Matt Taibbi has a big piece titled “Obama’s Big Sellout ” in Rolling Stone that people are sure to be talking about. There is a lot to quibble with — most notably, his claim that Rubinites didn’t like the stimulus package because they favor deficit reduction (I have never heard this and it’s naive to think that generally favoring deficit reduction means that you would oppose traditional Keynesian anti-recessionary measures in the teeth of a severe recession). He also doesn’t go into the details of the bail-out enough (I think it only makes sense to discuss it in the context of how much money the government will actually lose on it). But this part is striking:
While Rubin’s allies and acolytes got all the important jobs in the Obama administration, the academics and progressives got banished to semi-meaningless, even comical roles. Kornbluh was rewarded for being the chief policy architect of Obama’s meteoric rise by being outfitted with a pith helmet and booted across the ocean to Paris, where she now serves as America’s never-again-to-be-seen-on-TV ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Goolsbee, meanwhile, was appointed as staff director of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a kind of dumping ground for Wall Street critics who had assisted Obama during the campaign; one top Democrat calls the panel “Siberia.”
Joining Goolsbee as chairman of the PERAB gulag is former Fed chief Paul Volcker, who back in March 2008 helped candidate Obama write a speech declaring that the deregulatory efforts of the Eighties and Nineties had “excused and even embraced an ethic of greed, corner-cutting, insider dealing, things that have always threatened the long-term stability of our economic system.” That speech met with rapturous applause, but the commission Obama gave Volcker to manage is so toothless that it didn’t even meet for the first time until last May. The lone progressive in the White House, economist Jared Bernstein, holds the impressive-sounding title of chief economist and national policy adviser — except that the man he is advising is Joe Biden, who seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform.
What I’d like to know is if President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board really is “Siberia”. I have no idea what the answer is.
br
There’s this phrase on the internets “jumping the shark.” I think this latest installment from Taibbi qualifies. He’s much better when he just uses “fuck” every other word.
Dave Fud
I think it is likely that the jist of his critique is more important than the actual facts that he bases it on. Specifically, he is angry that Obama is a centrist that the liberal wing projected their ideas onto, disappointed that Obama isn’t the second coming of FDR.
Well, I think it is unfortunate too.
However, at least we don’t have an incoherent lunatic being manipulated by a monarchist VP anymore. And I think that is more important in the long run than the benefits that might be obtained from a true liberal in the White House. Why? Because the Senate is the place where we have empowered corporatists to kill every bill that doesn’t ladle pork into their trophs. Nothing would have truly changed anyway, and Taibbi would be railing at the Senate more than at the president.
The Moar You Know
I don’t know if the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board really is Siberia, Guantanamo or any other place where you hide inconvenient truths, but I do know one thing for sure; on matters regarding economic policy, Obama is most assuredly NOT listening to one person, and that person is Paul Volcker.
Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. I’m not an economist, but I can say that from my little corner of the world, I see the US firmly entrenched in the third “jobless recovery” I’ve seen since 1990. We don’t seem to be doing the right things with our economic or monetary policy, but what would I know?
Obama seems to have decided to embark on a course of “more of the same” with regards to the economy, and this may be the right thing to do, or he may have a firm hand on the tiller as we go over the waterfall. I don’t know. What I do know is that things aren’t getting any better for the average American, and haven’t been since the mid 1970s.
Dork
yawn……
At least those guys have jobs, period.
EconWatcher
@br:
I haven’t read the article yet, but I’ve been following Taibbi since early in his career as a Moscow journalist. He hasn’t jumped the shark, because there’s no shark to jump in the niche he’s carved for himself.
His writings are always about 80% hyperbole, scatological humor, and agitprop. But then there’s almost always a little kernel of insight that you can’t find anywhere else. I suspect he wouldn’t disagree with this description. in the end, he’s a useful citizen–and how many journalists can credibly say that?
ISLM
Christina Romer, the Chair of the CEA, hardly a comical role, is an academic. Larry Summers, head the NEC, hardly a comical role, was at one time a prominent academic. Both are, to their bones, economists of the New Keynesian tradition. (Yes, Larry was lulled into a false sense of self-regulation as a result of the Great Moderation. Most economists were.) Indeed, as much as one might admire him, Mr. Volcker doesn’t hold a candle to Drs. Romer and Summers in terms of formal economics training. He is a banker.
The central problem we face is that Senators who represent cows and lobsters have, by the Senate’s construction, disproportionate effect on the lives on land-faring non-ruminants known as people. The Senate is the source of our systemic political risk.
donovong
Sorry, but I am not a member of Taibbi’s fan club. He strikes me as a spoiled child, doing whatever he has to to attract attention.
Rey
I don’t totally disregard everything Matt says in this article. I had hoped that the Obama administration would take a hatchet to Wall Street and start over. But to be honest, after reading this article- I went to check on the balance of my 401k and though it has not been restored to what it was 18 months ago it has definitely rebounded some. I’m a kool aid drinking Obamabot, but I know that he is not God and I knew that once he became President, he would have to do “Presidental” things. They all do, it comes with the territory. I ‘m still thankful for a President Obama than President McCain/Palin though.
K. Grant
Reading Taibbi always feels like reading a less interesting and less insightful Bill Grieder. Or worse, yet another spoiled brat trying to be the next Hunter Thompson.
Comrade Jake
@Rey:
Rey, I would say that the people who followed Obama and actually thought he was going to blow up Wall St. were the ones drinking the cool-aid. On economic policy at least, Obama’s no DFH, nor has he ever given the appearance of such.
ISLM
@Rey
I suspect that by the time Obama celebrates his first year in office, he will likely have signed into law a substantial piece of financial re-regulation. It doesn’t go as far as I would like, but it creates the moral equivalent of FDIC insurance for the shadow banking system. It also begins the long march toward limiting excessive leverage (the source, in my opinion, of this whole mess) and forces the exchange of derivatives into more transparent markets. It doesn’t bring back the wall between investment and depository banking, which is unfortunate. It also enshrines federal pre-emption, so states can’t enact tougher regulations, which I think is a solid win for the men and women of high finance. Nonetheless, it will be a very good piece of legislation (which the Republicans will oppose through and through).
EconWatcher
@ISLM:
I don’t mean this as snark, but what evidence do you have that Obama is going to aggressively pursue financial reform? I’d genuinely like to know.
I’m not one of these people who calls Obama “Bush lite,” or any such nonsense. But I’ve been bitterly disappointed with his failure so far to take on Wall Street. And I’m afraid he let the national furor (righteous and just furor) against bankers die down enough that the moment for real reform may have passed.
But I’d be very happy to be wrong about that.
Bob In Pacifica
Obama’s stimulus (which is really Bush’s stimulus) aided people with money. It did not help the hoi polloi.
We useless bread-gobblers continue with massive unemployment. Banks remain tight with their money.
Here’s what should have been done: lots of money directed at public works, at energy-saving jobs (solar panels for all), at highways and schools. Big money institutions that fail should be seized and run by the government and all execs who ran those institutions into the ground should be shown the door. When banks don’t loan money to the people, then create a federal bank to do it.
But things like that won’t happen. Obama, or any President, doesn’t have the power. He doesn’t have the power to get American troops out of Afghanistan or Iraq. He only has the power to say yes to whatever the plan is.
That’s the nature of things. We peons only frustrate ourselves with talk of democracy. We have no real say in things.
sparky
the answer is yes.
i must say i am disappointed with many of the observations here. instead of discussing what is actually happening (i.e., is Taibbi correct), what we see are various mealy-mouthed explanations, distractions and excuses. i didn’t expect Obama to be Chavez, either, but i also didn’t expect him to be working for GS and Citi. and yes, Taibbi resorts to hyperbole, but dismissing the entire argument because of the hyperbole is the kind of cant that is usually attacked here (Broder, anyone?). sad.
and one other thing (ranting, now). if i see one more person say “oh I think he’s going to do something great” i am going to scream.
joe from Lowell
Seeing as how the Obama administration just announced that $200 billion in repaid TARP funds are going into a small business/jobs program, Taibbi looks like a bit of an idiot today.
Jim
During the campaign, Goolsbee was offered as proof that Obama was really Bush, anti-labor, pro-NAFTA
Um…. What the fuck?
MikeJ
The worst thing about Hunter Thompson is all the idiots that think his shtick is as easy as he made it look.
Bootlegger
At least Taibbi is one journalist willing to take on the Village. Yes, he embraces his role as a Village outsider, which is a damned good thing. Any intelligent person can debate his arguments, but at least he’s trying to hold the Powerful to account. Who else is doing that?
EconWatcher
@Bootlegger:
This.
ISLM
@EconWatcher
I guess my answer would be that you could start by reviewing a summary of the bill that will likely pass the House today. The NY Times has some discussion. There are other summaries widely available on the internets. The bill contains very substantive reforms, as I’ve already listed.
But I’m curious what you think “aggressively pursue financial reform” means. How else does an elected official pursue something other than through changes in law and regulation?
I’m all for pillorying the investment bankers. Hell, I’m neighbors with half a dozen of them. At the end of the day, their behavior will not be shifted by words. Trust me, they have no compunction about anything but being seen at the newest chic Soho restaurant. Their behavior will only be changed by altering through regulation and law the world in which they are allowed to operate.
(Having said all that, I do think one thing that hasn’t been sufficiently pursued by Obama or anyone else is the idea of a transactions tax.)
ISLM
A statement that is orthogonal to the truth. If you’re going to criticize Obama, at least get your facts straight.
robertdsc
Geithner the fuckup has already expressed negative commentary on such a tax when it was brought up at a recent worldwide conference.
Xenos
@ISLM:
That. Absolutely. And maybe that is what they are trying to slide in with the insurance fund for the Wall Street Banks. A transaction tax (I think we used to have one at about 30 basis points) would be the perfect way to fund such a fund – the more you churn, the more you save for the eventual blow-up.
El Cid
No, it isn’t “naive”, it would be making an assumption with or without empirical evidence.
Randy P
@ISLM:
That is my view of where we’ll be with health care reform, too. When the State of the Union rolls around, we will have taken tiny baby steps forward in the face of 200 mph headwinds from lobbyists and rightwing gasbags. That is far, far better than not taking steps forward. And I am also firmly convinced that the story is not over on financial or health care reform.
Just the fact of making forward progress will be hugely significant. So I’m choosing to be upbeat.
PeakVT
Larry Summers, head the NEC, hardly a comical role, was at one time a prominent academic.
Since then he’s become a gambler.
neff
@ISLM: With the Senate we currently have, it’s pretty tough to get excited about anything passing the House.
The Republic of Stupidity
Very well said. There was a time when I read, and reread, and reread Hunter, trying to decipher the secrets of his style. If you go back all the way to the start, the actual journalism from the early years, and work thru Hell’s Angels on up, he was actually a very exacting writer behind the persona.
He may have made it look effortless, but it wasn’t. And faaaaaaaar too many younger writers have tried and tried and tried to be the Second Coming and really never got it.
Fergus Wooster
Taibbi never intended to be a Thompson copycat – he was always aspiring to be H.L. Mencken. Of course he’s fallen short, which he’s first to admit.
Speaking as a banker, I have to concur with the glass-two-thirds-empty crowd on Obama’s financial performance thus far. I’m eager to be proven wrong in the future, but for now it looks like Taibbi was right – we were gamed with Volcker, Goolsbee et al. in the election, only to get Geithner and Rubin.
And now we have Goldman and the Big Boys borrowing from the Fed at 0% and investing in Treasuries at 2%. Nice work if you can get it.
Tom_23
I saw the Stewart/Colbert show from Wednesday and their respective guests were Andrew Ross Sorkin (Book = Too Big to Fail)and Matt Taibbi. Sorkin main point on the show was how nothing has changed regarding re-regulation and how Wall St was already looking to dismantle anything that comes out of congress. Taibbi was quite grounded with Colbert and his basic point was the frustration of seeing tax dollars go to Wall St with no accountabilty. (At least thats my memory this AM!)
R-Jud
@MikeJ:
Nicely put. He’s not my favorite by a long shot, but he cared deeply about the craft of writing in a way that I respect. He’d sit down with copies of books and stories he admired and type them out, word for word, to get a feeling for how the sentences were strung together.
