The biggest pinch.

Brad has a post up about the alarmingly high prices that gas could reach in the future, and he asks people how they’re coping.

But seriously: we need to solve this problem because it’s not getting better. I’m fortunate in that my current job allows me to work from home once or twice a week, although I’m still spending around $50 a week on gas. I’m trying to organize a group of my fellow employees to pitch in for a shuttle service that will take us from the commuter rail to the office every day; how are the rest of you coping?

Luckily, I barely have to drive, since I work from home and live in the city, which means I can walk or bicycle almost everywhere I go. I even braved bicycling to the dentist and back to get a filling done. (My first cavity ever, and my reason for concern was I had no idea how scary it would be and whether or not I’d have to be sedated. Luckily, no. I’m not that big a weenie.) I think I drive to Marc’s studio more than any other place, and even that will probably not be an issue after we move even more central in a couple of months. I often seriously consider selling my truck, but a pick-up truck is a useful thing to have and I just know that if I did sell it, then the next month would be when I started to have need to haul shit around. In fact, the new place has a garden, so I’ll soon have a more immediate need to haul large amounts of compost and mulch, so there you go.

My main concern at this point is inflation of everything else, especially food prices. I don’t drive much, but I eat a whole lot, and food is getting expensive, and I think transportation costs are a big part of it. And of course, oil costs affect the cost of growing or raising the food in the first place, so rising oil prices hit food production at every point in the process. Americans are doing a lot better than people in other parts of the world, but still, it’s a belt-tightener.

What are your concerns? Not everyone can do what I do and just bike everywhere they need to go. What creative solutions to high gas prices have you come up with?

Come on, people. Instead of praying for lower gas prices, you need to v-o-t-e out all the Rethugs who rubber-stamped the current administration’s policies and warmongering that got us here.

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it’s come to that.

“God is the only one we can turn to at this point,” said Twyman, 59. “Our leaders don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring.”

…”God, deliver us from these high gas prices,” Twyman said. “That’s all they have to say.”

As one commenter at my pad said:

I wonder how God rates Twyman’s suffering from high gas prices as compared to the suffering of someone, say, raking through garbage on a steaming trash heap in the outskirts of Lagos, searching for something edible, or of someone who has lost his legs or eyesight from a bomb dropped last week on Sadr City.

Since Americans are God’s chosen people, perhaps Twyman’s suffering is paramount.

On the other hand, perhaps Twyman will go to Hell for paying taxes to the government that drops the bombs and enforces poverty in the Third World.

This past weekend I decided to get away from the blog. I just checked out and rest my brain from the insanity of politics and spent time with Kate in Asheville. I unfortunately turned on the TV for a short while and I mistakenly turned to CNN, and there the news bleaters were, talking about this scandal of Obama using the term “bitter” to describe blue collar voters disillusioned by the turn of the economic tide against them, and finding solace in clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them….”

As this was breathlessly reported on at least twice while I had the TV on, I turned to Kate and said — “is there nothing else to report?” and flipped it off. I was serious — aside from the predictable reaction that he is being elitist or out of touch, no one with any credibility can say that what Obama said wasn’t true. It appears to me, as I was not willing to watch any more news over the weekend while away, that the issue was less about the word “bitter” than Obama’s politically blunt truth-telling.
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This story is kind of interesting, because it’s the classic example of a story where the lede was chosen on sexiness, not because of what the story is really about. The hook is a “whodathunkit”.

Profit margins on gasoline sales are razor thin. Indeed, some gas stations are losing money on credit card sales, once the fees are factored in.

How do they stay in business? More and more a gas station’s bread and butter is, well, bread and butter — and the coffee and candy bars it sells in its convenience store. Most of these items generate much higher profits than gas…..

Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, estimates that gasoline accounts for 70 percent of a typical station’s revenues, but only 30 percent of its profits.

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(UPDATE: The latest flap is that Hillary hasn’t paid her staff’s health care premium to the tune of $292K. FEC filings show unpaid bills to provider Aetna for at least two months. Good lord, this PR problem is beyond the pale. Here is Clinton’s FEC filing, and Obama’s.)

The Clinton campaign is trying to keep its financial operation afloat as it hits the next slew of primaries, but this is bad PR any way you look at it. You can’t sell yourself as a president ready to give hope and help to working families when you stiff small vendors who have made you look good on the road. Even worse, when vendors have contacted the campaign to see when they might be paid, no one responds. (The Politico):

Event production is important to big-time presidential campaigns. It shapes how candidates look and sound, not just to the thousands of people who turn out to campaign speeches and rallies but also to the millions who catch snippets of them on television.

And word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.

…The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter.

More below the fold.
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We’re going down… down… down…

The Federal Reserve is urgently moving to contain a deepening credit crisis and restore confidence in panicked financial markets by becoming a lender of last resort for Wall Street investment houses, which were able to secure short-term emergency loans beginning Monday.

…President Bush rushed to strike a note of calm to the turbulent situation on Monday morning, hailing the Fed’s action and saying: “We’ve taken strong decisive action.” The president spoke after meeting at the White House with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other members of his economic team. “We’re in challenging times,” Bush said.

The central bank, in an extraordinarily rare weekend move, took the bold action Sunday in an attempt to calm the markets. It also approved a cut in its emergency lending rate to financial institutions to 3.25 percent from 3.50 percent, effective immediately.

