Here’s a great description of why the economy greatly depends on Congress acting to rescue the credit economy.

The financial services sector is the heart of the economy.  They have fucked up badly in the last couple of years, but really, they’ve generally fucked up because we have allowed it.  Companies don’t exist to provide good jobs or good benefits.  Companies exist to turn a profit, and public companies exist to return value to their shareholders.  They are made to do this on a quarterly basis.  A good quarterly report returns profit to shareholders.  A bad one returns no profit to shareholders (generally).  So why would we think, after removing regulations and failing to enforce most of those that remained in place, that Wall Street would do anything beyond what we have made it possible for them to do?  And that, in a nutshell, is to work the system - mostly within the law - to return insane short-term quarterly profits and therefore shareholder value.  The idea that business would think a) long term (when we are painfully short-term focused from a market perspective; and b) do things to benefit people rather than their own bottom line is counter-intuitive because we don’t reward business for behaving in that fashion.

But do go read the whole thing.

Nina Smith over at Queercents is doing a series on ‘Transgender Finances’ - covering issues like Social Security, marriage, etc. She has already interviewed me, James Green, Jenny Boylan, Jay Sennett and a few other trans people & allies. This series is a great, cool idea, & I’m glad to see someone’s doing it. Thanks, Nina!

If we had given a damn about the people who couldn’t pay their mortgages & were being foreclosed upon, and had figured out a way to help them keep their homes, would we be in this mess now?

Wow. John McCain has lost his mind. Today he blamed the Washington insiders and lobbyists for the economic woes of the country, which may or may not be the case. But THEN he pointed out that it’s Obama’s judgment was bad as a Senator.

Goddamn does that take balls. Balls or outright delusion. I wonder if he sleeps at all these days, but for one of the Keating Five to get up & say that shit - well, wow. He’s sunk to a whole new level.

For those of you who don’t know, the Keating Five was the group of senators who were accused of less-than-ethical practices when it came to the Savings and Loan bailout of the 1980s. (McCain has been called “the most reprehensible” of the five.)

Wow. What a piece of work. First Obama’s not in the Senate long enough to have enough experience to be President, and now he’s personally responsible to a global economic crisis. There’s actually this famous scandal pinpointing McCain’s ability to be swayed by lobbyists, and no such dirt on Obama, and he’s getting up there & righteously pointing the finger at Obama.

Wow.

On hearing about the closing of Indymac Bank, my thoughts went like this:

• What the hell kind of name is that for a bank?
• Who has more than $100k in savings?
• I will probably never have to worry about having more money than the FDIC insures.

Which is, in these proto-depression days, something like reassuring. In case you don’t know, the FDIC guarantees accounts up to $100K. So if you have more than that, you need to spread it around if you want it guaranteed. The FDIC was invented after the last runs on banks, after the Great Depression. It’s nice to know, so far, that it’s working, but apparently there’s another 90 banks that are at risk of closing due to this whole mortgage disaster.

Of course, if you just have too much money in the bank, you should feel free to donate any extra you’ve got to the hundreds of organizations that need it.

This financial post brought to you courtesy of my sister Kathy’s birthday, who bugged me & bugged me to take economics courses in colleges & who I thoroughly ignored. (Sorry, Kath. Modernism seemed so much more pressing at the time. Happy Birthday!)

Dubya & Co. have been in power long enough to pretty much devastate the economy, and in response, women are reporting that they had abortions in the past year precisely because of the bad economy. Women, being imminently practical, and carrying the burden of most childcare, and being the first and hardest hit by dropping wages, can’t afford to have their babies.

An interesting dilemma for Republicans, no?  So if you want to prevent abortions, maybe it would be a good idea to quit funding tax cuts for the rich.

(via Feministing)

& More on the Fr. Pfleger post! Someone wrote to me & said:

I am Catholic as well, 1st generation Irish-American, I was poor, faced prejudice - and feel I owe nothing to Father Pfleger’s constituency. I feel I worked myself out of the bottom and I don’t feel anyone owes me anything either. But if this race-baiting (as I see it) continues then I might have to argue that I was discriminated against as well—if not here in the USA then maybe in Ireland/England.

