Regarding the nationalization of the banks, the people in the United States should stop looking to Europe, and Japan as the only places to find historical references. The United States government and the media should look south to Mexico which in 1994-1995 had the worst financial crisis in its post revolution history (1910-1921), worst than the current one in the US. In 1995 the Mexican Government took over the failed banks and other big industries through the Fobaproa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobaproa. The Fobaproa wasn’t short of controversies, but years latter the problem was solved. The banks were sold to private companies like the biggest bank Banamex to Citibank. From 1992 to today the value of the Mexicans peso has decreased 5 times against the dollar from 3 to 15 pesos per dollar, but in the same time the stock exchange increased 10 folds more than the S&P 500 At the same time, inequality in Mexico has been reduced.

On Point, the greatest show in radio, should invite former president Zedillo who implemented the Fobaproa and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization at Yale University (no one can imagine Bush performing the same task). He is also friend of Larry Summers. Zedillo spoke about the US Banks problem in Davos, but in the US it went unreported, as same as any useful comparison of the Mexican solution to its insolvent banks.

For most people in the US the world starts in San Diego and ends in Stockholm, everything else are failed States.

HEADLINE TODAY ON MS-NBC:
“Corporate America’s Giants Crumbling”
Apparently globalization didn’t spread risk as effectively as was thought… instead it exposed these MegaCorps to too many immature markets.

I’ve been feeding this argument to friends for years:

Large corporations are burning the U.S. economy to fuel world-wide (esp. Asian) expansion, and they’ll regret it.
Why?
Because the world doesn’t have enough resource wealth to grow twice anything like the massive consumer society that was grown over centuries in the U.S.

In effect, corporations have killed their Cash Cow and shot themselves in the foot (how’s that for two quick cliches?)

China and much of Asia was never going to spend like Americans. They have an ethic of thrift that cannot be easily wiped away, and they simply don’t have the economic infrastructure. It was sheer stupidity and greed that led MegaCorps to believe they could expand idiotic consumerism across the globe.

On the plus side?

Americans can now join the rest of the world in poverty. We have lived off of the backs of the third world, plundering their wealth ensuring their leadership was subservient to corruption… and now one more cliche: the hens have come home to roost.

What “economic infrastructure” am do I mean?

Stores on every corner making any goods whatever available in every neighborhood: easy credit everywhere; the ability to deliver goods and services instantly anywhere, etc, etc.

These things which existed in the U.S. like they existed nowhere else are now disappeearing from america as well, and nothing will be the same ever again.

Michael Steele has shown what most believed him to be, when first he stated what rush really is and than had to run back and say he is sorry for it. and pretty much begged for forgiveness.

This show the extreme down-side to global capitalism, where as before the us built thing to us as a service society and if one big company or companies decide to take on far to much risk and not invest in itself for the future, short-run massive profits, long-run the government has to bail them out with tax payers money, than u top to boot it not only affects us it affects the whole world. and vice versa. And because people in our government tied so much of our savings to the stock market there can in turn hold us and the government hostage to get there money or atleast lighten there losses.

Jack,

The SEC is full of lawyers who don’t know anything about high finance and markets. I know someone who might be getting a job there as an SEC attorney, but he is not financial wiz….they need to fill that place with people like Markopolis, the guy who had warned the SEC about Madoff for months with no action.

“At the same time, inequality in Mexico has been reduced.” must mean that most everyone there now is equally impoverished.
As it is here now, the middle calss in this country is practically wiped out because of the lack of savings, losses in home values and the destruction of personal retirement accounts. We have gone from four oh one ks to two oh half ks and headed for one oh quarter ks, accompanied by astronomical increases in education and health care expenses, thus taking the medical care and higher education out the reach of the middle class, Yes we could leran a lot form the Mexican experience, now that we have become the northern province of Mexico, thanks to the bankers. Just as i had predicted in 2004
http://tombstone001.blogspot.com/2009/03/reminiscing.html

There ARE other names for so called ” high fincnces” such as ponzi schemes, shell games, trickery, lying, cheating, obfuscating, skimming, and more

If you want to save the economy, end or suspend mark-to-market accounting immediately, as Steve Forbes has repeatedly recommended, and ban naked short selling. If not, be prepared to ride it all the way to a bottom that will make an abyss look like a pothole.

This is the worst lineup of guests you have had for a Week in Review I have ever heard. And after last week, which was maybe the best.