…The Fed acted just after JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy rival Bear Stearns Cos. for $236.2 million in a deal that represents a stunning collapse for one of the world’s largest and most venerable investment houses. Just on Friday the Fed had raced to provide emergency financing to cash-strapped Bear Stearns through JPMorgan. Days earlier the Fed announced a set of other unconventional steps to thaw out a credit market in danger of freezing shut.

The Fed’s actions come as fears have spread that other financial houses could also be on shaky ground.

Hey free market folks out there — tell us all how it’s going to work itself out. Are some banking bootstraps going to be pulled up, or are we instead going to see crying corporate babies at the government teat?

I’m not making it up. This actually came out of the mouth of Dear Leader during a PBS interview when the reporter asked whether he had any idea of how he might address soaring oil prices (his friends in Big Oil are experiencing record profits, btw). Look at what he said (Think Progress has the video):

GHARIB: Well, you’ve pressed OPEC to increase oil production –

BUSH: I did.

GHARIB: And they didn’t do it. Let’s say that OPEC did pump more oil. How much do you think that that would bring down oil prices, by $20, $30?

BUSH:You know, I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask the experts that. I’m just a simple president. But I really don’t know what it would do. I do know that the main problem is supply and demand and excess supply obviously would help.

If you want more of McSame, John McCain was asked what he would try to do to address the impact of oil prices on the economy, and his answer sounds like he had the president’s dunce cap on.
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In midst of the furor over Geraldine Ferraro’s unfortunate comments about Barack Obama, I read this fascinating post (via) about the history of lynching that’s been unearthed and compiled. The pride that lynchers had in their crimes is disturbing, but had the side effect of leaving a historical record that has been used to build a picture of what motivated communities to lynch this person but not that person. The discovery of the common thread behind many lynchings is telling.

And the terrible, but fascinating, bit of secret history turned out to be the immediate aftermath of over half of those lynchings. Over half of those lynchings turned out to involve black men who owned their own successful farms and/or businesses. And the day after the lynchings, those farms and businesses were sold to white neighbors, in closed auctions, for pennies on the dollar, and the surviving real heirs were run out of town. And in a terrifyingly large number of those cases, historians were able to show one or more of the following facts. The buyer was the person who made the initial accusation against the victim. And the buyer was a relative of one or more of the following: the mayor, the chief of police, the local minister and/or the municipal judge.

One thing that gets lost in a lot of the examination of how people get into the extreme hate zone is how they personally benefit, at least in their own perceptions. Part of it is the discourse around ideology in the U.S., where direct interests are considered a bit gauche to discuss. Or, at least that’s the impression I get when I talk about how a lot of the anti-choice noise stems directly from people that lost an entitlement when the market for adoptable white babies dried up. It’s a tad low to accuse your opponents of having mercenary motivations, but what if they do?

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What an economy Bush will hand over the next president. We may hit $4/gallon by the end of this year.

This is what people are paying around my way…

North Carolina Unleaded Average

Current Avg.	$3.189	$3.384	$3.533	$3.630
Yesterday Avg.	$3.176	$3.371	$3.519	$3.609
Month Ago Avg.	$2.979	$3.161	$3.300	$3.344
Year Ago Avg.	$2.462	$2.612	$2.727	$2.63

How about a trip down memory lane, back to 1988?

Just to rub in the pain a little more…here's a shot from one of my favorite action films Die Hard, set in L.A.

This is a scene (46:12 into the film) where the camera pans up to the fictional "Nakatomi Plaza" where Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is holding people hostage, a gas station/convenience store in the foreground (where policeman Al Powell has stopped for a Twinkie run). 77 cent unleaded, argh.

So what are you paying at the pump? Do you belong to a discount club like Costco, to save a few pennies per gallon? Does your area have decent mass transit? Here is AAA's fuel report.

“There is no question the economy has slowed down,” he said. “I don’t think we’re headed into a recession, but there is no question we are in a slowdown…why don’t we let the stimulus package we have a chance to kick in.”
– Dear Leader, at a press conference last Thursday.

Bub, we’re already there and all the signs are there that now that the mortgage crisis has gone into freefall, the cascading effect of those people turning to their credit cards to bridge the gap looks like it’s going to lead to defaults on that front as well — credit card debt is nearing a whopping $1 trillion, a new record. (Center for American Progress Report):

The U.S. credit card market is showing signs of trouble just as the home mortgage crisis surges to unprecedented heights across the United States and throughout the global financial marketplace. Against the backdrop of record-high numbers of home foreclosures, lenders are tightening mortgage lending standards, making it harder for families to maintain their consumption in the face of weakening income growth. At the same time, credit card issuers present their all-too-convenient lending product as a much needed but inevitably dangerous pressure valve for cash-strapped borrowers.

As borrowing in the mortgage market slows, credit card borrowing is accelerating—a dangerous trend because borrowers still face weak income growth. That means the credit card market could eventually run into the same problems that now afflict the subprime mortgage market.

The lending industry that no longer aggressively issues subprime mortgages continues to aggressively market credit cards, especially credit cards with subprime-like lending terms, such as a variety of higher fees that are poorly disclosed. In the end, more and more borrowers could end up defaulting on their credit card debt because they do not fully understand the terms and conditions of their new plastic, which could prove detrimental to their financial health. Déjà vu all over again!

The consequences could deliver further uncertainty to financial markets and additional turmoil to the economy as more consumers file for bankruptcy, driving down the value of securitized credit card receivables.

