First things first. Last week I wondered about what to call the present social / economic event. And wouldn't ya know it... there has already been a contest on a name. The Nation launched a competition last June to find a name for these times - or the period from the late seventies to the present. There was an impressive panel of "progressives" as judges, including the Barabara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn and Walter Mosley. See "Name our epoch".
The winner was announced this week. And the winner is... The Borrowed Times
So read all about it. It is a good name but I doubt that it well catch on. I think that the name people will use will hang the disaster around the necks, rightly or wrongly, of several US presidents. It may be called Reagan Bush period or age. These guys will leave their name on the door much as Metternich left his and Victoria left hers. But we won't know the name for some time yet. It won't be 'us' who will be naming. Those who are left will do that.
And getting back to my naming game - I think that the crisis is best described as the "Financial Meltdown" as in all that is solid melts into air - the quote from Marx and the title of Marshall Berman's book.
Maybe rather than melting down it will all simply congeal......
Posted by: KM | January 28, 2009 at 12:51 PM
Maybe rather than melting down it will all simply congeal......
Posted by: KM | January 28, 2009 at 12:52 PM