"That being said, however, I confess to being extremely confused regarding the need for and/or most effective form of a government bailout of the financial sector. My husband, who has a degree in economics, is likewise confused."

Thomas Frank on this

http://www.alternet.org/story/100393/a_wall_street_bailout_wouldn%27t_help_anyone_but_rich_investors/?page=2

"We're being dragged down by, among other things, a market in credit default swaps that we know nothing about. It's unregulated, it's unscrutinized, nobody understands it. I've read numerous stories about it -- I barely understand it."

I assume someone has already pointed this out, so to repeat:

Levin is saying that Bush and Paulson are "liberals." Ok, he's not really saying that, but he's conveniently blaming the Democrats for the bail-out even though Bush and Paulson are the ones saying "crisis, give us this power".

It's flabbergasting. It's like in Mitt Romney's RNC speech where he said D.C. and the Supreme Court and the federal spending were too liberal; that Democrats were the party of Big Brother.

It's insane.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/09/was-mitt-romney-trying-to-prove-my.html

Romney begins by saying that we need to "change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington!" and to "throw out the big government liberals." Remember that this is a campaign speech for the Republican presidential candidate. Is Mitt Romney unaware that the Executive office has been under Republican rule for the last 8 years? that the "big government liberals" Romney is talking about are President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican Congress that they had for much of their time in office?

The thing is is that it doesn't matter that Republicans have controlled much or most of the federal government - executive, legislative and judiciary - since 1980. Republicans such as Romney exist in a realm of mythology and imagination; where "liberals" are always to blame and "conservatives" by definition are never responsible for bad government. As Thomas Frank puts it in The Wrecking Crew (since blockquoting translates all text into italics, I've bolded words that Frank had italicized)

If we adopt the conservatives' own timeline and date their "revolution" to Reagan's election, it has been twenty-eight years. From that day to this, with only a few interruptions, conservatives have held either executive or legislative power over the very state that it is their article of faith to despise. The big government that they rail against, is, by and large, their government.

But "conservatives" can not recognize responsiblity for their governance because it is at odds with their ideological mythology. The narrative remains the same regardless of what the reality is: "liberals" and the "big government" establishment are the problem; "conservatives" are the solution. Frank elaborates this point through out the book

The conservatives' sense of their own exclusion is fundamental; it predicates everything they do, say, and enact. The government is never theirs, no matter how much of it they happen to control ...

...

The hallucination is dazzling, awesome. For most of the last three decades these [self-described] insurgents have controlled at least one branch of government; they were underwritten in their rule by the biggest of businesses; they were backed by a robust social movement with chapters across the radio dial. Still, however, they are the victims, the outsiders; they fight the power, the establishment, the snobs, the corrupt.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/01/mccain-aspire-dictator/

MCCAIN: I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. Its just not acceptable. […] This is just a not acceptable situation. I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently.

"For obvious reasons, that book is more relevant now than ever."

Yes, that and his previous book - Perfectly Legal - I consider essential reading.

In particular, there is a chapter in Free Lunch titled "Not since Hoover" that notes that the concentration of wealth resulting from 30 years of bipartisan Robin Hood in reverse, corporate socialism has reached levels that are virtually identical to those of 1928-29, you know, the ones that preceeded the Great Depression.

I wrote a post a while ago based on the figures from that chapter.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/07/sinking-boats-amidst-rising-tide.html

Warning - To anyone who checks that link: I mixed to sets of data from the book which differ slightly and was meaning to recheck out the book from the library and note which was which but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

http://fora.tv/2008/04/14/David_Cay_Johnston_Talks_About_Free_Lunch

That's an hour long lecture on the book from Jonston at Fora TV about the book. It's an excellent resource that let's you jump around to specific topics and discussion questions.

Yeah, the "the liberal .. He blah blah" is creepy sounding. I half expected Levin to start talking about how the nefarious hook-nosed liberal manufactures crises in order to put his one world government international banker George Soros conspiracy into action.

This is what I was getting at the other day when I expressed cynicism about the populism of House Republicans and how it reminded my of anti-Wall Street fascists in the 30s.

Obama should:

1. Point out this is what happens when a campaign is running on 4 more years of a presidency that is going to be remembered as the worst in American history ... character attacks are McCain's only hope

2. If McCain wants to start blaming Obama for the economic meltdown he's a fool. Obama should be bringing up in every speech McCain's role in the Savings and Loan scandal, and that the current economic mess is an extension and outgrowth of that bailout in the 90s.