re-posting from the [reclaim-spaces] list, originally in Black Agenda Report
Tear Down the Ghetto: The Price is Wrong
http://www.nathanielturner.com/teardownghettopriceiswrong.htm
What the misanthropic Jenkins calls a "small mental adjustment" is
actually a government-
subsidized economy of destruction -rather than production- divorced
totally from human needs but instead dictated by the demands of those
who deal in "moneyness."
By Glen Ford
The final crisis of capitalism is no longer looming: it has arrived with
all the mad presence of a six-foot-seven transvestite at the head of the
parade at the stroke of midnight in Greenwich Village on Halloween.
Here's the latest criminal enterprise hatched by the ruling sectors of
U.S. society: tear down all that overpriced housing, the stuff that was
only recently built but can no longer be financed for sale. No, don't
convert it to useful purposes as rental units or reasonably-priced
family homes to satisfy the desperate needs of millions of families and
of people who wish they could successfully constitute themselves as
households 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 States
be knocked down, bulldozed until a renewed shortage of shelter will
render the housing that survives worth something close to the prices
advertised before the bubble burst.
It has come to this: The U.S. economy can only heal itself by destroying
those few products it can still manage to create. This is what happens
when pure capitalists rule society, the people with no connection to
actual production of goods and services, but only to the uses of money,
or the recently coined phrase "moneyness", stuff that can be made to act
for 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 these
strange "instruments", which were just as good as money as long as
financial institutions pretended they really were money-like.
At some point, the derivatives will have to be disposed of, but there's
a problem. The yearly gross product of the United States is only about
$17 trillion, and the entire planet only produces about $50 trillion in
goods and services a year. Therefore, nobody can possibly bail out ten
times 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, unoccupied
or half-built houses in selected markets," thereby driving up prices by
lowering availability. Jenkins points to ghettonomics -government at its
most destructive and least responsive to the citizenry- as the emerging
business model. "In highly depressed housing markets," Jenkins quotes
Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke, "the worst-quality units are often
demolished to mitigate safety hazards and reduce supply."
But Jenkins' is not concerned about safety, only with keeping supply
down and price up. For example:
"Baltimore has been praised for efforts to keep borrowers in their
homes, but little mentioned is a program of demolition of foreclosed
homes. Cleveland spends $6 million a year to demolish buildings. Dayton
plans to demolish 550 this year. Only a small mental adjustment is
required to begin aiming these bulldozers at 'new' homes too. Get over it."
What the misanthropic Jenkins calls a "small mental adjustment" is
actually a government-subsidized economy of destruction, rather than
production, divorced totally from human needs but instead dictated by the
demands of those who deal in "moneyness."
"Knocking down surplus homes would be the most efficient and equitable
way to spend taxpayer dollars. It can proceed experimentally. It can be
turned off quickly when the need evaporates. It would not be a lesson to
Americans that housing debt is not real debt and need not be repaid. It
wouldn't benefit the most irresponsible lenders and borrowers at the
expense of responsible ones. The housing market would still have to hit
bottom, but the bottom would be higher (and sooner)," said Jenkins.
"Surplus homes" in a country in which affordable housing is
disappearing. In this same sense, the problem with New Orleans was
"surplus people," who have now been scattered and exiled through a joint
public-private-meteorological venture that goes under the general
heading of Katrina. That which cannot be exploited by the Big
Capitalists is, by definition, surplus.
There can be no doubt of the insanity of late stage capitalism, its
absolute disconnect from every notion of supply and demand drummed into
the heads of innocent school children during crude early Miseducation.
Wall Street and its servants in government purposely created a monstrous
bubble of grossly overpriced housing in order to build up debt that
would make it appear that a non-producing society is really doing things
that are healthy and worthwhile. There was never the slightest chance
that the scheme, which violated every lesson of recent and ancient
history, could avoid absolute disaster. Suddenly, that which was crazily
overpriced 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 we
know well, who are desperate for a dignified place to stay at a price
that can reasonably fit the budget of the median household in the United
States: $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 -big
ones, small ones, urban ones, rural ones- but the conspirators that run
the U.S. and much of the world economy solely for their own benefit can
only satisfy their demands for ever-higher rates of return on investment
by two methods: blowing bubbles until they inevitably burst, and
international theft through direct actions of war or warlike coercion.
By the Wall Street Journal's Holman W. Jenkins' reckoning, the wrecking
balls and bulldozers need to get to work immediately in much of Black
America, where the subprime lending crisis hit hardest. If these ghetto
houses cannot be financed at the bubble prices demanded, then they must
be torn down, thus making housing in general more scarce. Soon, with
scarcity, prices will stabilize.
All three major presidential candidates are on great terms with the
madmen of Wall Street who have brought western "civilization" - which
includes Cleveland and Baltimore - past the edge of the abyss. We are in
freefall, contemplating tearing down perfectly good houses, as crazed
capitalists pile up human and material debris at the bottom of the hole,
hoping for an acceptably soft landing. But there can be no mutually
acceptable outcome to the current crisis, because human beings and Wall
Streeters have diametrically opposed goals in life. Humans want some
degree of stability in life, a reasonable chance that their children
will experience a materially, morally and intellectually better world,
and a degree of social justice that allows people to look one another in
the eye. They require a roof over their heads, under fair terms.
Wall Streeters want advantage, the opposite of justice and fairness. We
will soon be forced to go to war with these people. Their notion of
surplus is deadly.
BAR executive Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Source: Black Agenda Report
