As Holmes would say, "Quick Watson, there's not a moment to lose. The game is afoot!"

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In times of crisis, one needs to have some "ideas lying around," ready to go at a moment's notice during times of crisis. How about tax cuts, deregulation, and Bail-outs? The party of "faith-based economics" really socked it to us this time. Read my lips: "No Bailouts!"

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yesterday and I intend to call my senators today.

I used 'talking' points gleaned from watching DemocracyNow yesterday. Basically that the bail-out is in fact a stick-up. Not a good idea.

I called MSNBC too and got through to Chris Matthews' voicemail. What a thrill. I told him how to solve the problem, told him I understand the economics and post here about religion and politics.

I told them the solution was renegotiating people's mortgages, keeping them in their homes. Banks should be forced to do this like they used to have to do.

Anyone pushing a rush on this thing looks guilty of attempting to commit some very serious crimes. I can't wait for their criminal investigations. They ARE terrorists, right? All those nasty new laws they passed to fight 'terrorism' can be used on them, right?

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What’s your Rush?
Talk about shooting America in the face.
Trying to get out of Dodge,
With your saddle bags full of Taxpayer money?

Bush is a Horse Thief!
Impeach him now!

He is finally first at something!
He finishes first in,
Bush/Cheney/McCain
Race to Disgrace!

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(Transcript from Alex Jones Sunday 9/21 KLBG show): "If you go and you look at the evidence in the book I wrote back in 2002, 9/11, Descent into Tyranny, the last chapter lays out how in the next eight years, and we’re now six years into that, how they would artificially implode the debt, restrict the credit, and then “have a bailout” that basically bankrupted the people of the world to the IMF and World Bank and to the private families that own the private Federal Reserve and the IMF and World Bank.

So this is the big scam. The banks can’t trick you to take out a loan on a farm you can’t pay because what they really want is that land. The banks can’t trick you to sign away your birthright and your children’s future. But they can go buy off your government, militarize your police and military, generationally, while they get the wealth off the control they have in the earlier sets of the Ponzi scheme, and then come in and bring in total tyranny.

And this is what they have done. So this is not a bail-out you are seeing. This is mass raping of the economy. This is done by design, and they are moving in army brigades so that when you really find out what’s happening, when you riot because they’ve taken your pension fund and destroyed your future, they can use microwave guns and machine guns down the street.

Now the good news is, most of the military and police I’ve talked to are now aware of this because of people like Jim Marrs and myself and others who have been out there warning people, so they are not going to go along with it.

I wish this wasn’t the truth, but it’s really happening.

Now, it’s been said many different ways by many different historians and people of note, philosophers, that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. And if one wants to understand the present and the future, they’d have a grasp of history because humans tend to act the same; there’s nothing new under the sun, and the same scams get developed, the same ideas, the same mindsets. And if you study the Nazis and you study Fascism in Italy and Germany, and if you learn who the players were in the United States, England and Germany, who funded the fascists and the communists, and when you read books by Carroll Quigley, the top Georgetown professor and Bill Clinton’s mentor, he explains it in a 900-page book how the big banks funded the fascists and the communists, and they created a dialectic. They control the left/right. And then you think you have a choice, but it’s a controlled choice.

But they are going with the fascist model right now. They brought down the communist model in ’91. That got them some control and domesticated the population. Now they are going with the fascist model.

Now don’t think of a Nazi as a guy with a mustache. I have a picture here I drew on the front of Newsweek, “What Bush Got Right,” and I drew a little mustache on him. And you know we can joke about that all day, but he is just a puppet. But his grandfather was the head U.S. Nazi in the United States, and that was even in the New York Times 50 some years ago. So Jim Marrs, best-selling author, wrote the book Crossfire on JFK, helped write the screenplay and was the main consultant on that film. His new book, The Rise of the Fourth Reich is a New York Times best-seller, available everywhere and as well at Infowars.com, along with the film I made four years ago about the same subject. But he’s got 100 times more detail, and it is shocking.

