Kemstone's Journal

Monday, September 20, 2010

When Mike got up early Monday morning, I woke up too in order to wish him farewell, as I didn’t think I’d be seeing him again. He’d spent the previous day finishing up his upgrades to my lap-top, replacing Windows XP with the far-superior Windows 7, and he said that to really put the finishing touches on the upgrade I should buy a couple of 2 GB memory cards that he showed me on the Best Buy website. After I woke up I found an e-mail from him saying that if I picked up the cards in the city and brought them to his office at Rockefeller Center, he would install them for me.

The only thing I had planned for the day was to visit my Uncle Lance and his kids out in Glen Cove, Long Island that evening, so I had most of the day free and open. I was supposed to meet Lance when he got back home at 6:00, so I knew I’d have to either arrive super-early or sit in some rush-hour traffic, and figured that if I left by 4:00 and resigned myself to hitting the traffic, two hours should be enough time.

That allowed me to venture back into Manhattan one last time, this time on my own. Mike had given me instructions on how to get in the easiest way—just taking the R train straight to Broadway, where I could stop at Kristin’s sandwich shop for lunch. Kristin, once [not-so] affectionately known as “Little Cracky” (for reasons I’ll leave up to your imagination) has really turned her life around in the past few years and is now managing a really successful sandwich place called “Wichcraft” (get it—sand “wich”?) in Manhattan, and I figured I might as well check it out.

After just a little bit of trouble I found the place and Kristin told her underlings to hook me up with some food while she remained busy doing what she had to do to keep the place running. I didn’t get to chat with her while I ate, but I did get to eat the most excellent tuna sandwich I’ve ever had, and thanks to my ‘in’ with the manager I got the $8 sandwich completely free. When I was done I bid her a fond farewell, saying I hoped I’d see her again sooner than two years from now, and I firmly meant it. I’d like to go back to America again as early as next year if I can somehow manage that, though it depends on so many factors. But yeah, I definitely want another one of those bangin’ sandwiches.

Now I had to get down to business, first to find the Best Buy and then Mike’s building at Rockefeller. Of course I always end up going the wrong direction when I get out of the subway, so I lost some time that way, and I was already running out of time before my 4:00 goal of leaving Brooklyn when I finally found the store. To make matters worse, the Best Buy wasn’t selling the nice, relatively inexpensive combination-package of memory cards Mike had found online but I had to buy them individually for what would amount to more than twice the price I’d been expecting. They said I could try another store a few blocks away, but by then I was really running out of time and I just wanted to get it over with. Of course I knew I could just forego the whole memory-upgrade process for the time being and maybe figure out how to do it in Germany, but I just wanted the whole thing to be finished. So I paid through the teeth for the cards, accepting what I like to think of as the ‘git ‘er done’ fee (in life you frequently have to pay a lot more if you don’t want to wait for something), and headed up towards Rockefeller Center.

Finding Mike’s building was also a huge bitch, as it wasn’t where I thought it would be and I ended up stumbling around for a good twenty minutes trying to figure out where we’d been on Saturday. It looked a lot different during the week when everything was in business, and I was hoping to see some of my favorite NBC celebrities walking around but I had no such luck. (Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the days that Cenk Uygur would be guest-hosting at MSNBC, as if I’d seen him I would have pounced on him and demanded to know why he hasn’t answered any of my e-mails).

But I did find the building and told the doorman I was here to see Mike H up at Myd-Marketing (that felt kind of badass) and then I headed upstairs and strolled right into the Wall Street trading firm right when they were in the middle of their dirty evil business, which felt super-mega-badass. The French guys who own the company shot me and my long hair a dirty look when I came inside, but I just said “I’m here to see Mike” and they let me on through.

Mike greeted me, apparently not too busy at that particular time, and tore open my computer to get those new cards installed, while I looked around and appreciated the fact that I was now in the lion’s den with the lions (even if most of these particular lions were French). Every work-station with its multiple monitors was occupied, CNBC was running on the big screen, and more money than I make in a year was being traded back-and-forth as I sat there, trying to resist the urge to start shouting doomsday scenarios about the inevitable next financial crisis that’s going to hit sometime soon.

When the installation was complete, Mike gave me instructions for the fastest way back to Brooklyn and he walked me out of the building and sent me on my merry way. I made it back to his apartment (in his awesomeness, he’d let me keep a set of keys for the next time I’m around) and got the rest of my stuff, finally getting back to my car and on the road at about 4:15. Not too bad in the timing department.

I definitely hit the traffic on the Belt parkway and later the Long Island Expressway, but somehow I got to Lance’s house just 10 minutes after the planned 6:00 arrival time, and just minutes after he and the kids had gotten home as well.

