The credit crisis is not over even as the extent of it is barely hinted at in much of the US press. For weeks, most business writers suggested that a cut in the Federal Reserve Bank’s interest rate will solve the whole problem. Yesterday the NY Times reported that experts now do not now see that as a panacea. That means no quick fix folks.

Congresss is also divided and unwilling to act:

AP: No Quick Action Expected on Mortgages

WASHINGTON (AP) - Want government help to get out of a bad subprime mortgage? Don’t look for Congress to come to your rescue anytime soon.

Lawmakers have lots of ideas and plans - as well as hearings to share their concerns and assess blame - but there’s no consensus on how to stop the foreclosures. The only thing everyone has agreed on is that something must be done.

“We may have as many as 1 million to 3 million people who could lose their homes, not because they lost their jobs, not because the economy collapsed, but because they got bad deals on mortgages,'’ said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

AND WHAT ABOUT CREDIT CARDS?

Meanwhile there is concern that other bubbles—as in credit cards and car loans may soon be at risk.

The Telegraph in London reports:

Fears are mounting that British credit card debts could soon spark a fresh crisis in the global financial system.
Debt-laden consumers in Britain owe more than £1.3 trillion, including more than £50bn on plastic.

Billions of pounds in credit card debt run up with Barclaycard, Egg, MBNA and every major card provider have been sold off to the capital markets in recent years.

That is happening in other countries and here as well. From Frontera NorteSur in Mexico we learn:

Is a Credit Card Debt Crisis Looming in Mexico?

New numbers strongly suggest that Mexico’s level of consumer credit card debt is steadily sliding from the “yellow” zone into the “red” one. A new report from the official National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services’ Customers (Condusef) reveals that the percentage of bad debts grew from 4.6 percent of total credit card debts during the first trimester of 2007 to 6.1 percent of the overall debt load by June of this year. The jump represents a 100 percent increase in the amount of overdue credit card debts from June 2005, when only 3 percent of the overall debt sector in question was in arrears.

ONE SUGGESTION RE MORTGAGE ADS ON MEDIACHANNEL

Shebar Windstore writes: “About those pesky mortgage ads on your website: You could *use* them! Add some appropriate text next to where they appear (e.g., “Is the government still allowing sub-moronic mortgage lenders to prey on us?”) & maybe a link to another website. They’re like dead canaries in a mine. As long as they continue to appear, we know that Congress is still out to lunch.”

US MEDIA NEVER WAS GREAT—AND ITS GETTING WORSE

Patrick Greanville challenges some dominant views:

There’s a widespread assumption in leftwing circles that increasing concentration of media ownership is, ipso facto, the main if not sole culprit for the appalling performance of mainstream journalism in our time. Surely there’s a lot to decry, but is media consolidation and deregulation the cause for this calamity? And if the American media have indeed fallen from grace, as it is claimed, where in time do we locate this mythical “golden period” when the media establishment did measure up to its social mandate?

That the American media are palpably in what we might call today a pathetic and degenerate state, if not a free fall toward irrelevancy, should be obvious to thoughtful observers……

50th ANNIVERSARY OF JACK KEROUAC’S ON THE ROAD

THOUGHTS ON LABOR DAY:

James Carroll in the Boston Globe

Labor Day can seem like a holiday that belongs to another era. That is not because the trade union movement is no longer relevant, nor does the impulse to honor work and workers ever lose its importance. But the word “labor” once defined an entire culture, with its “names, battle slogans, and costumes,” in Karl Marx’s phrase. Where did it go? The labor movement had its symbols, from politically charged clothing to badges to the holidays in May and September; its structures, from picket lines to unions to worker-owned insurance companies; its rhetoric, from the manifestos of agitators to the leaflets of organizers to the songs of Woody Guthrie; its ethic, defined as solidarity.

David Podvin writes on MakeThemAccountable.com:

Another Labor Day has arrived, making it the perfect time to examine how American workers are victimized by those who pledge friendship. Conservatives never betray laborers, if only because it is impossible to betray people you openly despise. It is progressives who seduce the working class with false promises of fidelity.
In recent decades, American workers have seen their wages steadily lose ground to inflation while the monied elite have prospered. The national distribution of wealth now skews higher than ever, the byproduct of tax policies and trade agreements and illegal immigration. Conservatives have faithfully promoted the interests of the GOP’s aristocratic benefactors while liberals have failed to represent the peasants who vote Democratic.

When the Democrats took control of Congress, new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that working people had won a great victory. Thus far, that victory has yielded a largely symbolic minimum wage increase benefiting entry level service industry employees and few others. The Democratic Congress refuses to consider repealing the Bush tax cut that provided the upper class with cash and the working class with debt. The Democrats still support trade agreements that encourage business to replace American blue collar workers with foreign slave labor.

