The 74th day of the oil spill in the Gulf

2010_7_02 Today marks the 74th day of the oil spill in the gulf
In his Wednesday column Paul Krugman said we are in the early stages of the nation’s third Depression, which he termed a “Long Depression” rather than a Great Depression. The dynamic of what we are experiencing is slump, improvement, relapses. There will be an immense cost due to a failure of policy and because the G20 are obsessing about inflation and belt-tightening. PK said that the real threat is from deflation and inadequate spending. The recession brought on in 2008 and 2009 by the financial crisis caused by Wall Street caused in turn the catastrophic unemployment which has ravaged the working and middle classes, now in the grips of long term unemployment, while the rich continue to get richer due to their preeminence and predominance in the country’s financial structure which has been protected by the policies of a naïve and not-aggressive-enough Obama administration. The unemployment situation shows no sign of truly abating or being remedied. According to Les Leopold 30 million people are unemployed or stuck with part time work. The Old Time Religion is in force right now—hard money and balanced budget orthodoxy—and Obama and his cohorts don’t seem able to cope with it.
In his column today PK was equally pessimistic and super-critical. He said he and some other economists have watched in amazement and horror as a policy of fiscal austerity has come out on top, rather than an expansionary policy of spending and stimulus. It is the result of conventional wisdom that has no relation to facts; he equates it with a fairy tale, with a channeling of Herbert Hoover. So the western countries remain mired in a deep Recession. He calls the counties we have borrowed from “Bond Vigilantes,” and our fear is they will call in our debt. There is a puritanical foundation to this conventional wisdom and fear, a paranoid worry that the other guy, who is so different then we are, will take us over, and that applies to Islomofacism as well as Saudi Arabia and China, the main Bond Vigilantes. Conventional wisdom argues that austerity will create confidence and economic growth, which is why we must appease the Bond Vigilantes. Alan Greenspan calls these worries “the canary in the mines.” He ends his column with this advice: “ The next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity…you’ll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us it we are bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we we’re good. And real-world policy—policy that will blight the lives of working families—is being built on that foundation.”
Naomi Wolf writes that innocent individuals are being punished for a crisis created by the derivative traders and absentee regulators. She also has recently pointed out that the G 20 was founded by Paul Martin of France and Larry Summers who allowed bank consolidation and refused to regulate derivatives. They were taking care of their own kind.
Christopher Hitchens has esophageal cancer and has cancelled his schedule for the rest of the summer to seek chemo treatment for his affliction.
The paradox for Republicans is this: They want to regain control of the government in November when they hate it with a passion and want only to make it dysfunctional and ineffective. The only thing it is good for is building up out military and our number one status in the world. The rest of the government they want to “drown in a bathtub.”
CNN has lost 7 anchors this year;
1.) Larry King…He is retiring from his show which has been falling in the ratings. There is a rumor that Ryan Seacrest will take King’s place. He is a juvenile delinquent who will probably have a naked lady Gaga as his first guest. Larry King had stiff competition once Rachel Maddow showed up on MSNBC,
2.) Campbell Brown…Another victim of poor ratings, as she was up against the popular Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. So far she hasn’t shown up any place else,
3.) Christiane Amanpour…She decided to move over to ABC where she was offered THIS WEEK, their thriving Sunday show. She’s a good journalist and I am glad to see she found a good spot to operate from.
4.) Lou Dodds…He has dreams of running for president or being Black Bart on the border.
5.) Gerri Willis…Their Finance adviser (Went to Fox Business Channel)
6.) Erica Hill…Daytime anchor (Went to the EARLY SHOW on CBS)
7.) Betty Nguyen…Saturday Morning Anchor (Now a CBS Correspondent)
Eliot Spitzer and Kathlene Parker are going to team together in the slot previously occupied by Campbell Brown. Spitzer, the disgraced ex-Governor of New York, is in the midst of a comeback, which is a good thing because he is a bright, talented man whose positive contributions can’t be ignored. Parker is a syndicated columnist who I rarely read, so I can’t say much about her. But I suspect Spitzer will be the heavyweight of the pairing.
ABC EVENING News showed a picture of an Alabama beach tonight from one year ago and the beach was crawling with people, in the water and out. Today, the 74th day of the BP oil spill, there was nary a soul on that beach.