Ted Kennedy

September 9, 2009

The death of Ted Kennedy has provoked an outpouring of sentimental drivel in the US media. For those looking for some relief from this, I recommend Lance Selfa’s article in Socialist Worker as well as Alec Cockburn’s piece in Counterpunch. They both do a pretty good demolition job on the reputation of the late paladin of Camelot. As for the idea that Kennedy was a champion of health care reform, check out this article by Helen Redmond. She makes it clear that Ted abandoned single payer back in the 1970’s.

I must admit that my background predisposes me to a skeptical attitude towards any member of the Kennedy clan. I spent part of my childhood in Massachusetts, where the Last Kennedy was the senior US Senator. My parents were both New Deal Democrats who worshipped the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. As such, they were deeply unimpressed with Ted Kennedy (my mother referred to him as “Sailboat Boy”). Indeed, my parents were unimpressed with the whole Kennedy family. My father took deep offense at the famous challenge that John Kennedy made in his celebrated inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” my father would say. “We are the country.”

My father needed no lectures about self-sacrifice. He had fought in World War II and had been wounded. He didn’t understand that high-minded calls for self-sacrifice always play well with the media, as well as with dewy-eyed liberals.

As for Teddy, the Chappaquiddick incident would have ended the career of any other politician, but he got a pass simply because he was a Kennedy. Doesn’t that bother anybody? When I was growing up, the media would actually sometimes refer to the Kennedys as “America’s Royal Family”. No one found this outrageous.

I had one brush with Ted Kennedy. Once, when I was living in Boston, I saw him getting into a car. He saw me looking at him. He smiled and waved to me.

I waved back. I’m not sure why I did. I would like to think I did it out of simple politeness. However, I must admit that for a moment I may have given in to the Kennedy “charisma”, which took in so many millions of people.

(I had one other brush with a Kennedy. Once, I almost took part in a touch football game with JFK, Jr. in New York’s Central Park. To me, he was the most sympathetic of the Kennedys. True, he published a boring and vapid magazine, but at least he never dropped bombs on anybody or walked away from the scene of an accident.)

When I lived in New York, I had a friend who would spend his summers on Martha’s Vineyard, where his family owned a house. He would support himself by working as a bartender there. He once told me a sordid story about seeing Ted Kennedy stinking drunk in his bar. When I made a disparaging remark about Kennedy, my friend suddenly became defensive. He said he thought that Kennedy was doing good things in the Senate. I just looked at him, not sure what to say. Had I been more politically astute in those days, I might have pointed out that the “good things” that Kennedy did in the Senate included deregulating the trucking and airlines industries, which contributed to the decline in living standards in this country.

Over the years I’ve listened to numerous people defend Ted Kennedy. According to them, Chappaquiddick was just a fluke. However, I believe it wasn’t a fluke, but was symptomatic of how the Kennedys viewed other people. They would use and exploit them and discard them when they became inconvenient.

Posted in Democrats, The Kennedys | 2 Comments »

Barack Obombsaway

August 29, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen the Obama “Hope” image in a while. A few months ago, it was ubiquitous. And you don’t see many people in Obama t-shirts any more. The reality of Obama’s administration has begun to set in: most of Obama’s policies are not going to be significantly different from Bush’s. Certainly not with regard to the economy; Obama has continued Bush’s policy of giving trillions of dollars to the banks. What’s more, all the screaming and yelling of the tea baggers can’t conceal the fact that Obama’s health care plan really is a terrible plan. The Huffington Post, that nexus of liberal opinion, has said that the plan would be a “windfall” for the insurance companies. These parasitical entities that have caused so much suffering will benefit much more than the American people possibly will. As for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities, that is simply the fulfillment of an agreement that the Bush administration made with the Iraqi government last year. (Reports are that violence has decreased since. This suggests that we on the left were right in arguing that the occupation has been fueling the violence.)

Those who saw Obama as the “peace” candidate must be scratching their heads right now. It can be argued that Obama is actually more hawkish than Bush. Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan – something that Bush refused to do. Earlier this summer Obama sent Joe Biden to Ukraine and Georgia, where he made shockingly inflammatory statements. He endorsed Georgia’s bogus claims to Abkhazia and South Ossetia and taunted the Russians. He followed Bush’s line in calling for granting NATO membership to Georgia. This would mean that the next time the Georgians decide to start a war with Russia, we would be obligated to defend them.