ECONOMIST MAX F WOLFF: CHANGE THE NAME TO CAPITAL DAY

As Labor Day/Capital Day falls in this the two thousand and seventh year of our lord, capital’s share of the American pie is at record level. Labor’s share too has achieved a new record — a record low. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the share of national income going to wages and salaries has reached an all time low (lowest point since data began being collected in 1929) and the share of national income going to profits has reached a high. I believe this strongly supports my contention regarding a name change for the holiday!

MAP OF RAIDS ON WORKERS—CATO INSTITUTE

CHANGING SEASONS

Now its September. Students go back to school. I go back to work. How long can our efforts survive? I don’t know but we will keep going until we can’t.

Some like reporter Chris Floyd sees a far darker cloud that he fears others don’t see….He sees an erosion of our democracy.

It won’t come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won’t come with “black helicopters” or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm - but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.

As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns - plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.

He quotes a master:

Put your hand on my head, baby;
Do I have a temperature?
I see people who ought to know better
Standing around like furniture.
There’s a wall between you
And what you want - you got to leap it.
Tonight you got the power to take it;
Tomorrow you won’t have the power to keep it.

- Bob Dylan

Can we resist this tide?

Comments to Dissector@mediachannel

LABOR DAY BLOG IN CASE YOU MISSED IT–IMMINENT ATTACK ON IRAN?

RENEWED REPORTS OF IMMINENT U.S. ATTACKS ON IRAN

CULLED FROM THE NY TIMES: At current rates, analysts expect foreclosure filings to hit a rate approaching heights not seen since the Great Depression.,. One in five student borrowers passes up a less expensive federal student loan in favor of private lenders, according to a recent study.

SPECIAL REPORT: NEW REPORTS SUGGEST AN ATTACK ON IRAN IS IMMINENT

I swore I was taking the holiday weekend off but as I reviewed articles I was sent I felt I had to share them with you. There is more than chatter out there suggesting that the US is planning to bomb Iran. (Just Today, the Iranians claimed they have more nuclear centrifuges than even the International Atomic Energy organization estimated. Are we in for a showdown or something worse. What better way to shift attention off Iraq in the very month that a report is due reporting on the “progress” there. There being no real progress, to report why not open up a second front? Hmmmm…..

Is it possible? Could the Bush-Cheney cabal be serious about expanding the war into Iran despite their obvious defeat in Iraq, despite the incredible cost to the people of the United States and our country’s honor? Is this kind of insanity in the cards, in the plans, about to happen.?

There were reports of US war planning going back a year now, beginning with Sy Hersh’s New Yorker report. Scott Ritter was sounding the alarm. It was reported but then downplayed. I

t was supposed to happen in June. It didn’t. War critics including Noam Chomsky said he doubted the war plan was still on. After all Europe trying to mediate. US backed leaders like Maliki or Iraq and Karzi of Afghanistan were meeting with Iranian leaders and suggesting they had a role to play in peace in the region. We were reminded that the Iranians had actually promoted free elections in Kabul.

But the rumors would not go away even if the US press was not playing it up.

This past weekend, The Sunday Times in London reported: “The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.”

Media analyst Jerry Policoff had this to say about this report:

This article, which ran in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, was clearly planted by Bush’s Neocon enablers, and seems to be preparing the world for a massive U.S. air operation against Iran involving 1,200 targets. Also note the inclusion of references to a report released by the Institute for the Study of War written by Kimberly Kagan. Kagan is the wife of Fred Kagan, one of the most un-repentant of the PNAC Neocon gang that got us into Iraq. He is also one of the architects of the current “surge.”

Here’s George Packer in the New Yorker commenting on a report by Foreign Policy expert Barnet Rubin that neo-cons are launching a media campaign to hype a bombing attack on Iran.

True? I don’t know. Plausible? Absolutely. It follows the pattern of the P.R. campaign that started around this time in 2002 and led to the Iraq war. The President’s rhetoric on Iran has been nothing short of bellicose lately, warning of “the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” And the Iranian government’s behavior—detaining British servicemen and arresting American passport holders, pushing ahead with uranium enrichment, and, by many reliable accounts, increasing its funding and training for anti-American militias in Iraq—seems intentionally provocative.

Perhaps President Ahmedinejad and the mullahs feel that they win either way: they humiliate the superpower if it doesn’t take the bait, and they shore up their deeply unpopular regime at home if it does. Preëmptive war requires calculations (and, often, miscalculations) on two sides, not just one, as Saddam learned in 2003. When tensions are this high between two countries and powerful factions in both act as if hostilities are in their interest, war is likely to follow.

