Progressives Must Speak Out on the Financial Crisis

It is the general policy of this publication to focus our news coverage and editorials squarely on issues of import to Boston and environs - a mandate we expand to include Massachusetts state politics since Boston is the seat of state government, and much of what's done at the State House has direct bearing on metropolitan politics. However, there are times when national and international politics burst in upon our normal reverie with such force that we'd be fools to ignore them. Such times are upon us, and so Open Media Boston must weigh in on the progress of the growing financial crisis that is tightening its grip on our nation and our world.

This week, we witnessed world financial markets see-sawing more erratically than they have in decades - driven by the collapse of numerous investment banks, the selective (and highly suspect) propping up of some of them, the destruction of others, and 6 central banks (led by the U.S. Federal Reserve) spraying huge amounts of cash at still other failing enterprises. All this on top of the still-growing sub-prime mortgage crisis, rising unemployment, and a weakening dollar.

In the short term, the mass media is trumpeting that "swift action" by the Fed and the Congress has caused a rally in the stock market - and pats on the back are being given all around elite circles. In the longer term, the news will doubtless continue to get worse. It cannot do otherwise. For when you build an economy on financial speculation and accounting tricks rather than on investment in core industrial sectors and infrastructure improvement at some point the pigeons will come home to roost. As they must. Wall Street and their backers in the White House may swat away these allegorical pigeons for a time, but they will not stop them from their ultimate goal - the probable end of casino capitalism and the beginning of an extended depression.

Given this likely outcome, it is important for progressives to analyze the situation and begin to push prescriptions to the crisis that don't simply involve printing lots of money to stuff in the pockets of the very corporations that created it to begin with (Hello, Switchboard? Get me Inflation on line 2 ...). This is already happening in national policy circles, but not persistently, loudly or militantly enough for our tastes.

For example, at the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Convention in Andover yesterday, there were a number of quite decent speeches by AFL leadership, Democratic Party operatives, and a couple of Democratic politicians - notably Congressman Michael Capuano - all eloquently laying out the many problems facing working families. And all leading to the conclusion that the best thing for labor unions to do is throw their waning might into getting Barrack Obama elected as our next President. The thought being that Obama and his crew are rational people with good values who are the best hope for stemming many crises that 8 years of Republican rule have inflicted on working America.

Now as a regional publication, we had no plans to weigh in on the Presidential election and we will try to stick to that decision - especially given the strong desire many progressives feel to see a Democrat in the White House come January and our general disagreement with that strategy. We don't feel any great need to raise any hackles when we have no serious alternative to offer this late in the election cycle. But over the months (and hopefully, years) to come we will certainly return to the issue of how progressives might best engage electoral politics.

However, we think that there is something else beyond the election (or as part of it) that even nominally progressive labor unions, electoral parties and non-profit organizations need to be doing - here in Massachusetts, and across the country - in the next couple of months that will help out the cause of working people a great deal.

We need to push progressive solutions to the financial crisis. We need to take or make every opportunity we can to get in the public eye and say that if corporations continue to dictate the political agenda of the United States then we are all in deep trouble.

We don't have to all agree in every detail. But we all need to take our best shot. Be it a in a big newspaper, a TV show, a blog, a meeting with a legislator, a church social, or a debate in front of a few people in a bar we need to make it our business to say that it's not o.k. for the government to hand $85 billion dollars to an irresponsible company like AIG and it's not o.k. to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives on wars for oil and it's not o.k. for there to be tent cities sprouting up all over America because of the mass foreclosure of homes and it's not o.k. to accept the myth of the "invisible hand" of market when everyone knows that all these policies are concocted by very visible people - rich and powerful people who even now are doing everything they can to remain rich and powerful. Even if the livelihoods of millions are squandered in the process.

If we all make some noise every day, every way we can, it will go a long way towards exposing the very obvious untruths about the growing economic crisis - and point the way forward for the movement to come. The movement for democracy that must happen and that will change this country for the better.

We'll do our part here. We just thought we should remind everyone that even one voice can move millions. So raise yours up.

It's go time.