I spent the evening with Lance and two of his kids, as his wife Sue and oldest son Max were away that week on some kind of mountain-climbing adventure. His kids are all in this special school with its own educational philosophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner (the brain behind Theosophy, one of my favorite metaphysical belief-systems), so they do all kinds of cool trips like that. The focus is much more on learning through experience than it is in the rest of academia. Whether or not having such a radically different educational experience than their peers will be a disadvantage for them later in life is yet to be seen, but I hope not. I’d rather the rest of the educational system become more like the one he’s got his kids in.

Lance is another deep-thinker, so I always love talking to him because I never have to worry about staying on the same page. As his second-oldest son Beau cooked us up a nice dinner of angel-hair pasta and tomato-sauce (pretty damn good for a 12-year-old) we chatted about my experience living in Germany and how different America looks to me now that I’ve been gone for so long.

After dinner we were summoned outside by his daughter Margot, now age 7, who wanted us to see the full moon. The moon wasn’t quite full but that didn’t matter. She was a bit nervous around me but I started helping her play with her paper airplane while Lance went inside and before I knew it I was sitting under a tree with her in the twilight and having a very long and meandering discussion about everything from fairies to stars to bugs and spiders to whatever else popped into her 7-year-old mind while we were talking.

I made sure to really appreciate the fact that I was having that conversation, as it’s not at all often that I get to speak with young kids for any length of time. I certainly can’t speak to German 7-year-olds because unless they’ve got an English-speaking parent none of them have started learning English yet. But Margot is super-adorable and about as sweet as you can imagine, so it was quite a pleasure talking to her. The last time I saw her she was only 4 years old, so she didn’t remember me but she did believe me when I told her that I’d met her before.

I also appreciated how easy it was to talk to her, as my job as a language teacher is to keep conversations going which can often be rather difficult, but Margot just never ran out of things to say. She just went on and on about this and that and some other completely random thing. “I like it when bugs fly by my ear. It feels kind of weird.” You know, I never thought of it that way. Or maybe I did but just forgot…

I spent a really pleasant, very out-of-the-ordinary evening with Lance and his kids until he put them to bed and the two of us stayed up talking until about midnight. I told him about Revolution Earth, an idea he really liked, and he told me all the latest news about his business, Braun Brush (check it out if you need any fancy brushes) and his invention brush-tiles which are apparently still pretty popular among interior decorators. I hadn’t spoken to him in two and a half years but it felt like we’d picked up right where we left off and we’ll do the same the next time I get around to seeing him.

I told him to wake me up in the morning before the kids left, because I knew it might be a few more years before I’d see them again and I wanted to make it a bit more likely that Margot will remember me next time, when she’ll probably be 9 or 10 and a completely different person. Beau already remembers me because I saw him a lot more often when he was younger, and he’s definitely a great kid. Sue and Lance may be raising their kids in a somewhat outside-the-box kind of fashion, but so far it seems to be working. 7-year-old girls can often be awful little brats, but Margot is the farthest thing from that (at least from what I was able to see) and Beau is just an incredibly nice young boy.

It almost makes me want kids of my own…but not quite.

Tune in tomorrow for the not-so-thrilling-but-still-hopefully-somewhat-interesting conclusion of my American adventure stories.

I got a kick out this story when I read it yesterday morning.

NEW YORK– Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner traveled to New York City on Monday to tell bankers and the financial industry that new financial regulations are a good thing for business.

Geithner explained to an audience at NYU that while the law’s regulations would be a “foundation of a stronger economy,” the Obama administration would seek a balance that would safeguard business.

There are probably two reasons that Obama sent his Treasure Secretary to Wall Street with this message. First is to improve Geithner’s image as a complete tool of the financial industry by placing him in a role that makes him appear separate from it.

But the second reason is the funny one. Back in February, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor met with the titans of Wall Street to assure them that he and Republican Party would be doing everything they could to block reform and let the financial industry continue with business as usual. His pitch seems to have worked:

Months later, an emerging campaign theme is the Democratic Party’s trouble collecting Wall Street donations. The Republican Party, save for a handful of members, voted en masse against financial regulatory reform and some GOP lawmakers have pledged to repeal the final product. At the same time, it has been widely reported that Obama has a frosty relationship with the business community. And, perhaps most tellingly, Cantor has seen his campaign coffers bulge.

Data released on Wednesday morning by the good government group Public Campaign shows that Cantor received more than $460,000 from the financial sector during the second quarter of 2010.

So Wall Street is giving more money to Republicans and less money to Democrats. This is no surprise. But that fact that Tim Geithner had to go and try to make nice with the bankers seems to indicate that it came as a surprise to Obama.

His whole strategy with financial reform was to do what Geithner said and water down the bill enough for it to meet with Wall Street’s approval. He needed to pass some kind of reform to appease progressives, but the reform needed to be weak enough to appease the bankers.

Well this is what happens when you try to have it both ways. Not only are progressives disillusioned and angry that the legislation was so toothless, but Wall Street isn’t satisfied that the legislation was toothless enough. Democrats might serve their interests, but republicans serve them better.

