Needs to be given to everyone in Congress:
Yes. And at the risk of linking too frequently to someone, what Larison said:
What people mean by the now dreaded phrase “too big to fail” is that large firms hold the people hostage and demand public support when they are in distress using the rhetoric of bombers whose explosives have dead man’s switches: if we go down, we take the hostages with us. What the government is doing right now is colluding in blackmailing the public for the benefit of the most egregious, failed risk-takers. With or without an equity share in the institutions whose debts the government takes on, this is really not much more than serving the interests of a relative few at the expense of the many.
It is nice to know there are actually sane conservatives out there still.
BTW- After a few days of CNBC running in the background, it is my firm opinion that the entire CNBC staff is morons and the douchebag frat boys who wore head to toe Tommy Hilfiger in 1992 while driving their dad’s BMW. A bigger collection of retards could not be found this side of Doug Feith’s inner circle or the Hugh Hewitt Carribean Cruise.
Catpain Haddock
I am always surprised when I hear that not only CNBC is still on the air, but people actually know where to find it. I don’t think I’ve even stumbled on it by accident.
Englischlehrer
Somehow my Republican pops thinks we should just give Paulson control of the cash or the whole thing is gonna crumble. I mentioned that lack of oversight or any court of law ever reviewing his actions disturbed me. He said that 50 million dollars here or there are gonna get lost. I said that I would want those people brought to justice. He said that Congress was gonna waste money trying to get it back. I told him that if it cost 50 million dollars to recover the 50 million dollars, it was worth every penny. It’s amazing how modern conservatives actually don’t care much about conserving anything except their own stuff. I love my pops but we can no longer talk politics because he thinks:
*The Scooter Libby “thing” was a witchhunt
*He doesn’t care if the Bush Administration lied about going to war in Iraq, “the egg is broken and now we gotta fix it”.
*He wants a tougher stance on illegal immigration, which I do as well but he does NOT want to give those here already to have a chance at citizenship.
*He only gets his information from talk radio and actually accused me of getting my information from outside America (I live in Germany now) and that some of the websites I get info from are non-Americans…
The holidays are fun.
Tom
She’s amazing.
Snail
Maybe it’s something in Ohio, but I just heard Sen. Sherrod Brown on NPR, and if he and Kaptur are representative of congressional Democrats, I think we might be in good shape. Brown also made a point of hanging this whole thing on, as he put it, “the Bush-Cheney-McCain-Paulson” philosophy. Awesome.
Elvis Elvisberg
No such thing as linking too much to Larison.
S.G.E.W.
Well, there is one thing that I’ve acquired, personally, from this whole kerfuffle – way more detailed knowledge about the financial markets than I ever wanted. I’ve been reading the Economist for many years now, but I started skipping the markets section after a while*. Now I’ve had to give myself a crash course in the field (thank you, internets).
But did I really gain anything? All I see is the thing that I feared and suspected: the whole thing’s been cooked for a long, long time now.
Most of the time, when I learn about a frightening new subject**, I eventually reach a point where my more paranoid tendencies are assuaged (e.g., yes AGW is bad, but it’s not surface-temperature-of-Venus bad; no, the W.T.O. does not, in fact, control the world). But with this whole boondoggle . . . I have yet to find a reasonable explanation that doesn’t, at least tacitly, admit that the whole thing (from the fraudulent credit transactions to the doomed loans to the “trust me, I’m from the government” bailout scheme) is a big old scam. The people responsible succeeded beyond their wildest dreams (for a time) by defrauding the American people, and a good chunk of the international economy. And they will not pay a price***.
This cannot stand without punishing those responsible (full disclaimer: I have said this before, embarrassingly often, but this time I mean it!). Americans have a deep retributive streak in us, and, judging by the bizarre multi-partisan agreement (Someone must pay! I.e., not us, the taxpayers!) I can’t help but think that there really might, finally, be a path towards an actual path towards fundamental reform of the incontinent financial markets.
Or, of course, we might just hit the “streets run red with the blood of the traitors” stage a tad earlier than I thought****.
* “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out . . . . It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study In Scarlet.