But then when does it end? When does victimization end? It has gone on a long time in the USA and it hasn’t improved. I don’t think victimization helps improve people’s lives. It never helped me. I worked my way out of it (and people don’t understand the work that I did unless they did it themselves).

But when Father Pfleger says we owe some of or 401k’s to black people because we had ‘white privilege’, I have difficulty understanding it because I don’t feel I had equal opportunity and yet I don’t resent it. I accept it–It is life and I don’t think it will ever change.

Which is all perfectly logical & makes sense to me; I think it’s the nut of why poor and working-class white people sometimes object to Affirmative Action programs.

Except that the reality, in the US, is that we have inherited a system where some people are oppressed because of their race and only because of their race. It is not the only way people are oppressed, and plenty of us (white folks) did not have family here when slavery was operable. But the system that came out of race-based slavery was, in turn, racist.

So while poor white people didn’t benefit from equal treatment - because we didn’t - we didn’t have to deal with being poor AND black. We were privileged in one aspect - being white - and oppressed in another - by class. Catholics and Jews and other “white” immigrant groups were often also oppressed due to their religion or recent immigration status. Often these groups are referred to as “white ethnic” - meaning ‘white but not WASP.’ It’s what I consider myself. For an excellent book on the subject, specifically the way whiteness was sold as privilege to unionized white workers - check out The Wages of Whiteness, or on White Ethnic groups, check out White Ethnics.

Being able to look at the ways we are each privileged and the ways we are oppressed is what we call Intersectionality in Gender Studies.

But more importantly, let me say this: the idea here isn’t about victimization. It’s about understanding one’s individual story in context. It’s not about sitting around & saying “woe is me” or anything like it. It’s just about knowing which aspects of your own experience and others works against you, & them; it’s a way of explaining why some women are more privileged than others, and why, say, a white, rich, professional gay man might have a hard time understanding why a black poor lesbian can’t get a decent start in life despite them both being LGBT.

So: no whining. Just acknowledgment in the ways we exist, as individuals, within the larger culture and its institutions, and the ways those institutions, in turn, shape us. (Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would prefer to blame everyone & anyone for why they suck, but that’s an entirely different issue entirely.)

What’s a politico to do? I am an ardent feminist, which most of you reading already know well enough. But I’m so saddened by the way women are talking about the Democratic nomination and how they feel they’ve been sent to the back of the bus. I don’t doubt that there was some sexism at play, in the media & elsewhere, for Hilary Clinton. It’d be a surprise if there weren’t. But that’s not a good enough reason not to vote. I mean, imagine the Suffragists! Imagine what they fought for, what they went through, & imagine explaining how you, as a woman, chose not to vote because your candidate didn’t get the nomination.

I couldn’t do it. I’m not happy about Obama’s “sweetie” remark at all. And it’s true that I just don’t like Hilary Clinton and never have; her ambition scares me. Not because it’s wrong for a woman to be ambitious - I so wish more were! - but because hers seems more about what it would mean to her to be president than being about what she could do for the country. And it scares me, when someone’s goals seem more about having something to prove than about accomplishing something.

If Ann Richards had run for president, I would have worked on her campaign and given up a year of my life to get her elected. And if Obama doesn’t win the nomination, I will work to get Hilary Clinton elected. Because the sad reality is that John McCain is not pro-woman: he’s not pro-choice, he voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act, and he actually had the nerve to suggest that women should get more education and training if they want to be paid as much as men.

So please, Clinton supporters: get out & support whoever the Democratic nominee is. I will.

I was so happy to find this article on being a woman who is planning to marry a man who is deep in debt and who actually called off the wedding - at least temporarily - until he got this finances in order. It’s an issue no one ever talks about - debt in general, & money in relationships too. I’ve seen money listed as one of the top five things a couple should make sure they agree about (the other four are having children, dealing with family, sex, and religion) before they get married. Historically women end up with a lower standard of living after divorce, for instance, than men do, despite all the jokes about how women “get rich” via divorce. Those with children, even moreso.