Maybe next time Obama will actually try to fight for real change, seeing as how even his pocket change is too much for Big Industry. But considering that Tim Geithner is not only still around but still trying to cozy-up to Wall Street, I highly doubt it.

I’m on fire today, as you’ll know if you read the post below. I’m temporarily without internet access so until I take this computer to somewhere with a WiFi signal I can’t waste any time doing research and finding relevant links and videos—which is the most time-consuming part of blogging. So today I’m going old-school and just ranting straight from my head. As such I’m only covering the really important stuff—Sarah Palin will have to wait.

You wouldn’t know it unless you’ve been paying really close attention, but we’re approaching what will be one of the most defining moments of the Obama presidency. In fact, it may be the most important cross-roads that Barack Obama has ever come to. He’s faced with a choice—a choice that only he can make and for which the responsibility will rest on his shoulders alone. It would seem like a small decision, like just one of a thousand little decisions the president makes every day, but taken in the broader context it’s a decision that will define how he is perceived by the public for the remainder of his presidency. The decision is over who to appoint as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s no secret that the financial reform legislation that came out of the senate is weak and watered-down. It won’t change the way Wall Street does business and it won’t prevent future bailouts. The only thing it does that has the potential to do real, substantial good on behalf of the American people is the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which would serve as a much-needed watchdog to protect consumers from corporate greed and abuses of power.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will only be as strong as the people who control it. It it’s run by establishment insiders and friends of Wall Street bankers, it’s probably not going to do too much to protect consumers. It’ll just exist for the sake of public perception, to make it look like Obama accomplished reform.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether Obama wanted real reform and was just forced to accept what he could get from a congress drowning in Wall Street money, or whether he’s as complicit as they are and has no interest in changing the status quo either. When Obama chooses who to appoint as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we’ll know the answer.

Elizabeth Warren is the person who came up with the idea in the first place. From her current position as chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, she has been an incredibly forceful advocate on behalf of the middle-class and her zeal for standing up to big corporations on behalf of the little guy is well-known and celebrated by progressives everywhere. If she were put in control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there is no doubt that she would give the corporations a run for their money. She would take the strongest possible approach to dealing with Wall Street and while she might still not have the power to prevent another financial crisis, she’d be able to warn everyone when she sees it coming, and people would have to listen to her because she would be in a position of power. We need a progressive in a position of power. We need someone who is not beholden to Wall Street with the capability to exert pressure on Wall Street.

If Obama appoints Elizabeth Warren, then nearly all of my cynicism about the financial reform legislation will evaporate. I’ll bow my head and concede that at least in this instance, Obama delivered on some of the Change he promised.

Obviously, the rich and powerful are completely opposed to Elizabeth Warren. She’s their worst nightmare. They’d rather have anyone but Elizabeth Warren at the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Preferably, they want someone who isn’t really interested in protecting consumers. Someone like Tim Geithner whom they already know and whom they’re buddies with. Someone whose top priority will be protecting Wall Street first, and protecting consumers only insofar as it doesn’t interfere with the way Wall Street does business.

If Obama appoints someone other than Elizabeth Warren (assuming it’s not another progressive like Paul Krugman or Robert Reich), then you can rip the “Change We Can Believe In” sticker off your bumper and bury it six feet under ground, because the promise of the Obama presidency will be dead. It will be completely over. He will have raised the white flag and surrendered to the very establishment he said he was going to change.

Why is this decision so important as compared to all the others? Why will this be more of an indicator of Obama’s true character than, say, the fight over the public option? Because this time, there’s no one else to blame. This time the decision is squarely on his shoulders and there are no Joe Liebermans, Blanche Lincolns or Ben Nelsons to hide behind.

You can already see indications that the White House is leaning away from appointing Warren. They don’t want to piss off progressives too much so they keep insisting how much they like her and how great she is, but…

The ‘but’ is key. They’ll say “But there are other good options” when in reality the only other names being thrown around are friends of Tim Geithner—people with the Wall Street stamp of approval. They’ll say “But she’s unconfirmable because republicans will filibuster her” but in reality Obama could appoint her with the stroke of a pen. I’m pretty sure the way the legislation is written she doesn’t need senate confirmation, but even if she does there’s the option of a recess appointment.

The point is, it can be done and the only thing that would stop it is Obama deciding not to. He knows that progressives really want him to appoint Warren, but so far his whole governing strategy has been to ignore progressives and do everything he can to try and appear like a centrist moderate (see my rant below). So far, he seems to have done everything the establishment has wanted him to do.

Will the pattern continue? Will he decide not to appoint Warren because he’d take too much criticism from Fox News? There’s no doubt they’ll be throwing the entire Socialist/Maoist smear machine directly at her, but they’ll do that to anyone he appoints even it’s Lloyd Blankfein (the CEO of Goldman Sachs) himself!