And so when the Nazis were brought to the U.S. when Germany fell, they were coming back home. They were coming from where they’d sprung. And that’s why they were put in charge of not just NASA but every other major agency. And so now you’ll understand what’s really happening."

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Take whatever position you like on the other policy points he makes, but Gingrich is 100% right that Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) has failed. Every company that has gone under or had serious trouble in the current crisis is under SOX regulations and none of the reporting or auditing required by SOX has shown even a blip.

If anything, it has driven these problems into hiding by companies going private or moving operations overseas to avoid the cost of implementing SOX controls, which don't provide any kind of early warning to these types of issues.

Totally agree that the regulatory environment need an overhaul but expensive regs like SOX that don't actually prevent bad behavior or fix any problems are a drag on the system.

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Would suffice to prevent a reoccurance, otherwise, they get their hands slapped, and they start all over again, designing new ways to fleece the American Taxpayer.

Leadership by the Republican Pirates is economic suicide.

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They want everything – and quickly. They want to complete the looting of the USA (by the will of God of course…)
Steve Bartlett, President and CEO of The Financial Services Roundtable, a believer in deregulations and sanctity of CEOs exorbitant pay, made a threat on the public radio by suggesting that the banks could stop money withdrawal on a business card, for example, at a gas pump.
Paulson and such are the highly-paid enavlers of thugs and they must be stopped. The golden parachutes that were awarded to the “captains” of the financial industry during last 8 years (following Gramm’s deregulation fiat) must be suspended till a thorough investigation of Wall Street policy makers is completed.

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I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The American voter elected the ignoramus sitting in the oval office, not once but twice. They knew from the first four years what a fool and liar he was and still reelected him. Now they are simply reaping what they have sown. It seems very logical to me. He's your man and he is doing your job, the one you gave him. So, as the judge said, get used to it!

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...that most Democrats are believers in the tenants of the Neo-Liberal religion. Most of them supported the deregulation legislation that made this most recent heist possible, and they are not likely to do anything about if people don't call them out for the bad policy they supported. Obviously, the overturning of Glass-Steagall needs to be undone, but it simply isn't going to happen unless enough people demand it.

I live in Seattle, and I recall going to a town hall meeting of U.S. Congressman Jim McDermott in 2001. This was at the time that people all over the country, most notably California, were getting ripped off the utility deregulation. When McDermott was asked a question about the negative effects of utility deregulation, McDermott just shrugged his shoulders and said that it is difficult to imagine utility deregulation being undone, as if utility deregulation were the equivalent of a major earthquake rocking Puget Sound. Of course, McDermott, an unapologetic NAFTA supporter, voted for utility deregulation, and I'm sure he voted for financial services deregulation as well.

Meanwhile, at the same time a bill to re-regulate the utility industry, and re-impose a utility system with democratic oversight and cost based, rather commodities based, pricing, had been introduced by Congressman DeFazio of Oregon.

Of course, DeFazio's bill went nowhere. Indeed, Congressman McDermott, it is difficult to imagine undoing deregulation if you refuse to support legislative efforts to re-regulate industry.

I'm sure somebody like a Kucinich in Congress will introduce legislation to re-impose the wall of separation between banking, investment and insurance required by Glass-Steagall. It will get no support from followers of the Neo-Liberal religion in the Democratic Party, such as McDermott and his ilk. When asked about financial service deregulation, McDermott will just shrug his shoulders again and say that it is difficult to imagine it being undone. And the people of his district won't say boo about this and continue to re-elect him in yet another election landslide every two years.

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Although I have read Naomi's book on disaster capitalism, and found that I concur with its premise and conclusions, I'm in the dark as to how we will combat the evident rush to conquer our own countries (US and Canada) from within with this manufactured crisis. The profound ignorance of most of the electorate as to how the economy works (myself included) cannot have been an accident, but it's too late to reeducate all of North America in the few weeks prior to the US election, which may or may not be suspended. Senator Obama represents the more moderate wing of the single party ruling the US, and his features and rhetorical skills will no doubt serve to mollify the less racist and dispensationalist portions of the polity, but with Rubin waiting in the wings to assume the reins of the economy from the Republicans, I can't see how we as a people will free ourselves from the rule of Capital after this election. The North Americam population has not experienced warfare or severe deprivation on our soil for at least 75 years, and without those conditions being within living memory, I have little hope that sanity or even informed debate will occur anytime soon. Without developing a bunker mentality, and descending into general chaos, how can we prevent the incipient fascist/corporatist state from becoming reality?