Here’s an NBC report on it (via Think Progress):

The next occupant of the White House will inherit a helluva mess to clean up.

My patriarchy-and-capitalism-blaming spidey sense went a-tingling this morning, and when I opened up my email, I saw why. Before I get into this, though, I should clarify that while I think the patriarchy is a bad thing that needs to go, I don’t think capitalism is necessarily evil. I think that capitalism, in controlled circumstances that allow for a genuine free market to flourish, is a great thing. If mixed in with socialist elements like public ownership of certain markets that do better under public control, and held in check with regulation and pro-labor policies, as well as high marginal tax rates that encourage long term investment over short term scorched earth investing, I think there’s a place for capitalist markets that can encourage creativity and wealth creation. Unfortunately, the capitalism we have now is increasingly geared towards making a quick buck rather than long-term investment, and that has resulted in all sorts of bad, including the mortgage crisis and the way we’d rather start wars to get at oil than make the long term investment into energy independence.

I also blame that mentality for this bit of weirdness.

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It’s kind of like having real money….

I grew so desperate for any hint of reality in this article in the NY Times denying that the gap between rich and poor is a problem in this country that I ended up doing a Ctrl F search for the word “debt”. All it gave me was the word “debate”. It’s like looking for the word “woman” or “women” or even “girl” in an article defending abortion bans. After a point, the lie of omission becomes the thesis.

The article is the usual denial that growing poverty is a problem—essentially, if the poor have no bread to eat, let them watch TV. The possession of a VCR is considered the only legitimate measure of wealth, which is like arguing that cats are people because we all have eyes. Basic financial security, the hallmark of the American dream, is dismissed as irrelevant. Skeptical? Don’t be.

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.

The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled “financial flows,” shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status.

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I’m trying to imagine a worse set-up for creating a hatefest in the comments at Salon than this article, and all I can come up with is that if there were children involved, it might give the haters another excuse to go nuts. But as it is, the article is by a single woman living in New York who has behaved irresponsibly and is not currently giving oral sex to any of the commenters at Salon, a perfect storm to create an avalanche of hatred with overtones of insinuation that this is evidence that all women everywhere are too simple-minded to be permitted to live outside of male authority. I’m writing this paragraph before reading the comments as a little bet with myself, to see if my prediction skills on this are adequate.

The woman’s sin is to live way outside her means for a number of years, racking up $10,000 in credit card debt. She freely admits that she did not have a huge expense like a medical bill to blame. She just had a lifestyle she couldn’t afford at a 30% interest rate. She’s responsible, and she’s taking measures to fix her problem, but the article also subtly drives home the point that there’s something deeply fucked up about our usury laws that we allow something like a 30% interest rate to even exist. (The article reminded me to pay off a balance sitting on my credit card, however. Paying even a nickel in interest to these sharks crosses a deeply held moral boundary.) It also reminds the thinking reader, in light of the recent plot to goose the economy with a check mailed out to everyone in working class consumerland, how much our economy is built on consumer debt incurred by working class people. It’s easy to wag our fingers at people who charge a bunch of stuff they can’t afford, but if people quit doing it all at once, the stock market would probably crash.

But like I said, this woman set herself to be a scapegoat. And now, having made that bet with myself, I’m going to read the comments……

….and I find myself mildly surprised at the ratio of sympathetic comments to slagging. I mean, there’s plenty of nastiness that feeds right into the Dictionary Of Words You Use Against Single Women Who Don’t Fuck You, like this:

Come on. This article was a waste of space. I cannot muster sympathy. For someone like Tacroy, certainly. Tacroy’s story needs telling. But putting yourself into deep debt through bar tabs, lattes, and CDs… yes, you’re spoiled and kind of dumb…..

But then here comes Sarah explaining that, yup, she’s a ditz who spent out of control on luxury items and just hide the bills in a sock drawer. Tee hee.

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The other night on Marketplace on NPR they had a report about how this economic downturn affects more than the elites. They then went on to interview a number of small businessmen who expect to lose business because they mostly peddle luxury goods that are sold to the very, very wealthy.

Yeah, I laughed until I cried.

I’m reading Paul Robeson, Jr.’s book and he says that it takes $75,000 a year to live what used to be considered a middle class lifestyle. 18% of us are middle class. 2% of us are wealthy. 62% of us are working class. 18% of us are poor. When I went to college, my parents were trying to get me a middle class lifestyle that is, for all intents and purposes, out of reach.

I hear that our economy is on a downturn and the government is going to give us money to make it right. What I say is that the economy has been on a downturn, and it wasn’t until the very wealthy saw their extreme wealth threatened that we saw any action on it.

The irony is this: The fix for our problems is actually pretty simple. Capitalism per se is not the problem. In its place, it’s a good thing. But we need the basics to be made into public property—access to nutritious food, housing, health care, day care—and we need to get our capitalist system out of short-term thinking. We need to make it unreasonable and unprofitable to gamble on third world debt and the way it can be used to manipulate foreign currency. We need to make capitalism capitalistic again, i.e. return the risk to it, instead of offering huge government bailouts to save its failures. And we need high marginal tax rates to encourage capitalists to make long term investments instead of the short term investments that rule our culture.