Won’t that be fun?

This really shouldn’t surprise us. JFK turned out to be more hawkish than Eisenhower, authorizing the Bay of Pigs invasion and deepening US involvement in Vietnam. Bill Clinton actually carried out more interventions than Reagan and Bush the Elder. It can be argued that, when it comes to foreign policy, liberals are potentially more dangerous than the right. The conservatives have no illusions as to what imperialism is about. Liberals, however, want to believe that they really are bringing enlightenment to the world.

Posted in Imperialism, Obama, Parliamentary cretinism | 2 Comments »

Some More Thoughts on Barnes & Noble

August 21, 2009

Since my last post, I have been thinking some more about my experiences at B&N. One thing that I didn’t talk about was the fact that I had to sell Barnes & Noble “Member” cards. (These were sometimes referred to as “customer advantage” cards, or, more accurately, as discount cards.) The deal was this: the customer would pay $25 for the card (which had to be renewed annually). In return, he or she would get 10% off most items (including cds, dvds, and cafe purchases), 20% off adult hardcovers, and 40% off hardcover bestsellers. So, a person would have to spend as much as $250 in a single year before he or she would begin to come out ahead. Now, there are many people who do spend more than $250 a year on books. However, there are many more people who don’t spend that much (or anywhere near it).

Whenever I was working at the cash register, I was obligated to try to sell, or at the very least mention, the card to every single customer. I felt a bit conflicted about this, since I knew it wasn’t a good deal for most people. Usually I would only do a hard sell if a person was buying a lot of books, or if the person asked about the card. However, management always seemed to be fretting that we weren’t doing enough to sell the cards. We were always having meetings, in which they would discuss the importance of selling the “memberships”. They would outline various strategies for getting customers to buy them. It all got to be a bit wearisome after a while.

The explanation they gave for the card is that it promotes “customer loyalty.” That’s putting it politely. I gradually realized that the card actually entails a subtle psychological persuasion. If somebody forks out $25 for a card, he or she will then feel obligated to spend enough money in order for the real savings to kick in. Otherwise, the person will feel like a chump. P.T. Barnum would have been proud of this.

The psychological persuasion cuts two ways. Every worker wants to believe that he or she is doing a good job, regardless of how that person feels about the nature of his or her work. I really did feel compelled to show management that I could sell the card. I felt proud that I always managed to sell more cards than were required by the company’s mandated quota. I even felt envious of the employees who sold more cards than I did. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. There was a woman I worked with who would get visibly upset if she failed to sell any cards during a shift.

Another thing that bothered me: the cafe workers are paid the same wage as the booksellers, even though their work is more demanding. They aren’t even allowed to have tip jars. (The cafe workers at Borders are allowed to have tip jars.)

Full-time workers get health insurance only after they have worked a certain number of hours. This one woman I worked with injured her leg a few weeks before she would qualify for health insurance. (She had been working there for quite a while.) I remember her limping around the store in obvious physical pain.

Posted in Capitalism | 1 Comment »

Barnes & Noble

August 18, 2009

I recently lost my job at Barnes & Noble after working there part-time for four-and-a-half years. It’s always an odd feeling when you lose a job. It’s as though a part of yourself is suddenly gone.

My fondest memories of working at B&N were the feelings of camaraderie that I often had with my fellow employees. I also enjoyed dealing with the customers (most of them, anyway). Even when people were rude to me, I could often sense that this was the result of difficulties they were having in their lives. (Although I could never forgive people for talking on their cell phones at the same time I was ringing them up.)

Barnes & Noble interests me because it is a perfect example of the trend toward monopolization in capitalism. There used to be lots of small bookstore chains here in the US. (Does anyone remember Paperback Booksmith? They had stores all over the place when I was growing up. Whatever happened to them?) Now there is just Barnes & Noble and Borders (Coke and Pepsi). (B. Dalton is owned by B&N, and Waldenbooks is owned by Borders.) And Borders is rumored to be about to go under at any moment.

I got a sense of B&N’s predatory business practices long before I worked there. Years ago, I worked at the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. (This was the weirdest place I have ever worked. I could tell lots of stories about it, but I will have to save them for another post.) This store is justly famous for its mind-boggling collection of second-hand, and often obscure, books. While I was there, B&N opened up a huge store a couple of blocks south of the Strand. A few months later, they opened up another huge store just a few blocks north of the Strand.

Gosh, what do you think they were trying to do?