I do think that towards the end he became a parody of himself. But maybe that’s just me.
Corey
Again, as with all instances of people blindly supporting the President even when he’s wrong, it’s amazing how much of the critique of Taibbi is based on his tone rather than substance.
I’m sorry, it’s just a fact that the Administration is stacked with financial industry insiders who have urged deals and “reform” measures that either do nothing or actually strengthen the industry.
That’s reality. It can be defended (for instance, the financial world is often described as so arcane that only insiders can properly regulate it), but don’t just pretend that it’s not happening, or chalk it all up to the President being some kind of strategic genius who’s just fooling us.
homerhk
Well, most of that stuff you ask for was in ARRA and has either been done or is in the course of being done. If you look at ARRA, for example, there has been a greater investment in education in the US than ever done before.
As to big money institutions that failed, I would just love to have seen what would have happened had those institutions been nationalised. where do you think the money would come from to run those big institutions and/or to deal with the worthless assets on the books? by any chance would that be the taxpayer?
I agree that MT’s article is more a manifestation of the sheer disgust one feels in having to give the wall street banksters money to survive, but that was unfortunately what had to happen – by the way, since everyone forgets, this was done by George Bush, not Obama – although it is fair to say that there was broad consensus that it needed to be done.
El Cid
@Corey:
I think I’m seeing this on a lot of topics.
The Republic of Stupidity
I almost mentioned this in my comment. Impressive, and clearly the mark of a man dedicated to his work.
Yeaaaaaaaah… I’d have to agree w/ that assessment. But then, there’s always that point when Willie Mays can’t get around on the fast ball anymore either… what’cha gonna do?
It made me sad when he committed suicide. Back in the day, when I’d get depressed, I’d go start reading Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, for the 12th time, and I’d always end up laughing myself out of the dumps…
When he had his ashes fired out of a cannon? I think he just wanted to go out with a big bang…
Salud……..
TaosJohn
Hyperbole in the defense of the truth is no vice in my book. As for the happy incrementalists, you all must have health insurance and secure financial positions — well, God bless and keep those cards and letters coming. All’s right with the world, then.
Seriously, I don’t mind that you don’t mind that we’re on the cusp of a monster depression and the end of the last chance the middle class will ever have in our lifetimes, or that the political/educations/economic/health care systems are completely broken. Besides, I’m usually fulla shit when it comes to taking this society seriously.
But I’ll bet Taibbi speaks for a LOT of people, and hardly anybody else is…
br
@Corey: Yeah, and have you looked at the justice department? The number of members of the ABA on their is payroll is unconscionable. More of the same sucking up to the law industry insiders.
tomvox1
Aside from matters of style, I think the main difference between Taibbi and Thompson is that Thompson had a realistic concept of how the government works, a gimlet-eyed fatalism. Taibbi is more of a bomb thrower who is pissed because Obama didn’t abolish the Fed this year while simultaneously naming Elizabeth Warren Treasury Secretary. Not that these are necessarily bad ideas, mind you…
I do wish Hunter had lived long enough to see Obama in office. His take would have been damn interesting.
ItAintEazy
First of all, joe from lowell… don’t, just don’t. Bribing banks with no restriction on executive pay because they are given MORE TARP money to do what they should have done with TARP money they already stolen from us is the type of corporate cocksucking horseshit that I doubt even Taibbi could make up.
Second of all, this is soo last month since that’s when I bought the Rolling Stones magazine off the rack (the one with that picture of Taylor Lautner competing in a wet t-shirt contest) just for that Taibbi article. Unlike some of you mincing nitpickers that seem to have more of a problem with Taibbi’s “hyperbole” than what’s going on with our country, I thoroughly enjoy every piece of his writing and will continue to support his and RS’s good works. Seriously, it would be too dangerous to start a drinking game out of the number of times you see “I don’t agree with Taibbi on everything…”
Sorry, Taibbi bashers, but the fact is that the onus falls on Obama, even if everything else Taibbi said is wrong. Everybody knows of the oil bubble driven by commodities speculators that was sucking our nation dry before the economic collapse. Well, Obama could prove that he was all about change by who he appointed to head the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which I guess is the agency that’s supposed to watch out for those types of manipulations. But instead he appointed Rubanite and GS-alum Gary Gensler. You know, the same Goldman-Sachs at the heart of the oil bubble to begin with?
Sad thing is, people have seen this from miles away. Especially haunting is the prediction that his “horsetrading” with financial machers will make him impotent in accompishing actual change.
Edit. Because I can :)
Napoleon
@robertdsc:
Wow, I wonder why? After all it will have virtually no effect on long term “real” investors like grandma and her 401k (or me) and really will only effect companies that do a lot of flipping and stuff like the high speed – split second electronic trading that many think is really illegal front running that the government has refused to shut down (and which according to many economist amount to a tax on all of America that goes into the pocket of the traders who do this, the largest of which is Goldman).
Jim
I’m fine with people criticizing Obama as long as they’re honest about it, by which I mostly mean acknowledging that Congress plays a role in our political process and that Obama can’t get around that by doing “something”, a word his most hysterical critics like to throw around but can never define. I wish Obama had been/would be more assertive against Wall St and in favor of the public option, but it’s Democrats, and “Democrats”, like Melissa Bean and Ben Nelson who are throwing the wrenches in these bills. If someone can define “something” for me, I’d be happy to consider it.
As to the specific issue at hand, maybe Volcker and Elizabeth Warren need to resign from their administration related posts and loudly and publicly align themselves with a couple of Senators– Sanders? Dodd? Boxer? where is Snowe on this? yes I know it’s an annoying trope but bipartisanship helps sell things to the Washington Post– who are willing to push through real reform. There’s my attempt at defining “something”.
Clark
Goolsbee was an economist for the PPI, a DLC think tank, and as Jim noted upthread, he was supposed to be a sign during the campaign that Obama was pro-NAFTA and somehow a continuation of Bush. He’s hardly some radical Keynesian banished by the Rubinites to some minor agency.
Also, Kornbluh actually served as a staff member for Rubin for some time. She might be serving in a minor position in the Administration, but it’s not because she’s in opposition to the Rubinites.
The Republic of Stupidity
@TaosJohn:
Heh… well, I, for one, can seriously say I DO take this society seriously…
But not in a way that society would find very flattering…
Seriously…
hal
Liberals are always disappointed.
Morbo
@ISLM: Well, it did shovel millions of dollars to Mark Penn’s firm for advertising. Maybe they were the low bid though, who knows.
To me, most of my opinions regarding Obama and economics boil down to “Don’t hate the playa; hate the game.” For now, that is… As president, Obama obviously has the potential to change the game. If it still looks the same in 2011 he’s going to be the one responsible. If as Taibbi says all the progressive voices are left out of the decision making process then it is cause for pessimism. I’m not convinced that they are left out, but it’s certainly true that Summers and Geithner have more power than Volcker and Goolsbee.
I’d also like to hear more from Goolsbee because he’s fucking funny.
Leelee for Obama
If we read all the reasonable people, e. g-people who are not Hank Paulson, Bill Kristol, John Fund, or other such Friedman-ites, and then take the time to distill a core truth, then all writers are welcome. It’s sort of like the way Olympic ice skating throws out the top and bottom scores and averages the rest. Hyperbole is the Three Stooges poke in the eye, the less shrill are the Charlie Chaplin nuance. The problem, as I see it, its we want to pick the story we already believe to be true, and all else is dreck. The right has an entire media empire for that. Intellectual investigation is not a lost art, YET, but it really needs a major comeback.
flukebucket
Okay guys. I have heard much about Hunter Thompson but have never read anything he has written.
Recommendations?
The Republic of Stupidity
I had the feeling, after he had passed, that Thompson simply couldn’t bear looking at this shit any longer. He pulled the trigger while Bush was still in office, and it seemed like his way of saying, ‘Sweet Mother of Christ… I’ve fought and fought and fought these hideous dumb asses for decades, and here they come again, like some mutant recombinant DNA/Night of the Living Dead plague…’…
John PM
@br: #36
I can’t tell if you are being serious or not. Almost all lawyers throughout the country are members of the ABA; it is the largest bar organization in the country. Membership in the ABA is not a problem for me. Rather, membership in the Federalist Society raises an immediate red flag. Most of the “shining legal stars” in the Bush Administration belonged to the Federalist Society, which I have heard described as “authoritarians who want to smoke pot.”
Leelee for Obama
@The Republic of Stupidity: I think Thompson just wanted to beat the devil cancer that was killing him by inches. Someone like him would find that an insult not to be borne. He’s rather have been blown away by a depraved critic, but since he was his own toughest critic, he did it himself.
The Republic of Stupidity
Oh, hell yes…
Start with Hell’s Angels and then go on to Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas…
Fear & Loathing is the Moby Dick of the 20th century…
And for counterpoint and balance, you might want to read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. Parts of Hell’s Angels and Acid Test overlap and cover the same people, places, and events, but from pretty different perspectives. As I recall, Thompson & Wolfe actually met at the time…
mk3872
@br:
Just an overly cynical jouvenile tirade by a writer who wishes Obama were more liberal
The Republic of Stupidity
And conservatives whine too much, when they’re not busy stealing something…
Leelee for Obama
I’ve written about the Federalist Society before, but it bears repeating. These people have chosen to view the Federalist Papers as the addendum to the Constitution, when, in truth, they are the op-eds in support of ratification, by the Federalists Hamilton and Madison. It would be like forming a Tom Friedman or a Maureen Dowd Society and using their writings like Holy Writ. Hyperbolic, admittedly, but not a false analogy.
Olly McPherson
God…people here are really cool with TARP and Geithner and how the bailout has proceeded? I guess it’s just another issue where Obama needs more time and understanding as he works to extend the status quo .
tomvox1
@flukebucket:
If you are a political junkie, start with “Fear And Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72,” one of the all time great accounts of the US political process. If you want a range of topics, “The Great Shark Hunt” is a fantastic and wide ranging sampler of articles from his early and peak middle period. Of course, if you want the drug cliche (but only a cliche in retrospect because it’s so archetypal HST), then “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” it is.
Buy the ticket, take the ride…
mk3872
Classic hit piece. “Some people call it Siberia”. “One person even called it …”
Taking anecdotal unnamed quotes and putting them into a story is meant for only one purpose: to prop-up your own opinion and anger at the position being taken by the administration.
I firmly believe that the liberal online press (Taibbi, HuffPo, FDL, DK, etc.) would only have been placated had Krugman and Reich been appointed to the highest levels in the admin and had let the biggest banks fail, which would have been catastrophic.
So instead they just sit from the sidelines and throw darts, while the economy recovers, ignoring that fact.
mk3872
@Dave Fud:
Obama’s not liberal enough and not conservative enough.
Which means that he gets darts thrown at him from the fringe of both sides of the U.S. ideological gulf.
Olly McPherson
As Taibbi would say, “The peasant mentality lives on in America.”
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/14/americas-peasant-mentality/
The Republic of Stupidity
@Leelee for Obama:
He was one of the reasons I moved to California back in the 70’s… I was hoping to find that high water mark he mentioned in Fear & Loathing…
Your comment sounds about right… again… he just reached a point where he knew he couldn’t get around on that fast ball anymore…
The Raven
Obviously deserves to be inducted into the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill.
liberal
@Comrade Jake:
There’s a lot of room in-between blowing up Wall St, and doing what Obama’s been doing (viz, appointing people who are shoveling $$ into the banksters’ pockets at a furious pace).
IdahoSpud
As a progressive, I believe Obama has sold out most of the people who voted for him based on his promise of “change”.
What change? We are still engaged in two unnecessary wars, one of which is ramping up.
ALL of the Gitmo prisoners need to be brought to trial, not just the ones the government believes it will win.
Warrantless wiretapping needs to stop NOW.
Behemoth banks that are too big to fail are being bailed out, while 1 in 4 children is on food stamps to avoid starvation.
GNMA has picked up buying all the subprime loans that crashed our economy the first time.
Have these (allegedly Democratic) shysters learned nothing from the failures of Republicans?
mk3872
@Olly McPherson:
How is GDP growth, falling unemployment and a growing stock market statas quo? Were you comatose the past 2 years?
gwangung
That is more a NEGATIVE for a journalist than a positive, doncha think?
