Taking stock

I am a reforming news junkie and this economic meltdown has juiced up that addiction, so to speak. I read analysis from the NYT mainly and listen to KBOO, our community radio station that offers alternative points of view....

After reading that the stimulus package passed the Senate and the market is wobbling downwards, not confident that this will fix anything, I really really wish someone, i.e. the President whom I so admire, would start talking about the utter failure of capitalism this whole debacle represents.

I don't really think that change around the edges is going to do much. The players (i.e. the Lords of Wall Street and Congress) run a system so corrupt and so ridden with greed, how can we the people trust that throwing more money at them will fix it? That someone could possibly design a regulatory system to control that level of avarice? A system that allows for extreme poverty and exploitation as part of its business model, so to speak.

I don't think so.

That old Chinese curse about being born in interesting times is really applicable here, and I actually think that this whole mess presents a great opportunity to really talk about capitalism and class in new ways.

From what I was listening to on KBOO and know from reading La Jornada, the left in Latin America is far ahead of us in terms of thinking and acting out new models. I'm going to try blogging more about what I can find/read/listen to (I have the wonderful gift of being bilingual, so I get double the access to info).

Stay tuned for more in posts to come.