Milton Friedman famously argued that capitalism is about “choice”. Yet capitalism actually narrows our choices. One day you can choose between Barnes & Noble, Borders and a bunch of independent bookstores. The next day you have Barnes & Noble and Borders. Then you have just Barnes & Noble. There’s choice for you!

I must admit that I’m pleased to find that the Strand is still in business, although I must say that when I worked there, they treated their employees very badly. (So much for the “small capitalism” argument.)

During the past year I noticed that B&N has been a lot harder on its employees. No doubt this has something to do with the economic downturn. When things are slow, bosses take it out of their workers’ skin. One day I came in to work, and I was told that a customer had called the store that morning and complained that the night before she had heard me “mumbling”. (I was never told what it was that I was supposedly “mumbling”.) So I was written up for “mumbling”. On another occasion, a manager angrily reprimanded me for washing my hands in the employee break room after clocking out. (I swear, I’m not making this up.)

I once found on the Internet a blog for Barnes & Noble employees. I was delighted. I assumed this was a place where employees would share grievances about the company and perhaps discuss ways they could possibly fight back. To my dismay, I found that, although there was some criticism of management, most of the gripes were about customers. Even worse, many of these complaints were trivial. For example, some bloggers seemed to take great offense that people would sometimes line up in the wrong spot for the cash registers. Well, what do you expect when the registers are surrounded by tables and spinners selling all sorts of knick-knacks? Even Davy Crockett would get lost in such a wilderness. I suppose this is another example of capitalist alienation. Instead of getting mad at your boss who’s screwing you over, you get mad at some poor guy who happens to be standing in the wrong place.

Posted in Capitalism | 2 Comments »

Shepard Fairey – The Final Act

July 28, 2009

On July 10, The Boston Globe reported the denouement to Shepard Fairey’s legal troubles in Boston. You may recall that Fairey was facing 13 felony charges for doing graffiti in Beantown. The Globe reported:

    Fairey consented to a plea deal that will prohibit him from carrying stickers, posters, wheat paste, brushes, and other tools of the graffiti trade while in Suffolk County for the next two years. Under the arrangement, Fairey pleaded guilty to three vandalism charges and must pay a $2,000 fine to one of his adversaries, Graffiti NABBers for the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay.

Back Bay, as you may recall from my earlier post, is one of the richest neighborhoods in Boston. So, Fairey was forced to pay $2000 to a bunch of rich people just for putting up some ‘Obama’ and ‘Obey’ stickers. I think it worth repeating what I said in my earlier post on this matter:

    This strikes me as a peculiar form of capitalist alienation. It’s okay for companies to put their advertisements all over the place, but if someone unaffiliated with a corporation puts up signs or images, they are automatically considered eyesores, regardless of their content or aesthetic quality.

Reading the blog that accompanied the Globe article online (you can find it here) confirmed for me this observation. The hatred that some of these people showed for Fairey was just amazing. From what they wrote, you would think he was a child murderer. Here is one example:

    it is just graffiti and nothing more! He is a litterer and a public menace! I say lock the idiot up! He has no right putting that crap up on public space – I should not have to look at it!

However, most people either defended Fairey or said the whole business is silly (which is my own view.) It’s nice to see that some people have refused to buy into the hysteria whipped by some rich snobs in the Back Bay.

Posted in Art, Boston, Shepard Fairey | 1 Comment »

Socialism 2009

July 8, 2009

The Women's Building, San Francisco

This past Fourth of July, instead of watching fireworks, I listened to verbal fireworks at the ISO’s Socialism 2009 in San Francisco. It was held at the Women’s Building in the Mission District. This is a charming old structure with a beautiful mural painted on the outside. However, it quickly became embarrassingly obvious that it was not designed for an event the size of the one we were having. The problem was over-cautious thinking on the part of the organizers. They expected between 400 and 450 people to turn up. Instead, there were over 900 people. Clearly, there is an audience for socialist ideas out there.

In spite of the logistical problems, this was the strongest of all the Socialisms that I have been to. Of all the talks I went to, not a single one was a disappointment. Each one had something interesting and thought-provoking about it. Just as good were the discussions that took place. People made well-informed arguments and asked challenging questions. Too often at previous events, some people would just get up and ramble. It was as if they were picking their brains to show how much they knew about a particular topic. I didn’t see much of that this year. This may have been due to aggressive chairing, but I think it may be because the economic crisis has forced people to be more politically serious.

