Signs Of The Times

by

by hilzoy

That the Financial Times has a headline that reads "Greenspan Backs Bank Nationalization" is truly a sign that we live in strange, strange times. Any moment now the sun shall become as black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon shall become as blood, and the stars of heaven shall fall unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind, and the seas shall turn to blood, and we shall hear an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

But in the general amazement, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that Alan Greenspan is not just one of the last people on earth I would have expected to endorse nationalization. He's also one of the people most responsible for the calamity that makes nationalization necessary (though as Yves Smith reminds us, he is not alone.) " "Greenspan Backs Bank Nationalization" is not like "Hayek: Keynes Was Right!". I've been trying to figure out what it is like, and I've come up with a few possibilities:

"Kaiser Wilhelm Backs Surrender To France, Allies: 
Wars Of Aggression Wrong, German Monarch Claims"

"Typhoid Mary: Attention To Hygienic Food Preparation Vital To Public Health"


"Mao Zedong Backs Privatization: 
'Great Leap Forward' An Act Of Idiotic Hubris That Cost Millions Of Lives For No Earthly Reason, Dictator Concedes
Backyard Smelters 'Particularly Boneheaded'"

"Sherman To Atlanta: Oops! My Bad!"

"Alaric: Great Cities Should Be Left Unmolested:
'I Liked Rome Better Before We Sacked It', Visigoth Laments"

"Satan Backs Christ's Effort To Redeem Mankind On Cross:
Regrets Involvement In Fall"

Want to add any of your own?

47 thoughts on “Signs Of The Times”

  3. “Ford to City: ‘Here’s your bailout'”
    Ben Stein: “It Evolves!”
    “Andrew Sullivan Weds Michelle Malkin!”

  4. “Rumsfeld says he talked to former Pres. Bush and they tossed around the idea that the Middle East was more stable befofre the US invaded Iraq and that we ought to withdraw immediately because we can’t afford to be meddling in other government’s affairs.”

  7. Sullivan Declares Himself Uninterested in Palin’s Uterus
    Sadly, No! Opens Conservative Blog, Providentially, Yes!
    Obsidian Wings Moves To WordPress – Users Request Pagination Feature

  9. Some headlines I’d like to see:
    GROVER NORQUIST DROWNS IN BATHTUB
    Government investigates
    CHENEY IN LAST THROES
    Has 5 years to live, docs say
    FRANKEN SWORN IN
    Limbaugh still fat
    RIC WARREN MARRIES LARRY CRAIG
    Pat Robertson officiates
    ANN COULTER CONVERTS TO ISLAM
    Taliban insulted, embarassed
    LAFFER APOLOGIZES
    Napkin was upside down
    POPE CANONIZES GALILEO
    Dan Brown gives up
    A-ROD CONTRITE AT PRESS CONFERENCE
    “I’m here to take my medicine”
    Okay, that last one is not really made up.
    –TP

  12. Heh, my thought was that a better headline would have been, “Greenspan expects Dems to be in power until his retirement”.
    He’s sucking up to the new Boss.

  13. George W. Bush calls for democratic elections supervised by neutral Electoral Observers to ensure that all votes are counted and the winning candidate gets to take office.
    …oh wait, that actually happened.

  15. Bill O’Reilly uses personal fortune to fully fund the ACLU for a decade: “it’s important that justice is available to all, no matter how unpopular their views.”
    Rush Limbaugh opens a chain of feminist bookstores called “Herstories”, declares “women need a place they can hear truths which haven’t been mutilated by the white male oppressorship!”

  16. Mark McGwire to Chair a Commission Investigating Steroids in Baseball
    “We cannot move forward until we deal with the past” he said.

  17. REDSTATE EDITOR: These liberals aren’t so bad.
    JOHN THULLEN REVEALS WHY CHICKEN CROSSED THE ROAD: So called ‘Other side’ was important

  18. Blogger pauses, thinks, decides to wait until all the facts are in before offering an opinion on a topic he knows only from a half-page article in a USA Today he read three weeks ago.

  19. taking stock of his life, bin Laden sighs and looks out his cave entrance. after a moment, he says to his bodyguard, “Abdul, that Adam Sandler is a pretty funny guy, no? Was I wrong about the Jews?”