Will he decide not to appoint Warren because Wall Street won’t stand for it? They’re almost certainly threatening to pull their funding from Democratic candidates this election if he goes with Warren, so he might think he has no choice but to cave in again.

Or will he just this once actually make the right decision and appoint Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Will he just this once accomplish some real Change? Will he listen to the people that got him elected just this once instead of spitting in their faces?

I doubt it. But I really hope more attention gets paid to this because it’s of monumental significance. This is a moment where Obama can really change course and begin to regain some of that progressive support he’s been losing since taking office by standing up to Wall Street and doing something that will actually help average Americans.

What’ll it be, Barack? Was the promise of Change just a big fat fucking lie that you had no intention of keeping? Or are you really trying to do the best you can? Your decision will reveal the answer, and we anxiously await it.

Financial reform legislation is hurtling towards final passage, severely watered down and riddled with loopholes. Most economists agree that it’s not strong enough to prevent another crisis and does nothing to end Too Big Too Fail which makes taxpayer bailouts a necessity. The only silver lining in this cloud is the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a government watchdog to keep an eye on Big Industry for the sake of average Americans. Among this agency’s many responsibilities would be to make sure credit card companies are straight with their customers, that they don’t hike up interest rates too quickly or charge excessive lateness penalties—things every credit-card user would appreciate.

Whether or not this agency will have any teeth depends to a large degree on who is in control of it. Most of the regulatory power in this bill goes to the treasury secretary, currently Wall Street’s favorite tool: Tim Geithner.

The effort to dramatically expand financial regulation bears the stamp of no one more than Geithner. The bill not only hews closely to the initial draft he released last summer but also anoints him — as long as he remains Treasury secretary — as the chief of a new council of senior regulators. The legislation also puts him at the head of the new consumer bureau until a director is confirmed by the Senate, allowing Geithner to mold the watchdog in coming months. And it will be up to him to settle a raft of issues left unresolved by the bill — for instance, which financial derivatives will be subject to the tough new trading rules and which risky activities big banks will be required to spin off.

Every step of the way, Geithner has fought against the strongest provisions in the bill. He opposed breaking up the banks, he opposed the Lincoln amendment to regulate derivatives, and he even opposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he gets to control and mold in the interim before Obama appoints someone else to be in charge.

Progressives want Elizabeth Warren, the current chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel where she’s been a strong and consistent advocate for transparency and accountability. Not only that, she has a knack for boiling complex financial issues to the core and explaining them with crystal clarity:

If she were put in charge of the Consumer Protection Bureau, there’s good reason to believe she’d give Wall Street a run for their money. So naturally, Tim Geithner is opposing her nomination. Geithner’s philosophy is to do as little regulation as possible and let Wall Street handle itself. If it were up to him, there would probably be no financial reform whatsoever.

Now, Obama is once again put to the test. Simon Johnson, author of 13 Bankers, says this can only go two ways: Will he actually listen to progressives for once and appoint Warren to head the new agency (outcome #1), or will he side with his Treasury secretary, as he has done nearly every step of the way so far, and appoint someone else (outcome #2)?

Despite the growing public reaction, outcome #2 is the most likely and the White House needs to understand this, plain and clear – there will be complete and utter revulsion at its handling of financial regulatory reform both on this specific issue and much more broadly. The administration’s position in this area is already weak, its achievements remain minimal, its speaking points are lame, and the patience of even well-inclined people is wearing thin.

Indeed, Obama has been throwing progressives under the bus repeatedly since the beginning of his administration, and progressives have been remarkably patient thus far. But we’re not buying the line that this is the most sweeping reform since the Great Depression, and we don’t believe for a second his blatant lie that this reform means there will never be another bailout. If he sides with Geithner over his base yet again and appoints some weak-kneed tool of the industry to head the Financial Protection Bureau, that will be the last straw for many.

Unfortunately, it’s entirely possible that Obama will stick with his strategy of pleasing Wall Street at the expense of progressive goals because he knows progressives have nowhere else to turn in November. He keeps throwing us under the bus because he knows we could never vote republican, so he might as well keep those Goldman Sachs campaign contributions flowing. If you want to help send him the message that we’re not going to let him kick us around anymore and he’d better appoint Warren, you can sign the petition here.

Ever since becoming politically aware I haven’t been able to firmly decide if the government is made up of people who are knowingly and deliberately trying to screw us or if it’s actually just a bunch of clueless idiots who don’t know what they’re doing. To put it simply, is the demise of the average person a result of malice or just ignorance?

When it comes to Obama, I keep going back-and-forth as well. The weakness of health care reform and stories of backroom deals to get drug companies and private insurance on board led me to believe that he was a complete sell-out, another politician who won the presidency by outright lying about who he was and what he stood for. At worst, a complete tool of the power-elites, chosen and groomed for his ability to sell the American people on policies that would look like reform but would actually serve to make the powerful more powerful.

