Great post, Jeremy!!

Some of the best writing on the economic crash and its aftermath is being published in Rolling Stone magazine and Harpers. The current RS has a must-read piece by Matt Taibbi. Then the April Harpers has an article by Thomas Geoghegan that traces how the removal of caps on interest rates on credit cards, coupled with the busting of unions, trashing of labor contracts, destruction of many working Americans' pension funds, and stagnating wages has led to a hopelessness in American workers that contributed to their taking on staggering levels of personal debt.

The very idea that banks can charge 35% interest! My god, and that's when we're bailing their asses out of bankruptcy! It's usury, pure and simple. Especially considering that the annual prime interest rate right now is .016% That's the rate banks charge one another for borrowing--although few banks are loaning to other banks at the moment because they all know they're insolvent.

Where is the American rage?!!

The only among my friends who are doing well are the ones that started their own businesses at least ten years ago --- if you are an entrepreneur, a good businessperson, good at what you are attempting to deliver to your customers, and you've been at it a while so that your pains of start-up are already behind you, then you have a chance at surviving with a fair amount of comfort.

The rest of us, it seems, are all slowly going down the toilet.

So Jeremy,
What's the deal with the "compromise" that CostCo, Whole Foods, and Starbucks are trying to broker that would eliminate the card check and binding arbitration provisions? Should I be thinking about new places to buy coffee and groceries?

Income inequality? How about we discuss mandatory high school graduation? That would help a lot for starters. Reading, math and science proficiency for everyone. (allowing for those who have dyslexia to advance at a slower pace)

What a surprise. Wealthy individuals make sure their kids get an education who in turn become wealthy in their own right. Gosh, independent decisions of individuals to try and hold on to their own money are diabolical.

We (American Taxpayers) own 80% of AIG we had better hope they are successful...or that money is gone.

Privately owned small businesses had best not be overtaxed because they will employ fewer people. They already pay the lion's share of unemployment compensation for which no employer ever receives a thank you.

Hard working executives who are overtaxed will work less hard ("as it all goes to taxes") and the net result will be less employment. The French socialist experiment of cutting the work week to 35 hours has not led them toward financial liberation, but recently riots in the streets.

America will be a more socialist country, but we should approach this "with the brakes on" and learn to work together rather than just for ourselves. I knew Chicago families on the third generation of welfare who were stupid and hopeless and bored, and unmotivated and amazed that their neighbor worked so hard. They could never "find the time" to work as hard.

Good post Jeremy.

Contrast what Obama is doing to UAW retirees and what he did about preserving the bonuses paid to AIG looters, managers and stockholders. What Obama is doing to the UAW is the same thing Bush did to airline unions after 9-11. Bush refused loans to unionized airlines and many of them failed while the rest of the airlines forced deep concessions from unions.

Obama recently selected Steve Rattner, a blood thirsty corporate looter and major Democratic (sic) fundraiser to ‘oversee’ the auto industry. He’ll oversee it the same way a wolf oversees a rabbit. Rattner appointment naturally had nothing to do his ‘campaign contributions’ to the Democrats, which by my rough count were about $456,345.00 and included, for some unknown reason, proportionality large amounts for Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=NY&last=RATTNER&first=STEVEN&city=&zip=&xst=&next=0

Rattner’s an experienced corporate raider and looter who runs the Quadrangle Group. Obama, himself an unashamed lap dog of Wall Street, to run the UAW, and especially retired autoworkers into the ground.

The [Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123845522845271355.html] headlines their article on Rattner as “Blame Is Put on Management, but Hourly Workers, Retirees Face More Pain”. The article says that “

President Barack Obama's recovery plan for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC appears to take aim at union retirees, a usually reliable Democratic constituency.
… the president's auto task force concluded GM and Chrysler's survival is dependent on greater concessions from the United Auto Workers union… In his address Monday, Mr. Obama … called on hourly workers and retirees at the companies to be ready to accept more sacrifice if they hoped to keep their employers afloat.(!!!)
Clem Wittman, 68 years old, spent three decades working the assembly line for GM… said ‘What 85-year-old can go out and get another job? … Mr. Wittman said that for 30 years he paid for those benefits and shouldn't be asked to give them back.”

In other news the national debt recently passed $11,043,588,980,678.90 today according to the [US Treasury http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway] The vast majority of that money is being given to the looters who wrecked the economy and bought by other countries.

Nothing is ever going to be done to the execs at AIG and hundreds of other companies that looted the economy and rubbed salt on the wound by giving themselves multimillion bonuses and parties. Nothing. Obama told Congress that he wanted them left alone. But he’s going to try to wreck the lives of retirees.

Obama is some piece of work.

And it's ok to to start saying "Socialism now, socialism forever! As people recover from the shock of mass unemployment and as Hope turns to Rage a lot of people are going to be saying it.