Might be acceptable for a partisan, but when we pillory Villagers for that kind of sloppiness, shouldn’t we be consistent?
Details matter, particularly in journalism.
K. Grant
While it probably makes the most sense to start with “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, I tend to want to steer you to “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ’72” which I find to be some of his best work.
During the 80’s he cranked out a couple of collections of his shorter articles, the best was “Generation of Swine”.
liberal
@The Moar You Know:
Quibble: I don’t think that’s quite right. Volcker is relatively good on the issue of finance (in particular, financial institutions and their regulation).
joe from Lowell
It Ain’t Easy,
I’m sorry the facts trouble you so, but the decision to reprogram TARP repayments into a jobs program instead of deficit reductions demolishes Taibbi’s facile thesis. Even if you’re a big fan of his.
There were people in the administration arguing both sides, and the liberals won out. This is not what would happen if the centrists were the only important voices, and the liberals were all in Siberia.
Yes, yes, I understand that going so NOT GOOD ENOUGH, because Obama didn’t go back in time and let the banks collapse.
You’ve gotta love people who blithely waive away the possibility of a financial panic sending us into second Great Depression, ignore the fact that such a catastrophe, and the unimaginable agony it would have caused to ordinary Americans, was avoided, and pretend that they are the champions of the regular guy.
mk3872
@IdahoSpud:
Newsflash: Obama is not dedicated to changing the things that you consider pet peeves. You should have paid more attention during the election.
FYI, troops are already planning the withdrawal in Iraq in 2010, Gitmo is going the process of closing, Congress passed the Stim bill which Repubs would never have done, CO2 is now a contaminant, we meet & talk with “enemies” and the govt is enacting open gov’t measures.
That change I voted for …
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@neff: And Melissa Bean is doing the Senate’s job in the House. Being the tool of Wall St. she is, she’s basically gutted Elizabeth Warren’s baby(the consumer protection agency idea). And Bean represents the North Side(and suburbs) of guess where? Not NY!
valdivia
@mk3872:
I was going for something like that. For me the biggest tell is that when we were told with certainty and screaming caps at the beginning of the year that Obama HAD to nationalize the banks or else we would face catastrophe and now that it did not come to pass those same people who assured us nothing would be ok if the banks were not nationalized have moved on to yelling with certainty about other things and have forgotten about how important it was to nationalize the banks.
Again, getting the economy back to being right is not a one shot deal, it will take throwing at it a bunch of different initiatives that combine different strategies. And as mentioned above–let’s see what the regulation package looks like. The fact that the lobbyist are screaming about it should tell us something.
The Republic of Stupidity
I don’t think it’s completely fair or accurate to describe F&L as a ‘drug cliche’.
It was the point at which his style crystalized into its most fully realized form. Sheer black satirical perfection. Sure, he was lurching around the country out of control, but then , the WHOLE f-in’ country was lurching around out of control…
Behind the booze and smoke and pills and profanity, I always thought Hunter was both an extremely hard-working man and a deeply frustrated idealist.
And yes, Campaign Trail is as good as anything else he wrote, and one of the best political books ever written. I remember the very painful vivisection he did of Jean-Claude Killy and his 3 gold medals quite well… something about ‘the sucker who buys his style off the pages of Playboy magazine gets what he deserves’.
And yes, Shark Hunt is essential to understanding where Hunter started out and how he reached where he got to.
El Cid
Here’s to me an analogous situation, albeit radically different circumstances:
Many of us disagreed with a lot of the decisions made by Bill Clinton and his administration, and warned that they threatened really bad economic damage in the future. A lot of people then did things like point to the fact that the economy got better under Clinton than it was under Bush Sr., so, SHUT UP.
Many of us were correct then, and since then all sorts of mainstream figures have said things about how, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t have done A or B, and yet it didn’t make us ‘objectively’ in favor of the right wing crazies, or immature babies who didn’t understand some deep reality of the how government works, or any other such slur that were used at the time.
I’d advise Taibbi to maybe watch his tone a bit, or not extrapolate too often when not directly based on empirically verifiable facts or events, but I don’t think it would matter, because the choice seems to either be ignored as some sort of non-sophisticate or dismissed as some naive immature lefty bomb thrower.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@joe from Lowell: And how is the jobs program supposed to work? And why does it make Taibbi look foolish? Also, do you really want Obama to repeat FDR’s mistake of the mid to late 30’s?
Olly McPherson
@mk3872:
Apparently not as comatose as a lot of people on these boards. More and more I feel like I’m reading Red State circa 2002 around here.
“It could be worse” is the general mantra. Well, it could be better too. Unemployment’s still above 10 percent. Another jobless recovery, meaning the middle class (what middle class?), isn’t getting shit, which is how it’s been for my whole lifetime now.
We’re still living under the Bush framework. Obama’s just making a few modifications around the edges.
joe from Lowell
The trick is to understand that there are people who hate the rich more than they care about the poor, and would gladly sacrifice the latter to punish the former.
There are actually people, some of whom are on this thread, who would have welcomes a financial apocalypse and years-long depression, because the Depression-type images of human suffering would have been politically beneficial for their political agenda.
The Leninists used to call it “heightening the contradictions of capitalism.” The phrase was “worse is better.”
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
You’re right, I hate the poor. Good gleaning of my life from a blog comment, asshole.
Leninists? Are you fucking kidding me?
joe from Lowell
I’d like to point out that nationalizing the banks would have cost a great deal more money than the recapitalization efforts that were actually carried out. Even more taxpayer dollars would have been collected and diverted from important causes.
But, hey, it really would have stuck a thumb in the eye of some rich people, more than what was actually carried out, so that makes it the better choice.
liberal
@mk3872:
Bullshit. The idea that the only choices were (a) letting the banks fail, or (b) just handing them money without wiping out their equity and forcing their bondholders to take a haircut is sheer nonsense.
Also nonsense is the implicit claim that Obama had no choice but to appoint monsters like Geithner and Summers.
MBunge
“Again, as with all instances of people blindly supporting the President even when he’s wrong, it’s amazing how much of the critique of Taibbi is based on his tone rather than substance.”
I think that’s because a decent amount of the criticism from folks like Taibbi is fairly pathetic. It’s frequently either legitimate criticism presented in a wildly overheated manner or it’s childish whining over Obama not doing X, where the critic clearly hasn’t given a moment’s thought to how X could ever be done.
Mike
joe from Lowell
It makes Taibbi look foolish, because its adoption would not have been possible if the administration operated the way we theorized. Clearly, the pro-jobs-stimulus, left-leaning people in the administration are not exiled form the corridors of power, and clearly, it is not just conservative deficit hawks who have his ear.
No, not at all…which is precisely why I am so happy that Obama is committing to even more stimulus, with a jobs-based focus, now, when the economy is beginning to recover. This is precisely the opposite of FDR’s 1936-37 mistake.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
God, that’s such utter crap.
Do you have any idea, for example, how much total shite is now on the Fed’s balance sheet?
And your choice of verb tense, “…would have cost…,” indicates you think this is all over, that the large banks are basically pretty much healed. LOL!
El Cid
Exactly. That’s the trick. Make sure and repeat this because anyone making a reasonable argument that we are choosing worse policies over better policies in favor of the super-rich because of their empirically studied political and economic influence is obviously not a mature, sober analyst and is automatically a screaming irrationalist and in the end it doesn’t matter whether they’re proven correct 10 years later because the trick is to get logical points dismissed as ultraleft Romanov killing voodoo in the present.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@valdivia: You are kidding, right? Just because the lobbyist are screaming tells you it’s a good package? Did you not hear the news yesterday?
Elie
@TaosJohn:
This is just not helpful TaosJohn…
I mind a lot. A lot.
The issue that I take with some of the critics is that they blow past seeming to acknowledge the realities of our political system or how quickly these issues you list can be “fixed” in a short time by just having “the right people” that you approve of in place. Yeah — these have been urgent for a long assed time.
Thats where I get upset. Not at the appropriate criticism and questioning that necessarily has an eye towards helping us meet our ongoing needs and keeping the admistration on the right track. But that the fix has to be done — completely reconciled and finished right now and should have been finished by now if Obama was not a “sell out”..THAT is what sends me to crazy
joe from Lowell
I don’t think you hate the poor. Reed guuder, because this is what I wrote:
I think you like the poor; I just think you hate the rich even more – much like a Leninist, which is why you adopt their tactics.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@joe from Lowell: And I suppose you’ve seen the big story over at TPM right now? And you do realize that Obama has a wrong-headed fascination with Pete Peterson, right?
Brien Jackson
@MBunge:
Well to go a bit further, I’d say it’s more a result of the fact that style and tone is really all Taibbi has. I mean, look at this article. There’s a drastic oversimplification of a decade of fiscal policy in the name of creating some strawmen “Rubinites,” there’s the idea that Austan Goolsbee is some sort of raging populist, Romer and Summers somehow aren’t academics anymore, etc. These “facts” underlying this “argument” are straight out of an alternate reality. There’s nothing really to address, because this simply isn’t based in our reality. But hey, there’s lots of righteous anger and pissedoffedness. But when that’s basically all your writing has going for it, don’t be surprised when people focus on that and not your make believe world.
liberal
@mk3872:
Falling unemployment? What planet are you living on? Unemployment has overall been rising. Right now people are ecstatic on the jobs front because the second derivative of the jobs number is positive. But the first derivative is still negative.
Stock market is pretty meaningless, because there’s no evidence that the current market rebound isn’t largely speculative.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Clearly, the pro-jobs-stimulus, left-leaning people in the administration are not exiled form the corridors of power, and clearly, it is not just conservative deficit hawks who have his ear.
So where is someone like Stiglitz? And what is your proof? Maybe they are worried about 2010 and 2012? And you do know who the only one of the Gang of 535 that showed up at the unveiling of the Hamilton Project was, right?
joe from Lowell
Less than if they’d taken ownership of the banks they bailed out.
Going back to valdivia’s point:
Right now, they’re screaming about the cost of TARP; and yet, even now, we’re seeting TARP repayments coming in, one of which is being used to fund a big jobs program. So, pretty soon, we’ll see them forget their screaming about TARP’s cost, and move onto something else.
Because the screaming is the whole point.
El Cid
Okay. Great. Now if you disagree with a current apparent political establishment consensus on economic policies, whether or not there are scads of pro-capitalist economists agreeing with you, you are, in effect, a Leninist, driven not by sane disagreements with economic policies which have demonstrably favored the uppermost economic classes in this nation over the last 30 years over the vast majority and which were not, in fact, economically necessary, but political choices, and you are driven by weird, ancient, Old Marxist animalist hatreds, and if you’re not a Bolshevik revolutionary, then, well, you’re at least a fellow traveler, or maybe a dupe. Or maybe you’re prematurely anti-consensusist.
mk3872
@Olly McPherson:
What Bush framework?
I know of absolutely NO “Bush framework” in regards to domestic policy other than no regulations, no taxes and 100% protection for big business.
NONE of that is part of Obama’s strategy. He is pushing for more regulation, expiring the Bush tax cuts, a jobs package and a consumer protection agency.
Can you explain what you mean or are you just too angry to express it properly, similar to Matt Taibbi?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Stock market is pretty meaningless, because there’s no evidence that the current market rebound isn’t largely speculative.
It is speculative. You’d be gambling too with house money and interest rates at zero knowing that Uncle Sam will probably bail your ass out.
mk3872
@joe from Lowell:
Ownership of big banks in America won’t happen. You’re dreaming. And if you are mad at Obama for not giving into those ideas, you belong on FDL, not this site.
mk3872
@liberal:
Unemployment:
Avg job losses in first part of 2009: >700k/month
Job losses last month: 11k
See the difference?
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
A Leninist! That’s hilarious. You’re right, I’m an avowed follower of the political philosophy of Lenin, something that has been politically meaningless since before I was born.
Or gee, maybe I think stimulus money should have gone to people who would actually spend it? Is that Leninist?
Maybe I think the big banks (and their heads) should have been forced to make some concessions in exchange for accepting billions and billions of dollars of our tax money? Is that Leninist?