** Such as international trade or global warming, and not relatively benign knowledge, e.g., jarring vegetables.
***Beyond losing their private jets and “high quality” prostitutes, of course. Poor dears. How we weep for them.
****For the record: I think that this is a bad thing. Violent revolutions have a terrible, terrible track record, and I don’t want to see my neighborhood get burned down, thank you very much.
demkat620
Hey, I got an idea! Let’s just give ole Gambling Hank a wheelbarrow full of cash and let him go to Wall Street and scream “Free Money”
That’s what this bailout really is.
Punchy
Jezuz Chrizt. You just quoted MY dad, almost verbatim. Why must old men be so fucking bass-ackward and ig’nent?
By the way, every day this thing doesn’t pass is probably another 25% chance it nevah does. If we ken block, obfuscate, argue, and fake-pontificate this botched abortion until Friday, and the market doesn’t take a massive digger (big if, natch), I think this proposal as largely envisioned is DOA.
S.G.E.W.
(And why does WordPress mistake * for a bullet point sometimes?)
Shinobi
Moving to Ohio so I can vote for her.
Pooh
SGEW, any tips for where to get such a crash course?
Also, this is massively awesome.
S.G.E.W.
Like that dastardly, foreign New York Times. Ooo, those New Yorkers, living over there in Spain, which is in the Western Hemisphere, which can be seen from Alaska.
The Moar You Know
Hey, there’s a debate Friday, isn’t there? Boy, I’ll bet no one will be paying attention to it, what with all the excitement going on.
/mccain
Just Some Fuckhead
I have no idea who that lady is but she needs to be in charge of the world stat.
mark
Meanwhile, Digg it here.
Richard Bottoms
Hell yes.
S.G.E.W.
Um. Read everything you can find online form (allegedly) legitimate sources, and paw through your back issues of the Economist for the explanatory grafs? I admit that my “technique” for self-edumacation is a little, uh, scatter-shot.
Shinobi
Done and Done.
Paul L.
Rule 3: control the playing field…
Reminds me of this statement by James Hansen
Ted
This is the biggest heist in the history of humanity. Christ, even Aurich Goldfinger wasn’t this audacious.
S.G.E.W.
By the way, why are Dem. Ohio Representatives so full of win and vinegar? Is it something in the water?
Linda
Well they tend to be from the northern part of Ohio. If you go to Southwest Ohio, you get to be represented by John Boehner. I spent almost two years as his constituent, and every time I was urged to contact my representative about an important issue, I thought “Yeah, right. That will do a lot of good.”
Stuck in the Fun House
I can’t remember the source, but Harry REid is saying that unless John Mccain votes for the bailout, there won’t be a vote. It seems The GOP is starting to line up against the plan, and against Bush while expecting and hoping for dems to pass it. So they can get the conservative talking point of anti Bush and anti governemnt, while the dems do the right thing and take the backlash. Anyways, that’s how the theory goes.
jake
Yeah except it doesn’t work unless the “hostage takers” are aided and abetted by the people in charge. I’ve been saying this since bAdmin. announced we absolutely positively had to bail out the airlines after Sept. 11. ZOMG! We have to give them tons of money or they’ll shut down and people will lose their jobs and we’ll have to walk every where!1
Yeah, that worked out well.
Strange how the uber-Capitalists have no faith in the free market.
r€nato
same situation here with my ex-father. Nothing like listening to a confirmed wife-beater launch into a vicious, misogynistic rant about Hillary Clinton, to make me want to fucking bludgeon someone to death first and think about the consequences later.
The only thing that could be worse in his eyes would be a liberal ni&&er getting elected to the White House. I am glad he is going to get to live to see that.
I guess it would be rude to say that I hope he has an aneurysm when that happens… so I won’t say it.
PeterJ
Kaptur said lockbox, so I’m in my right to post a link to this video about a federal bailout to the oil companies.
Brian J
On some days, I am not sure whom to trust.
r€nato
Correct me if I am wrong but IIRC that did not happen. What I recall is the administration piled a lot of new responsibilities and costs on airlines, and when they asked for help paying for it all, the Bush regime told them to take a hike.
