David Sirota: A Message for America's Ruling Class - We Told You So

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A Message for America's Ruling Class: We Told You So
By David Sirota, AlterNet. Posted December 13, 2008.

Our bipartisan political Establishment and sycophantic Punditburo have been wrong on the economy over and over again.

Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it's a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America's ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it's not said here you can bet it won't be said anywhere else in the media, and it needs to be said somewhere on behalf of the millions of citizens who were right.

We told you so.

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When in 2005 Congress overwhelmingly passed a credit card industry-written bill gutting bankruptcy laws, progressives were right to try to stop it -- and not just because it was an immoral move to legalize usury. We were right because as the New York Federal Reserve Bank reports, the bill played an integral role in the recent foreclosure surge that crushed the economy.

In the past, bankruptcy laws made sure debtors first and foremost continued paying their mortgages so that they could stay in their home. But the 2005 legislation effectively compels debtors to first pay off their credit cards, meaning many then have no money left to pay their mortgage. The Fed's report estimates that the bankruptcy bill is causing 32,000 more foreclosures per quarter than the economy would have already generated.

We told you so.

When almost every media voice in America was sounding the alarm of financial panic and demanding a Wall Street bailout plan; when bailout opponents were roundly ridiculed as "irresponsible" by politician and pundit alike -- those opponents were nonetheless right to say then what a study from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank says now: that the case hadn't been made.

While reporters and the Bush administration frantically insisted that bank-to-business lending had ceased, inter-bank lending had stopped, and short-term "commercial paper" loans had dried up, the Minneapolis researchers tell us that "all three claims were false" and continue to be false; that "nobody has explained how the money system has frozen when the data says it has not"; and that "a trillion dollar intervention warrant(ed) a bit more serious analysis."

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mistakes, and so it means little one way or another. Now those of us who are can no longer find any justification to lisen to another plan that bails out the powerful.

We have no shortage of "worked all my life, now I'm wiped out" stories, where are the "I had a billion dollars in 2005, but the same thing that wiped me out is going to happen more and more and we have to put a stop to it."

No such stories. Lots of business people laying off people and saving their money. But where are the guys who invested 100 million in whatever who are now broke and have to sell their McMansions?

It seems to me that the ones holding the bag on these things are either 1) not American or 2) solidly middle class (ie: common shareholders who now can't retire).

It also seems to me that the whole bailout thing was, of course, one of the last stabs (quickly followed by the destruction of unions) the rich are using to gut our economy before they leave it in banana republic ashes for us to dig ourselves out of while they live in their gated communities...

It's damn near every issue, the left has been correct about a great many issues, the Iraq War, the environment, the drug war.. I could go on for a while...

But the left is still locked out of the political process to a big extent.

Those who were continually wrong are still running things and those who were continually correct are locked out.

Go figure.

those who are wrong are the pundits who always get invited to bloviate on news and news opinion shows, while those who are always right never get invited, or if they do get invited, they are outnumbered at the table by several of the guys who always get things wrong.

The wrong-headed guys, i.e., "conservatives," are considered "serious people," so their grave pronouncements are received as though they are the wisdom of the ages, while the ones who always get it right, i.e., progressives, are treated as the loony fringe and largely excluded from the serious conversations about policy. If they're included at all, it is only so that the "serious people" can laugh at them for being so far out.

*I enclosed "conservatives" in quotation marks, because they are really far right radicals.)

and the loans are repaid with usurious rates on personal credit. It all comes out of the consumer's pocket.

Don't consume. Don't feed the beast. Pay off your cards and learn to use cash again.