  21. POPE AUCTIONS VATICAN TREASURES
    “We don’t need all that stuff,” said Pope Benedict, “And there’s a lot of victims of abusive clergy all over the world. We’re just trying to make it right.”

  24. I think Sherman deserves to be in better company.
    Committing war-crimes against slave-owners gives you a free pass on genocide against Native Americans, I’m guessing.

  28. OT: DC Circuit appeals court reverses ruling freeing the Uighurs in Guantanamo, says only the executive branch has the power to settle them in U.S., and that as long as govt is making good-faith diplomatic efforts to settle them no court can order release.
    WTF??! These men have been told since 2004 that they were “free”!
    Interesting, sickening precedent: treating people the U.S. government illegally took and held without any process for seven years as “immigrants”.
    These men have done nothing. The Uighurs are a directly analogue of the Tibetans, with the difference that they’re Muslim, not Buddhists, and that therefore Chinese repression more readily produced armed resistance. There are Uighur communities in the U.S. prepared to welcome and integrate these prisoners; demand that President Obama allow the men to join them: 202-456-1111.
    Reparations are in order, as well, but the urgent human need is to get more than 200 men out of the hell we’ve kept them in.
    While googling for more on this story, I ran into a headline that qualifies for this post:
    Conservatives Call on Bush to Free Uighurs
    Following the link, however, reveals that the conservatives are the old-fashioned rule-of-law types who have, through an unlikely alliance with left-wing human-rights lawyers, stood up for the right thing to do against imperial-power Republicans and craven Democrats.

  30. Other signs of the times:
    – Not much to talk about today, bloggers across the political spectrum agree; the authorities have everything under control, and they are the experts, not us, so who are we to give them advice?
    – Eric Martin denounces use of obscure song lyrics in blog post titles, says “nobody cares about music anyway”

  31. john bolten: UN a force for good in world. US should pay up all overdue funding.
    GHWB & GWB: prescott bush was a nazi sympathizer who did treasonous crimes against the US.
    dick cheney/henry kissinger: can’t we all just get along?
    republican party: complex issues have many possible solutions, and must be studied in nuanced ways.

  33. “But, but I don’t see any apology forthcoming from Greenspan, or acknowledgement of his role in the Fall.”
    He’s probably waiting to the lead of Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership on that, just to avoid embarassing them.

  34. He’s probably waiting to the lead of Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership on that, just to avoid embarassing them.
    Good point there Brett. Why if Obama hadn’t spent the entire general election campaign defending his 1999 vote in the Senate to repeal Glass-Steagall, he might have won the election in a landslide (and consequently enjoy high approval ratings), rather than narrowly squeaking out a disputed victory using last minute votes in IL engineered by Rod Blagojevich, just like JFK in 1960.
    If only we lived in that world, rather than this one.

  35. Cheney Demands Gitmo Crimes Investigated: “torture is always wrong”
    Regan Supports Return of AFCD: “Nothing is more important than our nation’s children”
    Dobson Supports Marriage Equality Amendment

  37. Bush Rejects Torturous Justification Of Torture.
    FOX Rebuts Unverified Claims by Panelists.
    Politico Requires Sources To Shed Anonymity.
    DRUDGE Stifles Baseless Rumors Against Democratic Legislator.
    Steele Admits Republicans Can’t Be Trusted.
    Burris Confirms Would Have Paid to Play If Could Have Paid.
    Krugman Does Not Know Everything.
    Californians Polled: Would Be Great Place to Live if We Paid What It Was Really Worth.

  39. The size of Obama’s victory, and the margin of the Democratic majority in Congress, has precisely no bearing on whether they share any conplicity, (They share lots of it.) for the present economic situation. It merely highlights the irony of their being catapulted into power in no small part due to a crisis they contributed to the creation of.

  42. Achmadinejad “Thrilled” to Find There Actually Are Homosexuals in Iran: Leader Calls for Celebratory Gay Pride Parade.

  47. Jolie/Maddow vs. Palin/Bachmann
    Presidential race seen as step forward for female empowerment
    Limbaugh opens fitness center
    “spewing bile ineffective diet” says former talk radio host

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