My good Republican small government mother went, for a time, out of the field of entrepreneurship during the transition from the Clinton neoliberal years to Bushco’s governance, but the one thing that carried between the two was Greenspan’s willingness to manipulate the real estate market to keep the economy and his reputation afloat. My mother was, during those years, a lender in speculative real estate. And all that time, what she told me and tells me to this day is that people overstretched. She’s out of it and a good partisan now, so she won’t say the markets are about to crash, but when her livelihood depended on it, she said—daily—that the ongoing investment in real estate aimed at high end and short term markets was bound to fail. And we’re now waiting to see the bottom in that. (Buy in New Orleans, folks! They need you and real estate is dirt cheap. Good homes.)

I have a professional livelihood, but I’m solidly working class. I almost welcome the crash—and so should you, since crashes often signal a willingness of the upper class to admit the working class into the middle class. You will get your checks soon. Don’t feel guilty if you intend to do what I do, which is spend it on products made out of country and/or save it.

Quickly now, who wrote this:

According to AP, congressional leaders have reached a deal on those economic stimulus checks. And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they’re apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again.

Okay, I know I kind of gave it away with my clever title and all, but damn. What kind of entitled, ignorant, overreacting shit is that? Try to keep in mind, he’s burning down the house over a $300 to $600 check. In order to miss out on it, you have to gross $300 every working day**.

Here’s some more from John A.:

That means that if you make $75,000 or more a year, no check for you. Forget that fact that you live in NYC or DC or San Francisco, where prices from property to food are outrageous. No, forget that. Some guy living in a mansion in Topeka making $74,999 a year will get his little gift from the US Treasury and you, living in NYC making $75,001 out of a 300 sq ft studio apartment will get nothing. How about my friend who bought an entire house in Baltimore for $275,000 when that would get you a very small studio in DC.

I’m not saying I’d love to commute from Baltimore to DC, but you can fucking do it. Or from Arlington. Or Brentwood. Or Capitol Hill, if you’re willing to lower yourself to a rowhouse. And I’m definitely not one to micromanage the sacrifices people make in their personal economics, but I’ll happily refrain from shedding a tear over someone who’s going to get upset over the difficulty of affording life in Midtown rather than Jackson Heights, or Noe Valley rather than…well, he may have a point about San Francisco, actually.

That’s because far too often the Democrats don’t give a damn about anybody who isn’t a minority or starving to death (both valid causes to be sure, but are they the ONLY causes out there?).

Look, I don’t care if you live in a co-op made of gold brick smack dab in the geographical center of Highrent Island , there is no circumstance under which an American making $75,000 a year is worthy of the bullshit sentence above. Don’t get me wrong, people at all salary levels can struggle - bankruptcy bill, anyone? Universal health care? - but for fuck’s sake, John. “Both valid causes to be sure”? Don’t break your arm throwing that bone, okay?

The thing is, maybe there’s a discussion to be had.

And don’t think this is only about a stupid $300. It’s about health care. It’s about education. It’s about every single issue you care about. The powers that be simply aren’t in this to help people in the middle. The Republicans want to help the big pharmaceuticals and the big business hospitals, while the Democrats want to help uninsured poor people and kids. And while all of that’s nice, what are the rest of us supposed to do when our premiums hit $2000 a month and, God forbid, something catastrophic hits us?

And you know what? He might be right, but it’s really hard to tell, what with his being covered with the remains of the people he disemboweled on the way to the point. The Democrats definitely don’t give a shit about the middle class, but $600 seems like an awfully strange rock on which to make that point. As one of his commenters mentioned, you have to draw the line somewhere, and nearly 350% of the national median income*** seems like a passable place for it.

Plus, I’m not sure John “Treo” Aravosis has a shit-ton of personal economic credibility.

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** Assuming a five day work week, etc. etc.
*** Household income, based on the $150,000 two-person income limit for the proposed tax rebate.

This WingNutDaily crowd is really consuming some serious-*ss Kool-Aid.

Wait, which party ran the country into the ground and exploded the deficit? Which party rubber-stamped Dear Leader’s Big Military Mi$adventure? Man, the list could go on and on…feel free to add your own.

The hyped poll it cites, btw, says only 22% of those surveyed “indicated having a Democrat president worried them more than concerns such as global unrest, a terrorist attack or a recession.”

The Bush economy keeps chugging along because of the sub-prime mortgage debacle. And Citi is looking for a foreign bailout; ah, the $elling of America continues because of greed. (CNBC):

Citigroup could write down as much as $24 billion due to subprime and credit-related losses, CNBC has learned. In addition, the company could lay off as many as 20,000 workers as part of a comprehensive plan to slash costs and raise capital.

Citigroup also intends to raise as much as $15 billion from various foreign and domestic entities including Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder, as America’s biggest bank grapples with heavy mortgage market losses.

And by the way, in other, distressingly similar news:

Merrill Lynch Mortgage Losses Could Reach $15 Billion. Looks like the bull’s “boys” will get squeezed hard, and it’s looking for more money from friends abroad.

Merrill Lynch is expected to suffer $15 billion in losses stemming from soured mortgage investments, almost double its original estimate, prompting the firm to raise additional capital from an outside investor.

…To shore up its deteriorating finances, Merrill is now in discussions with investors in the United States, Asia and the Middle East, including American private equity firms, to raise about $4 billion in the coming days, these people said.

The developments underscore the rising toll that the mortgage crisis is taking on many once-proud Wall Street banks. In recent months Merrill and several other firms have grabbed financial lifelines from wealthy foreign governments. Further investments by so-called sovereign wealth funds could prompt scrutiny by Congress.