Some of the discussions were so good, that they seemed too short. At a number of the talks I went to, the discussion list had to be cut because time was running out. One discussion that I found particularly interesting was after a talk on Iran by Barry Sheppard and Lee Sustar. There were a number of Iranians in the audience who had taken part in the 1979 revolution. During the discussion it became clear that there were sharp disagreements between them on some issues (such as whether or not the ’79 revolution was “reactionary”.) I was interested to see how these arguments would play out, but unfortunately the discussion had to be cut short, because time was running out.

I saw Michael Yates speak at a panel on the future of the labor movement. He was harshly critical of the labor unions in this country. He argued that what we need to build are not traditional unions, but more broad-based organizations that address a whole host of issues that affect the working class. I would have liked to hear him discuss this idea in more detail, but again, time did not permit it.

I also liked a talk by Christian Parenti on Afghanistan. He managed to go into a lot of detail about that nation’s history. He predicted that Obama is going to try to destroy the Taliban in the next couple of years. If that fails, he will wind down the war in time for the next election. His main thesis, though, was that the war is already lost. Prolonging it will only cause needless suffering.

Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage and which was passed last fall in California, was a big topic at the conference. Friday night there was a panel discussion on this. I was impressed by the positive and upbeat tone of what people said. They feel confident that they can overturn this ban. This is so much different from the mood of the left only a few years ago. All you could hear then was about how helpless we were and about how the right was getting everything it wanted.

There was also a lot of talk about California’s fiscal crisis. At the Haymarket bookstore, they were selling T-shirts that read “Tax the Rich”, a demand that we all can get behind. (I might have bought one of these, but I didn’t like the font that they used. That’s what happens when you work as a graphic designer.)

There were some Sparts on the sidewalk outside, grimly selling their newspapers. One of these poor souls made the mistake of telling Sherry Wolf that the ISO is “sexist” and “homophobic”. You can imagine the earful that person must have gotten.

I was so busy that I had no time to see the city, except for a four block area of the Mission District. I remember that I talked a couple of young friends of mine from Eugene into going to an informational meeting on joining the ISO. Afterwards, when I asked them about it, they sheepishly admitted that they had instead gone to Haight-Ashbury to check out the head shops. (One of them expressed indignation at finding a McDonald’s there.) Well, I guess there’s a little bit of a tourist in all of us.

My friends and I stayed with two comrades, Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, in Berkeley. (You may recall that back in 2005 they wrote an eyewitness account of the destruction of New Orleans that was widely disseminated on the Internet and caused some controversy. You can find it here.) They were both very friendly and hospitable, and they made our stay a pleasant one. We had to take the subway out to their house. I must say, I was impressed by the Bay Area’s transit system. It only took us half an hour to go from the Mission District to Berkeley, even though they are on opposite sides of the bay. I also liked the fact that the stations had LED signs announcing how long it would take for the next trains to arrive. (The thing that always drove me crazy about subways in the past was that one never knew how long one would have to wait for the next train.) However, I didn’t like the ticket machines, which I found confusing and inconvenient. I ended up paying more money for tickets than I needed to. (Do you think maybe they designed the machines to make that happen?) I also didn’t like the fact that the trains stop running shortly after midnight.

There are some images from this conference that will alway be with me – such as the expression on Mark Steel’s face as almost half the audience showed up late for his talk on Che Guevara. What made the greatest impression on me, however, was the energy and enthusiasm of the people who came. There are people out there who want radical change, and we must reach them somehow.

Posted in San Francisco, Socialism | 2 Comments »

Iran

June 25, 2009

I noticed that on some of the left-wing blogs there have been debates, some of them quite heated, over what should be the attitude of the left towards the demonstrations in Iran. It seems to me that the first thing that should be borne in mind in this discussion is that even if the vote tally is accurate, the election itself was not democratic. Only candidates approved by the clergy are allowed to run in elections. Anyone promising real change is barred from running. The choice between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is like a choice between Coke and Pepsi. (Yes, there are differences between the two, just as there are differences between Coke and Pepsi, but they are minor in the larger scheme of things.)

