So it is imperative that the alternate news media, especially the blogosphere and progressive talk radio, continue to deliver the truth.
Thom Hartmann, whose daily Air America radio show is a national teach-in on history, politics and economics, has been doing an extraordinary job of providing context and continuity.
Recently, economist Ravi Bhatra, a frequent guest, suggested progressives not be too frustrated with the Obama administration for its adherence to the ideas of Larry Summers, Larry Geithner and others who are part of the problem.
Bhatra said this is not the time for new ideas, because no matter what is done it is going to get much worse before it gets better, and that if the Obama administration were to try new ideas now those ideas would just get blamed for the inevitable bottoming out.
But you can listen to Hartmann for free on the Internet, you can tune in on the air waves if you are fortunate to have a progressive station in your area, or you can subscribe to Air America's premium service and download the podcast.
And then of course there is the indefatigable Amy Goodman. Here is an excerpt from a very insightful interview she recently did with another worthy economist, Jamie Galbraith:
AMY GOODMAN: Professor James Galbraith is still with us, economist, University of Texas. His book, The Predator State. Explain the bailout and what you think should happen today.
JAMES GALBRAITH: Well, the crucial question is, on what terms does the Treasury plan to guarantee or to repurchase or to otherwise deal with the bad assets that the banks have? These assets are mortgage-backed securities. They are securities derived from subprime loans that were made in an atmosphere of regulatory laxness and complicity and fraud, basically, during the Bush administration, which came to take over the system of housing finance and to infect it with assets which nobody trusts, which nobody can value. And nobody really knows what’s in the files, what’s on the loan tapes of those—that underlie those securities. So the question that I think we need to ask is, before we issue a public guarantee, does the Treasury of the United States plan to conduct a meticulous audit of the assets that underlie the securities that they’re expecting to take off the banks’ books, so that we, the taxpayer, can have an idea of what, if anything, these securities are worth?
And the problem is that when you—the little bit of checking that has been done appears to reveal that a very large fraction of these securities contain, on the face of it, misrepresentation or fraud in the files. And so, we are looking at an asset which nobody, no outside investor doing due diligence on behalf of a client for whom they have some responsibility, would touch. And that is the issue. That’s the problem.
If that is indeed the case, then I think it’s fair to conclude that the large banks, which the Treasury is trying very hard to protect, cannot in fact be protected, that they are in fact insolvent, and that the proper approach for dealing with them is for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to move in and take the steps that the FDIC normally takes when dealing with insolvent banks.
And the sooner that you get to that and the sooner that you take these steps, which every administration, including the Bush administration, actually took in certain cases—replacing the management, making the risk capital take the first loss, reorganizing the institution, guaranteeing the deposits so that there isn’t a run, reopening the bank under new management so that it can begin to function again as it should have all along as a normal bank—the sooner you get to that, the more quickly you’ll work through the crisis.
The more you delay and the more you try to essentially prop up an institution whose books have already been poisoned, in effect, by this—the practices of the past few years, the longer it will take before the credit markets begin to function again. And as I said before, the functioning of the credit markets is absolutely essential to the success of the larger package, of the stimulus package and everything else, in beginning to revive the economy. Democracy Now, 2-10-09
For an archive of Words of Power posts on Economic Insecurity, click here.
For Words of Power's archive of posts on Corporate News Media Complicity, Power of Alternative Media, Propaganda & Freedom, click here.
Richard Power's Left-Handed Security: Overcoming Fear, Greed & Ignorance in This Era of Global Crisis is available now! Click here for more information.
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