“Ask this question — are the credit markets really about to seize up?
“How will adding $700 billion to the national debt ease strains on the credit markets?
Part of what happened to the core value of journalism is that people no longer have the intellectual skills and background to be able to “check it out,” know what questions are asked. Also, with the current emphasis on “objectivity” many journalists appear to consider it their job only to repeat what they are told and then, for “balance,” repeat another view.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Yes and don your festive bailout tab: $700,000,000,000 wherever you go!
Cut it from the newspaper or make your own1
everyone read naomi klein’s The Shock Doctrine. I really think this book can save us. I think Seymour Hersh saved us from invading Iran. Words have power.
Klein’s book is exactly germane to this. It is true, if people read it they would get it.
I learned a great deal in Latin America in the 80s, when these shock programs were in fashion and economics and business professors and smart reporters would write about it in the papers, in prose the layperson could understand. I learned then how FAKE the business pages are in the U.S. papers are, and that it is possible to see what is really happening.
I wish she could get on the mainstream news and talk shows.
Klein was on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now yesterday (I think it was yesterday_ amazing. I think you can download the podcast.
I am mystified, too. (a) there is no lending available for student loans–but about a month ago the credit card I have had ever since the end of my bankruptcy offered me up to $10,000 in debt at a fixed rate of 3.99% for the entire period of the debt payoff for a credit card balance transfer. What? (b) this week, I received a credit card offer, 4.99% fixed, from a company from which I bankrupted c. 10,000 in credit card debt at the end of my bankruptcy.
There is obviously no actual logic to this.
Gracias RG! S, I think the logic is they want us in more debt still? Just a guess. I keep getting new and better credit offers too, out of the blue. More than before, when there were already many. It gives me the impression there is Something Up.
Meanwhile, here’s someone else’s good post on all of this:
http://thedoctorisnt.blogspot.com/2008/09/thank-you-mister-keynes-may-we-have.html
Thomas Jefferson wrote ever so long ago of the need to oppose such government interference. I found a unique petition written using his mighty words. You can sign it at Jefferson’s Plea. Sign it. And get others to sign it. We need to go back to Jefferson’s America.
–I’m approving the comment in case it is from a real person but it seems to me it could be a .bot, so I am not including the link to the site. I don’t idealize Jefferson or anyone and I think it’s oversimplification to think that we can, a la Ron Paul, go back to being a small 18th century agrarian economy (with slaves, mind you) and have that work. I *would* like to get back to having some respect for human rights, though. –Z