Dr. Lester K. Spence

David Sirota asks this question. If Wagoner from GM gets the axe from Obama why not the bankers?

Simple answer really.

Marx had it all wrong when he put “capital” in one bag. The truth is that “capital” should really be thought of as “capitals” that sometimes cooperate but often compete with one another for state resources. Manufacturers create capital (or at least created capital) off of tangible products. Refined steel. Cars. Financiers create capital off of financial services (recently retagged as “products”). Guess who won out in the eighties?

The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. The boom began with the Reagan years, and it only gained strength with the deregulatory policies of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Several other factors helped fuel the financial industry’s ascent. Paul Volcker’s monetary policy in the 1980s, and the increased volatility in interest rates that accompanied it, made bond trading much more lucrative. The invention of securitization, interest-rate swaps, and credit-default swaps greatly increased the volume of transactions that bankers could make money on. And an aging and increasingly wealthy population invested more and more money in securities, helped by the invention of the IRA and the 401(k) plan. Together, these developments vastly increased the profit opportunities in financial services.

What Simon Johnson calls the quiet coup is nothing more than the spread of neoliberal governmentality. I remember reading in the NYT–if someone has a cite please let me know–about the War on Iraq during the Bush administration. An “unnamed official” noted that the Bush administration was in the business of “creating reality”. By the time the journalists caught up with the reality they’d created, they’d already moved on, creating another reality in so doing. I thought that what they did was pretty audacious.

But what the Wall street financiers did was something else. They cloaked a multi-level marketing scheme in the logic of market principles and high-order mathematics. By the time that people figured out what had happened…well here we are right?

The reason why Obama could pull the trigger on Wagoner, but not on the bankers, is simple. Wagoner represents the equivalent of a welfare queen. It’s relatively easy to diagnose the ills that the automotive companies are wrestling with, and relatively easy to point to cultural failures. Because the bankers are still intimately connected with the market, there’s still a sense that they are the only ones with the tools to diagnose and correct the problem. They’ve taken the bureaucracy designed to oversee and regulate them hostage.

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Living Art, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer bit the dust today to be reborn as an online only edition. The San Francisco Chronicle is losing $1 million/week and if it dies I believe that Sanfran will be the only major city without a major newspaper.

(as an aside i think the loss of the Seattle Supersonics was covered more than the loss of the Post-Intelligencer.)

The advertising based model of providing content is dying on the vine. Today’s NYT runs a story about the dearth of blacks on television, using the cancellation of both wack DL Hughley’s and my man (Go Blue!) David Alan Grier’s shows to ruminate about the challenge of having a diverse lineup on television. But who wants to diversify a burning house? Television shows are based off of ad revenue. Again, a dying model. I noted yesterday that there’s no way in hell that you can use 10,000 bic lighters to replace the lights of a baseball stadium.

It looks like those lights ARE going out though.

For those in the creative narrative game this is going to provide a tremendous opening. Ed has it partially right. Augie has part of the picture too. But creating cultural democracy means nothing if there are no institutions powerful enough to keep government institutions in check through shining a halogen light on their insides.

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Metro, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

I’m going to Vancouver on Thursday for a conference. I’m presenting the first chapter of my next book on neoliberalism in black politics. Vancouver has a Skytrain that traverses 33 miles through the city. It’s the longest rail of its kind in the world. Thirty years ago Detroit sought to be the first, by creating a People Mover that would extend from Detroit to Ann Arbor (over 40 miles). Although the money was there, suburban angst nixed the deal. The People Mover was built but it is barely used and travels only 3 miles around the city. I’ve probably ridden it five times in 30 years.

News comes today that the state legislature is seriously considering building a high speed rail line from Detroit to Lansing (over 50 miles).

Thirty years too late. Right now in Vancouver there is talk of extending the rail to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver…because people have seen the benefits of public transportation. Furthermore, Vancouver has a significant ridership (as well as a growing population). Metro Detroiters are conditioned to use cars, no matter what the price of gas is. But even if they could be conditioned to use public transportation…given the state of the region’s economy where would they take a Skytrain to? The region may have another chance to live together, but I don’t think some type of high speed rail line is going to be part of it. Folks in Lansing are living a pipe dream. Or maybe, smoking one.

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Day 60, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

I’m not sure how to take the news that the Baltimore Police Department will no longer inform the public about officers who kill/wound citizens in the process of carrying out their duties.

Yes, you heard that right. The Baltimore Sun, like many other big city papers is a shell of its former self–it didn’t even report the police department’s move. But combine the slow death of journalism as we know it, with government move away from transparency?

We can celebrate the rise of bloggers all we want. But even 10,000 bics (sorry, 20th century reference, I mean “lit up cell phones”) can’t provide enough light to read in the dark.

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I’ve been meaning to get to this, but Buster brought up something in comments that I meant to address but haven’t had a chance to get to. In fact, because my blogging has been so light, in the wake of so much bloggable material, I’ve considered making this a group blog. I’ve made an offer to one person, and am going to make an offer to a few others. We’ll see what comes of it.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to comment on the new Attorney General’s comments about our nation being a “nation of cowards.” Although Coates, P6, Rachel among others addressed this, I think they mostly missed the point. From the Attorney General’s website:

The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters generally and gives advice and opinions to the President and to the heads of the executive departments of the Government when so requested. In matters of exceptional gravity or importance the Attorney General appears in person before the Supreme Court. Since the 1870 Act that established the Department of Justice as an executive department of the government of the United States, the Attorney General has guided the world’s largest law office and the central agency for enforcement of federal laws.

 …and all he can ask is that we…TALK about race? To the extent that we talk about cowardice…who is the coward?? Where is the cowardice?? Buster is absolutely right. I expect an Attorney General to talk about something more than…talk.

Last weekend the New York Times ran a poignant story on the plight of the new American poor. Middle managers forced to work menial labor after being let go as a result of the current economic crisis. 

Mark Cooper started his work day on a recent morning cleaning the door handles of an office building with a rag, vigorously shaking out a rug at a back entrance and pushing a dust mop down a long hallway.

Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s janitorial services company. But that does not make the work any easier.

“You’re fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day,” Mr. Cooper said.

More here.

Craig Nulan has done yeoman’s work in uncovering the causes and consequences of this dynamic. And reading stories like this literally breaks my heart. But note the move here? The challenges that Mr. Cooper and others face as they struggle making $10/hour is the struggle that some of us have been trying to wrestle with for decades. Obama’s attempt to shift the nation leftward is only possible when the neoliberal exception becomes the rule. I still argue that exception is worth our time and our political energy. That we should care about the people who’ve BEEN making $10/hour as well as those who NOW make that much.

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_MG_5159.jpg, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

Here’s a little game to play during your next NBA outing: Look around for how many suites are dark. (You’ll notice them specifically in the corners or behind the baskets.) A dark suite means either that nobody bought it or that somebody did buy it for the season, then made the decision, “Screw it, let’s save the $1,200 [or whatever the number is] on food and drink and not give tonight’s suite tickets to anyone.” (Note: Only a handful of NBA teams control the concessions in their arenas.) That makes the less desirable suites somewhat of a sunk cost — those companies can’t get the money back for the season, but at the very least, they won’t lose more money on that purchase. What will happen next season? They just won’t buy the suite.

The sports guy nailed it. How long before the Madison Square Garden is empty?

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