<nettime> Paulson's face

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes {AT} wanadoo.fr>]

Hello bubble-bursters -

There are times when the ability of the press to select exactly the 
grimace of the moment from among thousands of available images is really 
gratifying to the average hometown viewer. For instance, Secretary of 
the Treasury Henry M. Paulson Jr., as portrayed for your delectation by 
the New York Times:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/14/business/14fannie.3957.jpg

This was Paulson announcing that the oh-so semi-privatized Federal 
home-loan banks, Freddie-the-Mac and Fannie-if-I-Mae, were going to be 
refloated with the taxpayer's capital to the tune of billions of 
dollars, if Congress approves, which it will for want of the courage to 
send the whole corrupt system down the tubes, and the US economy with it.

About seven months ago, on Dec. 13, 2007, Ted Byfield offered a 
genuinely prescient post to nettime entitled "how to fix a liquidity 
crisis." He accurately predicted that we would be hearing much more 
about the massive reflation of keeling-over banks afflicted by the 
sub-prime rot. I might venture to predict that said reflation, injecting 
huge liquidities wherever the Treasury hears that great sucking sound of 
potential big-league bankruptcy, will soon combine with sky-high oil 
prices to give us massive inflation, where all the funny money sloshing 
around just doesn't seem to pay for much more than a drop of gas (or 
heating fuel). Let's all invest right now in a warm blanket for the 
winter, my dear friends.

best, Brian

PS - The parallels between the financial front and the Iraq debacle 
continue to astound: here, it is said with journalistic abandon that 
government bailouts could provide an "overwhelming surge of capital to 
the companies." Why not just put all the home-loan banks in a Green Zone 
and consider the problem tabled?


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