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Newt crawled out from under his Rock to advocate for more 'Shit Rolls Down Hill' Economics?First Your employment was Terminated, NEWT and so was your Criminal Contractual Swindle. We threw you out with your rancid 'bath water' long ago. Go hang out with Buchanan at some Psychiatric Hopsital- you Are JUST as Delusional and Confused!
Newt Shouldn't be facing talk show moderators, He should be facing a Jury!
The so calle d'Republican PARTY, has controlled the WH or the Congress for Decades. We are now living out THEIR GLOBAL FANTASIES- America Up for Auction!
That little 'Contract' was ON AMERICA!Predatory Economic Hitmen.
Crawl back under your Rock NEWT, or you may have to pay the Piper with the Rest of your Orgnaized Crime Sydicate associates!
I've invested in Recycled Paper Plates....The Silver Platters are too valueable!

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I have been thinking "Shock Doctrine" 20 times a day lately.

That's why I'm posting here rather than under one of the front pagers.

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If all the dollars in existence today were redistributed in the U.S., everyone would be rich. The amount of wealth created over the last 60 years keeps increasing because there have been no adequate ways to destroy it. Rich families pass the wealth on to the children who then only add to it. More and more people become millionaires, other people become billionaires, and within twenty more years we will begin to see trillionaires. 64 trillion dollars already reside in debt securities and hedge funds. Controlling this money and keeping it out of the hands of the lower classes is the big problem of the day for the money managers. The war in Iraq is nowhere near adequate to reduce this huge sac of infection. Were it to be released on the public, the inflation of the past twenty years would descend upon us like a tidal wave. The frantic attempts of the money managers to dispose of $1trillion in this bailout is only the beginning. Successive crises will remove money from the economy leaving us with millions of food service workers, nursing home workers, housecleaners, lawn-care workers, and security personnel with nothing to do because the middle class will be cooking, caring for their own aged parents, cleaning their own houses, mowing their own lawns and doing their own laundry again. Only those who are positioned to stay on top will do well including those who engineered the crises.

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This is an issue to build upon, left and right. You'll find lots of company among ordinary market traders--not the big, rich suits. They don't like the bailout either, for basically the same reasons Naomi Klein dislikes it.

IMO, it's an opportunity to form a new coalition of regular citizens whom you may not agree with entirely, but it's a start. For real change to happen, there's a need to find common ground and allies in more than the usual places.

Check out the comments after the stories about the bailout, and I think you'll be surprised--not by everyone, but there are enough people there to create a new consensus and perhaps a stronger movement for change.

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When I checked CBS MarketWatch on Wikipedia, I found the following:

"MarketWatch, formerly known as CBS Marketwatch, operated in partnership with Viacom's CBS News. Once a publicly traded company, MarketWatch was 45% owned by Viacom and Pearson PLC before Dow Jones acquired it in January 2005 for over $500 million. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Jones. MarketWatch is part of Dow Jones' Consumer Media Group, along with The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, the WSJ.com and affiliated Internet properties."

Can I trust the Wall Street Journal to give me good advice concerning whether or not this $700 billion Wall Street welfare package is good for me on Main Street? I think not.

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was cheating on his wife while being a sanctimonious douchebag at the same time.

jdfu!

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This looks suspcious, this meltdown just before an election they are bound to lose. This timing was well planned, and if the people riot, they have their trained Blackwater soldiers to put down any trouble. Folks, I am afraid that they have stolen our country. Have the government seize everything until we straighten it out.

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that we can run a "reverse shock doctrine" move on Wall Street here?

jdfu!

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Would a mob of a million or so angry taxpayers marching right down the mall and into the Capitol building put fear in their deeply self-interested hearts?

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