Some people have expressed the fear that Iran will have a bogus “color” revolution, in the manner of Ukraine or Georgia, that will install a pro-US government. I think this concern is unwarranted. Iran is a much larger country than these two, and it is more socially and culturally complex. What’s more, Mousavi, who was Iran’s prime minister during the 1980’s, is not a US puppet, and he certainly is no friend of Israel. If Mousavi were to become president, he would likely adopt a more conciliatory tone towards the US (which may not be a bad thing), but there would be no radical change in Iran’s foreign policy. There are objective reasons why Iran needs to counter US and Israeli influence. Thus, the argument that the Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy is “objectively progressive” is neither here nor there.

I suspect the protestors are motivated not so much by support for the dubious Mousavi, as by general frustration with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. We are talking about a government that treats women as second-class citizens, executes gays, imprisons trade unionists, and persecutes religious minorities. People struggling against such a regime deserve our support.

Posted in Imperialism, Iran | Leave a Comment »

The Fourth of July

May 20, 2009

I know it’s early, but I’ve been thinking about the Fourth of July lately. Although Independence Day is politically problematic, I just think it’s cool that one day of the year is devoted to making loud noises. The best Independence Day I ever had was about fifteen years ago when I lived in New York City. I went to a party at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn. We went up to the roof of his building, and we could see three different fireworks displays going on simultaneously. (Only in New York, as they say.) Another year I was walking through a neighborhood in Jersey City, where there were so many people setting off firecrackers that it sounded as though there were a war going on.

I once heard an Iraq War veteran say that he hated firecrackers because they reminded him of war. I can understand how someone might feel that way. However, I remember that my father, a World War II veteran who suffered from PTSD (in those days it was called “combat fatigue”), would set off firecrackers in my family’s backyard on the night of the Fourth of July. My favorite was this thing called a “Roman Candle” that would shoot yellow and orange sparks straight up about ten or twenty feet. My father wouldn’t let my siblings and me set any off. He would only let us light these things called “sprinklers”. These were sticks that gave off tiny sparks and made no noise. I tried my best to enjoy these, but the truth was that I found them disappointing. I wanted something that would go bang.

I currently have some firecrackers left over from last year’s Independence Day. However, I’m not going to be able to use them this year, because on Fourth of July weekend I will be attending a socialist conference in San Francisco. I suppose there is something appropriate about that. Still, I will miss the fireworks.

This is a roundabout way of getting to my real topic, which is the American Revolution. It always annoys me when I hear some Marxist assert that the American Revolution was a “bourgeois revolution”. This is at best only a half-truth, since the staunchest supporters of the revolution were slave-owners. It was really only in the New England colonies that the struggle took on a bourgeois/proletarian character. In other parts of the country there were many people who sided with the British. In the Hudson River Valley, many tenant farmers opposed the revolution because their landlords supported it. Many Native Americans sided with the British, because they correctly perceived that people like George Washington were opposed to their well-being. Only the slave-owners saw the revolution as being clearly in their interests.

If the British had been smart, they would have incited a slave rebellion. What they really needed was someone like Marlon Brando’s character in Pontecorvo’s film, Burn!, an agent provocteur. That would almost certainly have defeated the revolution. (Though the New England colonies might well have fought on by themselves.) North America would be a different-looking place.

Posted in Holidays | Leave a Comment »

The Murderers are Among Us

April 11, 2009

Recently I saw the film, The Murderers Are Among Us (1946). I’m told that this is the first film to be made in Germany after World War II. It is an example of what the Germans call trummerfilme (rubble films) – that is, films filled with scenes of the bombed-out ruins in German cities in the post-war period.

The film begins with Suzanne (Hildegard Knef), a concentration camp survivor, returning to Berlin after the war. She goes to reclaim the apartment she had before she was taken away, but she finds it occupied by Dr. Martens (Wilhelm Borchert), a traumatized veteran of the war. At first, Martens haughtily asserts that the apartment is his, but he ends up letting Suzanne move into one of the rooms. The two of them then develop an uneasy domestic relationship: Suzanne cooks and cleans, while Martens hangs out in bars and gets stinking drunk. Since this is a movie, Suzanne falls in love with Martens. The plot thickens when Martens comes into contact with Ferdinand Bruckner (Arno Paulson), who was Martens’s commanding officer during the war. Bruckner had ordered the massacre of a Polish village, as a form of collective punishment. (It is implied that Martens’s own complicity in this atrocity is the reason for his self-destructive behavior.) Martens was under the impression that Bruckner was subsequently killed during the war. He is dismayed to learn that not only is Bruckner still alive, but that he is now a prosperous businessman, who lives in comfort while most of Berlin still lies in ruins. Martens gradually resolves to kill Bruckner.