But there is the possibility that even if he was chosen and approved of by the power-elites, that he doesn’t actually know he’s working for them. He might really believe in the things he said on the campaign trail, and he might really believe that he’s doing the best he can for the American people.

Psycho-analyzing the president is always tricky business, but looking at his behavior in the run-up to the final passage of the financial reform legislation, it seems as though he really believes his rhetoric.

Ask a random economist, and it’s likely he’ll tell you that this Wall Street reform bill does even less to reform Wall Street than the health care reform bill did to reform health care. Dean Baker called it a “fig-leaf”. Paul Krugman wrote that our misguided policies are causing what will become a third Depression. John R. Talbott itemized every way in which the bill fails to implement meaningful reform.

And yet Obama is out there hailing this as the “toughest financial reforms since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression”. If he really understood what he was doing, and he knew that these reforms weren’t tough at all and another financial collapse is all-but-guaranteed, I doubt he’d be showing such swagger.

When the next financial crisis hits, he’s going to look like a damned fool. And that might very well be what he is. It’s no secret that he didn’t run on a platform of reforming the financial system. When he began his run for president, he thought he’d be campaigning against the Iraq war. He made his first major initiative health care, rather than financial reform. The guy might just not have a good grasp of macro-economics.

Neither do I, but I trust economists such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich who point out that it was increased spending that brought us out of the Great Depression and tough rules on the banks such as the Glass-Steagall Act which prevented another collapse from happening up until the time it was repealed in 1999. This is just history. You don’t have to be a genius to just look at the charts and graphs and understand what they mean.

And yet Obama surrounded himself right from the start with people like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, people who are nothing if not creatures of Wall Street, who believe that when all is said and done the system is fine how it is. Sure, there was a bubble and it burst, but that was just a fluke—a once-in-a-lifetime thing. The bankers have learned their lesson and they won’t let another financial collapse happen again. They were telling Obama right from the start that the most important thing was to get Wall Street back in business and the rest would follow. He’d have to pass something called “financial reform” purely for the sake of public perception, but it shouldn’t be tough enough on the banks to fundamentally change the way they operate. Everything just needed to go back to the way it was before the collapse, and the bankers would take care of the rest.

It would seem that Obama bought into this bullshit. In which case, he is not a sell-out but a fool. The bankers will do whatever is in their best short-term financial interest to do. They do not care about the economic repercussions of their actions.

The problem that caused the crisis was that it became too easy to make shitloads of money by trading bundles of pools of mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford to repay them. It’s still too easy to do that, so of course they’re going to keep doing it. The collapse may have been prevented if the ratings agencies whose responsibility it was to accurately assess the risks of these bonds weren’t being paid by the same banks whose products they were supposed to assess. It’s still in their best financial interests to give Triple-A ratings to crappy bonds that are bound to explode, so of course they’re going to keep doing it. And the taxpayer wouldn’t have had to bail out the banks if they were small enough to collapse and not bring down the entire economy with them, but they are still Too Big to Fail so of course they’re going to keep taking these disastrous risks if they know we still have no choice but to cover their losses.

But Obama thinks he got the job done. He thinks he’s FDR. He thinks he really gave the banks a run for their money and showed them who’s boss. Meanwhile, they are laughing at him.

Then again, maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe he’s just as much the corporate tool as every single republican is, and he’s glad he was able to help out the bankers while making it look to the American people like he really accomplished something. But if that’s the case, you’ve got to wonder what his plan is for when the next financial crisis hits. Everybody is going to look back on this moment and say, “Um…you said you fixed it. What the fuck?”

What the fuck, Obama? You’re obviously an extremely intelligent guy. I can’t believe how someone so smart could be such a damned fool.

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is the only senator on the Democratic side who is sticking to his guns and refusing to vote for the financial reform package because it doesn’t go far enough. He wrote yesterday on the Huffington Post that he had a simple test for reform–whether or not it would prevent another financial crisis–and that this bill fails the test.

Of course he’s been cajoled by the administration and other democrats to get on board and act like this is real reform, but much to his credit he won’t do it.

It would be a huge mistake to pass a bill that purports to re-regulate the financial industry but is simply too weak to protect people from the recklessness of Wall Street. That would be like building an impressive-looking dam without telling everyone that it has a few leaks in it. False security is no security at all.

Obama and the rest of the democrats are making a huge political miscalculation. They think that the bankers have wised up and learned their lesson, and that they only needed to pass something called “financial reform” for the sake of public perception while Wall Street does its part to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

But “Wall Street” has no conscience. It’s not a singular entity that makes decisions and learns from its mistakes. It’s made up of a bunch of individual people who make day-to-day decisions based on their immediate financial incentives. Nothing has been done to change the incentives of these individuals: bankers can still make loads of money by lending to people who can’t afford to pay, and ratings agencies still work for the banks that they are supposed to be overseeing, so they still have an incentive to give bonds Triple-A ratings (meaning virtually risk-free) even when those bonds are loaded with risk.

