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well, it seems that the situation is not exactly rational--panic isn't.
there is no particularly clear explanation of the overall situation because the overall situation is not visible yet---for example, in the context of the trade in debt futures, banks had taken to accounting practices that might charitably be described as arbitrary--so there's no real sense of the amounts that are involved here, the range of institutions involved, or even really of the implications of it.
what is clear is the sequence of failures over the past 2 months, accelerating in the past couple weeks, which has created its own momentum quite apart from whatever the magnitude of the underlying problems.
what is clear is that the amount of money that the treasury/federal reserve layed out in the context of these collapses stretched that system to its limit, with the edge being reached after the aig move.
what is clear is that the bush administration has fucked things up politically to an amazing extent, and that the actions undertaken by paulsen have been surreal in their political ineptitude and content-free arrogance. (what the talking head set is pointing to as the signal of Trouble was the decision to let lehmann brothers tank. i am not sure about that myself, but that's what they're saying.)
what is clear is that the bush administration's affection for operating in an ad hoc manner in the context of an emergency didn't work for them this time. such are the consequences of the previous 7 years.
what is clear is that by thursday last, the republican study committee had begun organizing a little revolt that they staged in the photo-op with cowboy george and the presidential candidates, which may not in itself have been a bad thing, but which sent thing hurtling into the weekend with this bizarre expectation abroad that a comprehensive program would be drafted to address a situation the extent of which no-one seems to know about.
what is clear now is that this is a fucking mess.
we can demand whatever you think "we" want, but the fact is that things are devolving at a very rapid pace and it may well be that less-terrible, flexible action may have to be set into motion before everything is worked out--what i think would help is a kind of continuous process that would adapt the programs and aims as the situation stabilized away from panic and information is gathered about what is actually being taken on.
more broadly, it think it is time to set neoliberalism on fire, but that's been equally true for a while now. i'd like to have a party to celebrate the end of it, once it seems more well and truly dead.
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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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