That was one situation where I would have supported some kind of help for airlines, after all the government had just piled a lot of new expenses on them in a business which historically has not made a lot of money.
S.G.E.W.
What? The markets are “free”? Whoever told you that is your enemy . . . .
(h/t RATM)
Studly Pantload
I don’t take that as a given.
Poll: By Double-Digits, More Say Obama is Best Able to Address Financial Meltdown
Assuming people are actually comprehending what he is calling for, they like the equity-for-assistance feature, the oversight, and the focus on regulation — and I’m sure the populist executive salary-cap isn’t hurting, either.
Public support may be the wind at the Dems back McCain hadn’t counted on.
Jay B.
t seems The GOP is starting to line up against the plan, and against Bush while expecting and hoping for dems to pass it.
I’ve been seeing this everywhere too. GOP whore Pat Ruffini is calling it the “Bush-Pelosi” bailout. Newt Gingrich has been spouting off about it too. The trouble is, from their perspective, they started the ratfucking too soon.
Dodd said the Paulson/Bush plan is unacceptable. Obama said that he won’t vote for the bailout without Dodd-like conditions.
So basically, the GOP, thinking this was a win-win (their corporate cronies can loot the Treasury without oversight AND the Democrats get to take the fall), started being all “fiscally conservative” again.
But this takes the pressure off the Democrats to act quickly.
The rush to war and FISA and the Patriot Act only worked because the Bushies had the GOP screamers and Congressional critters supplying the demagoguery. They’ve tipped their hand here by going against Bush and preemptively blaming the Democrats. Who haven’t voted on anything and, judging by the CW, are starting to realize the trap that had been sprung.
Rick Taylor
I agree, or at least principled ones. It looks like the momentum may have changed and the debate is around Dodd’s bill more than Paulson (which is either good or bad depending on what you think of Dodd’s version). I doubt this would have happened without some defections by conservatives; the administration could have held the line and said this or we blame you for what happens when no bill is passed and they would have pulled off enough moderates to win.
Sherrell H.
Seriously this “rescue plan” is like giving $20 dollars to a crackhead on the street and “trusting” that he’s not just gonna use it to keep getting high!
And I know us American’s can’t focus on more than one thing at a time but WTF is going on in Galveston, TX. Anderson Cooper reported “third world conditions.”
What happened to the effectiveness of Rick Perry and the other republican governors?
Stuck in the Fun House
I don’t know why you would say that, given Harry REid’s and the dem congress sterling record of consistency and always standing up for what’s smart and right.
SNARK>
Jeff
Another good video of Kaptur.
Don't misunderestimate me
I thought they didn’t “negotiate with terrists”. Unless of course they’re home grown ones of the financial kind it seems, then they’re just surrender monkeys.
jake
The worst thing: After nearly 8 years of Bush this doesn’t seem like a lot of money.
Maybe you’re thinking of a later request for additional funds. The being told to take a hike does ring a bell. The FAA tried to help by skipping inspections but that wasn’t enough, alas.
slip
I think Dems have a very good card to play right from the start in this game:
Bring up an immediate vote to repeal the provision that deregulated credit default swaps. Hold up Gramm as the villain, and let Repubs choke on it. It’s an easy play: “America is going through a crisis brought on by this sort of deregulation, and Republicans are standing up with the guy who wrote the book on it…the same guy who is now calling us a nation of whiners.”
Tsulagi
Yeah, she was good.
Still, what’s the over/under on number of days before this thing passes with Dem support along with some sternly worded resolutions/conditions? I’m thinking seven would sound about right.
mellowjohn
as a special ed teacher, i must object to your use of the word “retard.”
my kids are way smarter than the staff at cnbc!
Justin Slotman
Just in general–don’t watch CNBC, it’s idiotic. Fox is marginally less so. Bloomberg is actually pretty good.
Englischlehrer
I have seen a couple of Republicans on TV now making it seem that they are against the bailout. Are Republicans going to be able to play this out as the Dems having blow away our financial future while they fought against it? How can politics always be the answer?
jnfr
Kaptur makes me proud to be from Toledo.
