(written for rabble.ca's election coverage)
Irrational exuberance and the terrible hangover. Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch both bit the dust yesterday, the worst day for the U.S. financial sector since the Great Depression. In the wake of Washington’s takeover of Freddie and Fannie and the collapse of Bear Stearns, the towers of finance capital are more than a little shaky.
Black Monday showed, for those who needed the lesson, that the kind of people Stephen Harper thinks are so good at running the world are not only greedy, they’re world class incompetents.
Harper and his pals, south and north of the border, believe in the wondrous power of de-regulated capitalism to make the economy soar by getting stale, old government out of the way. That is, of course, until the new financial instruments they invent, designed to turn billions of sow’s ears into silk purses, land them in big trouble. Then they scurry to government, quaking with fear, begging for the handouts their friends in office are only too happy to provide. Harper will use the financial crisis to reward his corporate friends and punish the rest of us.
We saw some cracks in the structures of capitalism yesterday. The shafts of daylight that came through teach people that there’s nothing wondrous or all-powerful about the system. Now’s the time to get out radical ideas about how to restructure our economy in the interests of wage and salary earners and how to take control of our petroleum industry out of the hands of Big Oil.
That needs to be the subject until election day.
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4 comments:
I'm all for that. Now how do you get everyone to stop thinking that change is dangerous and that Steven Harper of the comfortable blue sweater will save them. In spite of all of his efforts to look like he is a kindler, gentler iteration of the Neo-conservative, I am convinced that when the ship, S.S. Economy founders on the rocks of his corporate friendly policy, he will throw the Canadian people an anchor.
Remember that the Common Sense Revolution boys of the Harris Government sit in Harper's front row in Parliament--Flaherty, Baird, Clement with Guy Giorno, Harris's former chief of staff pulling strings for Harper behind the scenes.
Anyone who believes the Kinder-Gentler-Harper shtick better be ready for 4 years of Harris like shenanigans, only on a national scale--great for Harper's millionaire buddies and corporations, a kick in the slats for the rest of us.
The media, lead by the CBC, are giving Canadians the notion that all is well and that the storm will pass us by. The Corpse's piece on the National on Nov. 16 made Dion look like Chicken Little for claiming the economy was in trouble. As for that fellow who claims to be leading the NDP, well if he couldn't summon up enough courage to take on Harper on Afghanistan, how can we expect him to go mano a mano with Conservative leader on this issue.
Dr Laxer, I think that you are telling us that Harper believes in the magic of capitalism, and that it is an optimising and self-regulating system. My concern is not so much that he is wrong but that most voters never peer so deeply into these questions. How can the fallacy of this point of view be explained to people who wouldn't know a system if they tripped over one?
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