I’m told that the script originally had Martens kill Bruckner at the end. However, the Soviet occupation authorities demanded that the ending be changed, because they feared it would be seen as a call for vigilantism.

The film has some scenes in it that are clearly meant to be disturbing. In one, Bruckner complacently chews on his lunch while reading a newspaper headline announcing that millions were gassed to death at Auschwitz. In another scene, German officers are shown singing “Silent Night” in front of a crucifix, after they’ve just massacred a Polish village. Also disturbing is the fact that in some scenes Bruckner comes across as likable, even caring. There is a nice visual touch in the scene in which Martens finally confronts Bruckner. We see Martens’s shadow looming over Bruckner, who seems to be shrinking, as the latter screams that he had to do what he did because of “wartime.”

The biggest problem I have with this film is that nothing is said about Suzanne’s experiences in the concentration camps. The film doesn’t even say why she was taken away. Is she Jewish? A Communist? A Social Democrat? A pacifist? A Gypsy? The film doesn’t say.

The film was written and directed by Wolfgang Staudte. This was the first time I had ever heard of Staudte, and I wanted to learn more about him. I found a very short biography of him on English-language Wikipedia, and a longer one on German-language Wikipedia. He made his early films in East Germany. However, in the mid-1950’s, he moved to West Germany. This apparently had something to do with the fact that Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel had prevented him from doing a film version of Mother Courage. According to German Wikipedia, his films went out of fashion during the 1960’s, though it doesn’t say why. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could provide me with any additional information about Staudte.

The Murderers Are Among Us is a powerful and disturbing film, and I highly recommend it.

Posted in Cinema, Germany | 1 Comment »

Countrywide Home Loans

March 14, 2009

foreclosure

I recently read an article by Sharon Smith on the Socialist Worker website. It contained the following information:

    A dozen former executives from mortgage lender Countrywide (which is also now owned by BoA), whose predatory lending practices played a key role in precipitating the sub-prime mortgage crisis, have launched a new corporate entity, the Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company–with a strategy to make exorbitant profits from individuals unable to keep up with their monthly mortgage payments.

    Known as PennyMac, the company buys overdue mortgages at steep discounts from the federal government, which took them over from distressed banks. PennyMac then contacts the homeowners to negotiate new terms–and either pushes them into foreclosure or negotiates lower interest rates. It’s a win-win equation for PennyMac.

    One of PennyMac’s leaders, Stanley L. Kurland, is a former president at Countrywide and an architect of the classic sub-prime mortgage formula–mortgages with low “teaser” interest rates that later rose sharply. During the six years before Kurland left Countrywide in late 2006, Countrywide’s portfolio increased from $62 billion to $463 billion. Kurland sold $200 million in stocks shortly before leaving Countrywide. Now he stands to make many millions more reaping profits from the same category of people whose lives he helped to destroy.

    Federal banking officials nevertheless defend recruiting executives like Kurland to rebuild the financial system. As the New York Times explained: “[Federal officials] said that it was important to do business with experienced mortgage operators like Mr. Kurland, who know how to creatively renegotiate delinquent loans.”

It so happens that I once had a temp job working for Countrywide. (I didn’t last long, I’m proud to say.) I worked at an office they had in L.A. It was located at the foot of the beautiful Santa Suzannah mountains, where a small nuclear reactor melted down in 1959 (but that’s another story). I was hired along with about thirty other temps. We had to go through a week-long training course before we could start work. At one of the these training classes, a high-level executive came to talk to us. She told us quite frankly that Countrywide got all of its income from charging fees for late mortgage payments. (I will never forget the look of glee on this woman’s face as she explained this to us.) Perhaps I was in a state of denial, but it was only after I left this job that I began to put two and two together. If this was their sole source of income, then they had to be luring people into buying mortgages that they couldn’t really afford. People who have difficulty making their payments are likely to default sooner or later. What Countrywide was doing was unsustainable, just as a Ponzi scheme is unsustainable.

Countrywide was a purely parasitical organization. In my opinion, what they did was on the same level as what Bernie Madoff did. The only difference is that what Countrywide did was legal, while what Bernie Madoff did isn’t. Stanley L. Kurland deserves to be in prison just as much as Madoff does. Instead, the Obama administration is looking to him, and others like him, to help revive the economy.

Posted in Capitalism | 2 Comments »

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