Maybe I think Obama’s economic advisors compose a circle jerk of the very upper-crust speculators that got us into this mess, and that, beyond that, they have a vested interest in kicking cash to their old buddies? Is that Leninist?
I’ll consult my old Leninist Bible to find out!
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
I’m perfectly happy to listen to “a reasonable argument that we are choosing worse policies over better policies in favor of the super-rich.” I think there’s a great deal of merit in that argument, and I would have done things differently in implementing TARP.
It would be nice if serious people without an underlying political and emotional agenda would come along, and crowd out the Matt Taibbi’s of the world. It would also be nice if more people were able to recognize the difference.
mk3872
@liberal:
Monsters? Good grief. Who are you? Glenn Beck?
The only other option was to take ownership of the big banks. That is a complete dream if you think that would happen in this country.
liberal
@valdivia:
LOL! If you were to actually read places with good commentary, like nakedcapitalism.com, you’d realize that we’re getting totally screwed by the FIRE sector on the topic of re-regulation.
In that case, though, the fault is at least as much Congress’ as it is Obama’s. Even someone as nominally liberal as Barney Frank is wholy owned by the banksters.
joe from Lowell
A Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
That’s very encouraging. Jobs in the short term, and concern about the long-term deficit.
The worry is that the administration will emphasize the reduction of next year’s deficit over job creation; the fact that even a conservadem like Stoyer is talking about the importance of jobs programs next year, and discussing the deficit in terms of the long-term, is exactly what we should hope to hear.
liberal
@mk3872:
No, someone intelligent enough to understand that handing over on other of $1T to the banksters and their bondholders is a grotesque moral outrage, and the relevant actors are indeed moral monsters.
As for you, it’s probably not a diminished moral sense that limits your understanding of such matters, but a lack of intelligence.
Again, false dichotomy (viz, between complete nationalization and what we ended up with (complete socialization of the losses). Why do you post about topics you clearly know absolutely nothing about?
Olly McPherson
@mk3872:
What Bush framework? We’re still living in a world of tax cuts and laissez faire capitalism as policy panaceas! Obama hasn’t done anything to change that frame.
“He is pushing for more regulation, expiring the Bush tax cuts, a jobs package and a consumer protection agency.”
Well, maybe he should have pushed harder when the economy was collapsing and the financial firms needed to deal. Plus, I’ll believe it when I see it.
The Republic of Stupidity
Better… no?
… and of course… Marx… Groucho, that is…
All hail Marx & Lennon!
Elie
@valdivia:
sigh…
You are so right. Why is this so difficult for some?
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
Uh, you’d have to have icewater flowing through your veins to not be emotional over a reverse-robinhood theft of hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: I find myself wondering if Taibbi weren’t so over the top in rhetorical style if there would be any attention whatsoever paid to arguments about the — in short hand for much more complex topics — harmfully and overly pro-Wall Street consensus of the Democratic Congressional and White House staffing and policies.
I don’t see any evidence whatsoever that there have been too many or too strong or too publicly significant rash and overly leftist economic commentators on any major topic for the last 30 years. In fact I think the problem has been completely the opposite.
It’s okay to have the most wildly exaggerated praisings of the craziest ultra-capitalist theories — hey, cutting all these banking regulations can really unleash our economy via financial innovation! — but what we really need to do is guard against the unreasonably emotional leftist or leftish critics of an actually existing Presidential administration.
joe from Lowell
My proof is exactly what I’ve provided, now for the third time: the reprogramming of repaid TARP funds into a jobs program instead of deficit reduction.
Is there a reason nobody will acknowledge this point? If I told you a week ago that Obama was going to do that, to put another $200 billion into jobs instead of deficit reduction, you would have rolled your eyes and called it an outlandish fantasy, but now that’s it’s happening, it’s beneath your notice?
This type of cherry-picking to fit a pre-conceived narrative is why I don’t take the characterizations of people like Taibbi seriously.
Oh, for Chrissakes! Whenever Obama does something you don’t like, it shows his dark heart. Whenever he does something good, it’s a cynical ploy. Whatever.
liberal
@Elie:
Which completely misses the point.
Yes, it’s hard for Obama or anyone else to do something positive in a short amount of time. (Cf the health care debate.) But that’s entirely distinct from the claim that Obama’s a sellout because he does damaging things in a short period of time, like appointing Geithner, or listening to Larry Summers.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
At this point, $200B is too small by a factor of four or five.
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
Shall I call the waaaaaaaaambulance for you?
I’ve explicitly stated that I have no problem with criticism of Obama’s policies, and have some myself.
It is you, and not I, who are refusing to distinguish between meaningful, informed criticism and infantile tantrums. In fact, you are so committed to this conflation you pretend not to notice when I explicitly draw a distinction.
If you don’t want your oh-so-serious criticisms to be treated like Taibbi, and if you don’t want to be lumped in with cyncial far-leftists who just just use political fights to push an agenda, then man up, drop the “no enemies on the left” bullshit, and admit that it is possible for someone who criticizes Obama to be wrong.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
“Serious people without an underlying political and emotional agenda” don’t exist. And if they did, they certainly wouldn’t call people Leninists on the basis of one blog comment.
joe from Lowell
mk3872,
You’re confused. I’m not advocating for nationalization of the banks. I’m the one pointing out that it would have been incredibly expensive, and turned out not to be necessary.
liberal
@Olly McPherson:
That’s key. Although it should be noted that the moments of greatest opportunity passed while Bush was still in office, IIRC.
El Cid
I think this is a very, very significant point, and says more about the willingness of Obama to be reasonable in the face of an awfully insane establishment consensus than nearly anything I’ve seen in months, with regard to economic policy. It is potentially a hugely positive development, and if truly followed through would help plug a major gap that was acknowledged from the original stimulus.
I’d also like to point out that Nancy Pelosi herself has been leading in emphasizing these types of approaches, publicly stating numerous times that the real contributor to the deficit and the debt would be the weakness of the American employment situation.
Even us crazy Leninists can occasionally swallow our bile and admit some potential out there.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
Yep, “…turned out…,” because none of the big banks are zombies anymore, there’s no more shoes like CRE waiting to drop, etc.
LOL.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: Let me clear something right up for you, then. I don’t give the slightest hint of a fuck what you think of me, and what views of mine you would or wouldn’t respect, and you can take your weird thoughts that I might give a shit about it and cram it way, way, way back up your ass, where your silly convictions about the threat of Leninists wandering the American landscape should more properly reside.
joe from Lowell
liberal,
Maybe. On the other hand, we don’t have $1 trillion in TARP money paid back, and I doubt it would be possible to get another big stimulus appropriation through Congress.
But be that as it may, I offered that evidence in response to a specific point: that the administration is turning its back on jobs for regular people, and is committed only to helping the super-wealthy. I have 200,000,000,000 reasons to believe that isn’t so, and that point stands even if you think that further spending is necessary.
Elie
@joe from Lowell:
“Oh, for Chrissakes! Whenever Obama does something you don’t like, it shows his dark heart. Whenever he does something good, it’s a cynical ploy. Whatever.”
As you said upstring — the point is the screaming. And that is why this “debate” is just a waste of time…there really isnt an attempt to reconcile real facts — just another opportunity to “make the pitch, make the sale” that Obama is just-like-Bush-sellout. As Valdivia and others have taken pains to point out, there is just no way to have any positives at all acknowledged without a “yes but”.
It would be just kinda an interesting aside, except unmitigated could turn into the answer to the right’s tea bagger movement — undercutting support for Obama’s policies further and undercutting all future Democratic candidates who don’t meet the purists’ rigid test or pedigree.
There is very little learning going on in these arguments..
liberal
@El Cid:
It’s important to distinguish between fiscal efforts to blunt the recession, and matters related to finance (bailout, and reform).
On the former, Congressional Dems and Obama have been OK, though not nearly aggressive enough.
On the latter, they’ve been abysmal, and show no signs of improving anytime soon. (With notable exceptions, like the one’s who co-sponsored the “audit the Fed” bill. But as I said above, Barney Frank for one is entirely owned by the banks.)
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
My, your profanity-laded tirade, at the end of a series of posts chastising me for my characterization of you, certainly does convince me of how little you care about what I write. Way to go.
I love the fact that the people who began this thread by insisting that it’s wrong to take exception to Taibbi for using a heated tone, for his hyperbole, and for his lumping people into groups, are now ending it by chastising me for using a heated tone, engaging in hyperbole, and lumping people into groups.
Gee, do you think that maybe the people who didn’t like Taibbi’s article had a point?
Rhoda
The whole thing works to hard to paint a picture that doesn’t exisit IMO. The first big red flag: why was Citi so special it got such a deal? Because it would have brought the whole freakin’ world down! To say that this collapsing bank which is trading at, what $4, put in place Obama’s team is stretching it. Besides, I thought only Sachs had that power?
Obama has done an amazing job keeping his promises on the whole; the only place I’d call him a sell out is in regards to civil liberties (Bagram, military tribunals etc). Otherwise, his budget keeps faith with the platform he ran on and he’s fought for health care reform in a senate that is fundamentally broken. (The House has done cap and trade, health care, and the stimulus as well as nearly completing all of regular business.) He’s made mistakes, obviously. But given the conservadems, how crazy the right has gotten, and our F’d up media that has declared him a failure on the regular it’s been a decent 11 months.
God bless him, hopefully the next three years’ll be better.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
Ha–you’re calling people Leninists and claiming they would advocate the poor suffering through a global economic collapse! Who are you to complain about anyone’s tone?
joe from Lowell
Elie,
Quite right. Now, compare this to a decent, honest Obama critic like Paul Krugman on the economy, or Howard Dean/Anthony Weiner on health care. These are people whose primary interest is in seeing progressive change actually happen, and not just in staging some drama whose central theme is the moral superiority of the critics.
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: You are fucking kidding me: ON BALLOON JUICE, you are mentioning “profanity” and “tirade”.
Right. What was I thinking? Nothing more proves me an overly emotional nut than that I would fail to contain my language to more 19th century Victorian standards on this honored forum.
But, no, without any profanities whatsoever, I really, really don’t seek your personal respect, and I really, really am completely unconcerned about any of your personal declarations of either agreement or dissent.
I just want to be clear about that, because often blog commenters intimate that losing their respect or agreement would in one or another way trouble me.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
“Serious.” “Decent.” “Honest.”
You sound like David Broder.
“These Obama critics are coming in and messing up the place, and it isn’t even their place!”
Cat
@br:
Epic Fail. Its not even a halfway credible strawman attack.
joe from Lowell
Olly,
I haven’t called anyone a Leninist. I merely noted the undeniable similarity of your tactics to theirs.
Lots of people learn political tactics from Lenin. Grover Norquist has a poster of Lenin on his wall.
Anyway, “Your not one to…” hasn’t the slightest relevance to any issue about economic policy, so it doesn’t really interest me. From where I’m sitting, who is and isn’t more morally pure than whom just isn’t the point. YMMV.
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
I’m not chastising you for your potty-mouth. I have no problem with your language.
I’m just noting, with a certain degree of mirth, the way your use of such…over-emotional grammar clashes with your protestations of how little you care. As does your need to keep coming back and telling me how little you care.
Now, if you don’t have anything else to say about economic policy, kindly piss off.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
My tactics? What tactics? I criticize Obama, and you immediately pull some bullshit out of your ass about wanting the poor to suffer through a global economic collapse. And now you’re trying some wounded, holier-than-thou tone? Give me a break.
joe from Lowell
Oh, good, El Cid and Olly have decided to make this a thread about me, personally.
It’s about time people got their priorities straight. Barack Obama and the economy? Boooooooooring!
I think we need a few more comments about who I sound like.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
“Piss off”? Are you the moderator here? Is this your blog? Do you get to set the tone?
Because there have been a lot of substantive disagreements here that you’re dodging with nonsense about Leninism and whinging about decorum.
I must be at the wrong URL!
Cat
@Olly McPherson:
You never escape the peasant mentality, just as you’ll never stop having Authoritarians or Sociopaths. They are part of the spectrum that makes up the Human Psyche.
liberal
@Elie:
That’s just completely silly. It depends on the issue area.
