Correspondent Spencer Michels reports on the prospects for a modern New Deal to help artists weather the recession.

"Indicators of avoidance are what come to mind while absorbing the various rescue, recovery, stimulus and guarantee programs coming out of the Obama Administration to slow and reverse a splintering and shattering economy. If the Obamites do not act now when the political time is ripest, to put into motion forces of deterrence and prevention, the casino capitalists of tomorrow will again be able to de-stabilize our economy. The other day I saw Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, just about predicting another round of recklessness in about fifteen years. But he called it “human nature” not casino capitalism."

This Bill Moyers interview is going viral so fast, I can’t even keep up with it. And for a very good reason - former S&L regulator Bill Black explains exactly why the current banking bailout is a mistake. Hat-tip to Crooks & Liars for content!

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

If we created a social safety net to sustain ourselves, people, we might then sustain the environment, instead of behaving desperately and destructively, by chasing wealth, or working at environmentally destructive jobs, out of fear for our very survival and that of our families.

Walden Bello delivered this speech at the Conference on the Global Crisis in Berlin, March 20-21, 2009.
"This period of high growth came to an end in the mid-1970s, when the center economies were seized by stagflation, meaning the coexistence of low growth with high inflation, which was not supposed to happen under neoclassical economics.. Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and Structural Adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by 1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and 2) redistributing income from the poor and middle classes to the rich on the theory that the rich would then be motivated to invest and reignite economic growth.

In a fascinating piece in the latest issue of The Atlantic, Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, outlines what he sees as the alarming influence of Wall Street firms over the American economy. He expounds on his thesis in our interview, making several points: America’s Crisis Resembles that of Emerging Markets: While at the IMF, Johnson saw so many financial crises that the core problem became old hat: In the free-wheeling growth years of an economic boom, the politicians and oligarchs of an emerging market like Russia or Argentina would get so close that eventually they would meld into a politico-industrial complex. As long as the boom lasted, this cozy relationship never bothered anyone—because everyone was getting rich. Fast forward to the latest market crisis—the one in the United States. The pattern is exactly the same, Simon Johnson says, with a mutually beneficial money-and-power corridor now running between Washington and the modern oligarchs Wall Street. But There Are Key Differences.."

Most of economics depends on consuming. When employers stop raising wages, you force a dilemma on people. Borrowing substitutes for wages. We took on unprecedented debvt and built a house of cards.