Since I’ve posted two stories on Iraq in a row, I would also like to take this time to remind you that the aftermath of the past 10 years of reckless corporate welfare giveaways and rank corporate malfeasance by cronies of, among others, George W. Bush, continues to make for an extremely fragile economy, with low profits, surging oil prices (as a direct result of U.S. sabre-rattling), and dismal retail results.

The lowest US interest rates for 40 years have helped keep the American economy afloat, especially through strong consumer spending. But companies are still struggling to make profits in an environment of low prices while saddled with debt accumulated in the 1990s boom. Analysts thought companies would be over the worst by now, but the stream of profit warnings and credit downgrades shows no sign of drying up.

Well, it should be noted that the coexistence of "the lowest U.S. interest rates in 40 years" and accumulating debt is not merely a coincidence. When your central bank is giving away basically free money, and the legislature is stealing money from workers in order to write billions of dollars in corporate welfare checks, the amount of investment is artificially jacked up. That will jack up the economy temporarily, but eventually the chickens will come home to roost: artificially low interest rates means artificially high malinvestment - pouring cheap money into bad projects because the risk is artificially lowered. We are now living with the hangover of our central planners’ and corporate bureaucrats’ long investment binge in the 1990s.

The Bush apparatchiks, of course, have been trying to blame this all on Clinton. And certainly Clinton’s economic policies helped create the bubble economy and continued the long tradition of massive corporate welfare giveaways. Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to claim that every single problem Bush faces - from international terrorism to the going-nowhere economy - is not, in fact, the result of any of his own numerous fuck-ups, collusions of interest, or back-room deals. Instead, it’s all messes that Clinton left for Bush to clean up. Why? Because Clinton was too distracted by the Monica Lewinski investigation! (In other news, Limbaugh announced that four legs good, two legs bad.)

Let’s get serious, folks. We have an administration in power that is dedicated to increasing command and control over the economy by central planning bureaucrats - in corporate boardrooms and in government offices. The economy has been weak for the entire Bush Presidency and it shows no signs of letting up. He’s had a year and a half now; by now, even the lagging indicators (such as unemployment levels) are reflecting decisions made under the Bush administration. The problem is that the Democratic leadership is too spineless and too cowed and too much in collusion with the same corporate interests to point out that Bush’s policies have been making things worse, not better. Once again, more proof that we desperately need a system that allows for vibrant third parties in America. We desperately need a lot of other things, too—like an end to corporate welfare and centralized command-and-control over the economy—but until we have some basic democracy reforms we are very unlikely to get any of that.

You know, it’s really just pathetic when the Democratic leadership’s most forceful condemnation of reckless international aggression comes from Al fucking Gore. If he ends up being the most pro-peace Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 2004, I think I am going to go insane and start systematically knocking off people’s hats.

Meanwhile, in DC, the waffling continues:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House’s second-ranked Democrat, said yesterday that she didn’t think Democrats would offer a single alternative to the Bush proposal. Her party, she said, was working on a number of different approaches that she hoped would become a part of the resolution that Congress finally votes on.

This is precisely what the problem is. Despite some high-level divisions, the Right is overwhelmingly lining up behind George W. Bush. They’re pushing this issue as hard as they can and trying to use it as a wedge for November. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, because it’s viscerally terrified of anything that might vaguely resemble a consistent commitment to social justice, or an opinion seriously challenging the Administration on foreign policy, has no unified plan, is making no common voice, and generally is letting the Right-wing nuts have a field day with it.

This is precisely why we need a vibrant multiparty system, so that the many people who are now in the Democratic coalition (Congressional and otherwise) who know that the present course of the Party leadership is politically suicidal and fundamentally reckless and stupid, actually have some leverage to challenge the War Party toadies and the Right-wing maniacs.