Another financial crisis will come, and when it does Obama and the democrats will look at best like fools, and at worst like liars. Russ Feingold will look like the only one who understood how serious the reform needed to be.

Luckily for the democrats, the other party will look even more foolish. This week John Boehner said that financial reform was like “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.” Exactly backwards, John. The bill is more like sending in an ant to defuse a nuclear weapon.

NOTE: Unlike the health care reform bill, which I reluctantly supported in the end because “something is better than nothing”, in this case the minor tweeks to the system are just as good as nothing. Even if Feingold’s no-vote is enough to kill the legislation, he’s still doing the right thing by forcing the democrats to either make the bill stronger or let it die.

Obama called the financial reform package that passed this week “the most sweeping reforms since the Great Depression”. Ha fucking ha.

I won’t bore you with the details, but if you want the basic facts just take two minutes to read Dylan Ratigan’s brief but spot-on piece on the Huffington Post.

The few reforms that actually made it through are pretty much window dressing. Banks are still Too Big to Fail, the regulators still have a financial incentive to not do actual regulation, and banks can still make risky bets backed up by taxpayer money. This is no more of a fix to our financial system than the health care bill was a fix to our health care system.

Wall Street owns Washington. Congressmen and senators on both sides of the aisle had to do a song and dance and pretend to fix the problem–and some genuinely tried–but ultimately the goal was to pass something called “financial reform” and score another political victory for Obama and the democrats.

What I can’t figure out is whether or not Obama just doesn’t understand the issues enough to know that these reforms aren’t nearly tough enough to prevent another crisis. He’s surrounded himself with people like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner who have Wall Street in their DNA, and they’ve been telling him all along to trust the bankers, don’t be too hard on them, they’ll make sure we won’t have another collapse.

But the structure of the system is such that it is guaranteed to collapse, and when it does our only recourse is still to bail them out with taxpayer money.

If you thought the Tea Party was mad now, just wait until the next crisis. They’ve been blaming Obama for the crisis and the bailouts already, but thus far we’ve at least been able to counter them with the undeniable fact that these things happened during the Bush administration. But when the next financial crisis hits, it really will be Obama’s fault.

In keeping with my new tradition of sharing petitions I find important on my blog, I’m offering up this link to a petition telling congress that we demand the restoration of Glass-Steagall like rules the prevent banks from gambling with taxpayer money.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Glass-Steagall Act was a regulation put in place after the Great Depression which prevented regular banks from engaging in the kind of risky trading that investment banks do. For decades it prevented another market crash until it was removed during the Clinton administration, and what followed was the inflation of a giant financial bubble on Wall Street and ultimately the financial collapse of 2008 which has brought us to the recession we’re still stuck in.

Thanks to a progressive primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, she tried to boost her progressive credibility by offering one of the strongest amendments to the financial reform package still being worked out in congress, and in spite of Wall Street’s best efforts it still hasn’t been killed.

And it’s obvious why. Telling banks that they can gamble all they want–just not with taxpayer money–is the most obvious thing in the world. It would ensure that if another crash comes, it won’t be our money but Wall Street’s money that’s lost.

Anyone who votes against the re-instatement of Glass-Steagall like laws is, without a doubt, a complete and utter tool of Wall Street. Sign the petition and let them know you understand that.

I write a lot about America’s problems in my blog, but this time I’ll actually offer a solution. It’s not an original idea—I’m sure we’ve all thought of it at one time or another—but it’s such a simple and obvious measure we can take to get government working on behalf of the people again that it bears repeating as often as possible.

We’ve all heard the term “revolving door congress” which refers to the implicit bribe that public servants have to cater to big industries at the expense of their constituents. Spending time as a congressman or senator may not earn you a great deal of money while you have that job, but it will earn you significant credentials for any future job. Whether it’s a place on the board of directors of a major corporation, or merely a job as a lobbyist, you can earn a lot more money when you move from the public to the private sector.

But the revolving door isn’t only in operation for actual congressmen—it works for their staffers as well. A huge portion of staffers on Capitol Hill, perhaps even the majority, are only in it for their resume. They work in Washington, make connections with the power-players, and put those connections to the service of lobbying firms once they’re done. The staffers are the ones who actually write the legislation, and if their main goal is to be a lobbyist for a big corporation, they’re going to make sure they write that legislation in a way that benefits, to the greatest degree possible, the corporation they intend to work for. That corporation will reward them with a nice fat salary when they’re finished. It’s not bribery per se, but it’s pretty damn close.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks gave a perfect example on the show last week. Having just returned from a protest they organized in Washington, he’d had a few conversations with Washington insiders which provided some additional insight into the situation. His source wanted to remain anonymous, so he couldn’t be very specific, but there was a provision in the Financial Reform package that was so transparently helpful to Wall Street and harmful to Main Street that not even the republicans could openly support it and it was removed from the bill. But when a new draft came along, the same provision had miraculously reappeared, and had to be removed again. The same thing happened a third time, and finally they realized that staffers at the Federal Reserve, who had been given the task of actually writing the legislation, had been slipping the provision back into the bill with each new draft.

