Saturday, September 20, 2008

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine Coming True


George W. Bush came into office with a surplus, and will leave this country in the greatest debt in our nations history when he leaves office next January.

The Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration today sent lawmakers a historic $700 billion emergency rescue plan that allows the Treasury to buy the troubled mortgage securities that have been toppling major financial firms and are at the heart of Wall Street's turmoil.

The package, the most sweeping government intervention in the markets since the Great Depression, was $200 billion higher than lawmakers had been told yesterday to expect. It also does not include the $200 billion that officials said earlier this month the government will spend on the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

To accommodate the spending, the package also would also raise the federal debt limit to $11.3 trillion from the current $10.6 trillion. The debt now stands at $9.6 trillion.
Let's put this into perspective. It took the United States 200 years to become a trillion dollars in debt. The first administration to dramatically increase the debt was the Reagan administration, who left the country nearly $3 trillion dollars in debt.

I didn't think it possible for anyone to be worse than Ronald Reagan, but George W. Bush has proven me wrong. When Bush leaves office the national debt will be close to $11 trillion dollars.

Our biggest worry isn't about a terrorist attack, our biggest worry is that one of the nations lending us money will call in the loan.

There is still time to impeach the whole lot of them -- and it can't happen a minute too soon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Earlier this week, I heard the Shock Doctrine summed up by Cenk on The Young Turks. In a nutshell - I'm going to create an enormous mess and scare the hell out of you with it. Then I'm going to tell you that I'm the only person who can fix the mess. You hire me to fix the mess and I make the mess bigger, etc....

Just moments before, when asked about the Wall Street mess, Sen. Grassley said on C-SPAN that we needed to clean up Freddie & Fannie and then privatize them so this can't ever happen again.

The Shock Doctrine! Now I get it!

dinthebeast said...

They should be more careful, you know, a trillion here, another trillion there, pretty soon that's gonna add up to some serious money.

Comrade Kevin said...

Voodoo economics has proven to be the undoing of a large sector of credit lending and banking.

It would be extremely foolish to resort to those tactics again.

BAC said...

DCup - it's pretty shocking!

Dinthebeast - I agree, and welcome!

Comrade - I always thought the trickle from Reagonomics looked a little yellow.


BAC

mwb said...

2001 "Terror! Terror!" - quick bipartisan support to kiss Civil Liberties goodbye.

2008 "Wall Street is Falling!" - quick bipartisan support to transfer more wealth from the rest of America to the wealthiest 2%.