Fiscal stimulus: good, but not nearly aggressive enough.
Finance (bailout, reform): horrible, awful. Screaming justified.
Environment: good—lightyears from Bush.
Wars: perhaps better than Bush, but not great.
And so on.
But to repeat, anyone who thinks that Obama and key Congressional dems haven’t sold out on the bailout and the concommitant lack of real reform of financial regulation is either a shill or doesn’t understand the underlying issues. Sorry if that hurts anyone’s feelings, but that’s the way it is.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
Well, the only “personal” thing about it is that you have no understanding of the bailout, the current zombie status of the major banks, etc etc.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
You made it personal! Let’s look back.
Here’s you: “There are actually people, some of whom are on this thread, who would have welcomes a financial apocalypse and years-long depression, because the Depression-type images of human suffering would have been politically beneficial for their political agenda.”
In response to: “God…people here are really cool with TARP and Geithner and how the bailout has proceeded? I guess it’s just another issue where Obama needs more time and understanding as he works to extend the status quo.”
Really? You’re trying to be the victim here?
Olly McPherson
@Cat:
That’s probably true.
scudbucket
There’s an unstated question in this thread: Is Obama a centrist, or a lefty hamstrung by centrist institutions? It’s similar to the question I have about B.O.B.: is he a real, or only a parody troll?
In each case, the answer is under-determined by the evidence.
El Cid
There’s just some weirdness here, a sense of power and authority in a situation where it is clearly unwarranted. My contacts with the Party will be quite interested, and I tell you, sir, your records will soon be pulled and examined.
joe from Lowell
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
My tactics? What tactics?
I’ll be happy to educate you:
1. Make unreasonable demands. If any demand is met, shift your demands. The point is to show that your demands are being ignored.
2. Oppose “ameliorationist” efforts. The purpose of politics is to deliver an ideal end-state, which will only come about when enough people rise up. Proposals which make the lives of the masses better only serve to make them less willing to rise up.
3. Redefine every issue away from meeting the needs of the people, and towards getting back at the wealthy. IE, instead of “you don’t have enough bread,” say “Those rich bastards are getting all the bread!”
Sound familiar?
joe from Lowell
Oh, good, more comments about me. Keep ’em coming, people.
Nice victimology, El Cid. Pretending I said you belonged to a Leninist party is quite Rovian, but I’m not Dick Durbin, and you can indeed piss off.
Cat
@valdivia:
They did nationalize the big banks, The Fed has bough(at par) or lent at less then 1% over a trillion dollars to the them at rates so low they could just reinvest in with the government at a profit.
The only reason you don’t call that nationalization is because its supposed to be called looting.
El Cid
I think a lot of times the actual questions go under-determined. People seem to think they know which debate they want to have, but even given that blog comments are used for people for a variety of reasons — i.e., some serious dry debate, some steam blowing, some not sure, sometimes varying — I think there should be more efforts put into thinking about what questions one is addressing.
I think it’s sometimes interesting to phrase these giant topic questions through the lens of Obama and his perceptions, since he certainly is a major actor; but sometimes people need to not think things through via the imaginary lens of being the President or other particular leader.
For example, if I speak your original two questions out loud to myself, I start to wonder what they would actually tell me if I indeed felt like I could start to answer them. Are we in a case in which not only would such an ‘answer’ be under-determined by the evidence, but would such an ‘answer’ really tell us something we needed to know?
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: You could at least read the comments you’re allegedly responding to. And it wasn’t the Party of Dick Durbin I was talking about, but, you know, the Party.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
“Sound familiar?”
No, what the fuck are you talking about? How does that have anything to do with what I’ve said on this thread?
“Educate” me…that’s really condescending.
fraught
@joe from Lowell: You’re doing a great job here ducking the stones thrown by the Taibbi Kool-aid guzzlers who seem to believe that he is the new god of rhetoric and try to mimic his style. (El Cid: this means you with your fake pearls which you insist upon throwing before fake swine.)
It’s funny to see how just by mentioning Lenin you created panic among the generation for whom he is a name in an old history book and who can’t seem to remember just exactly who he was and how he could possibly have relevance in a world where people use words like consensusist.
joe from Lowell
Oh, clearly, liberal. That’s always been my problem – I just don’t know very much. Very shallow pool of information from which I have to draw.
Certainly, our disagreement has nothing to do with different perspectives, different goals, or different ideology.
Nope, it’s that same problem that, as anyone who’s come across me can tell you, I just don’t know very much. That’s always a safe assumption to make about anyone you argue with, and me in particular.
joe from Lowell
That whooshing sensation on your scalp you felt when you read my Dick Durbin reference, El Cid?
Don’t worry about it.
joe from Lowell
Good. Mission accomplished.
So…how’s that “adopt a hysterical tone so my ideas will be taken seriously” thing working out for you?
Olly McPherson
@fraught:
You’re right–I’m so panicked I can barely type. ajpadsfoiaraditj!
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
Well, the “responding to my statements” part of the exchange clearly isn’t working for you.
kay
Is it true that Taibbi is mistaken in writing that it was Robert Rubin’s son who played a role on the Obama transition team?
Jamie Rubin in question is NOT related to Robert Rubin?
Wow. That’s some rigorous analysis, right there.
Olly McPherson
@Olly McPherson:
You’re pretty good at the “dodging direct questions” portion, though.
joe from Lowell
El Cid,
Dick Durbin.
I’ll let you do the rest of the work yourself. It’s really not that hard.
joe from Lowell
Yes, Olly, it almost as if I’m not really interested in anything that someone who argues and behaves like you has to say.
Saaaaaaaayyyyy….I wonder if this has any relevance to Taibbi’s article?
El Cid
@fraught: I have never once thrown fake pearls before fake swine, because fake pearls can be expensive, and your average fake swine can’t tell the difference between good fake pearls and a handful of mints.
And I happen to guzzle Taibbi Kool-aid because it’s sold in individual sugar-free packets at the local halal market.
And there is nothing wrong with the word “consensusist”, precisely because it was intended to sound ridiculous.
However, this demonstration of blog commenter solidarity has restored my faith in Man, such that I feel empowered to tackle the yard raking I had postponed by telling myself I on this blog had been helping lay the groundwork for the Revolution via my refusal to lay down for the Social Fascists. (D’oh! Another Old Time historical reference inside joke! I’m sorry! It’s the Taibbade, it’s got guarana!)
Corner Stone
@mk3872:
You know what I find odd about using this stat to somehow prove that unemployment is falling? That at the end of the month, 11K more people are unemployed than they were at the beginning of the month.
One could try to argue that the increased rate of unemployment is falling, but probably not make the argument that unemployment is falling.
kay
“He is the son of publisher Harvey Rubin and his wife Judith. Many people mistakenly think is he is the son of former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Rubin, who also has a son known as Jamie.”
Connection to Rubin? Last name.
Olly McPherson
@joe from Lowell:
C’mon dude–how have I acted and behaved? Throw me a bone here. Try hard–be specific.
(Hint: You’re the one calling people names.)
Redshirt
That seals it: I’m voting Nader.
Seriously, it’s wonderful to see a political landscape where one side (R) will oppose anything and everything the President does, and his own side (D) will carp and critique and complain at any possible chance.
Is it any wonder the Republicans have dominated the political scene for the past 30 years? That they dominate the media, and the conversation? Liberals will never be able to muster sufficient support for any candidate – and thus, we will get the latest crazy Repuglican flavor of the month, shortly.
But yes, lets all run Obama through a purity test too: END THE FED! END ALL WARS!
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell:
Finally! Something I can agree with you on!
El Cid
@joe from Lowell: The Dick Durbin comparison just was not apt, because what you’ve endured here at my hands is twenty gajillion times worse than a trillion Dick Durbins being forced to apologize in front of a quintillian Pol Pots while being forced to listen to a googleplex of lip synching Milli Vanilli (plural?).
kay
@Redshirt:
Any connection to the following is per se evidence of bad faith:
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, The Clinton Administration, a free trade think tank.
Oh, and if your last name is “Rubin”.
Cat
@mk3872:
All I see is an idiot who is comparing one month’s jobs data, that has yet to see any revisions, to the average of several months of jobs data which saw many revisions.
For your next stupid statistics trick I imagine you’ll start listing the whole series as some sort of proof. Do you also deny climate change because one month bucked the trend?
kay
Oh, and Goolsbee isn’t progressive on trade, but that’s just another minor error.
scudbucket
@El Cid:
GWB was in South America and a reporter asks him how he could justify that two Brazilian soldiers had been killed fighting in Iraq. He said, ‘well two brazilian is alot of deaths, but I think the sacrifice is worth it’.
Cat
@liberal:
Being emotional to the point it clouds your ability to make reasonable arguments and frame them properly with quotes, from the right people, and “sober analysis” keeps you out of the Serious Person’s Club. With out that membership you won’t get anything done or be taken seriously. Tribalism still rules.
mattH
Less than a third of the $200 billion is repaid funds. Most of that was never used and has been sitting in wait in case it’s needed again. So the good news is that everyone seems to agree that we won’t need the $200b we have for further bail-outs or financial troubles. Thing is, we’ve only seen about $65b back from the banks that needed $500b, and rumor is, the administration is only looking to spend $70b or so. I don’t blame them really, it’s probably all they have and can get, yet it’s still not enough when state and local governments are cutting $350b alone.
El Cid
@scudbucket: I had heard that one a little differently.
keestadoll
@The Moar You Know:
Interesting snippet on Volcker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6764177/Ex-Fed-chief-Paul-Volckers-telling-words-on-derivatives-industry.html
Quackosaur
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Yes, I know this is from up-thread quite a ways, but I can’t let this glaring inaccuracy stand (and thus give other people the wrong idea).
You’re about one-quarter right. Bean represents no part of Chicago proper, but rather Chicago’s Northwest suburbs, which is (was?) a nexus of McMansions and suburban office parks. Quite distinct from the North Side of Chicago or even the North Shore suburbs.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
I think we’re seeing evidence from numerous quarters of the aftermath of 8 years of the Unitary Executive. I’m not happy with Obama on several fronts, but I have to remind myself that he’s the president, not a dictator. He believes in the balance of power, which is a good thing. Right now, in regard to HCR and Wall Street, we’re taking baby steps. If, come about 2011, we’ve not moved further, then I’ll be seriously disappointed.
Taibbi is no HST, but I still enjoy reading him, even when I disagree.
Selah
mattH
Even better, we add about 127,000 people to the economy every month simply through population growth, so you’d need more than that just to stay even.
Corey
I know Balloon Juice is run by a dude who hasn’t been a liberal very long, and maybe some of that trickles down to the commenters. I don’t know. Most of you all are very smart people so I don’t understand why the following things aren’t generally understood:
1) Liberalism/progressivism values, perhaps above all else, freedom of thought, unencumbered from societal or hierarchical pressures. In other words, we question authority – including our own authorities.
2) We also recognize that the world is an extremely complicated place and value nuanced thinking, because black and white thought simplifies the world so much so as to be almost useless. That’s why, for instance, conservatives cannot comprehend the idea of climate change – they literally cannot comprehend a nuanced and complicated world.
These are pretty foundational things – nonauthoritarianism and nuance are part of what it means to be a liberal. With that in mind, I’d just like to remind everyone that progressives and liberals are allowed to have nuanced, critical opinions of their own leaders, including the President. You are not a Republican and you’re not called to defend the indefensible. We are not blind loyalists or political opportunists. For that matter, criticizing the President doesn’t mean you were wrong for voting for him, or that you think Clinton/McCain/Palin would’ve done a better job, or that you want the ghost of Trotsky to be reincarnated as Treasury Secretary.
Sorry if this sounds a little condescending, but Jesus. The President’s not perfect, and when he’s not perfect he deserves vociferous criticism.
kay
@Cat:
That isn’t it, Cat. Taibbi cribs a NYTimes article in his piece to make his case. But he quotes selectively. He announces that 8000 banks were exempted from the new regulations pertaining to consumers.
What he doesn’t tell you is they exempted community banks and credit unions. Small banks.
The regulations cover the 150 big banks, and the 150 big banks have 4/5 of the assets.
