Reagan, Bush I and now the worst adminstration ever, Bush II are the epitome of failed Republican administrations that are disastrous for the economy and the common good with their government of, by and for the rich and the financial system.

 

These failed GOP regimes have all been Herbert Hoovers on steroids.  Under these presidents, un-American, anti-Constitution, pro-corporate and wealthy the hell with regular working Americans have been the destructive philosophy and policies after which the Democrats had to clean up and for which the American taxpayers were always on the hook.

 

Now the politicized Federal Reserve under Bush, headed by Bushite loyalist Ben Bernanke blunders again.

 

From Naked Capitalism (h/t Cursor.org): "We noted earlier today that neither the signing of the much-touted bailout bill, nor the dramatic increase in size of the already bulked-up Term Auction Facility (it has been enlarged six-fold in a mere two weeks) has had any impact on conditions the money markets, which are barely functioning. We noted earlier and reiterated that the Fed's latest liquidity moves have in fact been counterproductive, reinforcing the propensity of banks to rely on central banks rather than each other. We also affirmed a notion voiced by John Jansen, that the Fed and other central banks need to guarantee commercial paper and interbank loans, rather than continue to engage in indirect measures that have proven useless.

 

 

Naked Capitalism continues: "This is indeed a cardiac arrest for the shadow and non-shadow banking system and for the system of financing of the corporate sector. The shutdown of financing for the corporate system is particularly scary: solvent but illiquid corporations that cannot roll over their maturing debt may now face massive defaults due to this illiquidity. And if the financing of the corporate sectors shuts down and remains shut down the risk of an economic collapse similar to the Great Depression becomes highly likely....

 

 

Jonathan Tasini at Working Life weighs in on this just being the tip of the iceberg: "

"The wild swings in the markets around the world are just the most obvious symptom of an economy heading down. You probably know by now that credit is frozen--so businesses can't borrow to pay off normal bills. Banks are just unwillining to hand out money when they have no idea what the underlying value is of the collateral being offered to secure a loan. The unwinding of the $60 trillion in credit default swaps ($60 trillion!!!--where is Ronald Reagan when we need him to tell us how high a $60 trillion stack of one dollar bills would go) is going to take a long time. Most of this language is pretty foreign to most people but here are some things that I'm guessing we can expect in the coming year, as the economic crisis deepens, that will be a lot more understandable:

   1. One or two or more big retailers go belly up. No one is going to be spending money this holiday season. You know the problem is acute when you read, as I did yesterday in the Financial Times, that Las Vegas is in a big downturn. With home equity loans a thing of the past, most people will have no more credit--and those that might have some cash are going to sit on it because everyone is worried about their jobs. No money spent=retailers go bye-bye.

   2. At least one major airline will go belly up in 2009--and may simply be absorbed or liquidated. Somewhat same reason as #1--no money means people will cut back on travel (both leisure and the more profitable business class).

   3. Demands will start picking up that public employees cut back on their "generous" pensions. I've been telling people this was coming for weeks and, sure enough, in today's New York Times we read that this about New York City:

Some fiscal watchdog groups are pressing Mr. Bloomberg to move quickly to take deficit-cutting actions that could infuriate municipal unions, including requiring many city employees to start paying health care premiums and creating a new, less generous, fifth tier of pensions for all future city employees.

   We are going to see that message coming from politicians are the city and state level.

   4. There will be a great push to say "we must now push through so-called "free trade" agreements". Mark my words: the proponents of so-called "free trade" will drag out that false nonsense that "protectionism" caused the Great Depression of the 20th Century and we will be told that if we want to avoid the same thing now, we have choice but to save the globe by pushing these bad deals through--even though, in reality, depressed incomes of millions of workers, partly brough about by these failed deals and "liberalization" generally, is at the heart of the economic crisis.

 "So, to sum up: the greedy got really greedy, played casino games with really big money and we get screwed.

 " On that note, have a  nice day."