Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Scenes from the Recession

I am copping this from Infinite Thought.

A series of images published earlier this month, dramatizations of the contemporary global financial crisis, most certainly worth looking over.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Fox News really just claimed CNN is a communist plot.

...no, really. And they 'oopsied' that Ceasar 'the lettuce guy' (no lie, direct quote) Chávez is the president of Venezuela.

Here is a gem from Fox news (which I discovered on BoRev.net), aired the morning after Mauricio Funes won the Presidency in El Salvador last Sunday.



How Fox news can be seen as anything other than an elaborate 24 joke at this point is quite beyond me.

Friday, March 13, 2009

I'm sure I'm the millionth person to post this

Possible symptoms to be smiled upon:

Some of you might have picked up on this week's battle between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer. Daily Show vs. CNBC's cheerleading us to the current clusterfuck that we call an economy. There are some real gems here: Stewart gets flustered beyond belief numerous times, but perhaps more importantly, there are a few moments at the end of the second link where: 1. Stewart describes the US as 'a nation of workers' in an attack on the financialization of contemporary markets; and 2. Stewart reaches out to his 'other' base and talks about the innocent traders on Wall Street who are also getting, in his words, 'fucked' in this mess.

In a very real way, Stewart is doing two kinds of work here: he is not only repeating the refrain of the mainstream press and politicians in the US that this crisis is the bad result of the actions of bad men. However, if this were all he were up to, we would have seen an entire program dedicated to Bernard Madoff and Shinanigans reminiscent of his appearance in 2004 on CNN's crossfire. Instead, we see the second type of work, pointing towards a (but not coming out and saying it?) systemic logic underlying this mess.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220252&title=cnbc-gives-financial-advice

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=220533

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Two rather different 'Nationalizations' in less than a week.

Venezuela...The US...

In the US, when you run your firm such that you threaten the very financial fabric of the entire universe, you get nationalized...by which of course we mean the Obama administration gives you even more of the public's money.

In Venezuela, when you run your firm in a way that threatens the health and safety of your fellow citizens in the name of 'the laws of the market,' you get nationalized...by which of course we mean that the government plans on socializing the 'goods' of the company in question, not just the fallout.