…Merrill is hardly alone in seeking capital from overseas. United States financial institutions have raised more than $29 billion from foreign governments and their related investment entities, according to the market research firm Dealogic.

I’ve been happy this year to read a couple of blog posts written by men just slamming the ever-living shit out of the popular holiday commercial message, “All women are whores, just set the price.” Otherwise known as ads pushing luxury goods like diamonds and cars with a fairly unmistakeable message.

These ads go far beyond just saying, “Hey, it’s fun to spoil someone you love on occasion,” and straight into making rather fucked up insinuations about how marriage and heterosexual relationships are transactional—her love and sex for your baubles. That women give love because they love and have sex because they desire doesn’t enter the equation. There was one ad awhile back that was pretty close to explicit on this—a guy runs through the streets declaring he loves a woman. She’s angry with him for his romantic and inexpensive gesture. He presents a diamond. Now she likes him again. Women’s affections are a commodity, says the ad, not a normal human expression.

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100% of the women in the country have already rejected you.

The continuing series of rants from Dr. Helen about how women need to settle into marriage with anyone who asks, because men are men and like entitled and stuff, has been getting some attention around the blogosphere. (I briefly blogged it here.) For those who don’t want to click the link, the staunch economic conservatives over there have a really odd attitude about women—not that women are subhuman commodities that are exchanged on an open market (people all over the political map believe that), but that unlike every other good on the market in the libertarian eyes, communist principles should apply in the pussy market. The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can. Anyway, I’ll get back to that in a bit, because Lindsay makes the good point about how there is a link between the declining fortunes of the rest of us (compared to the rising fortunes of the rich in what looks to be like a direct wealth transfer from labor to the elite) does in fact influence the marriage rate negatively.

I wish liberals would talk more about how increasing relative economic inequality might be affecting people’s day-to-day lives. Abject material deprivation is only part of the problem. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a lot of young people are priced out of marriage–not because they can’t find a willing partner, but because they don’t have enough financial stability to “justify” getting married.

If you don’t have substantial assets in common, or a job that would give benefits to a spouse, marriage just isn’t as practically alluring as it might have been.

That seems like it makes sense. For instance, if a couple is doing well enough to be saving money and perhaps getting assets like real estate, then marriage makes good sense, because it gives you a quick and dirty way to legally share your assets going forward. But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur. As more and more Americans are going into debt and fewer and fewer are saving money all the time, we can probably expect that formula to kick in and marriage rates to decline.

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I was of two minds about this NY Times article about “push presents” that’s being lambasted on the feminist blogs. One one hand, I 100% agree that the whole “wives are so bitchy and domineering!”* tone is grade A sexism that would make your average misogynist 60s comedy writers flinch. And then there’s the assumption that what all women really want is more baubles to display in the “whose husband loves (read: spends the most money on) you the most?” game. But I also had a reservation, because the concept of “push presents”—gifts presented a woman after giving birth that are about her as a human being instead of her as a mother—struck me as a great idea. If they weren’t generic gifts of jewelry, but there was a tradition of family and friends of the new mother thinking hard about her taste and buying gifts that were appropriate for a birthday or Christmas, that would both remind the new mother that she doesn’t have to subsume her identity into her new role, and would be a reminder to said family and friends that having a baby isn’t the end all, be all of a woman’s existence.

But Lindsay’s post on the article squelched my reservations. She latched onto the fact that “push presents” are contextualized so utterly and completely as expensive jewelry—and that the articles use sexist tropes that the diamond industry is married to—and concluded that this entire attempt to start a tradition is being funded by a jewelry industry looking for a growth market.

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I was up getting dressed this AM and heard a report by Ali Velshi, CNN’s senior business correspondent, about the latest “bend over” practices by credit companies.

Some of these sharks are bumping the interest rates of customers up to 30% — even if they never miss a payment, never are late sending in a payment — simply because their credit score dips a few points.

What’s wrong with this? Your credit score can take a hit for simply opening a new card account with a retailer (Velshi cited a department store card as an example). It can also take a hit if your credit is checked by vendors too frequently in a short period.

This practice is so egregious that CNN reported that both Citicorp and Chase have announced that they will cease doing this; Congress is looking into the matter since it’s clear most credit card companies refuse to police themselves as they rape customers with otherwise good credit history. (AP):

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee, is holding out the club of possible legislation to spur voluntary changes.

“Working people are being squeezed,” Levin told reporters Monday. In a call for “good, strong legislation” to be enacted next year, Levin said that “these abuses need to be remedied. … We have some real momentum for reform.”

On Tuesday, Levin’s subcommittee, which has been investigating the industry, will look at how credit-card issuers raise consumers’ rates — to as high as 30 percent — when their so-called FICO credit scores decline even if they’ve paid credit card bills regularly and promptly. In many cases, consumers have little notice of the increased rate, which are automatically triggered by declines in FICO scores for reasons left unexplained, the subcommittee found.

…Ken Clayton, managing director of card policy for the American Bankers Association, which represents the banking industry, said: “Costs for nearly every product can change, be it because consumer’s risk profiles change or because underlying costs change. Credit cards are no different.”

It’s pretty clear that the banking industry is roiling over sub-prime follies and want the responsible consumers out there to pick up the tab. It will be interesting to see what position Joe Biden, presidential candidate and a senator from Delaware and home to most of the credit card industry, will come down on all of this. He voted for the damn bankruptcy bill.