How can we expect Washington to produce any legislation that works in our favor if the very people writing that legislation have a vested interest in making it work in the corporations’ favor? Public pressure made the financial reform bill much stronger than many of us expected it to be, but once the debate in front of the cameras was over the bill got fatally weaker. When all is said and done, there will be enough fine print and loop-holes so as to make Wall Street feel as though the whole legislative battle had been nothing but a dream and things can continue exactly as before.

The solution is painfully obvious, so obvious that it’s a wonder the public isn’t demanding it so loudly and forcefully that congress has no choice but to act: close the revolving door.

There are already rules that prohibit congressional staffers from lobbying their former colleagues for at least one year after they leave those jobs. But a mandatory year-long waiting period is a joke. Of course they’re just going to wait out the year and go to work for the lobbying firm the minute they can. For a huge portion of them, that’s their exact plan. Help to sabotage financial reform, wait a year, then go to work for a Wall Street bank. Help to sabotage health insurance reform, wait a year, then go to work for a private health insurance company. Now, help to sabotage energy legislation, wait a year, then go to work for an oil company.

Some say we should insist that they expand the waiting period to five or ten years, but we all know what happens when we start from an already-compromised position. We have to insist that they completely prohibit all public servants and their staffers from ever working as lobbyists for as long as they live. Don’t just slow down the revolving door—destroy it completely. If we keep demanding this, we might reach a compromise whereby the waiting period is extended. That will at least improve the situation a little.

But what’s wrong with demanding the life-long ban? Why shouldn’t we insist that if you want to work as a public servant, you must give up the opportunity to be a lobbyist? The government’s job is to work on behalf of the people, to protect our interests from the interests of giant organizations—be it a country or a corporation—whose interests conflict with ours. If you want to work for the government, why shouldn’t we say that you then have to give up your right to lobby the government on behalf of those organizations?

There should be no financial incentive to work for the government. The only incentive any public servant should have is to serve the public. Destroy the revolving door and all those single-minded greed-driven individuals who only use government as a springboard for their future careers will have to find another path to success. The government will once again be composed of principled people whose only desires are to do some good for their communities and their country.

If anyone who reads this knows anyone with the know-how, the skills, and the resources to organize a campaign to demand this badly needed change to our system, I hope you’ll encourage them to take up this fight. This is a cause that Americans from across the political spectrum would support, and if enough of us demand it we can’t possibly be ignored.

Allow me to depress the hell out of you for a moment as I step back and take a broad look at the state of affairs in the world and draw my gloomy conclusions. Hopefully someone can tell me why I’m wrong and that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Cenk Uygur, the host of my favorite political show—The Young Turks—sees most things almost exactly as I see them with one major difference. He insists that while he may be pessimistic in the short-term, he’s “long-term optimistic” and I know a lot of people who also feel that way. But not me. I look at the world and the human race and I see a species on the verge of extinction, brought about by its own blind ignorance and refusal to accept responsibility for its fate.

Just look at what’s in the headlines today. Wall Street Executives are expressing sighs of relief at the financial reform package just passed in the senate. You don’t need to know a damned thing about economics to take that as an indication that the reforms didn’t go far enough and the bankers can continue with business as usual. Banks can still be too big to fail and they can still trade derivatives. There is slightly more oversight and rules banning some of the more reckless financial practices…but no penalty for banks that break those rules. Just this one line from the New York Times piece says it all:

Some experts predict that Wall Street, like water overcoming a dam, will easily adapt to the new regulations, or at least exploit what loopholes do remain and thrive again.

If I had any money I’d bet heavily on another financial crisis hitting within the next few years. And when it does, the damage is going to be far worse than the last one. The big banks haven’t been broken up so they can still hold the economy hostage. The public has to bail them out or it all goes under. But people are still enraged about the first bailout—how is it going to be politically possible for anyone in congress to vote for another one? I suspect they all will because they can hide behind the cover of “this is absolutely necessary” like they did the first time, but there’s a chance that the people just won’t stand for it this time and the banks will go down. In any case, Obama will be blamed (rightly so in one sense) and the Tea Party movement is likely to boil into open revolt. Economies all over the world will fall like dominos and countries that have a social safety net will find the number of unemployed far too large to handle. Billions will be out on the street with nowhere to turn, and global chaos will ensue.

Maybe that won’t happen for a few decades, but that seems to be the direction we’re heading in. Thanks to these financial crises the human race seems to be waking up to the fact that the entire global monetary system is based on nothing more than a kind of international consent. We agree that your money is worth something and you agree that ours is too. But economies are becoming less based on actual tangible goods and more on abstract ‘financial products’ that have no intrinsic value. Wealth is just a number in a bank account, scarcely more real than points in a video game. The entire global financial system is a balloon filled with hot air and we’re doing nothing to stop those who keep blowing into it because they hold the balloon—they own everybody in a position to potentially stop them—and sooner or later the balloon is going to burst.

