Gerhard Stoltz's Library tagged blame →  View Popular

And which entities are receiving the most heat? The exchanges. The least? The OTC derivatives markets and the rating agencies. Why is this?

Throughout this period, the public affairs office under Larry DiRita (now head of public relations for Bank of America) focused on blaming the abuses in Abu Ghraib on a handful of enlisted personnel–Rumsfeld’s “bad apples.” It used this classic sleight of hand to distract attention from Rumsfeld and the leadership figures who were in fact responsible.

The notion being put forward by Schwarzenegger, the Democrats and the media alike—that the state’s working class is now responsible for devastating California’s once extensive and accessible network of social programs—should be treated with contempt

As I observed yesterday, the immediate risk to sovereign credit, the risk of Icelandization of Ireland and perhaps even the UK, lies in the banking crisis. If governments take over banks on the premise that their asset books are worthless but their liabilities must be met, the weight of bank liabilities is sufficient to sink government finances.

That's one of the important points you have to make about US foreign policy -- goodness has nothing to do with it.

If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes they feed us all.

Among the results of the 1873 Panic & Long Depression (lasting until 1896) were the labor movement and religious fundamentalism in the US, modern anti-semitism in Europe, and (according to Hannah Arendt) the origins of totalitarianism.

If we generalize a bit from the 1870s-1890s, a handful of key issues emerge as likely to have echoes today:

• Aggressive self-interest on the part of states, despite clear potential to damage the overall economic/political structure;
  
• Desperate need to find scapegoats;
  
• Embrace of religious extremism as a way of finding support and solidarity;
  
• Heightened conflict between economic classes and political movements.

You can imagine what a soothing read this is. The entire subtext of the book is It’s Not Your Fault. And Americans especially can’t hear this enough. We bear a peculiar cultural burden that Alexis de Tocqueville, French political theorist and author of Democracy in America, figured out on his first visit in the 1830s. “These poor fuckers!” he said. (I’m paraphrasing here.) “With no monarchy or crushing class system to blame for not getting anywhere in life, and all this talk about how any jerk can become president, each American is going to feel hideously ashamed of his own personal failure to become a big shot.”

In Central and Eastern Europe, times were even harder. Many political analysts blamed the crisis on a combination of foreign banks and Jews. Nationalistic political leaders (or agents of the Russian czar) embraced a new, sophisticated brand of anti-Semitism that proved appealing to thousands who had lost their livelihoods in the panic. Anti-Jewish pogroms followed in the 1880s, particularly in Russia and Ukraine. Heartland communities large and small had found a scapegoat: aliens in their own midst.