If you consider yourself middle class—and statistically, I know most of us do, even those of us who are marginal on either side of the divide—and you’re wondering if you’re the only one who can’t seem to get it together, finances-wise, well, you’re not alone. The mid-20th century idea of “middle class” was not just middle income, but financial stability and possession of assets, and by that definition, the American middle class is small indeed and shrinking. (Hat tip.)

* Only 31 percent of middle-income families match our profile for being securely middle class. That is, despite falling into the broad range that defines middle-class “income,” fewer than one in three families has the necessary combination of other factors to ensure middle-class security.
* Our Index results vary by race. Thirty-four percent of white middle-income families are securely in the middle class, as compared to 26 percent of African-American middle-income families and only 18 percent of Latino middle-income families.
* One in four middle-class families matches our profile for being at high risk of slipping out of the middle class altogether.
* One in five (21 percent) white families is at high risk for slipping out of the middle class, as compared to one in three (33 percent) African-American headed households and an alarming two in five (41 percent) Latino families.

Lack of Assets

* More than half of middle-class families have no net financial assets whatsoever-that is, no financial assets or debt levels that exceed their assets.
* Only 13 percent of middle-class families have sufficient assets to meet three-quarters of their essential living expenses for nine months, should their source of income disappear.
* About four out of five middle-class families do not have sufficient assets to cover three quarters of essential living expenses for even three months should their source of income disappear. We defined essential living expenses as food, housing, clothing, transportation, health care, personal care, education, personal insurance and pensions.
* Middle-class families have a median debt of $3,500 and median net assets of $0.

Insufficient Income to Meet Living Expenses, Cover Housing Costs, and Buy Healthcare

* Twenty-one percent of middle-class families have less than $100 per week ($5,000 per year) remaining after meeting essential living expenses. These families are living from paycheck to paycheck with very little margin of security.
* In nearly one out of four middle-class families (23 percent), at least one family member lacks health insurance of any kind.
* Twenty-eight percent of middle-class families spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing expenses, putting them above federal guidelines for housing affordability.

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Through Avedon and Atrios, I see that Countrywide has found the properly hued scapegoat for their credit crisis.

To this day, he says his beleaguered company did nothing wrong during the loose-lending craze that is now unraveling nationwide with record foreclosures and mountainous losses. Instead, Mr. Mozilo considers himself and his company to be victims of financial forces beyond their control.

At a conference sponsored by the Milken Institute about two weeks ago, for example, he explained that borrowers forced lenders like Countrywide to lower their mortgage standards. The industry faced special pressure from minority advocates to help people buy homes, he said. Now, the government must help by increasing loan limits at government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he added.

As Avedon points out, there was no pressure for lower standards of lending for minorities, just the same standards,* which leads one to realize that Angelo Mozilo feels put upon having to allow non-white people to walk through the doors of his business.

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Some of the unpleasant crap from my childhood.

Reader and frequent commenter MAJeff sent me a copy of Born to Buy by Juliet Schor, and I finally had a chance to read it this week. The book came out a few years ago, but all the trends she details in it are still going strong, namely the hyper-commercialization of childhood by marketers hungry to have a non-jaded audience that constantly replenishes itself. I found the book to mostly be fascinating, especially the second part where Schor conducts a research study on two populations of children, one in the city of Boston and one in a suburb, to see what kind of effect this increasingly commercialization had on the well-being of children, and found strong evidence that kids who watch excessive amounts of TV and otherwise engage in excessive amounts of participation in marketing to children suffered strongly for it both physically and mentally, and more to the point, that the engagement with the commercial culture caused the depression, anti-social behavior, excessive weight gain, lowered grades and other ill effects on children.

It’s an important book for this research, and I felt bad for parents because it seems that there’s really only one choice when faced with the hard evidence—limit TV-watching, exposure to fast food, toy collecting and other engagements with the mass media that markets to children. Which will cause fights and could cause your child to be unpopular and the target of bullies—seems like a real dilemma in a lot of ways. Schor admits that social pressures like this make opting out hard, but the fact that excessive exposure to commercialization has the long-term effect of making children less pleasant people, hopefully the social issues will balance out over time. (Obviously, if you’re an adult who weathered childhood with a rich, balanced life, you’ll be grateful for it, but the eventual benefits in adulthood probably seem very far away during the years of childhood.)

I thought the book had a lot of really great points about how fast food is marketed to kids, and toys, and just excess in general, and what ended up disappointing me was that Schor had a lot of trouble reining in the “moral panic” tone. She admits up front that this is always a concern, and argues pretty effectively that the overwhelming amounts of evidence that our materialistic culture is damaging kids has to be weighed in favor of this not being a moral panic tome. And mostly she’s right. But she keeps making minor and distracting accusations against marketers of employing explicit sexuality to sell to kids, when I don’t think that’s quite right. For instance, the existence of explicit sexuality in action figures or video games doesn’t necessarily mean those things are being sold to kids; more likely, the intended audience is the post-Boomer adults who (rightfully, to my mind) see no reason to abandon certain pleasures because they’ve been coded as “childish”. Instead, we simply reclaim them for adults. “Beavis and Butthead” may have been a cartoon, but it was not for children. And I got the impression at times that Schor wants to clean up adult entertainments to make them child-safe—she writes a lot about how kids watch adult TV, for instance—and I can’t help but think that’s unfair. I fully support making the world better for children, especially by giving them more things to do than watch TV all the time and making it safer for kids to play outside, but I draw the line at depriving adults of adult entertainment.

