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Rich Rice
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 April 2008
Posts: 195
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 1
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I love all this talk about who got money. They all get money and the money is dolled out in the hopes of securing favorable legislation. With our present system, anyone seeking higher office will need hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve that end. It is essential so Politicians take the money. Sure, Democrats and Republicans have fed off the largess of Wall Street, however it has been the Republican party that has been most in control during the last 30 years, and the party most connected to an ideology of deregulation as a means to achieve unfettered growth in the business sector. It is a failure of both parties, however it is more a failure of the Republican Party because they are the ones who have been most in power and they are the ones most beholding to the ideology that gave Wall Street the room to be bastards.
If anyone or anything has taken a 'hit', or needs to take a 'hit', it is the ideology that government oversight is bad and a free wheeling market is good. The end (profits) overshadowed the means. Con men in suits raped in the name of profits and cooked the books all along the way. From the Savings and Loan scandal to Enron to the present Banking mess, greed and corruption was word one. Now the people are left to pick up the pieces... And the guys who championed deregulation are left sputtering, "Well, how do you regulate greed?"
All that gregarious spending, all those lovely homes in Cape Cod, shiny toys and maid service. It's never a bad day to make money, particularly when people who had no party or interest are left to guarantee the debts when it all falls apart.
What took a 'hit' is the lie that we are, or were, about to "cut spending." Make that 1 trillion dollars for a pointless war. And 1.8 trillion dollars to save corporate executives from a mess they created. -3 trillion dollars spent on !#@$.
While we bicker over 'earmarks.' Nickel and dime stuff. Peanuts.
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Rich Rice
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 April 2008
Posts: 195
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | 2
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The most traumatic events in the Bush era produce almost no debate
Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon is really worth a read http://www.salon.com/opin...nwald/2008/09/20/bailout/
...
Whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.
What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.
More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble. How can these bailouts not at least be categorically conditioned on the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from those who are responsible? The mere fact that shareholders might lose their stake going forward doesn't resolve that concern; why should those who so fantastically profited from these schemes they couldn't support walk away with their gains? This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't.
And all of this was both foreseeable as well as foreseen -- see the 2002 grave warnings from Warren Buffett on pages 14-15 of his shareholders letter (.pdf), among many other things -- and it's also happened before, when the Federal Government bailed out the S&L industry that (with John McCain's help) was able to gamble recklessly and then force the country to protect them from their losses. The people who did this have no fear of anything -- they completely lack the kind of healthy fear that impedes reckless behavior -- because they know how our Government works and that they control it and thus believe that their capacity to suffer is limited in the extreme. And they're right about that.
What's most vital to underscore is that the beneficiaries of this week's extraordinary Government schemes aren't just the coincidental recipients of largesse due to some random stroke of good luck. The people on whose behalf these schemes are being implemented -- the true beneficiaries -- are the very same people who have been running and owning our Government -- both parties -- for decades, which is why they have been able to do what they've been doing without interference. They were able to gamble without limit because they control the Government, and now they're having others bear the brunt of their collapse for the same reason -- because the Government is largely run for their benefit.
If there is any "pitchfork moment" -- an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage -- it would be this. Nobody really even seems to know how much of these losses "the Government" -- meaning working people who had no part in the profits from these transactions -- is undertaking virtually overnight but it's at least a trillion dollars, an amount so vast it's hard to comprehend, let alone analyze in terms of consequences. The transactions are way too complex even for the most sophisticated financial analysts to understand, let alone value. Whatever else is true, generations of Americans are almost certainly going to be severely burdened in untold ways by the events of the last week -- ones that have been carried out largely without any debate and mostly in secret.
Third, what's probably most amazing of all is the contrast between how gargantuan all of this is and the complete absence of debate or disagreement over what's taking place. It's not just that, as usual, Democrats and Republicans are embracing the same core premises ("this is regrettable but necessary"). It's that there's almost no real discussion of what happened, who is responsible, and what the consequences are. It's basically as though the elite class is getting together and discussing this all in whispers, coordinating their views, and releasing just enough information to keep the stupid masses content and calm.
Can anyone point to any discussion of what the implications are for having the Federal Government seize control of the largest and most powerful insurance company in the country, as well as virtually the entire mortgage industry and other key swaths of financial services? Haven't we heard all these years that national health care was an extremely risky and dangerous undertaking because of what happens when the Federal Government gets too involved in an industry? What happened in the last month dwarfs all of that by many magnitudes.
The Treasury Secretary is dictating to these companies how they should be run and who should run them. The Federal Government now controls what were -- up until last month -- vast private assets. These are extreme -- truly radical -- changes to how our society functions. Does anyone have any disagreement with any of it or is anyone alarmed by what the consequences are -- not the economic consequences but the consequences of so radically changing how things function so fundamentally and so quickly?
Other countries are debating it. The headline in the largest Brazilian newspaper this week was: "Capitalist Socialism??" and articles all week have questioned -- with alarm -- whether what the U.S. Government did has just radically and permanently altered the world economic system and ushered in some perverse form of "socialism" where industries are nationalized and massive debt imposed on workers in order to protect the wealthiest. If Latin America is shocked at the degree of nationalization and government-mandated transfer of wealth, that is a pretty compelling reflection of how extreme -- unprecedented -- it all is.