I know that because I read the paragraph following the paragraph Taibbi selectively quotes.
CalD
I frankly think that someone needs to up their meds.
Corner Stone
Since DougJ has essentially made a living on this blog criticizing Broder, I love, love, love it when someone makes a paean to “serious people”.
Elie
@mattH:
so let me see here…
So that the unemployed number is smaller than it was by a great deal from the year before, (holding aside the added people to the economy issue) (From 750 K down to 17K), we are then to take it that the only acceptable transitional number in this dynamic metric is zero? Really? I mean, do you think that you just go from 750K unemployed to zero unemployed in one year without a transitional number in between? And that transitional number is not a fall, but some sort of, what, no — not an increase, but because its not zero, its not a fall — type of crazy logic?
See its this kind of thing that makes me know that the “critics” just wanna be critics and are not interested in real progress (hence are not really progressives). You are just absolutist ideologues not particularly interested in fairly discussing reality — just your views about what you think reality should be. A smaller number is not a fall, but something else…
Cat
@Redshirt:
I was under the impression the Republican’s have ruled politically because the people who voted in Elections were mostly older white Christians. The newer voters are in a demographic the Republicans don’t like and the voters know it.
El Cid
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon): On HCR, it does appear very much like Obama has tried to re-emphasize that it is the Legislative branch’s responsibility to craft and pass legislation, and I wonder if, besides the reform itself, that might be one of the more positive outcomes, a slight de-emphasis of the Executive, at least on domestic issues?
kay
@Corey:
Right. But shouldn’t it be accurate? Can it be riddled with errors and omissions? Because it is.
Midnight Marauder
@Olly McPherson:
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen on a web site not named Red State. More and more like Red State? HA! Get the fuck out of here with that weak sauce.
Corey
@Redshirt:
The strawmen just keep flying in this thread, I see.
As to your more substantive criticism of Democrats and liberals for not uniting in lockstep behind their leader – we aren’t authoritarian people. That’s why we’re liberals. Republicans, both at the elite DC level and in the grassroots, advocate for policies they do not believe in because it will help their “movement”. We, luckily, do not have to do that.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder: Not to speak for Olly in any way – but I read that to mean Olly thought BJ was trending to a “defend the dear leader right/wrong or in any eventuality” and if anyone says “Nay!” then call them Lenin.
But Olly could’ve meant something else I guess.
Olly McPherson
@Midnight Marauder:
I disagree. “Things getting worse at a slower rate” equaling “progress” was a very familiar argument in the Bush era. As was the assertion that any criticism of the President meant that you “weren’t serious” or “weren’t a REAL progressive/conservative.”
Corey
@kay:
I haven’t seen anything from Taibbi, Greenwald etc. that is substantively wrong. You might not like the tone, or you might disagree with the criticism and agree with the President. That’s fine.
If you want to defend the President’s actions, go ahead – if that’s what you really believe. But since this site is made up of the same people who opposed the Bush administration’s civil liberties policies and terrible record on financial reform, I have a hard time believing that that’s what many of the people defending Obama really believe. Hence my mini-rant on how we don’t have to blindly support everything the man does.
Olly McPherson
@Corner Stone:
Yes, that’s what I was saying.
Maude
Taibbi forgot to write, that today, you don’t hear the economists talking about 1929. They were a year ago and they weren’t kidding.
The House and Senate aare considering regulation now. The Senate is on hedge fund laws.
I think that Taibbi got overly fond of himself when he got attention from his Goldman Sacs article. He’s been whining about people from Goldman working in the Obama Administration.
Who would you want to help you if you had a computer security problem? A professor of computer science or a hacker?
It’s the same for getting the financial mess cleaned up.
Oh, and thank you Kay.
kay
@Corey:
Taibbi and Greenwald aren’t even in the same league. Greenwald would never write something as poorly cited and error-ridden as that. Never.
Elie
@Maude:
This…
kay
@Corey:
Greenwald names sources, or he doesn’t use them.
Nope. He’d never submit anything like this.
Corner Stone
@Elie:
When there is a number, and you add to that number – no matter how small an increment, the original number is larger after the addition is complete. Here, let me grab my crayon:
X + 11 > X
eemom
fwiw, Greenwald is slobbering over Taibbi’s piece as “masterful,” and pointing out how he and Taibbi are ideological brethren because Greenwald today is arguing that Obama’s Nobel speech proves he’s really a neocon in sheep’s clothing.
Fucking idiot, that guy, and I don’t care who flames me for it. “Zilla” my ass.
kay
@Corey:
Greenwald would never crib from a Times article, and then omit the paragraph that contradicts his conclusion.
mattH
I’m not a progressive, or a taoist, I’m a liberal. And I apologize to the taoists out there for the gross oversimplification.
As for being critical, a 2 thenths of one percent decrease in the rate of unemployment isn’t a smaller number of people being unemployed, or a rebound, regardless of what I want it to be. It’s a decrease in the rate of increasing unemployment. The same way that just because your car is slowing down doesn’t mean it’s going backwards. There are no net jobs there, only fewer people losing them.
Corner Stone
@Maude:
This presumes the hacker is there to *resolve* the issue, and not simply plant more backdoors into the system, take his paycheck and walk out to committ more haxx0rs.
ruemara
@Olly McPherson:
Uh, didn’t you just claim that this place seems more like RedState? Don’t deal in hyperbole if you can’t stand taking some.
I’ll go with Elizabeth Warren’s take on it. She feels we most certainly were heading for a 2nd Great Depression and that we’ve pulled back from the brink by the bailout. What she wants is more and better regulation to affect the culture. I don’t feel Taibbi is hitting Obama on those points. And since I don’t listen to “anonymous sources” or “as an unnamed staffer put it”, I don’t think he’s relegated the dfhs of his group to “Siberia”. In fact, I’d say he tried the corporate route, it’s not working, next up-liberal route and let’s see if that works. And, yes, the TARP bailout was Bush’s bastard child that he basically left on Obama’s doorstep the minute the guy won the election. This upcoming jobs program? That’s Obama’s bailout.
Maude
@Corner Stone: I should add that I mean that someone with the experience is better than someone with only theories. You do have a good point about the backdoors. I was talking about the “good” hackers.
Olly McPherson
@ruemara:
I did, and I stand by it for reasons above.
Of course, that was after the comment you cite, which sort of derails your larger point.
In any case, I can stand for hyperbole, just not one-sided ad hominem exchanges.
El Cid
@kay: As much as I think it’s important to have pundits and commentators from the general sort of outlook powering Taibbi, he would do better remembering that his main public role is — or at least I thought it was supposed to be — that of a journalist, or at least should be, and that used to mean a concentration on getting the key facts, names, events, biographies, and chronologies correct.
mattH
Sorry, I should make an addendum to that post. It might seem that a decrease from 10.2 to 10% is a decrease in unemployment, but that number is the number of people actively seeking a job and not finding employment, not the total number of unemployed people. The fact that we still saw job loss and yet that number went down more implies that that extra 0.2% is actually not looking any longer.
Midnight Marauder
@Corey:
These things are all fine, and that’s why no one here is saying things like “DON’T ATTACK THE PRESIDENT! LIBERALS 4 EVA!” No one is saying that progressives and liberals should not hold their leaders’ feet to the fire and constantly strive to make sure their critiques are nuanced and informed by substantive matters. HOWEVER, I think the point you’ve failed to acknowledge for days now is that many of the progressives and liberals criticizing the president these days are sorely lacking in nuance and critical thinking.
Everything you said about not being a blind loyalist or that you weren’t wrong for voting for Obama–all true things. However, when people are just hollering because THINGS AREN’T GETTING DONE FAST ENOUGH! (Who gives a fuck what those things actually are and why it is that they aren’t “being done” in whatever fashion is desirable to them), and they’re so blinded by their desire to just go around knee-capping any and everyone on their own side, then how the fuck do you expect the MONUMENTAL progress you keep clamoring for to happen?
Again, no one is saying not to criticize the president. What people are saying is to get some fucking perspective the next time you open your mouth to start with another hatchet job or get to mashing away furiously on your keyboard.
That is what people are saying, that the WATB routine needs to go somewhere and die. Fast.
Cat
@kay:
I was make a general statement about something not exactly related to Taibbi’s journalism. I don’t think Taibbi should be forgiven for using bad evidence to support his points. He has a valid point which I believe he could support using ‘honest’ facts and ‘rigorous’ journalism. The fact he’s on a monthly deadline isn’t an excuse, but I dont think you can invalidate his whole argument because of it. This isn’t a court of law or a journal paper.
Back to the point you bring up. A lot of people don’t trust the banks. Without knowing exactly how the reforms are structured or if there are legal ways for the big banks to own the smaller banks in a way they can funnel business through the exempt banks and bypass the reform, can you really say its irrational and dishonest to say the reform could be toothless?
I’d feel safer if every single bank was covered. When there are billions to be made, people will figure out a way to overcome the hurdles.
Corner Stone
@ruemara:
Agreed to an extent. But I also feel it’s worth noting that Senator Obama extensively whipped for TARP.
Midnight Marauder
@Olly McPherson:
Fine. But I would disagree with the framing you use–“things are getting worse at a slower rate”–in describing that critique. I would say it’s more of a “things are getting better, but certainly not as fast as one would prefer.” And like I said in my last post, I call bullshit on the fact that people are saying any criticism of the president means you “aren’t serious.” Again, I think it’s a specific type of criticism of the president that people are saying isn’t serious, and that type is one typically limited in its ability to appreciate the greater scope of the world we live in and how political realities can alter even the most nobly designed and well-intended plans.
ruemara
@Corey:
Unfortunately, while staring at the abyss of hard right conservatives, a little abyss purity stared back into us. Evidence-this entire first Obama term, still in progress.
Cat
@Maude:
You pick option ‘C’, because the ‘hackers’ activities aren’t illegal and he wants to go back to ‘hacking’ and making the big bucks. Even better is option ‘D’ that was never seriously looked at because they were afraid option ‘D’ would make the ‘hackers’ mad and they are more afraid of mad ‘hackers’ then the failure of option ‘D’.
Is it Friday bad strawman day or is it just me? I can respect a good strawman arguement, but the ones in this thread are just subpar IMO.
Redshirt
Well said by MM @202. This is not about constructive criticism of Obama, his Admin, or any of his policies. What my issue with all this is, it’s the reality. Have you seen what happens in the Senate? Have you seen the massive obstruction run not just by the Repugs, but by the Blue Dogs? If you have not, I suggest you pay more attention. If you have, then why focus your criticism on Obama? Why not on the Senate, both D and R?
It’s like the inverse of the Repuglican critique: It’s all about Obama.
It’s really not.
And I would add, though I am constantly surprised by the lack of comprehension to this question, what’s the alternative? Kucinich? Palin? McCain?
MBunge
“The President’s not perfect, and when he’s not perfect he deserves vociferous criticism.”
Not all criticism needs to or should be vociferous. When it is, the criticism tends to be more about the self-righteousness of the critic than any misdeeds by the criticized.
Mike
Olly McPherson
@Midnight Marauder:
Well, based on my experience in this thread, I’m going to have to disagree with you on the “not serious” accusation. “Some people” here are wielding it as a cudgel against those who disagree with the President on any issue.
Beyond that, each different argument that’s plausibly “anti-Obama” is aggregated into one big straw man, which is then roundly denounced.
Look at the progression here from expressing dissatisfaction with TARP/bailout to being a mindless Leninist. Pretty rapid.
“Things are getting better, but certainly not as fast as one would prefer.”
I hope so. I really do.
Olly McPherson
@Olly McPherson:
I mean, I know–we’re all just blowing off steam about politics on the Internet. But still, being told I’m rooting for the poor to suffer a global financial apocalypse because it would advance my Leninist agenda…yeah, that burned me a bit.
ruemara
@Corner Stone:
Yes, he did. So did other senators. Does this mean he owns it from it’s inception?