But my objections were minor, and just something that child advocates should keep in mind if they want to convince more people. Schor’s suggestions at the end are thorough and smart, and about remaking society so that children have a good place in it, not just band-aid solutions to the marketing problem. And I’d like to write more, but I’m already running way behind on this post, so I’ll leave it at that and figure that the commenting community will have plenty to add on these issues.

Film by Alfonso Cuarón setting out the thesis of the book.

I wasn’t far through The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein when I realized that this quite probably is the most important book I’ve read all year and certainly a must-read for anyone interested in what caused the ongoing global economic catastrophe that’s spreading poverty and helping the elite hoard more and more of the world’s wealth. (Right now 2% of the population owns 50% of the wealth, and 50% of the population collectively owns 1%, a human rights catastrophe by the measure of anyone whose soul and mind hasn’t completely been hardened by ideology.) I won’t lie; it’s a depressing book. I burst into small tears of relief at the end when Klein managed to carve out some signs of hope for the world, a light at the end of the tunnel for democracy and justice in light of the past 30 years, which is best described as a long-range racketeering scheme of the wealthiest designed to loot the assets of the poor and the middle class until we have nothing.

Of course, you can’t just walk into the collective houses of a nation, steal all their shit, sell it, and hand it over to the wealthy. No, you need an ideological justification, and Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics that we know best as “free market” capitalism* provided the cover story with an economic ideology they called neoliberalism, but in practice tends to turn into neoconservatism or what I cheerily call neofeudalism—slash taxes, especially for the rich, moving the tax burden onto the working class, free trade, slashed social services, privatize national assets, abandon price controls, government austerity that leads to massive layoffs. By the strict orthodoxy, government intervention should be absent, but most anyone who buys into this economic philosophy immediately realizes that it’s just a fancy way of saying that the best economic system is one where the nation’s wealth is rapidly redistributed into the coffers of the few, with massive poverty for everyone else. Friedman felt that it was the only economic theory compatible with true freedom,** but even he and certainly all of his followers around the world quickly realized that the system was incompatible with democracy and had to be forced down the throats of people worldwide, with a thick dose of flag-waving and talk of freedom to make the destruction of democracy more palatable. Which meant that despite libertarian bullshit about “small government”, the governments would not be small when it came to any function of the direct redistribution of wealth or the forcing of the system at gunpoint. It’s a book about economics, but it’s not dry at all, and in fact, is a real page-turner, albeit one where you find your eyes bugging out in anger or tearing up in despair at your fellow humans’ cruelty to one another.

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The face of creeping communism, apparently.

Ezra is offering to debate Michelle Malkin about S-CHIP, now that Malkin has whined that it’s liberals who make bad faith arguments. Apparently, in her topsy-turvy world, a good faith policy debate is conducted by harassing people who offer up standard issue examples of how good policy works. Sending out your minions to send the message that participation in the democratic process will be punished through harassment by a bunch of right wing thugs is a “good faith” argument.

I don’t imagine Michelle will take him up on the offer. She will either have him mop the floor with her anti-intellectual ass or she’ll just scream him into oblivion.

This entire debacle has managed to freak me out for some reason, which puzzled me for a bit, since as a blogger and political writer I spend a lot of time contemplating horrible right wing nuttery. Then I realized that it was giving me flashbacks to my and Melissa’s stint as a target of this Wingnut Flying Monkeys brigade. Except this is like 100 times worse, since she and I at least were probably aware of how sick and evil the assholosphere was going in. I’m sure for the Frosts, this is coming out of left field.

The entire situation is highlighting the profound differences in vision that the left and right have for what government and economy is for. I think that it really gets to the heart of it, actually. The left generally seeks a society with widespread middle class prosperity, where all people have access to the good life, defined as having roughly these things:

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Update: In comments, Elaine brings up a good point. It’s a social thing as much, if not more than a sexual thing. A man who is privately excited by the new post-pregnancy curves could still be embarrassed to present a wife who has them. A woman in the job market, responding to the bias against mothers, might wish to erase some motherhood evidence from her body to get a leg up at work.

A gazillion people have emailed me this article in the NY Times (link to Salon, because I couldn’t get the Times to load) about plastic surgeons who’ve zeroed in on the potential of pathologizing the stretched-out and puffier forms the body can take after having a baby or two or more. You have your babies and then off to the plastic surgeon to make sure your husband gets to fuck the same body before you had kids. The package includes a tummy tuck, breast implants (or a lift), and general liposuction, which I do believe has the highest infection rate of all plastic surgery. Turns out the popular notion of the “MILF” hasn’t taken hold with a lot of people who can afford to erase the “M” part from their bodies.

The word “vanity” is getting thrown around a lot, though last I checked, being vain is the only acceptable reason to get plastic surgery, now that a full 95% of women claim to be doing it for themselves and not to fit a beauty standard set upon women or compete with other women for male attention. I would like to quarrel with the idea that women who get the “mommy makeover” are vain. In my eyes, they are economic rationalists of the highest order. They have figured out what feminists have been noting for a long time—that the gap between men and women economically is now more a gap between mothers and everyone else. Once you have a baby, your value on the market as a worker goes through the floor, relatively speaking, and your dependence on male income into the household to maintain your living standard rises, especially now that you have dependents. Even if you have a job, your ability to climb the ladder at work is getting a pinch due to discrimination against mothers.

