Confirmation almost point by point of your Plan B prediction: “The Washington Monument Gambit”, richard vajs–here in the US News And World Report Version, under the heading “Take II”:

Another try at a big bailout plan. A lot of those constituents who have been calling Congress to complain about rescuing fat cats are going to rethink their indignation as they watch the stock markets–and their own portfolios–sink. Lawmakers who voted against the bailout plan are going to have to explain why they’re letting the markets collapse. The more uncomfortable voters get, the more likely Congress will be to pass some kind of sweeping relief plan. This is far from over.

[Richard Newman]

http://biz.yahoo.com/usnews/080929/29_bailout_take_ii_what_the_feds_do_next.html?.&.pf=banking-budgeting

That is the gist of Paul Craig Roberts’ position, as I follow it.

I claim nothing but understanding it perhaps and giving it a name.

Since the overwhelming majority of American politicos are liars, frauds, and thieves–with a few naifs and terminally stupid idealists thrown in for good measure–voting for any positive program is vain, and the main value of any vote is negative and impersonal, to wit: ousting an incumbent or holding a party or a group accountable.

If that is not what Roberts is getting at, I will gladly stand corrected.

I do consider Kucinich somewhat of an exception, mainly for his position on impeachment, and his economic and financial understanding.

It may not be intuitive in the Protestant subculture of a Doctor Slop like Congressman Paul, but of the three possibilities (1) no government support for higher education; (2) privately financed student loans guaranteed by government; and (3) free government subsidized higher education, (2) is of the three the most economically counterproductive.

Kucinich seemingly understands this.

But even with Kucinich, I get a bit queasy when he has a good word for the Fascist Delano Roosevelt.

AP September 29, 2008

Is this a bit of reality setting in after all?

It is to be noted that thief Paulson was yesterday pegged at a personal fortune of $700 million.

I wonder what it is today.

Or did he and some of his pals go short?

In any instance, Kucinich’s rough sketch of a bailout, including the establishment of a US citizen Mutual Fund, obtaining equity, and refusing to pay anything but fire sale prices, may have gained a bit of traction.

Like most of Kucinich’s proposals, it might actually make money for the taxpayer for a change.

Born in Palm Beach, Florida, to Marianna Gallaeur and Henry Merritt Paulson, a wholesale jeweler, he was raised in Barrington Hills, Illinois. He was raised as a Christian Scientist. Paulson attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.[3][4]

In 1970 Paulson received a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School…”?

[wikipedia]

Sunday Times (article on antiwar front page)

Some time ago in a blurb on the antiwar blog, I suggested that, given the collapse of USD in relation to oil and the Euro, one of the obvious courses as a response might be an attempt by the US to attack and depreciate the Euro.

Whatever the truth of the above story, it seems to fall under the heading of what such an attack might look like.

The article, read closely, also suggests that the motive force is the Neo-Cons.

Someone like Giraldi surely can do a much better job than myself of delineating the changes in the Central Intelligence Agency since the advent of Bush and Cheney to the US executive branch, and whether Neo-Con and CIA are now coterminous terms.

Obviously part of the context of the above might also be trying to set the EU and NATO at odds as two distinct and conflicting versions of “Europe” in the 21st Century.

The main problem here, one suspects, is that the US policy seemingly pursued in Georgia, like most of the hare-brained schemes thought up by the Neo-Cons, will almost certainly produce exactly the opposite of the effect intended as far as US interests are concerned.

And even if you interpret it mainly as a matter of, say, money, that involves specifying a point in time.

For example, the day after the “money” is appropriated, it may be X and Y that are the only beneficiaries monetarily.

Ten years down the line, however, and according to trickle down theory, it may well be the manufacturers of assemble-it-yourself mail order guillotines kits.

What I call the “One Bastiat In Every Socialist Cell” School is one of the schools that acknowledge such trickle down theory.

According the “Firing Squad School”, on the other hand, which deals with longer term “analysis spans”–if I may coin a useful term–the main beneficiaries in, say, thirty years, may well be the first generation serfs and wage-slaves produced by the bailout in the first place.

This is another hidden recursion not generally known to American or western economists.

An even more sophisticated analysis allows the possibility that no one benefits or that everyone is harmed, which are not the same logically, depending on whether one sees economics and finance, again just for example, as a zero-sum game.

In the sand of an afternoon twixt dilemma’s long horns

wisp-waisted maid somersaults the bum’s rush.

Manolete
dividending
all gall.

Marvellous to watch.

[copyright EAC]

END THE FED! END THE FED! END THE FED! END THE FED!