Progressive Ponderings: Financial Crisis Musings – Part 2

by Joe Mayer

Thank you, employees of Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors. Finally we have an occupation we can believe in! Republic, a relatively small company, fired all its workers with only three days notice, illegal by Federal law. Employees are owed vacation pay and severance pay according to their employment contract.

Instead of submitting to this "economic violence," they decided to "occupy" the workplace, refusing to leave. The company blames Bank of America which cut off its line of credit. Bank of America received $25 billion a month ago through Paulson's "bailout-the-rich" program supposedly designed to "ease the credit markets." Now Bank of America is blaming the company while workers continue their occupation (in earlier times this action was called a sit-in). This brave action might encourage other workers treated as disposable pawns to rise up in protest.

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From Common Dreams, 11/10/08 – "Dreaming the Future Can Create the Future," by Kenny Ausubel: "As Kevin Philips has chronicled, every major empire over the past several hundred years has undergone a depressingly predictable cycle of collapse, usually within 10 to 20 years of its peak power. The hallmarks are always the same:

· the financialization of the economy, moving from manufacturing to speculation;
· very high levels of debt;
· extreme economic inequality;
· and costly military overreaching.

The Dutch, Spanish and British followed this pattern. The U.S. is repeating it. But as J. Paul Getty said, "Every time history is repeated, the price goes up."

Obviously the U.S. fits all four categories described by Philips. Observe:

· As our financial system crashes, all government efforts have been to prop up the speculative, superficial financial markets and neglect the manufacturing of necessary "real" products

· Consumer debt (autos, credit cards, mortgages, even pawnshops), federal deficits and trade balances are at record levels and climbing

· Inequality has reached gilded-age levels, colonial and slave-labor levels, unsustainable levels needing violent enforcement; unending war and domestic repression are inequality's tools of self-preservation

· A nation of 300 million people attempting to dominate a world of over 6 billion is futile, discredits our proclaimed values and compromises our moral integrity.

Fighting to "conserve" the status quo are the financial speculators, the creditors in a debt-driven economy, the tycoons at the top of the hierarchical economic pyramid, the victors of war spoils.

We need to recognize this "crisis as opportunity." The vast majority of working Americans know that our economic system is broken – it does not satisfy the needs of the people and the planet they inhabit.

Obama spent two years promising change. The beneficiaries of the current system will try to block him every step of the way. We are the change we seek, but only if we follow our ballots with action.