The good news of the bad news

Yes, for those who know us, you might have expected this wouldn't be all poetry and pretty pictures. Yes, there will be our own humble rants and raves on politics, or our pointing out others' rants and raves we think more people should be paying attention to.

First stab: the good news among all this financial and economic calamity is that it seems to point to an exhaustion -- probably just temporary, of course -- of absolute, religious-like faith in the free market(as Thomas Frank's "Baffler" called it a few years ago, "The God That Sucked") as the ultimate all-wise and fair arbiter human good and progress, of orthodox neo-liberalism positing that publicly minded regulation of capital was inherently bad. The message is reinforced by the awarding of the Nobel prize to Paul Krugman -- certainly no radical, but one who warned for years that the housing bubble was in fact a bubble like those before it that would burst, but of a scale that would be systemically calamitous. He didn't get the prize, as least mostly, for his NYT editorializing, but even his academic work was instrumental in pointing out the mixed bag of neo-liberal globalization and -- what a breakthrough! -- of pointing out that what benefits a multi-national corporation does not always benefit the people in the nation where that corporation is headquarted. Stunningly simple for a change -- corporation is not synonymous with people -- and odd that we would need to be reminded of that, still.

As a good overview of the crisis, and the need to still be wary of the still ongoing canonization of neoliberal rhetoric and ideologues, lest they return after the state once again stabilizes the private sector, see this great talk by Naomi Klein, speaking against the naming of a building or something at the University of Chicago after the godfather of radical free-market ideology, Milton Friedman, himself the winner of a Nobel prize in another now bygone moment. Maybe the U. of Chicago would like to update their naming rights, and give the building to Krugman?

Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism
As the world reels from the financial crisis on Wall Street and the taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout, we spend the hour with Naomi Klein on the economy, politics and “disaster capitalism.” The Shock Doctrine author recently spoke at the University of Chicago to oppose the creation of an economic research center named after the University’s most famous economist, Milton Friedman. Klein says Friedman’s economic philosophy championed the kind of deregulation that led to the current crisis.

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2008/oct/video/dnB20081006a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=10:52