“It seemed fitting then, in a tragic way, that the holiday season began with violence fueled by desperation; with a mob making a frantic reach for things they wanted badly, knowing they might go home empty-handed.” NY TIMES

ECONOMY: BEHIND THE INSANITY AT WALMART

It didn’t just happen.

NY TIMES: “It was a tragedy, yet it did not feel like an accident. All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.

This year, that anxiety comes with special intensity for everyone involved — for shoppers, fully cognizant of the immense strains on the economy, which has made bargains more crucial than ever; for the stores, now grappling with what could be among the weakest holiday seasons on record; and for policy makers around the planet, grappling with how to substitute for the suddenly beleaguered American consumer, whose proclivities for new gadgets and clothing has long been the engine of economic growth from Guangzhou to Guatemala City.”

MORE ON WAL-MART (Thanks to Marta Steele)

01. At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day.

02 .This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

03. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

04. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears +Costco + K-Mart combined.

05. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer. And most can’t speak English

06. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World.

07. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

08. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).

09. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are SuperCenters; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

CHELLIS GLENDINING: CHEERING FOR MORGAN STANLEY

It was September 23 — and Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and A.I.G. had already tanked. Morgan Stanley, still holding on by bloodless knuckles, had just been sold in bulk to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Group.

That day, as the world of capitalism was spinning off its axel, I received two pieces of mail here in northern New Mexico. … With goose bumps quivering across my gut, I slowly tore the second envelope open Inside was a formal invitation. From Morgan Stanley.

NOW THEY TELL US: BUSHEVIKS KNEW, LOOKED THE OTHER WAY

AP Reports TWO YEARS LATER:

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

Now some of those banks are getting taxpayer money……

WHO WANTS AND IS GETTING BAILOUT MONEY? The New York Times has a list: Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout.

Dozens of banks and a handful of insurers have applied for funds from the Treasury Department as part of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury has transferred capital to 30 of these companies and to A.I.G. More are expected to announce their participation in the coming weeks.

PAUL KRUGMAN: WHAT TO DO

“What the world needs right now is a rescue operation. The global credit system is in a state of paralysis, and a global slump is building momentum as I write this. Reform of the weaknesses that made this crisis possible is essential, but it can wait a little while. First, we need to deal with the clear and present danger. To do this, policymakers around the world need to do two things: get credit flowing again and prop up spending.”

HISTORY LESSONS: The Economic Crisis in Historical Perspective By Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith

The superlatives of the global economic meltdown of 2008 are, well, superlative. Professor Noriel Roubini of New York University says the current crisis is “the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in history.” The International Monetary Fund says, “In advanced economies, output is forecast to contract on a full-year basis in 2009, the first such fall in the post-war period.”

The crisis of 2008 is frequently compared to past crises, and increasingly to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain recently said he does not expect the global economy to recover quickly from the credit crisis and that the environment more closely resembles the advent of the Great Depression in 1929 than recent slowdowns. Long-forgotten images of breadlines and homeless families have sprouted in the media. 60 percent of US voters polled in October said another depression is likely within a year.

Such historical comparisons can help provide perspective on contemporary situations, but they can also be misleading if they don’t include the differences as well as the similarities. For labor and social movements, there is much to learn at this time of crisis from crises past. But there are also significant differences which we ignore at our peril – and which may allow us opportunities for action that did not exist in the past.

The World Bank, the IFC and the antecedents of the financial crisis by Paulo dos Santos

The financial crisis seemed to come out of the blue, but Paulo dos Santos of the University of London argues that the ground was laid by financial sector privatization, liberalization and deregulation. Far from these trends being confined to the rich world, the World Bank and the IFC have played a key role in pushing these policies throughout emerging markets, exposing them to the fallout of the financial crisis.

Richard Cook: Citizens’ Economic Stimulus Plan: Stop Paying Credit Card Debt

But the worst of the debt may be credit card debt, where the controls on interest rates and penalty charges were lifted long ago and the government stopped providing a tax deduction for interest paid. In many cases, interest on credit cards is 28 percent or more, which means that even by making the minimum required payment, consumers see their balances grow each month. That the politicians could continue to allow such evil to exist is astounding but proves who their masters are.

So until real relief is forthcoming, citizens who are in distress should simply destroy their credit cards and stop paying the monthly bills. People are already doing this. Arrearages and defaults are climbing, and credit card debt is starting to be viewed as the next bubble to burst. But so what? If people have to use a credit card, that means they can’t really afford to buy whatever it is they think they want. If they can afford it, they should use a debit card instead.

Then tell the credit card company you cannot pay. Ask them to write off some or all of the debt, and if they want to take you to court, go on your own and defend yourself. You don’t need a lawyer, and you don’t need anyone’s permission. You also don’t need to go through the horrendous “reformed” bankruptcy system the credit card companies got Congress to pass in 2005. Failure to pay credit card debt is not, thank God, a crime in this country, and there are no debtors’ prisons—yet.

Besides, if people do not pay credit card debt, that money remains in circulation. So default is actually a form of patriotism in today’s trying circumstances. And the credit card companies really don’t lose anything, since the money didn’t exist before they lent it to people who are now broke.

Mirabile dictu, indeed! NAKEDCAPITALISM.com ON CRITICISM OF ROBERT RUBIN IN THE WALL ST JOURNAL

This ought to be a celebratory event, the scrutiny of a powerful player in the financial system who heretofore seemed immune to criticism. And what is interesting about the spotlight on Citigroup consigliere and board member Robert Rubin is that, unlike Greenspan, the reassessment is starting while he would still appear to have his hands on the reins of power. After all, he is still on Citi’s board; his protégé, Timothy Geithner, is slotted to become Treasury Secretary, his buddy Larry Summer is head-of-the-National-Economic-Council-in-waiting.

Yet if the reaction in New York is any indication, the outrage about the speed and size of the second Citigroup rescue is considerable, and a recent Wall Street Journal piece fingered Rubin as a moving force behind Citi’s disastrous strategy to take on more risk in debt markets in pursuit of profit and better competitive rankings. And the only consequences to Rubin will be (hopefully) lasting damage to his reputation. But he gets to keep his cash and prizes.

Rubin refuses to take an iota of responsibility for the bank’s tsuris (and that also comes from the Goldman playbook. The firm always circles the wagons and admits nothing). Get a load of this:

Robert Rubin said its problems were due to the buckling financial system, not its own mistakes, and that his role was peripheral to the bank’s main operations even though he was one of its highest-paid officials.

“Nobody was prepared for this,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview. He cited former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as another example of someone whose reputation has been unfairly damaged by the crisis.

BLOOMBERG: TWO STORIES FROM CHINA

l. CRISIS MORE SEVERE

“Owing to dramatic changes in the international economic and financial environment, the Chinese economy currently faces growing downside pressure,” and “the global financial crisis has not bottomed out yet.” Zhang Ping, president of the national commission for development and reform, the highest office of economic policy in the country, said today at a press conference that the crisis in the country has become much more severe since November, and said that in 2009, “excessive bankruptcies and production cuts will lead to massive unemployment and stir social unrest.”

CHARGES OF CORRUPTION

SHANGHAI – China’s stock market regulatory agency said Friday the wealthy founder of China’s largest electronics retailer, GOME Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd., is being investigated for suspected share manipulation involving two companies that may have been potential takeover targets.

State-run China Central Television on Friday night said China Securities Regulatory Commission officials held a press conference during the day to outline details of their probe into Huang Guangyu, GOME’s 39-year-old founder, chairman and biggest shareholder.