A New New Deal

On September 27th, Katrina Vander Heuval, publisher of The Nation, and Eric Schlosser criticized the bailout in progressive terms in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read their insightful and bold article as it was republished in The Nation.

In recapping what FDR did when he came to office in the dark days after the Crash of 1929--no, Joe, he wasn't in office then and there was no television either--Vander Heuval and Schlosser list all of the federal projects that boosted the economy, got people back to work, and ushered in the American age.

During the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration spent about $250 billion (in today's dollars) on public-works projects, building about 8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings, 72,000 schools and 80,000 bridges. The entire cost of all the New Deal programs (in today's dollars) was about $500 billion. The secretary of the Treasury now wants to spend perhaps twice that amount, simply to prevent a financial collapse.

We already know from Katrina to Iraq that we can't trust this administration to engage in any more spending, since everything it does is essentially profiteering for a few cronies with their infamous no-bid contracts and privitization.

But we must look beyond just saving the banks, and about that we need to talk.