I’m waiting for her to outline how exactly he managed this 53% reduction in so short a time. It’s encouraging.

I recently corresponded with two different people putting together an anthology about trans lives, and I asked if contributors were getting paid. I was told no one is getting paid, but they’re pitching to commercial publishers.

What the hell is that? I’m writing about this because it terrifies me. I’m not making a living writing - not many authors do - but jesus h., we still need to get paid! Sometimes I worry that because of the fierce competition in academic circles that people will do *anything* to get published, but goddamn.

So here’s Harlan Ellison giving you the what-for, writers. Get paid! & Join a damn union, whether you write books or scripts.

Ask your senators to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

(I thought that might get your attention!)

20 big Clinton donors tried to bully Nancy Pelosi for saying that superdelegates should let the voters decide who becomes the Democratic nominee. This is the worst kind of insider politics, and it has to stop.

Do we really want to elect people who think their money gets to call the presidency, or the guy who managed to raise more money from small donors than anyone ever has before? Hmm, let’s think about that. A lot of money from few sources, vs. a lot of money from many.

Let’s look up that definition of democracy again, shall we?

Sign the petition.

If you want an explanation of the whole subprime mortgage situation check this out.

& Yes we’re back. Back in Brooklyn, land of pizza places and churches.

A woman recently posted an ad on Craig’s List here in NYC asking for advice on how to find a rich - and by rich she means really rich - husband. She’s found guys who make $250k a year, but

“$250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West,” she said, asking questions like “where do rich single men hang out?”

A rich guy responded:

“Your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity … in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!” the banker wrote.

“So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset,” he said. “Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!”

“It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease,” he said.

Both posts have since been removed from Craig’s List, but the lesson is indelible.

(Thanks to Lena for the tip!)

If diversity itself wasn’t a worthwhile goal to some companies, maybe the better financial performance of a diverse board will motivate more companies to getting some women involved:

The study, which looked at three financial measures, found that companies with more women directors outperformed companies with fewer by 53 percent in return on equity, by 42 percent in return on sales, and by 66 percent in return on invested capital.

The study was done by Catalyst, a non-profit research organization whose goal is to expand business opportunities for women.

Forbes has just published their list of the Top 100 Most Powerful women. Among them, politicans and CEOs, a couple of Queens (of Jordan, & the UK), a judge (Ginsburg), a few anchors (Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric), and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, activist and Nobel Peace laureate (who is probably my favorite woman on the list).

Interesting, though, to see “Chairman” so frequently after a name. I guess “Chairperson” just doesn’t trip off the tongue the same way.

Another governor - this time Governor Strickland of Ohio - has given the Feds back the abstinence-only strings-attached sex education money.

That’s six states now, & the fifth (Wisconsin) only refused the impractical funding a few weeks ago.

So now there’s the other 44 to work on. Write your governor and tell him to return funding that denies a state the right to teach sex education in the way that we decide is most appropriate for our kids.

Reversing a decision I reported here a few weeks ago, the Women’s Health Department will now be fully funded.

The Office of Women’s Health - which researches funding on women’s medical issues such as menopause, birth control, pregnancy & the like - was allocated $4 million. $2.8 million of that is already spent or appropriated, and the final $1.2 million won’t be coming at all.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to withhold 30 percent of the funding allocated for the Office of Women’s Health in 2007, an unnamed, high level official told the Washington Post.

The source isn’t allowed to speak publicly about it and remained unnamed.

Um, isn’t that our money?! As taxpayers? Shouldn’t we at least know who made this decision and why? This type of mumblefuck is exactly why we need more women in government. Sure we’re 51%, but with nothing close to that in terms of representation. I guess this is the way the Feds decided to celebrate Women’s History Month: thanks, guys.

Someone remind me, next time around, never to publish a book during tax season - at least not when I’m still bookkeeping as my day job.