But that’s just money. The global chaos that will ensue when the balloon bursts may set humanity back to the Dark Ages but it won’t kill us all. The other big story in the news these days is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which in and of itself won’t be too devastating but it’s just one symptom of a much larger problem—one far more threatening than any economic collapse.

Not everyone accepts that CO2 emissions are warming up the earth’s atmosphere and not everyone believes that the earth’s resources are as limited as environmentalists claim they are, but just about everyone accepts the concept of a food chain. Anyone who knows anything about ecosystems knows that all forms of life depend on other forms of life for their survival. Nature establishes equilibriums, and when it’s thrown off balance the consequences are usually devastating. Remove just one species from a marsh and hundreds of others might disappear depending on how crucial that species was.

This planet is currently undergoing what scientists have labeled the Sixth Extinction, in which the earth loses about 30,000 species per year due to human activity. This has been going on since the development of agriculture thousands of years ago, but there is no doubt it’s accelerating rapidly due to industrialization. The Gulf oil spill is almost sure to take its fair share of species from the ocean, and there is no indication that we as a species have any intention to stop drilling any time soon.

And of course there’s only so much oil in the earth’s crust, so when that’s gone we’re really going to run into trouble unless we can find another fuel source that can provide us with as much energy as fossil fuels do. Wind and solar won’t provide enough power to keep civilization running as it currently is, and nuclear energy has its own problems, the biggest being radioactive waste.

But even if we find a way to keep the engines of civilization churning, those engines will continue to rape the environment, pollute the sky, and destroy species by the minute. Common sense tells us that there’s only so much damage we can do to the environment before a tipping point is reached and some element of the food chain that was critical to our survival disappears. It may not happen for another century, but unless we drastically alter our way of living it is bound to happen, and I see no sign of willingness on the part of humanity to make such drastic alterations.

The last story I read today is about the Muslim world’s perception of America on the one year anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech, and how nearly all of the hopes he raised in that speech have been dashed over the last year. The prison at Guantanamo remains open, Israel is still building new settlements in disputed territory, and American troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the wars, Iraq may be “winding down” but people are still being killed by insurgents nearly every day, while Afghanistan truly is “heating up” while many objective observers are saying that our presence there is counter-productive. Our troops are basically there to prop up and support a corrupt, criminal government with a leader who almost certainly won the election through fraud.

Why is this important? Why is it a sign of humanity’s impending doom? Because the leader of the free world is not George W. Bush anymore—it’s Barack Obama.

I came to true political awareness during the Bush administration and back then I was just as filled with doom and gloom. Clearly, the guy was the worst possible president we could have had. Not only was he an ignorant buffoon who probably genuinely believed that Jesus wanted him to start these wars—he was transparently a puppet of the giant corporations that dominate us. He was a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil and a staunch ally of the military industrial complex. Under Bush, you could be sure that the environment would continue to be raped and war would be the order of the day. Clearly, there would be no effort towards world peace or environmental sustainability.

But then Barack Obama came along with a promise of change. He talked the talk and inspired the world with the very vision we needed most—the vision of a world united in peace, an end to unnecessary wars and a true drive towards clean and renewable energy that would protect and preserve the environment we all depend on. If anyone was going to lead the way to that future dreamed about by men like Gene Roddenberry or Carl Sagan—in which humanity survives its technological adolescence and dedicates itself to its own betterment and to exploring the universe beyond our planet of origin—it was Barack Obama.

But clearly we’re a long way from the United Federation of Planets and it’s doubtful we’ll ever get there. If Obama had the best of intentions when he got into office, he quickly discovered that there were serious limitations to what he could accomplish. The powers that be were already too powerful. If the best he could do with Wall Street was to give them a slap on the wrist and warn them not to cause another financial crisis, if the best he could do with the two wars was to slightly alter the deployment numbers and shift a few resources around, if the best he could do to address climate change was to offer more subsidies for offshore drilling and then give up the fight when something went wrong, and if the best he can do during an actual environmental catastrophe like the one in the Gulf is to let the corporations handle it and hope the story just goes away—then humanity is more fucked than most people care to admit.

It turns out that it really doesn’t matter at all who the president is. If we’re heading in the wrong direction no matter who is at the helm, we’re eventually going to fall off the cliff. And what can I do about it? What can any of us do about it? That’s a question for another blog entry, one I’ll write if I ever come up with anything. For now I think the best we can do is simply recognize it. To understand that humanity’s survival is not guaranteed—that our grandchildren may not live to have grandchildren of their own—and that the only hope we have is to stop making enemies of each other and to come together and fight against extinction, the common enemy of us all.