El Cid
@Olly McPherson: Despite any amount of ‘fuck you’s’ and ‘no, fuck you‘s’, I wouldn’t take it too seriously beyond a particular comment thread or day.
mattH
The idea is this. The current level of Democratic representation in congress is contingent on the economy getting better. Same with Obama’s tenure in the White House. If things don’t get much better, better than a 0.2% drop in unemployment, and soon, we won’t be having an argument about why can’t we get anything through a senate where we ostensibly have 60 votes. It certainly seems that the head of the party, the president, isn’t applying much pressure in that venue, and what little he is isn’t substantial enough to make a difference soon enough. Couple that with the fact that the “bank” bailout has lead to their best profits in years, if not ever, and you seem to get nothing on the Main Street side of things from those banks, the question becomes what do we do? Well, the political leader of the party might want to expend some of his political capital, which he’s seemed very reluctant to do for the past year, or it’s going to fall on his head.
I certainly can’t do a whole hell of a lot, but I’m not going to stand on the sidelines and just watch, I’m going to yell a bit.
Olly McPherson
@El Cid:
Oh yeah, I know that. Slow day at work, blah blah blah.
Olly McPherson
@Olly McPherson:
But I think it is becoming more of a trend here.
Midnight Marauder
@Olly McPherson:
Sure. Except for the fact that joe from lowell didn’t call anyone a Leninist. He said the ideas being articulated in particular posts sounded similar to the tactics used by Leninists.
There is a difference.
Olly McPherson
@Midnight Marauder:
Oh, come on–that’s a sliver of a difference. Beyond that, it was irrelevant to my post, never supported and thin gruel besides.
But enough about me–this is becoming too self-centered.
Cat
@ruemara:
Then who ever owns any thing they do while in government? Those faceless ‘others’ or is it us?
Cat
@Midnight Marauder:
I’m not calling the president a traitor, but he is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
There is a difference, amirite?
Midnight Marauder
Is it going to be one of those days? Yikes.
@Olly McPherson:
Sure, it’s a sliver, but I felt given the comments being thrown around about this place is becoming a modern day Red State and the whole “can liberals be mean to people” inanity, it was worth highlighting. Mainly because of shit like this…
@Cat:
Sure, and I don’t think it’s the same as the example you cited. That would be the difference between you saying “You are a traitor” and saying “Hmm, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but that sounds like traitorous language. Just something to watch out for.” Do you see the difference or are you too busy shining up your fucking crow bar for another round of knee-capping, Tanya?
fraught
@Midnight Marauder:
Exactly, Yikes! Just the word needed here today.
Cat
@Midnight Marauder:
Oh Yes, Its just constructive criticism every time someone says you are acting like a traitor or a Leninist.
The patina is not from shining, but from the constant use the crowbar gets.
Midnight Marauder
@Cat:
Because I always said that I agreed with using that kind language to begin with? No, I didn’t. Just that I disagreed with the interpretation you were casting on it.
SBW
Kay,
Robert Rubin does have a son named James.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rubin#Family
And the New York Times does mention this son indeed assisted Obama in economic matters:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/us/politics/24rubin.html?_r=1
But yes, Taibbi is so sloppy….
Corner Stone
@Cat:
I think it may be Straw Friday (like Fat Tuesday except without the beads), but it’s very odd that more and more people here are arguing from a position of, “Well, we had to do X! The ONLY OTHER CHOICE was to do Y! If we didn’t do X then you’re saying doing Y would’ve been better?!”
This thread in particular is rampant with that mess.
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone:
Or the other things.
I read this whole thread and don’t know that I’m any better informed either way.
DaBomb
@Midnight Marauder: This.
And as always Valdivia, Kay, and Elie are holding the fort.
@joe from Lowell: You are really doing a good job of feeding those commenters their bullshit.
DaBomb
@eemom: Yes, I believe that Glen Greenwald can be a tad bit sucky at times. Al Giordano has proven that on a couple of occasions.
Elie
@Corner Stone:
Ya know Mr CornerStone, contempt kills everything about making a serious and respectful argument with another person.
The statistic that I was referencing was one posted by MK 3872 up at comment 96:
We may disagree about the numbers, but my point was correct, that while we still have unemployment, and that the number is not zero yet, it is less per month than it was in the first part of the year.
Now, is that better?
I’ll go get my crayons if you get into your play pen and put that toy up your — oh never mind.. not worth it,,,
Elie
@Elie:
block quote fail – here was what is was supposed to say
“Unemployment:
Avg job losses in first part of 2009: >700k/month
Job losses last month: 11k”
arguingwithsignposts
@Elie:
Hey, this isn’t C Street.
Cat
@Corner Stone:
This is probably just selective memory, but if you want to have a thread empty of critical thinking the OP will be “Someone said ‘Obama ur doing it wrong'” or maybe I just only open those threads as the siren song of the crowbar being scrapped against concrete is irresistible.
Sorry, the intellectual knee-capping metaphor is the awesome sauce and is an accurate discription of my particular brand of douchebagery.
kay
@Cat:
You really think that it’s a good idea to have your local credit union subject to the same consumer reporting rules as Citibank?
You’re putting small banks at a disadvantage to big banks, then.
This is exactly what I mean. Taibbi isn’t drawing any distinctions, yet he’s attacking the motives of the people who wrote the exclusion. That’s not just sloppy. It’s lazy.
Does he have an obligation to understand anything before he spouts off? If not, how is he different than talk radio screamers, other than his ideology?
kay
@Cat:
It’s almost a recipe for crappy legislation.
Take anything that could be called a “bank” and write broad rules.
Community banks didn’t create this mess. Why would anyone want them treated the same as BoA?
You’re almost assuring that big banks will survive and prosper, while small banks go under.
But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s important we target “banks”.
kay
@SBW:
I know Rubin has a son named James. I found that out today. There are two Jamie Rubins. We established that.
You’re telling me it’s okay to get the wrong Rubin?
That’s not sloppy?
The wrong person?
Elie
@DaBomb:
…Right on to Midnight Marauder and Joe From Lowell also…
I would add that without variation, as soon as you point out a content inconsistency or inaccuracy, the next step is some contemptuous snark or outright name calling..
Its actually as I have said, an issue of ongoing disappointed head scratching for me. I have always considered myself to be a leftie but find myself an embattled “Obamot” in some of these discussions. Not a place I want to be. I do not believe that whatever Obama does is ok, I do not believe that he has done everything just right. I do believe, however, that there is a huge system in which he/we are operating to make the changes we want, and THAT is a reality I just don’t see addressed in a real way by the critical left who just seem to want the grievance more than anything…
kay
I read Paul Krugman and Greenwald and Elizabeth Warren on Obama.
I am persuaded by a lot of what they write because they back up everything they say, and they don’t ascribe motive.
None of these people have been easy on Obama, and all of these people have loudly complained. But they’re credible, because they don’t create this elaborate story line to justify a theory, and they don’t OMIT everything that goes against that storyline.
And I think Taibbi does. Which makes him no different than those on the Right.
Corner Stone
@Elie: Why would I bother attempting to make a “serious” or respectful argument with someone who lacks the capacity to use the most basic form of logic and math?
In your ridiculous fail of a post you state:
Which is simply not true in any respect. The number of people who are unemployed has risen year over year.
Now, I would grant that what you really meant was that the monthly reporting indicated fewer jobs lost on a month to month scale. But, you then go on to make this fantastical claim:
Which no one ever asserted! In any respect whatsoever! It’s the most befuddling counterclaim I’ve seen in quite some time.
And my problem with the stat mk3872 used remains – it goes against his argument that unemployment is falling. Job losses may be slowing, and I hope that bears out, but the total number of unemployed people in the US is increasing, not falling.
If you or MK want to make the agrument that the percentage of people looking for work has fallen from 10.2% to 10% then please do. But that stat has no relevance to that argument.
No, you may be *incapable* of understanding what numbers mean, and making a cogent argument based on those numbers – but we are not going to disagree on them.
SBW
Kay,
Did you read the article?
Taibbi wrote that Robert Rubin’s son was hired by Obama to handle economic matters.
The New York Times wrote that Robert Rubin’s son was hired by the Obama to assist in economic matters.
Taibbi misidentified one position that James Rubin previously held. This diplomatic post was held by another James Rubin.
And that invalidates that Robert Rubin’s son was indeed hired by the Obama administration.
Exactly!
Olly McPherson
@Corner Stone:
Amen.
Elie
@Corner Stone:
You are self righteous and arrogant
“Why would I bother attempting to make a “serious” or respectful argument with someone who lacks the capacity to use the most basic form of logic and math?”
You know nothing about my “capacity” — only that my argument is either valid, strong or not. Nothing about my capacity.
Who the H do you think you are to scold me like some misbehaving child? Who made YOU the keeper of all that is accurate and true?
The core argument that you make in response to me is clear and I accept some of the qualifications that you make. I made an error in my previous post and did not accurately reflect MK’s statistic in comparison to the point being made. That said, your arrogant and wholy unnecessary contempt for me and my “capacity” or “capability” is nasty and totally uncalled for.
kay
@SBW:
When you’ve seen one Rubin, you’ve seen them all.
He’s wrong all through the piece. Why does he think Goolsbee is anti-free trade? That isn’t even remotely true. He quotes one statement from Goolsbee to “prove” this. One.
Why does he present the exemption that was carved out for community banks as a populist outrage, when the reverse is true?
Why doesn’t he mention that the new regulations cover the 150 biggest banks, who hold 4/5ths of the assets?
Because none of those FACTS support his theory.
Look, I’m not going to argue this anymore. You’re a fan of his, and he can certainly write anything he wants. Calling it “reporting” is a crock. Call it commentary, call it opinion, but don’t call it reporting.
Elie
@Olly McPherson:
Amen?
To what? That a contemptuous nasty person belittled someone who made an error?
good stuff ya got there..
My whole point anyway, not that you or Corner Stone would agree, is that the process of decreasing unemployment is dynamic, will take time and would not be zero a year after the catastrophic events that we experienced last year. Underlying my critique, was the point that somehow he and you and others seemed to expect that by now, somehow, we would magically be at zero unemployment and that everything in the economy would be fixed…
I give up
kay
@SBW:
I’ll stick with Elizabeth Warren. She’s been busting ass for consumers for 40 years, and she’s probably the national expert on consumer credit. She actually understands TARP.
I’m not looking for Obama lovers, because Warren has been brutal on Obama.
I’m just very skeptical of this brand new wave of ambitious populists, on both the Left and the Right. I’ll pass on that.
Olly McPherson
@Elie:
Oh, it’s not the error. It’s the tone in which the error was repeatedly made.
“Somehow he and you and others seemed to expect that by now, somehow, we would magically be at zero unemployment and that everything in the economy would be fixed…”
Yes, that’s exactly the case I’ve made…wait, what?
kay
“The 1,279-page bill creates a new federal agency dedicated to consumer protection, establishes a council of regulators to police the financial landscape for systemic risks, initiates oversight of the vast derivatives market and gives the government power to wind down large, troubled firms whose collapse could endanger the entire financial system. The legislation also gives shareholders an advisory say on executive compensation, increases transparency of credit ratings agencies and sets aside billions in government funds to aid unemployed homeowners. ”
Just passed the House. If Taibbi wants me to listen to him, he’ll have to sit down and read this thing and take it apart.
Elizabeth Warren will. Because she’s rigorous, and she’s been following this issue her entire career.
Cat
@kay:
A bank is a particular kind of deposit institution while a credit union is another. As far as I’m aware no Bank or Bank holding company is allowed to own a CU because a CU, as far as I know is, owned by the depositors. Maybe that is different in different states, but the states I’ve lived in the CU’s are structured that way.
The world needs more credit unions servicing local communities as they do have a competitive advantage over banks and they provide better a better service to their members. This is why CUs are always have to fight tooth and nail to expand the people who are allowed to deposit with them, banks don’t want the competition.
So yes, I want all banks covered by any reform because I know the difference between a Bank and Credit Union.
Elie
@Olly McPherson:
If you go back to my post on 178, which is my only reference to that statistic and my only “error” or rather inaccuracy, there is no continual “tone” as you describe.
There is no reason, ever, to discuss someone’s capacity on a liberal site. Unless you are into eugenics or are a racist or something like that, capacity is pretty much unknowable from someone’s comments. Same thing with capability.
