Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt

book jacket simple titleIll Fares the Land by Tony Judt (2010)

The title comes from a quote that also appears on the book jacket:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770

Please use the title link to Goodreads to see the jacket flap copy that offers a good summary of the book. Also note, the author has a PhD. in history from Cambridge (England).

This is an EXCELLENT book. A must read as you will probably be able to tell because I have felt compelled to quote from it so extensively. The author makes my beliefs and thoughts plain with his writing.

He begins on a dismal note, and the terror of the U.S. presidential election of 2016 was not yet known. Is not yet known to me, but I have lost all hope with the cheating of Hillary Clinton and her minions that stole the primary from a better man all for her own ambition.

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears “natural” today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.

We cannot go on living like this. The little crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before, we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come. (pp. 1-2)

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Theft of a Nation by Gregg Barak

book jacket with shadow of a bullTheft of  a Nation: Wall Street Looting and Federal Regulatory Colluding by Gregg Barak, (2012)

I had to get this book from Interlibrary Loan. It was a rare time when my local library did not have a book I wanted. It was pretty squeaky new; I suspect it had not been read before, and that is a shame because it is well-written and full of footnoted facts that will remind you again of why we were all mad enough to “Occupy Wall Street” just a few years ago. And the really sad part is that nothing has changed. Republican entrenchment has only become worse. I cannot understand where they get their deep and abiding conviction that the government owes NOTHING to the citizens, not even the right to vote. I am almost too tired, too sad, and too discouraged by the current election cycle (2016) to even bother to bitch about these old and wiped out of current memory catastrophes and the bastards that became millionaires and billionaires through endless corruption, greed, and sense of entitlement. These are people who do not care about the consequences of their actions: we have a surfeit of sociopaths in charge of our economy and government. The effects are catastrophic to Main Street and Wall Street just keeps on stealing the wealth from everyone else with their CEO pay, multi-million dollar bonuses, and casino capitalism.

If your personal wealth is predominantly in capital markets [then] you had a hell of a scare, but you’re 70 percent of the way back to where you were in 2007. If your personal wealth is predominantly in your home, you’re fucked. And for approximately 80 percent of the people in the United States, their only asset is their home.

— Damon Silvers, a lawyer at the AFL-CIO and member of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel 2011 (p. 40)

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Listen Liberal by Thomas Frank

book jacket bright yellow with cartoon pointing index fingerListen Liberal or Whatever happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank, (2016) [apologies in advance for such length without breaking out headers and subheads]

AWESOME BOOK! Nails it! Perfectly captures why Bernie Sanders supporters are baffled by the non-democracy of the Democratic Party. It USED TO BE the Party of the People, but it turned it’s back years ago, and did so deliberately, as one of my now favorite authors describes in this book.

I thought I had posted about his books before but cannot find now; he is most famous for “What’s the matter with Kansas” and I will post later. (It is also a good video – I especially was horrified at the power of too much money in the hands of some people, like the guy who built a “museum” on Creationism; especially the part with the dinosaur grazing peacefully next to a small boy.)

I have been saying similar things about WTF has happened to the democratic party I have voted for all my life. Yes sometimes the lesser of two evils, but I always thought fundamentally the commitment to workers and social justice were the values of the party. So I was truly shocked, but kind of not surprised to learn that Hillary had been a Goldwater supporter back in the day. Yeah, yeah, don’t get in my face, people can change. But I’m not sure she did or if she just calculated the odds of  achieving her ambition to become the first woman president was absolutely more likely in a democratic party, never the republicans.  It has never been more obvious than this 2016 election that the process of presidential nominees has been a queue of people who tow the line of the real power behind the politicians, financial and corporate donors.

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Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank

book jacket with cartoon figure of rich guyPity the Billionaire: The hard-times swindle and the unlikely comeback of the right,  by Thomas Frank, (2012). Author of several great books including new release MUST READ Listen Liberals and most famously his What’s the Matter with Kansas. [also on video]

Once again it is fun to see the title of the concluding chapter, in this case:
Trample the Weak. We who are living in this fake “free market” know that there can never be a free market because free markets are ruthless killers of all things, people, land, water, animals, and more, all for PROFIT. In fact, the religion of capitalism has now even shucked any pretense of their original charters with the obligation to serve the people by claiming “fiduciary” responsibility to their shareholders. How they can do that while taking $53 million a year in salary plus bonuses and stock options that cause them to waste capital on stock buybacks to jack the price up and contribute literally nothing in terms of goods and services, just shuffling paper money around, is beyond me. The shareholders aren’t even allowed a vote on the pay of the CEO but just their boards that are well-compensated people with next to no responsibilities except to rubber stamp whatever grand scheme the current CEO has to rape and pillage the people.

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Dumb Money by Daniel Gross

book jacket with cartoon of dollar sign and cone dummies hatDumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation by Daniel Gross, (2009)
The author writes for Newsweek and other column on money and economic subjects. This is a slim (101 pages) volume that has a great deal of detail on aspects of the 2008 financial meltdown without too much talk about LIBOR and tranches.

You can tell the author has a sense of humor by the name of the first chapter title: WTF. The utter disregard for the average person for the banksters is revealed in a quote the author cites of the still not-ashamed-enough to keep his mouth shut, Henry [Hank] Paulson (“former Goldman Sachs CEO running the financial system, quickly shifted to a clueless groper in the dark”) and the pathetic excuse for a human Alan Greenspan (BTW, married to Andrea Mitchell, broadcaster). He is, however, an undeniably interesting man when you read his Wikipedia entry. For example, he attended Juilliard, no small feat to get in, and played in a band. Music and match do often go together. But I guess it was too hard to make a living, so he moved on to economics (NYU summa cum laude). A note in the Wiki entry is that he specifically asked that his 1977 PhD dissertation be removed from NYU after he became Chairman of the Fed. Barron’s supposedly got a copy of it anyway (should be PUBLIC, especially now retired) and

notes that it includes “a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble”.[17]

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