Tear Down the Ghetto: The Price is Wrong

re-posting from the [reclaim-spaces] list, originally in Black Agenda Report

Tear Down the Ghetto: The Price is Wronghttp://www.nathanielturner.com/teardownghettoprice...

What the misanthropic Jenkins calls a "small mental adjustment" isactually a government-subsidized economy of destruction -rather than production- divorcedtotally from human needs but instead dictated by the demands of thosewho deal in "moneyness."

By Glen Ford

The final crisis of capitalism is no longer looming: it has arrived withall the mad presence of a six-foot-seven transvestite at the head of theparade at the stroke of midnight in Greenwich Village on Halloween.

Here's the latest criminal enterprise hatched by the ruling sectors ofU.S. society: tear down all that overpriced housing, the stuff that wasonly recently built but can no longer be financed for sale. No, don'tconvert it to useful purposes as rental units or reasonably-pricedfamily homes to satisfy the desperate needs of millions of families andof people who wish they could successfully constitute themselves ashouseholds in this jungle-like environment. Just make it all go away,with the federal government paying the bill for the massive destruction.

It is now proposed that the "excess" housing stock of the United Statesbe knocked down, bulldozed until a renewed shortage of shelter willrender the housing that survives worth something close to the pricesadvertised before the bubble burst.

It has come to this: The U.S. economy can only heal itself by destroyingthose few products it can still manage to create. This is what happenswhen pure capitalists rule society, the people with no connection toactual production of goods and services, but only to the uses of money,or the recently coined phrase "moneyness", stuff that can be made to actfor a while as if it were money. Like the $516 trillion in "derivatives"that big banks have to hold on to because nobody knows what's in thesestrange "instruments", which were just as good as money as long asfinancial institutions pretended they really were money-like.

At some point, the derivatives will have to be disposed of, but there'sa problem. The yearly gross product of the United States is only about$17 trillion, and the entire planet only produces about $50 trillion ingoods and services a year. Therefore, nobody can possibly bail out tentimes the Earth's worth in derivatives.

But the capitalist fools can start tearing down some houses.

The Wall Street Journal's Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., in the April 2 issue,suggests "using tax dollars to buy and demolish foreclosed, unoccupiedor half-built houses in selected markets," thereby driving up prices bylowering availability. Jenkins points to ghettonomics -government at itsmost destructive and least responsive to the citizenry- as the emergingbusiness model. "In highly depressed housing markets," Jenkins quotesFederal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke, "the worst-quality units are oftendemolished to mitigate safety hazards and reduce supply."

But Jenkins' is not concerned about safety, only with keeping supplydown and price up. For example:

"Baltimore has been praised for efforts to keep borrowers in theirhomes, but little mentioned is a program of demolition of foreclosedhomes. Cleveland spends $6 million a year to demolish buildings. Daytonplans to demolish 550 this year. Only a small mental adjustment isrequired to begin aiming these bulldozers at 'new' homes too. Get over it."

What the misanthropic Jenkins calls a "small mental adjustment" isactually a government-subsidized economy of destruction, rather thanproduction, divorced totally from human needs but instead dictated by thedemands of those who deal in "moneyness."

"Knocking down surplus homes would be the most efficient and equitableway to spend taxpayer dollars. It can proceed experimentally. It can beturned off quickly when the need evaporates. It would not be a lesson toAmericans that housing debt is not real debt and need not be repaid. Itwouldn't benefit the most irresponsible lenders and borrowers at theexpense of responsible ones. The housing market would still have to hitbottom, but the bottom would be higher (and sooner)," said Jenkins.

"Surplus homes" in a country in which affordable housing isdisappearing. In this same sense, the problem with New Orleans was"surplus people," who have now been scattered and exiled through a jointpublic-private-meteorological venture that goes under the generalheading of Katrina. That which cannot be exploited by the BigCapitalists is, by definition, surplus.

There can be no doubt of the insanity of late stage capitalism, itsabsolute disconnect from every notion of supply and demand drummed intothe heads of innocent school children during crude early Miseducation.Wall Street and its servants in government purposely created a monstrousbubble of grossly overpriced housing in order to build up debt thatwould make it appear that a non-producing society is really doing thingsthat are healthy and worthwhile. There was never the slightest chancethat the scheme, which violated every lesson of recent and ancienthistory, could avoid absolute disaster. Suddenly, that which was crazilyoverpriced one minute was transformed into a near-worthless redundancy,the next.

Worthless? Well, it's not worthless to you or me or a host of people weknow well, who are desperate for a dignified place to stay at a pricethat can reasonably fit the budget of the median household in the UnitedStates: $35,000 a year for a Black family vs. about $60,000 for whites.The houses exist, of course, and many, many more could be built -bigones, small ones, urban ones, rural ones- but the conspirators that runthe U.S. and much of the world economy solely for their own benefit canonly satisfy their demands for ever-higher rates of return on investmentby two methods: blowing bubbles until they inevitably burst, andinternational theft through direct actions of war or warlike coercion.

By the Wall Street Journal's Holman W. Jenkins' reckoning, the wreckingballs and bulldozers need to get to work immediately in much of BlackAmerica, where the subprime lending crisis hit hardest. If these ghettohouses cannot be financed at the bubble prices demanded, then they mustbe torn down, thus making housing in general more scarce. Soon, withscarcity, prices will stabilize.

All three major presidential candidates are on great terms with themadmen of Wall Street who have brought western "civilization" - whichincludes Cleveland and Baltimore - past the edge of the abyss. We are infreefall, contemplating tearing down perfectly good houses, as crazedcapitalists pile up human and material debris at the bottom of the hole,hoping for an acceptably soft landing. But there can be no mutuallyacceptable outcome to the current crisis, because human beings and WallStreeters have diametrically opposed goals in life. Humans want somedegree of stability in life, a reasonable chance that their childrenwill experience a materially, morally and intellectually better world,and a degree of social justice that allows people to look one another inthe eye. They require a roof over their heads, under fair terms.

Wall Streeters want advantage, the opposite of justice and fairness. Wewill soon be forced to go to war with these people. Their notion ofsurplus is deadly.

BAR executive Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

Source: Black Agenda Report