Naomi Klein on Real Time with Bill Maher

[LongTomH]

Run time: 08:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCHBLt-w9wE   Posted on YouTube: September 20, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: September 21, 2008 By DU Member: LongTomH Views on DU: 1390

 
Naomi discusses the current economic crisis and bailout with Bill Maher.

[mnhtnbb]

1. I just saw a replay of Bill's Friday show on HBO. He has a new

segment highlighting countries for people to escape to if McCain wins. Finland was this week!
He ended it with a photo of someone looking through binoculars--you can see Russia from Finland--saying it would qualify you to be VP!

Bill says he's not leaving--he's too stubborn and believes we can turn the country around. I hope he's right.

[bjobotts]

2. Andrew Sullivan shows what an ass he is.Just skipped over the bilions in bonuses

in his rush to blame the American people for this crisis...not the profiteering sales men from Wall street. He talks over everyone and is rude as if his "opinion" is all that matters. He's wrong but would scream you into submission.

[bjobotts]

3. I wantyed to hear Naomi Klein, a real expert, not some loud mouthed opinionated jerk

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Naomi shold have butted in and roared ALL RIGHT YOU'VE HAD YOUR SAY, YOU

HYPOCRITICAL JERK!

[DJ13]

4. He'll always be a Republican idiot

He starts out saying the people found their wages not keeping up in the 70's, then blames those same people for this crisis instead of the low wage policies put in place due to wall street.

[1corona4u]

7. Well, he may be rude, but he does have a good point....

there were millions of people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford. And he's right when he says that we will all now pay for it. Putting aside the people who made money for a second, millions of people did walk away from mortgages they agreed to pay. Some of them walked away due to job losses, and some just walked away because they got in over their heads.

It's a mess for sure. But, I can't in good conscience, just blame the financial industry.

[DJ13]

8. Its NOT the subprime loans causing the problem

Its the breaking up into small pieces and bundling of those with other small pieces of (good) loans that were then fraudulently rated triple A by the rating agencies that caused the problem.

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. The derivatives are the "biggie" - the equivalent of 11 times the total annual income

of all the economies in the world.

"Derivative holders - The current value of derivatives is $1,000 TRIllion. The US GDP is $15 Trillion or so. Derivatives are an out of control financial product, like gambling to hedge your bets in all cases. If any financial institution - bank, investment bank, insurance company - goes down and the you know what hits the fan with derivatives, it's "the end." Buffet calls these 'products' "weapons of mass financial destruction."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4034431&mesg_id=4034431

"What a great deal that was. The economy is now tanking. Only 18% of middle class families have three months worth of accumulated income, the amount needed to have a chance of surviving a financial crisis.

As foreclosures go through the roof, the know-it-alls in The Money Party public relations shop (the mainstream media) trot out their paid liars to blame the people."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0802/S00005.htm

That seems one good reason for believing that the evil day when the whole world goes pear-shaped (then banana-shaped, then pancake-shaped) can only be temporarily delayed.

And as well as digesting the content of Ellen Brown's article under this link, embedded in an earlier link, I hope Mr Cyclops notes the comment of Sir Isaac Newton, no less, after he had lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble. It does tend just a little to suggest that asking Joe Public to understand the world of finance might be UNREASONABLE! And what is more, asking him to demean himself.

[bermudat]

19. That is correct.

I don't know why more commentators are not shouting that from every roof top.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. Like that of Sullivan (the name means "one-eyed" in Gaelic and figures in Thatcher's descent),

your conscience does not appear to be appreciably informed.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. That chap Sullivan doesn't appear quite sixteen ounces. It appears to have

escaped his attention (unlike that of most worldlings, who make a fat living by it) that most people are not worldly-wise in the sense of being focused on wealth and political power. I failed a pretty elementary book-keeping course, myself.

So, Sullivan has gone beyond the historic tradition of the wealthy from early biblical times of blaming the poor for being poor, he's even reproaching them for covetousness. Even Thatcher didn't do that. Like Karl Marx she lamented the poverty of the desires of the poor; though unlike Marx, who felt compassion for them, she lamented that they either weren't covetousness enough to enrich the rich more, or were an unpleasant tax burden on them.

It's as if a strong swimmer and a weak swimmer were shipwrecked a couple of miles from shore, and when the strong swimmer reached the shore, told people it was the other guy's fault if he drowned. He should have been a better swimmer. Nice. And so sagacious.

So our dumb friend says it's as much their fault as the shysters and sharks of the Neocon cabal and the invisible-earnings sector. Funny. We don't hear that term these days. I wonder why?

[trthnd4jstc]

9. Thanks for the Post. Andrew Sullivan was arguing for Capitalism. Hey buddy your system only works:

for the 10%, and screw the other 90%. F#ck you. We need a mixed economy. I can agree that there should not have been all of that debt. Obvious. But, his system of Free Markets does not prevent these type of problems. It is at the basis of his Free Market that we have these types of problems. No Regulation allows this BS to happen in the first place. I think that there needs to be a lot of work to make a better world. But the whole ideal of Adam Smith's Capitalism was one with a bunch of tradesman like myself, who compete in an open marketplace. Even that is a bit old fashion. If we wish to employ the vast numbers of people in our nation, we have to have a measure of government involvement in the market place.

Naomi Klein is right about the problem of the huge federal debt going to bite us. I hope that we start receiving a balanced budget, and like Bill Maher said, we need to start producing some goods to trade worldwide. This will need governmental involvement also. The Free Market will simply allow the most of us to continue languishing. I am against debts and deficits, these ideas have to be in a balanced budget. We must counter inflation, and that will take positive income flow, as opposed to continued deficit spending.

[and-justice-for-all]

10. Sullivan is a douch bag...nt

[CurtEastPoint]

11. and a GAY douchebag at that.... must be a self-hater...

I cannot understand gay and 'republican' or whatever he is. Gawd!

[and-justice-for-all]

13. I know, I know...

I don't get it either. Never have.

[ghostsofgiants]

18. He sounds like a typical libertarian type to me.

"Rah, too much government, Noam Chomsky bad, Ron Paul good!"

[Fiendish Thingy]

15. Sullivan and Klein seemed to agree on more than they disagreed...

and their disagreements seemed to be a matter of degree; unfortunately, that was overshadowed by Sullivan's need to be bombastic and combative.

[Wetzelbill]

16. Naomi Klein is so pretty and intelligent

:loveya:

[ghostsofgiants]

17. Sullivan is using the classic neoliberal arguments that never stand up to the test.

Namely, the idea that economic crisis is the result of the market not being free enough, and that the market creates wealth. The more free the market, the more unstable it is, and the market doesn't so much create wealth as redistributes it in a very unequal manner.

[progressoid]

20. Dammit she scares me.

And Sullivan is a douchebag.