Comrade ellie
Marcy is my rep! She rocks. She was also vehemently against NAFTA back in the day.
ThymeZone
I don’t agree with much being said around here lately, but on this, we are totally in agreement. I can’t find much of anyone on the tube who has a fucking clue what is going on right now, or if they do, how to explain it so that it makes sense.
Because I am always right, I must repeat my position here:
1. Nobody in public view is getting this right, and that includes cable, print, and Blogville. Nobody.
2. Whoever you are, your main concern right now is taking care of your own financial future. Do what is prudent and necessary in that context, you have no control over what happens in Washington and New York. Set yourself up to be okay and be ready for things to get worse.
3. Focus on what’s really important, which remains the continuing destruction of the Republican party and its potatohead government. Don’t let anything distract you from that, once you have your personal situation in order.
Support the Democratic party and stop obsessing over who votes for what WRT the bailout.
4. Make clear distinctions between the big and small and the short term versus the long term right now. Don’t focus on who gets rich or who gets punished. Focus on stabilization and avoiding a collapse of the banking system, which is a precursor to depression. Once that is accomplished, then worry about economic and policy theories. Not before. And don’t listen to anyone who conflates these two contexts, whether it’s an official, John Cole, me, or anybody else.
Big E
smells to me like the old “give me a new stadium,
all the parking and luxury boxes or I’ll move my team somewhere’s else’ scam
Scrutinizer
What TZ said.
oh really
This is a sentence that is crying out for the subjunctive mood*.
Maybe it’s something in Ohio, but I just heard Sen. Sherrod Brown on NPR, and if he and Kaptur were representative of congressional Democrats, I think we might be in good shape.
Unfortunately, unlike us, the subjunctive mood is not required to operate in the real world. It does quite well with sheer fantasy.
*For those who didn’t study grammar in school, the subjunctive is used to express a condition that is doubtful or not factual. It is often found in clauses that start with the word if.
Comrade John Cole
If I have mistakenly given off the impression that I know what is going on in this mess, please know it is accidental.
I vacillate hourly in between thinking this is a 1920’s style meltdown and a grand scheme for widespread looting. I simply do not know what is going on. And for the record, I do not know anyone who has lost their house. Maybe that is just WV, and the housing market is different, but I know no one in trouble with their house right now.
Tsulagi
Eh, why not a little bit of both on the plate? Maybe like Saddam’s sons when they saw Iraq was going down the shitter they looted the Iraq Central Bank for about a billion. Use the power while you got it.
Bob In Pacifica
I used to think I was too big to fail. Then the doctor told me I had type 2 diabetes.
teak111
Wow, I think am getting turned on watching her.
Wait, yup turned on.
Is it too late to make her Obama’s VP choice.
charlotte
What a fucking dirty dog mess this is. How refreshing to see an intelligent, passionate woman making the case and doing it like a real human. My husband called it the other night — “If this were any other country, there would be an armed revolt.” The Republicans can try to spin this any way they want to but anyone watching the news will see that McCain is utterly lost. And the 15K a month to Rick Davis is going to piss millions of people off. Oh, yeah, and the lies. Since looting without lying is like a hotdog with no mustard.
Former Toledoan
Having cast a ballot for Kaptur in the past, allow me to emit waves of pride at having contributed to her awesomeness.
joe in oklahoma
this woman should be made president
cloned.
something.
txvoodoo
Englischlehrer, you said:
Excepting the bit about living outside the U.S., you’ve detailed how it goes with my older family members. We’ve had a cross-generational family email list since 1995, and this year it’s gotten very heated. They tell me (and my cousins) how we’re foolish, and unAmerican, and we tell them that the current GOP isn’t the one they grew up with. They’re all members of the “Greatest Generation”, and we’re all Boomers and our now-adult kids.
To them, voting non-GOP is akin to going to hell. They can’t see that fiscal conservatism switched parties sometime in the past decade (or before!), and that no one in the GOP is advocating for them, because they aren’t part of the top 2% of earners.
*sigh* It’s been a LONG election cycle.