But there's virtually no discussion of that in America's dominant media outlets. All one hears is that everything that is happening is necessary to save us all from economic doom. And what's most amazing about that is that the Natural, Unchallenged Consensus That Nobody Questions can shift drastically in a matter of days and still nobody questions anything. This is what Atrios observed as I was writing this post:
It's fascinating to watch how easily consensus is manufactured. A few days ago elite opinion seemed to be cheering Paulson's "no bailout" line, and now they're cheering a trillion bucks thrown down the crapper. All the Very Serious People will spend their days coming up with their pony plans, oblivious to the fact that the pony plan is not an option. The Bush administration's plan is the option.
The way it works is that Bush officials decree how things will be, and then everyone -- from Congressional Democrats to the Serious Pundits -- jump uncritically and obediently on board, even if they were on board with the complete opposite approach just days earlier, and then all real dissent vanishes. That's how the country in general works. As Atrios says: "We've seen this game played before."
I don't pretend to know anywhere near enough -- in terms of either raw information or expertise -- in order to opine on the necessity or lack thereof of The Latest Plan in terms of whether the alternatives are worse. But what I do know is that an injustice so grave and extreme that it defies words is taking place; that the greatest beneficiaries are those who are most culpable; and that the same hopelessly broken and deeply rotted institutions and elite class that gave rise to all of this (and so much more) are the very ones that are -- yet again -- being blindly entrusted to solve this.
UPDATE: Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It's elegantly simple. The three key provisions: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" [Sec. 8].
Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.
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Mike O'Brien
Byrne Robotics Member
Official JB Historian
Joined: 18 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10927
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | 3
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the ... savings and... loan... scandal... why does that sound familar..? Why does "Keating 5" ring a bell in my memory...?
Ah, I can't remember. All I can do insanely rant about and obsess upon Sarah Pailin...
Oh, and while Rich is correct in noting that it's peanuts, we mustn't said peanut gathering session with Obama looking, falsely, like the bad guy here. So...
Oh, SNAP, John McCain....
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Christopher Alan Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 October 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2787
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | 4
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Money donated to the RNC is not money donated to McCain.
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Pete Turley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 April 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 111
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | 5
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If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.
Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.
There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.
Oh 'SNAP' indeed
Edited by Pete Turley on 22 September 2008 at 2:24pm
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Mike O'Brien
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Joined: 18 April 2004
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | 6
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Pete, we covered this a few pages ago - the bill went nowhere - power to McCain for trying, but since nothing happened, chalk that one up to best intentions.
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Pete Turley
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Joined: 14 April 2005
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Posts: 111
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | 7
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What intentions did the Democrats who killed the bill have?
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Michael Retour
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Joined: 27 May 2006
Posts: 932
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | 8
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The Salon article sounds like a dictatorship run by Paulson et al.
It stinks of a bailout of fools and not the American people but the American people have to pay for it. Let the gamblers eat their derivatives losses. AIG's "rescue" was driven not by the altruistic intent to save the American population undue suffering (if Bush etc. wanted to do that Bush and Cheney would have resigned years ago).
And, as you can see, today the "market" sobered up and down she went.
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Al Cook
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Joined: 21 December 2004
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | 9
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Money donated to the John McCain campaign and its related committees is
not money donated to the RNC.
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Michael Retour
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Joined: 27 May 2006
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | 10
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for a new international
financial architecture rather than bailouts, in a press conference in
Sochi, the Russian summer capital, on Sept. 20. Putin had been holding
discussions with the French Prime Minister Francois Fillon there, Itar
Tass reported.
"We all need to think about changing the architecture of
international finances and diversifying risks. The whole world economy
cannot depend on one money-printing machine," Putin told the final
press conference after the meetings. "This is a very serious issue that
should be addressed in a calm, attentive and working manner, without
haste, together with our colleagues from Europe and America," Putin
said. "This issue should be considered not in a confrontation-like way,
but very benevolently, in order to find the most acceptable ways for
the development of the world economy and world finances."
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said he would put forth
several initiatives within days for dealing with the world financial
crisis. He called for "transparency," and said the two sides would be
working on the issues in the coming weeks. "I wouldn't say we have
survived the crisis,” Fillon said. "There was a huge impact on growth
in the world and Europe."'
...
Now add that to Brazil and Tremonti and you have a working alliance for a new Bretton Woods. I know Russians have called for it. China has called for it. This has been known worldwide for over a decade but the American press, as Salon, points out doesn't report it (and they have not been reporting it).
If you want to understand Mr. Myers you can start with pedantic, a sophist, and arrogance that comes from a deep-seated frustration in the events unfolding that he and his idols are unable to control. It's apparent he reads every single word I type and then attempt to take each word apart.
I still am waiting for one sector of the US economy that is still in good shape from him and he can't name one. The US can't survive as a service economy. Service economies are for servants. We need to go back to production. To banking practices that work. To regulation that has teeth and is enforced. Anyone remember the government threatening to fire regulators that blew the whistle?
Edited by Michael Retour on 22 September 2008 at 2:48pm
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Mike O'Brien
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | 11
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I don't know the intentions, Pete - I'm not a mind-reader, nor was I involved with the debate.
Could be something stinky, could be that, as is more often the case, there was wording in the bill and back-door traps that were not acceptable.
Unless you can provide some hard facts about why it didn't make it to the floor, I'd suggest your point is kind of meaningless.
It would be like me saying Sarah Pailin supports rape since she was opposed to funding for rape kits.
(Fact of the matter - she did, last week, explain her intentions on that one - she ixnayed the kits because they had emergency contraception in them. Soak in that for a while and suddenly my original accusation of her intentions doesn't seem so whacked-out...)
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Al Cook
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| Posted: 22 September 2008 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | 12
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QUOTE:
she ixnayed the kits because they had emergency contraception in
them |
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Really? That's unspeakably vile.
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Topic Closed)
