it:
http://www.house.gov/hensarling/rsc/...loutletter.pdf
which is kinda astonishing.