Dear Andrew,

On the Today show, of all the mainstream media places (i.e. corporate propaganda outlets), Charlie Gasparino was saying that the banks haven't learned their lesson. He made the case that the banks are still weak, and still aren't lending money. His message: don't trust the stock market or the green shoots just yet. And he looked back and the financial sector is a story of ever-increasing bailouts.

Your own reporting seems to indicate that the banking sector is successfully fending off any meaningful reform. It also seems to indicate that they aren't behaving as if they just dodged a bullet aimed for their heart, meaning they haven't done anything to reduce risky behavior. They are still fully exposed to a possible crisis in commercial real estate. Many are still zombie banks.

NPR aired someone (sorry, forget who) saying the banking crisis is effectively wasted. Apparently, even with Dodd apparently working against type (The senior senator from Wall Street) proposing to consolidate financial enforcement into one agency, this is not likely to happen.

I know you and I have specifically discussed this in the past. But I have to ask again – are you sure we shouldn't have let the financial sector crash last October? It would have been bitter medicine indeed. But are we going to continue with the status quo until the government CAN'T AFFORD to bail out the banks? By which I mean, they won't be able to afford to help any of the rest of us, either. That situation won't merely be bitter medicine. If the patient will be helped at all, it will be comatose for a long time – or worse, violently epileptic, hurting lots and lots of people in the process.

I was nervous and worried about the crash last year. Now I'm really afraid of the next crash. I suspect it will come soon, not in 80 more years. Why? Mostly because we really haven't done anything about this one other than put a leaky tourniquet on the problem. Or engage in "political theater."

Best Regards,

Bryan Hayward

As an earlier post alluded to, if Snowe had toed the line, power would have shifted to the Left. This was a way to show that there was still utility in negotiating with Rethugs. Had Snowe said "no" like the rest of the Repugs, it would have been easy for the Left to justify to everyone that we might as well do the public option since we weren't going to get any Rethug votes anyway by giving it up. Snowe is keeping the corporatists influence intact by this vote.

The Cash for Clunkers didn't last long enough to be stimulative. It was barely funded sufficiently to be considered a pilot program.

This sounds even worse - surrounded by plastic rather than wood and stone. "Ugh" is right.

The moving away for a job is, IMHO, about corporatism. To hell with families, the corporations pack up and move to wherever taxes and wages are lowest.

It affects me in a rather subtle way. I have a job 3 hours away from where my son goes to school. I found a decent school, and I dare not gamble that some other school nearby is tolerable. (Chances are they are not - I've checked.) Why are decent schools hard to find? So many corporations move out after the tax break expires - the one they negotiated to move in. So schools don't get the money they need, and rely heavily on property taxes, which is a losing game from the start.

So, for my son's sake, I'm a weekend dad, even though I'm still (happily) married. That sucks, since we actually still love each other.

Once he graduates from high school (less than a school year left!) my wife and I are determined to live together. Since the housing market is so bad (and in the area where we own the home, it is even worse), chances are we'll have to live in an efficiency until the house sells - and we will probably have to short sell (sell for less than the house is worth). But we've learned what is important. Better to live in squalor together than in a (Mc)mansion apart.

...or someone like him, and we might be in the middle of a civil war.

I don't exaggerate. The more I realize how insulated the Right (poor and rich alike) is from reality, the more it seems like the people who ought to hate the rich the most would be motivated to defend them.

So when the "average" American would be trying the oligarchy for crimes under the idealogue Secretary scenario, the morons with "Bush/Cheney '04" bumper stickers and a mouth full of wintergreen flavored tobacco would have come riding to their rescue. They would believe, as Faux News would tell them, that the Communist, atheist, gay libruls were coming to take over Washington.

Liberals should start owning and training with guns, or they'll be slaughtered when the country finally splits apart at the hands of the Limbaughs, Becks, and O'Reillys.

Can an economic superpower survive on services and light industry alone? We may be about to find out.

It depends on how much of a percentage of our current "10%" of the economy labeled "manufacturing" is this light industry. If light and heavy industry combined only makes up 10%, then (snark) I'll go out on a limb (/snark) and say we're totally screwed.

If only heavy industry is 10%, and light industry makes up a significant portion of the rest, we might have a chance.

"Services" are useless.

After years of flying under the radar, Salon was Websensed by my employer today.

Funny how The Wall Street Journal escaped their filter.