It may be too tangential to be brought into the discussion, but I think that there is an enormous amount of economy to be created in getting the citizens of this country healthy.

I wish liberals like Jack were better educated about health care systems in the world. They know about Canada, which is close by and English-speaking, so they insist that “single payer” is the only real way to control health care costs. But most of the affluent nations in the world do just fine with multiple payer systems; the best systems, like France, are multiple-payer, not single payer. The perverse obsession with single payer on the left is actually one of the problems we’ve had with health care reform; during the Clinton struggle many liberals sat on their hands dreaming of what they imagined to be the best reform, rather than working for the reform in front of them. You can cite polls about how Americans love single payer, but those polls are silly. Once you start talking about eliminating an entire industry with hundreds of thousands of jobs, and replacing it with a government bureaucracy I guarantee you those polls will move, and not in the direction you would like. But the fundamental point here is that there are plenty of ways to do what we need to do without single payer. I urge liberals to read about Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan and all the non-English speaking nations that deliver high-quality universal care for 75% or less of what we spend.

I am an Obama supporter, but I worry that if the economy recovers too soon – before a Grapes of Wrath depression – there will be a lack of political will to address the fundamental problems that have delivered us to this juncture. Excesses of compensation for doctors and brokers, inequities between production line salaries and board room salaries, the disparity between the rich and poor, capitalism without social conscience or compassion, and many other issues are the bedrock on which the current crisis is built.
John
Amherst, MA

Did I just hear Matthew Continetti say that “Republican’s aren’t in power, so they won’t get a chance to try their ideas for reform?”

Where was this idiot for the 12 years Republicans WERE in power???!!!! Eight for six of those years they had both houses AND the presidency AND huge revenues!!???
All Republicans managed in that time was MASSIVE giveaways to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Matthew Continetti is either clueless or a lying partisan hack!

And can someone in the media please counter the Republican talking point that Republicans are completely out of power and Dems can doo anything they want? Last I checked, Republicans were still thwarting Dems with their one all important swing vote. Nothing can get done without the Republican leadership willingly donating that one vote.

Mr. Ashbrook,

The missile defense system is being mischaracterized by your panel. While the mainstream media takes seriously the notion the US is building this to defend the Czech Republic from Iran; in technical literature and foreign policy journals in the US and in Asia it is widely recognized as a component in giving the United States “first strike capability”, something it has sought since 1949.

The reason the US or Russia dont have first strike capabilities now, is that if say the US attacks Russia with everything it has, it is still likely a small number of missiles would survive to retaliate against the US; hence “Mutually Assured Destruction”. A missile defense shield cannot, as Condi Rice points out, defend against the full force of Russia’s arsenal, that is, a Russian first strike. However it COULD defend against a Russian retaliation that is cripple from a US first strike.

That is to say, in sum, the missile defense shield would give the US the power to attack Russia without fearing any retaliation. You may not agree with it, but this is how it is talked about in security and foreign policy journals; even establishment publications like Foreign Affairs. It is only on CNN or Fox News that this is taken seriously as defending eastern europe from iran.

Thank you,

Kevin Maley

Tom Burke is right about the single payer system.
Canada is the worst country too look to.

Switzerland, had a system much like our and they rebuilt it from the ground up and it is a multiple payer system.

The insurance and pharmaceutical companies objected and were pushed screaming and dragging into the system and you know what everyone is happy for the most part.

The Netherlands is another system to look at.

However we are our worst enemies as Walt Kelly was found of saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us”…

People in this country seem to still cling to this idea that government is bad and big government is worse.
I have one idea that all Conservatives and Libertarians and all of us for that matter should think about; the Bush years have shown us what this kind of ideology can bring, a complete destruction of good government. Witness Katrina which is still a problem. Witness the debacle in Iraq. Look at how a huge amount of what the government does or did was out sourced to private companies at huge waste to tax payers. Fraud was rampant and there was little or no oversight or competitive bidding. My impression of Obama is that he is keenly aware of this and I think that he wants to make government better, more efficient and less wasteful, to all the naysayers out there I have two questions.

1: What’s wrong with that?
2: Do you have any better ideas?

Before you respond with the typical Republican party line please think about this; supply side has failed, Reaganomics has failed. All of the ideology of small government and unfettered market economics has failed.

I don’t have any answers, all I know is that what we are now living through is the results of a lot of things going wrong all at the same time due to these failures mentioned above.