In other words, your need to maintain your husband’s sexual interest in you is rising at the exact same time your body is losing some of the markers of conventional attractiveness. Is it any wonder that some women buy a little painful, expensive advantage against competitors for their husband’s attention in such an environment? You need to keep him or replace him easily more now that your value as a worker has decreased.

Others have seen this and thought, “More evidence that we have impossible beauty standards,” and that’s true. But it’s also true that this is evidence that we need federally subsidized day care, more worker protections for working mothers, better maternal leave (and maybe even mandatory paternal leave), more flex time at work, and less social stigma on motherhood.

Over thirty-six million people in the US live in poverty.

The administration is trying to spin this as good news, by saying that income is rising in all economic classes. Problem is, it’s not keeping up with the cost of living. It also ignores the fact that the raise in income for African-Americans was tiny.

Children and African-Americans are the hardest hit by poverty, as well as single mothers. Over twelve percent of the poor are children. Over 24 percent of Black people are poor; poor Whites come in at a little over eight percent.

Granted, I’m sure some folks, who know they can’t say that the obvious solution would be to stop being Black, will tout personal responsibility, while ignoring the fact that it’s actually very expensive to be poor. (We already saw this with Katrina.) This is a self-perpetuating system, and it’s not because the poor person is so lazy. It’s because when you’re poor, you’re less likely to have reliable transportation to get to a decent paying job or a grocery store (grocery stores don’t tend to be located in poor cities or neighborhoods). If you have to rely on a convenience store or fast food place for your food, you’re not going to be healthy (but it’ll be your fault for not buying healthful food from the grocery store that’s far away and inaccessible to you). You likely won’t live in a safe area, so going out for a walk or a jog could be dangerous. Your kids won’t have a place to play if this is the case, and even if it’s not, your kids will be more likely to get asthma (thanks to environmental racism/classism–we aren’t likely to see a medical waste incinerator in affluent areas any time soon). Lack of exercise plus crappy food equals more health problems. And if you don’t have health insurance, well, then, you can go to the ER of the county hospital that is already overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded and hope that you’ll get care. Oh, and don’t miss any work, as you’ll get docked or fired.

Some pundits, like those at the Heritage Foundation, repeat the myth of the Marriage/Money Fairy. It goes like this: if these poor single mothers would only marry the fathers of their children, they would cease to be poor. The Marriage/Money fairy would come on their wedding night and shower them with good paying jobs, health benefits, decent schools for the kids, safe and affordable housing, and access (either by car or very convenient public transportation) to their jobs and the grocery store.

Problem is, if the father of your child is as poor as you are, marrying him isn’t going to solve your problems. Marriage as a cure all is bogus. Unless the kid’s father is running a private equity firm and is going to marry the mother of his child, I’d say this is about as useful as chilipepper toothpaste.

You know that actually helps the poor? Livable wages; healthcare; well-funded, staffed and maintained schools; safe and affordable housing; safe neighborhoods; access to things like jobs and grocery stores; clean air and water; and decent public transportation.

You can be married and oh-so-responsible and still be poor.

There’s no story here; move along…

Countrywide cuts 500 mortgage jobs.

Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, said Monday it has eliminated about 500 jobs as it tries to ride out problems from a credit crunch that has rocked the home loan industry.

…The Calabasas-based company also tried to reassure its banking customers that their money was safe. Countrywide ran full-page ads in U.S. newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Detroit Free Press, in which it asserted “the future is bright” at Countrywide Bank FSB.

…Countrywide said last Thursday it had borrowed $11.5 billion so it could keep making home loans.

U.S. foreclosures rise sharply in July.

Foreclosure filings rose 9 percent from June to July and surged 93 percent over the same period last year, with Nevada, Georgia and Michigan accounting for the highest foreclosure rates nationwide, a research firm said Tuesday.

…The figures are the latest measure of the ailing housing market, which has seen defaults and foreclosures soar as financially strapped borrowers have failed to make payments or find buyers.

In all, 179,599 foreclosure filings were reported during July, up from 92,845 in the year-ago month, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc.

If you’re in California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio or Georgia, keep those blinders on — those states account for over 50% of the foreclosure filings.

Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t how most people think.

The thing about reading business publications is that you are transported to an imaginary world where nothing really exists outside of the boardroom. It’s all quite interesting when it’s a board game, I suppose, but when real life bleeds in, folks get uncomfortable and start complaining about the people who rudely harshed all over their Wall Street euphoria.

You’d think that the biggest problem with the subprime mess was that already-wealthy investors would lose their bonus–which is of course, really, truly urgent–but that the everyday people caught in the vice-like squeeze of the credit trap and the quicksane of stagnating wages and inflated costs were just a few exceptions. You’d also think that the moves of business leaders and lobbyists had zero to do with this mess.

Recently in the press there’s been all kinds of stories about the subprime mess with (finally) some concern about the fallout–the foreclosures, bankruptcies, the private equity funds that are now on shaky ground, and the burden of debt on people, and the suspiciously high rate of exotic mortgages for people of color–despite their good credit, they were pushed into dubious mortgages at a higher rate than Whites when they refinanced.

And make no mistake, this is nothing to sneeze at. I’ve always been skeptical of the unusual mortgages out there such the adjustable rate and interest only mortgages. As Amanda pointed out, the subprime mortgage industry drove housing prices into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, enough people plugged them (hell, enough banks pushed them) with the result that people signed up and found themselves in the middle of a debt hurricane a few years later.
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