Go download Jad and install it.  Then unzip your jar file:

unzip sourcefile.jar

This command will decompile all the .class files in source_dir and put the new files in target_dir with a .java file extension on them.

jad -o -r -sjava -dtarget_dir ‘source_dir/**/*.class’

Michael Moore has a plan.

In short:

1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE.
2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT.
3. BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME.
4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A “BAILOUT,” THEN WE OWN YOU.
5. ALL REGULATIONS MUST BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD.
6. IF IT’S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT’S TOO BIG TO EXIST.
7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF “PARACHUTE” OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY.
8. STRENGTHEN THE FDIC AND MAKE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE’S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES.
9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY.
10. CREATE A NATIONAL BANK, A “PEOPLE’S BANK.”

During the last week or so, I’ve been leaning toward approval of the $700 billion bailout plan.  I was, that is, until I heard Dennis Kucinich speak on Rachel Maddow’s new show.

I completely agree with his point that the current Paulson package is a top-down solution.  It’s directed at those top 400 people Michael Moore mentioned.  And I, like Representative Kucinich, am a Democrat, and don’t believe in trickle-down economics.  So let’s declare the Reagan Revolution dead.  Let’s use this opportunity to cut off the welfare queens at the top, and start legislating to improve the lot of those who actually need assistance.

Mother Earth News article with some numbers so that you can respond to people who think we can drill our way out of our current energy crisis.  I, like Al Gore, believe that the whole dependance on foreign oil position is a red herring.  The problem isn’t that it’s foreign, the problem is that it’s oil.  And coal.  And yes, natural gas.  That’s why I was even more pleased to see that the linked article included recommendations that didn’t involve fossil fuels at all.

With the increasing production and modification of plug-in cars, vehicles could eventually be powered, at least partly so, from energy obtained through wind turbines. Here’s an article about this very concept.

This one in particular is something I’ve been touting for a long time.  I feel that any of the current forms of energy are like drugs:  the supply side is small, provides limited access and can set prices however they like.  You also have no choice but go to them to get the product.  The fact that ethanol, bio-diesel, CNG and hydrogen all fit this same model is surely no mistake.  I’m sure the oil companies understand this, and will jockey to write legislation that supports this model.

No, I think that until we can break this model we are screwed.  And the best and easiest way to do it (we currently have all the technology available, too) is to create incentives for residential and commercial solar and wind and plug-in electric and hybrid transport.  The key to this model is that the energy production is home- or business-sized, and not generated at a central location and distrubuted long-distance.  No more pusher.

NYT article covering Obama’s and McCain’s positions on how to fix the problem.  Or rather how Obama proposes fixing the problem, and how McCain blames greedy “Wall Street Bankers”.

Basically, Obama says increase regulations (the article doesn’t mention giving agencies teeth), and McCain has no answer.  That’s because he’s trapped by his Senate voting record tying him to the hands-off Republican approach that got us into this situation in the first place.  How does McCain propose we fix the problem of those greedy bankers?  The article doesn’t say, but it does point to earlier quotes like this:

“I’m always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”

Later that month, he gave a speech on the housing crisis in which he called for less regulation, saying, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

I might be reading this wrong, but wouldn’t that be like giving a compulsive gambler a credit card with a higher limit?  How would that fix things?

One of the fundamental problems (and possibly the most scary and intractable) as I understand it, is that banks no longer trust each other.  Prior to the current credit crisis, they would readily loan each other money at super low rates:  the so-called overnight rate.  This is the rate that is changed by the Federal Reserve and covered with great fanfare by the media.  But the problem currently is that each bank knows that their own books are bogged down with overly risky investments, and the numbers they present to the world range from the confusing to the outrageously untrue.  So they know this is true at all the other banks, too.  Which means when one of them comes asking for money, nobody is selling.  Try as the Federal Reserve might by lowering the overnight rate, they can’t entice the banks to trust each other.  So they have no access to cash.

I really don’t see how the government stepping in to finance more risky investments is a good thing.  We should acknowledge the fact that banks don’t trust each other and fix the problem that gives rise to that mistrust.  And this requires regulation and enforcement.

I learned about this from John K. Galbraith from an article in Mother Jones this summer.  Do yourself a favor and read his article, and everything else he writes.  He’s a regular contributor to MoJo.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for these last few months, you’ve heard about the last-minute rescue by the U.S. Government (of, by and for the people) of Bear Stearns and of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.  This weekend it was Lehman Brothers turn.

Unfortunately for Lehman, this time around the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank (can someone tell me why they’re involved?) weren’t interested in putting any guarantees or cheap loans in place to make the deal sweet for other banks.

As told by the NYT:

Mr. Geithner [President of NY Federeal Reserve] made an impassioned appeal to the group: We need an industry solution. We need an industry solution, no matter what, he said. His message was clear; it is not about any individual bank, it is about the industry. If you don’t create an industry solution, you will be next.

Most of the bankers quietly listened. But some questioned the need for them to play a role in a bailout. Lehman Brothers had overreached and brought its troubles upon itself, they argued. Why should they put up their own money in a rescue?

I don’t know about you, but this situation sounds familiar to me, even down to the language of “personal responsibility”.  If you abstract things a bit, government seems to be taking an ideologically progressive position (everyone together can improve the lot of the few) and the banks are taking the conservative position (it’s dog-eat-dog, man; stop crying).  Only this time the government doesn’t want to invest any money in the fix.

The banks are being true to their character:  cold-hearted capitalism and pursuit of the bottom line at all costs dictates that they should hold out for a sweatheart deal where they get a troubled (but still valuable) asset, while the ever-shrinking and impoverished middle class pays for all the risk.  This is what banks do.  No surprise.

With little time to inspect Lehman’s toxic assets, Barclays and Bank of America made it clear that any deal would be contingent on them receiving government agreeing to absorb a portion of the losses.

But the government seems to me to be trying to strike an ideological middle ground.  They want the banks to take on both the risk and the reward, like this is some kind of normal sale deal.  Which of course it isn’t.  They’re practically begging the banks to do something that is fundamentally opposed to how their beloved free market ideology works.  They want them to buy a broken bank not for profit, but for the common good.  With no incentives.

I’m just curious why the government is digging in their heels now, after bailing out Bear Stearns and Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.  Have we run out of money?

What’s the answer?  It’s not the morally bankrupt answer of the right, the banks’ current position; the so-called free market.  It’s not the morally dishonest position that the government is currently taking; attempting to acheive the free market by expecting business to just do the right thing.

No, the answer is regulation.  I’m no economist, and there are complexities to this situation that I’ll never understand.  But a progressive ideology would dictate that you can’t leave these huge corporations to set the rules of the game themselves.  Our government has to set rules, and to make sure they are enforced.

Now that it’s the endgame and the government is getting involved, we should either let these banks go under or buy them and liquidate them.

It’s just the same old tired cliché, this time told with a lot of zeros and dollar signs.  And in the end, the only real victims will be people.  Lower- and middle-class people whose tax dollars will be spent to bail out yet another bank who tried to game the system rather than being spent on education.  People whose mortages are getting riskier, whose jobs are less stable and whose future is more cloudy.