"Fear has been running rampant all over the Street. Fear and greed, that's what rules the Street. I think the carcass has been stripped to the bone," said Dave Henderson, a floor trader on the New York Stock Exchange for Raven Securities Corp.
Via RJ Eskow in HuffPo even earlier today, and then my comment thereupon:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~After seven years of the Politics of Terror, and with only three months left to go, they decided to make one last play for power. The original bailout plan presented by Hank Paulson was to be the final Shock Doctrine maneuver of the Bush/Cheney Presidency. As with 9/11, the Administration tried to exploit a tragic situation for their own ends. And this five-day stock market plunge shows that, as with 9/11, they've made a grave situation even worse.
A groundswell of public resistance forced the Paulson team to cut back on its initial demands for unbridled power, but the fear generated by their initial pitch to Congress may have caused world markets to drop more steeply and more severely than they might have otherwise. From today's Wall Street Journal:
Strategist Jim Paulsen, of Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said the fear that has gripped the market in recent days may be an unintended, self-fulfilling consequence of recent efforts in Washington to pass a $700 billion rescue of firms saddled with soured credit bets.
"To sell the bailout to the public, everyone from the President on down had to go out and tell people how bad everything was, that the world was coming to an end," said Mr. Paulsen. "Ever since, people's expectations about the economy have gotten worse and worse and worse, and their reaction to each new action to fix the problems has gotten worse and worse and worse."Jim Paulsen is probably right. The scare tactics used by the Administration to push their bailout plan created a wave of fear, and fear can quickly turn into panic.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 09:51 AM on 10/10/2008
Wow, great piece. The evidence from the hateful McCain-Palin rallies is incontrovertible and compelling. "Ideas have consequences," Naomi Klein recently quoted Rumsfeld as admiringly saying about Friedman.
"Do as I say or suffer immeasurably until you do! And never ever ask questions."
This is feudalism, not democracy.
During Medieval times in Europe, "public authority broke down, traditional institutions were unable to maintain order, and private castles were built. During this so-called feudal anarchy, private relationships were established among the nobility in which weaker nobles attached themselves to stronger ones." "...[B]ased on the relation between lords and the peasants who worked their own land and that of the lord...Feudalism was therefore a means to restore social order or at least limit the excesses that resulted from the collapse of public authority." (Source: Encyc. Britt. Std. Ed. 2008)
It's all about the transfer of the Commons into private hands in the context of a holy war. Society was conceived as God's plantation, with the nobles as his landlords. To challenge political authority is now equally conflated, by those on the right, with challenging the throne of Heaven.
Our present overlords are absolute divine right monarchists, throwbacks to the Middle Ages. They rule by putting the "fear of god" into "subjects" and conflating their authority with God's.
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