Its hard to believe that no one bothered to respond to the right wing spin master’s comment that unemployment rates always go up when union membership goes up. Guess its just another sign of the times and politicians’, as well as the media’s, abject reflective movement to right in response to the “think tanks” spin of the last several decades.

Pulezzzz

Tom and Jack,

I love your show but you and other members of the press fan the flames of anxiety about the economy by the way you talk about it. I know you feel passionately about the current state of affairs, but as the bearer of news you have the opportunity to provide the wider context. Of course things will get worse before they improve. It has just been weeks since Obama has laid out his plans. The news will continue to show a deterioration for awhile, but then things will, hopefully, improve. New figures coming out each day or week are part of a larger process of meeting a crisis and working it through.

This seems particularly important when so much depends on a confidence or lack of confidence in the economy. The barrage of figures only creates doubt when in fact a lot of what is happening is unfortunately predictable as we try to work ourselves out of this crisis. Just a calm statement of reality can help listeners hear the news without becoming overly discouraged: “as might be expected, unemployment continues to rise”, etc. As Obama is doing, we need to urge folks to go out and spend (within reason) and buy homes and cars and invest in the market. If they don’t, we won’t recover.

Indeed it might be interesting to have a program on how the coverage of this crisis has been and how that coverage might be affecting those struggling to understand what has happened and what may fix it.

Thanks for your great work,

DS

You guys have the “Rush” thing all wrong.
During the campaign, even the slightest criticism of Obama brought out the “Race” card.
Now the Democrats are in charge and the Republicans are scrambling to recover. What better way to recover than to also have an African-American as the head of the party!
But this poses a problem for the Democrats. To criticize Steel? This has the potential for the same tactics used to cover Obama to be used against the Democrats themselves. Hence, the need for a ‘whipping boy’! What better ‘whipping boy’ for the Democrats than Rush Limbaugh!

If steele is the republicans obama, than due tell me how noone stood up against rush when he tore into steele, I been following steele for awhile and he is a spin doctor and token for the repubican party to use and say things that most republican what to say but cant.

I watched him on foxes say the whole reason where in this recession was because of black minority, spin deregulation policies, as if it was going great but there needed to be more deregulation and that was the cause of our problems and we should cut cap gain taxes even lower.

Steele got own by rush cause the repub party dont respect him and is using him(like there did with palin for hillary supporters) to get people on there side nothing more, nothing less.

As for Rush L. and republicans instead of trying to before more moderate and think outside the boxes they ran to rush l. asked him to speak for them and raise the hardcore right-wing troops for them. Please name a current congressman or senate republican that criticizes rush and doesnt run back and say sorry to him.

It took steele less than a day to hand his jewels back to him.

fyi it wasnt dems who told steele to make his comments about what is true about rush and than for rush to ripe into steele, and running back to him to say sorry. we just watched it happen.

If there was such an animal as a Moderate Republican anymore there would be a possibility for a rebirth of the Republican party.

Instead, they have become Rushactionary Rushpublicans with no real leaders, so they turn to simplistic ‘me-toos’ in the form of Palin for Hillary and Steele for Obama.

While those outside the confimes of the right-wing delusion see the obvious tokenism, the insiders really see their send-ups as the real deal.

When elected Party officials have to apoligize for their perspectives to a bloviating blowhard, how can that Party be considered viable?

the future of the GOP is in its past – returning to traditional conservative fiscal policy, a sensible non-interventionist foreign policy, strong defense of civil liberties.

The man that embodies those values is Congressman Ron Paul, who cause quite a stir and set fund raising records despite the mainstream media’s best attempts to crush his upstart candidacy.

Ron Paul called the recession in the debates in December of 07, while the other candidates were still blowing smoke up your you-know-whats. He understands economics and knows that phony “stimulus” and bailouts just steal from the productive parts of society to reward the failures. He honors and respects the Constitution. This is what the GOP should be all about. This is also what the Democrats should be all about, instead of trying to create the USSR 2.0

Jack Beatty, you make absolutely no effort to be balanced in your presentation of news and it drives me crazy. You need to advertise yourself as extremely liberal and we would all be better off.

It’s convenient for the White House that they seized onto this Rush Limbaugh controversy since it distracts from the facts that they don’t have substantive ideas to get us out of these problems… let’s quit talking about Rush Limbaugh!! Please, Rahm Emmanuel- stick to what really matters. Don’t waste tax payer money with this stupid argument.