It’s one thing for the American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard, et al to champion a war they support. It’s another to jump like circus animals at the crack of the White House whip. If the propaganda campaign predicted by Rubin’s friend is launched, less subservient news organizations should ask certain questions, and keep asking them: Does the Administration expect the Iranian regime to fall in the event of an attack? If yes, what will replace it? If no (and it will not), why would the Administration deliberately set about to strengthen the regime’s hold on power? What will the Administration do to protect highly vulnerable American lives and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world against the Iranian reprisals that will follow? What if Iran strikes against Israel? What will be the strategy when the Iranian nuclear program, damaged but not destroyed, resumes? How will the Administration handle the international alarm and opprobrium that would be an attack’s inevitable fallout?

If this really is a return to the early fall of 2002 all over again, then I’m fairly sure that no one at the top of the Administration is worrying about the answers.

Postscript: Barnett Rubin just called me. His source spoke with a neocon think-tanker who corroborated the story of the propaganda campaign and had this to say about it: “I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.”

Majorie Cohn comments on Common Dreams:

Bush has already set the wheels in motion. With Rovian timing, Alberto Gonzales’ resignation was sandwiched between two Bush screeds - one aimed at ensuring Congress scares up $50 billion more for the occupation of Iraq, the other designed to scare us into supporting war on Iran. As Gonzales rides off into the sunset, the significant questions are who will take his place and how that choice will facilitate Bush’s occupation of Iraq and attack on Iran.

One name that’s been floated for Bush’s third attorney general is Joe Lieberman, the “independent” senator from Connecticut. Lieberman, who advocates the use of military force against Iran, was the only person Bush quoted in his August 28 speech to the American Legion. Bush called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” and pledged to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

Gonzales greased the Bush/Cheney wheels for torturing in violation of the Geneva Conventions, illegally spying on Americans, and purging disloyal Bushies.

Similarly, Lieberman would ensure the Justice Department mounts a vigorous defense of a war of aggression against Iran. And Bush would get a two-fer: Connecticut’s Republican governor would appoint a Republican to fill Lieberman’s seat, returning control of the Senate to the GOP. A Republican-controlled Senate would direct the agenda, thereby furthering the Bush/Cheney plan.

We have to be careful about disinformation on all sides–false reports, unconfirmed rumors and speculative journalism. Joe Dunphy sent me this item:

Kos is calling the Iran attack diary by Maccabee a hoax. However, the timing of the hoax is itself interesting, given the announcement of apparantly good news from North Korea on a nuclear weapons research agreement. Could it be deliberate disinformation? hard to tell. At any rate, here’s a resend of a 4-19-2007 analysis of the potential situation in the Gulf of Hormuz. It’s still dangerous, and the missle threat against both naval ships and oil tankers remains a big risk. We know the Bush administration has put writers on the payroll, and engages in assymetric information warfare. One has to wonder whether this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the credibility of Daily Kos, as the memos in the investigation of the White House eventually undermined anchor Dan Rather. Ugly stuff.

MEANWHILE, US POLICY IS UNDER ATTACK FROM BRITISH GENERALS

LONDON (AFP) — The British backlash over the United States’s handling of post-invasion Iraq grew Sunday as another military commander blasted Washington’s “fatally flawed” policy.

Major General Tim Cross, the top British officer involved in planning post-war Iraq, said he raised serious concerns with then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the possibility of the country descending into chaos.

But Rumsfeld “ignored” or “dismissed” his warnings, the general told the Sunday Mirror newsapaper.

On Saturday, the head of the British Army during the 2003 invasion launched a fierce attack on the United States over its handling of troubled Iraq since.

General Sir Mike Jackson branded US post-invasion policy “intellectually bankrupt” and said Rumsfeld was “one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq.”

OTHER MUST READS;

Leilia Fadel, the Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspaper describes a new word being used in Iraq in her blog:

”Enaalso,” he said in Iraqi slang. It’s a new Iraqi word, a phrase used to explain being turned in by an informant to a militia and then being killed. Literally it means he was “chewed up.”

It’s what Iraqis now repeatedly say to explain the killings of families by militias that control their neighborhoods with fear and weapons; a word to explain the corpses that show up in the streets.

The Shiites in the neighborhood have grown disdainful towards the Mahdi Army, the militant wing of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. They to are being killed for one errant word, he said. But no one will say anything.

He ran his finger across his neck, in a motion of a throat being slit. That’s what happens, rah yaalsouch, they will chew you up.

SETBACK IN AFGHANISTAN

The NY Times: “In six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area that U.S. and NATO officials declared a success story last fall.”

BUSH DREAMS OF HIS FUTURE: PUTTING THE “Ol’ COFFERS” FIRST

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world.”

Question to the US Media: WILL YOU INVESTIGATE THESE REPORTS?

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

To Readers Who Ask: Yes we are trying to get rid of mortgage ads on our front page. We have a service that inputs these ads without our say so. Don’t think we know what a an embarassment this is and a disservice.