I dont think I am making an argument in any of my comments about your or anyone else’s inherent capacity or capability or intelligence etc. Only that your ideas, as expressed in your comments do not make sense in a realistic world and that you seem to want the issue and the agrieved resentment more than you want to actually discuss and change anyone’s point of view..
kay
@Cat:
You’d have to read the legislation. I supported the exemption because it offers smaller banks and credit unions a competitive edge on the big banks. My hope is the big banks will get out of the consumer lending business, because they’ll have more stringent reporting requirements that small banks. Since big banks start with an edge, I’d like to level the playing field a little.
The biggest failure to date has been the foreclosure relief plan.
This is the person who essentially designed them:
Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said previous efforts had largely flopped. “We’ve not attacked the problem at the core,” she told reporters. “We are woefully behind the curve.”
But her name isn’t Geithner or Rubin so she escapes review. She IS connected, quite closely, to Bob Dole, however, so maybe there’s a theory there.
kay
@Cat:
One of the big problems is that small banks aren’t lending to small business. Regulating them with the same tools that apply to big banks (who don’t need small business loans to prosper, and also aren’t lending to small business) doesn’t make any sense.
It makes the problem worse, and benefits big banks.
SBW
Kay,
You’re right. Taibbi won’t read all 1,279 pages. He’ll probably focus on what the Senate guts from the bill — meaning the actual part that benefits the people. And his point will probably remain valid — that the Obama administration will expend absolutely no effort to stop this, as they are more interested in supporting Wall Street than helping the country.
And yes, a President can and should lobby and work with lawmakers to pass legislation he or she deems important to the country. Lobbying and leaning on Senators isn’t a dictator move, or a Bush move, and has been going on the entire history of this country.
I don’t mind being called populist. The House even leans populist.
And from my vantage point both the Senate and Executive branch are not merely passive, but actively hostile to any non-cosmetic changes in the current financial status quo.
Olly McPherson
@Elie:
Whatever. You ascribe bad motives to anyone you disagree with and are consistently dismissive. I mean, look at the what immediately follows up your misreading of the numbers:
Maybe I just don’t have the capacity to be interested in “real progress” and “fairly discussing reality.”
Jasper
@kay:
I don’t think Taibbi actually said Goolsbee was anti-free trade in the article. I looked.
And James Rubin, Rubin’s son was named as a transition advisor, according to the NYT. So if the point was Rubin and Summers and Greenspan were architects of the system that failed and nearly brought down the world financial system, and Obama appointed Summers and Rubin and Greenspan acolytes to key positions in his administration, the key fact about “James Rubin” was it was the son of Bob, CITI and GS and Treasury head, who was on the economic transition team.
On the exemptions, it is true the largest banks have a huge share of deposits, but Taibbi mentioned “consumers” not deposits, and those two are different numbers. It might be that there are more depositors, aka consumers, in the largest 200 than in the remaining 8000, but you haven’t alleged that, or contradicted Taibbi by citing deposits. And the exemptions did not end at excluding the vast majority of institutions. I think it’s safe to say the derivatives regulation was largely a victory for Wall Street.
From what I know of the financial crisis, Taibbi has made some minor errors and definitely argues a point with some bluster and conviction, but he’s been MORE accurate than about 99.9% of the “reporting” on this issue which is largely best characterized as propaganda. It’s not correctly called “news” both because of what it reports but more importantly on how the reporting fails to mention the gigantic conflicts of interest that Taibbi has pointed out to many, many readers who are unlike some of us and do NOT read financial blogs all day. IMO, he’s doing incredibly valuable work.
The overall disappointing FACT that I see is the people who largely got us into the financial mess were given the job of cleaning it up. I’d have much rather seen those people villified for their roles in the crisis than rewarded for supposedly “knowing where the bodies are buried” which is the only reason I can see to employ them.
J. Michael Neal
Replace “local credit union” with “small high-growth IPO,” “consumer” with “internal control over financial reporting,” and “Citibank” with, well, I guess “Citibank” still works, and it sounds exactly like discussions I’ve had about Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley. My answer is, uhm, can I get back to you? This is a frustratingly complex topic, and there aren’t any easy answers. To your larger point, though, you are correct that no one should be blowing a gasket over someone who disagrees with them on the issue without some reason to think that the someone has rather more toxic views than just this.
Everyone probably knows what I think of Matt Taibbi at this point, so I’ll pass. I do want to comment on Hunter S. Thompson though, even though no one else has for about 100 posts. I enjoyed some of his columns, so I decided to read more of his stuff. I started with Hell’s Angels. I had to put it down when he cheerfully described his protagonists conducting a gang rape and attacked the middle class morals of the girl’s family for objecting. Really, this is the guy a lot of progressives hold up as an icon of journalism? He’s a great writer, but . . .
kay
@SBW:
Well, he was dead-wrong on one provision that the House “gutted” from the bill “at the behest” of Geithner (an assertion he backs up not at all), so I look forward to his analysis.
You know, the teabaggers took pieces of the House health care bill and misconstrued and misrepresented intent. No liberal I know gave that the slightest bit of credibility. Glenn Beck takes various czars and connects them to other people and organizations with chalk lines. I don’t know a single liberal who relies on that. Yet you’ll take Taibbi’s 4 points of connection and rely on that to determine bad faith.
1. worked at Goldman
2. worked for someone who worked at Goldman
3. worked in the Clinton White House
4. worked at Citi
It’s a weird process of elimination, and it doesn’t work. He declares Goolsbee a liberal because Goolsbee never worked for Rubin or Goldman. But Goolsbee isn’t a liberal.
I’ll wait for Warren’s analysis, thanks.
Elie
@Olly McPherson:
Well let me clear that up for you.
I have repeatedly said that its not that Obama and the state we are in is perfect and that I also do not have concerns and disappointments, but that I see progress. I have been stumped by continuous negative agrieved nature of your criticisms
Your points seem to be only about the concerns and disappointments and that there is no progress — not you specifically saying but many others, terms like — Bush lite, he has done nothing, everything is the same as it would have been under Bush, etc.
That is just not true and I have run out of ways to make any headway with you all since you just do not have the fundamental integrity in your point of view to accept limitations in your own arguments.
So I give up.
kay
@Jasper:
I read the article. He said Goolsbee was sidelined because he was a progressive. Then there’s a general rant on trade.
I got news for you. Goolsbee, like virtually every other economist or finance person, is a free trader. It’s not that most people are free traders. It’s that every single person of influence in the US is a free trader, and has been for 40 years.
That Goolsbee stuff about NAFTA during the campaign, in Ohio? Politics.
I live in Ohio. Every single rank and file Democrat here knew it was politics.
HRC is a free trader, and so is Obama. We know that.
Cat
@Elie:
This whole post reminds me of the end of any disaster movie. Lets take 2012 for example.
The heroes are hurtling do their doom and are saved at the last instant and everyone in the movie cheers as disaster is averted and everyone rides off into the sunset. Only the disaster wasn’t averted, you are still the last people on earth. You still have to build a sustainable civilization to say you’ve diverted the disaster.
We’ve got a bunch of people saying we have turned the corner and using the seasonally adjust U3 number for November dropped ~0.2% when it had been trending for a ~1% increase the last year. Yes, we didn’t fall of the bridge, but we are still in danger. There are several icebergs up ahead we need to navigate around, now is not the time to start cheering and feeling like the worst is over.
kay
@Jasper:
Taibbi could have easily included that FACT that the regulated banks hold 4/5s of the assets. He chose not to mention that. That’s a deliberate omission, and, incidentally, the NYTimes article he relied on had much more information than he provided, if we want to talk about “propaganda”.
We’re going to disagree on this “acolytes” argument.
If I use Taibbis rules, anyone who worked for Clinton is out, anyone who worked for Goldman and Citi is out, and anyone who has any connection to Rubin is out.
He now includes Greenspan? Am I to assume anyone who worked for Greenspan is out? Greenspan was around for a long time. That’s a lot of people.
No Clinton, no Rubin, no Citi, no Goldman and no Greenspan? Come on. That’s crazy.
Olly McPherson
@Elie:
I wasn’t aware we had such an extensive history.
True, on the whole I am disappointed with Obama. My main complaint: I don’t think he’s using his political capital to shift the Reagan-Bush-Bush political frame, and so I think his incrementalist approach is going to ultimately squander his political capital.
I also think he hasn’t been a forceful-enough advocate–not for my liberal views, which he doesn’t share–but for his own views of a Democratic vision of governance.
That’s just my opinion, so who gives a fuck? But I can have it. He’s not on my “team.” I don’t have to cheer for his decisions, even if I hope I’m wrong and they ultimately succeed.
“You just do not have the fundamental integrity in your point of view to accept limitations in your own arguments.”
Hard to give up throwing those little digs in there, huh? But that last bit is great news!
kay
@Jasper:
I’ll leave you with this, Jasper. I consider myself a populist. I have been one for a very long time.
I think Taibbi hurts my cause.
John S.
Wow, this thread is like a 6-way caged death match!
Elie
@Olly McPherson:
“He’s not on my “team.” I don’t have to cheer for his decisions, even if I hope I’m wrong and they ultimately succeed.”
If you are not on his team, that is sad. Whether you agree with him or disagree strongly, I would hope that you would consider this administration somewhere in the world of where you would want to be..
Principled opposition is an absolute necessity. Opposition does not mean repudiation of everything or not acknowledging any positive progress or issues with the reality of the situation we are in.
I’m sad that you think my giving up discussing issues with you or others from your point of view is a good thing.
That unfortunately is what I think you want — victory and beating opposition to your absolute and self righteous views into silence.
Sad. Instead of allies with similar basic values, we are opponents. Not good for the scope of problems facing this country and the need to have as many serious people addressing them and bringing together various perspectives.
scudbucket
After reading all this, I’ve had enough: I’m officially leaving the left (I will send my resignation letter to Sully as soon as the tears dry). And here is why:
Obama is too centrist for me, and too far to the left and right! The shrill criticisms from the far left, from moderate progressives, of him and each other, and each other’s views of him, and most importantly, each other’s views of other’s views of him (I’m looking at you Taibbi, grrr), leave me no choice but to find a new home of left-leaning moderate radical centrists. It’s not that I am leaving the party, but the party left me.
Elie
@Cat:
There are several icebergs up ahead we need to navigate around, now is not the time to start cheering and feeling like the worst is over.”
I think that you inferred a conclusion that I was not making. I dont think that I ever said that it was time to cheer or that the worst was over. Never
But there you go
BTW — You might want to hook up with your pal Olly and Corner Stone and burn a witch or two for amusement. Purges and executions are always fun for the terminally self righteous
MBunge
It’s amazing how insightful you can seem when you are deliberately ignorant of what actually happens and only focus relentlessly on supposedly good stuff that doesn’t happen.
Mike
Olly McPherson
@Elie:
I have no idea what you’re talking about. You seem to be continuing some conservation we’ve never started.
I’ve stated my POV in this thread–really, on a pretty limited scale–and I stand by it. But the psychoanalysis is getting a weird.
Tell me more, doctor. How does my mother factor in?
Jasper
kay, I we simply disagree about Taibbi. Most of the public has no idea of the power and reach of Wall Street. I think Matt pointing out these conflicts is undoubtedly a positive since knowing they exist gives us the incentive and the power to be wary of what comes out of the WH and Congress, just as one example.
The “acolyte” issue is one of opinion. I look at the people who staff the key positions and I see a lot of “hackers” (to us someone else’s example) in CHARGE of agencies. Fine to have insiders who have been made multi-millionaires by the system they are regulating in the room, but it would be nice to have someone with a smidgen of independence with the final say. It’s not that insiders are all corrupt, but that insiders have a particular viewpoint and surround themselves with other people who share that viewpoint, and aren’t likely to have a healthy skepticism or enthusiasm for actually reforming the system that made them wealthy and financially harming their old bosses and weekend golfing buddies.
How much independence does a man have who was paid $8 million the year before by the industry he’s been asked to provide advice on? Would we trust coal miners on CO2 emissions, Pfizer VPs on drug policies and importing from Canada? But you’re asking us to pretend Summers is fine and a slew of GS/CITI insiders is fine. How about that 29 year old officer from Goldman hired to head enforcement for a key SEC division? Sorry, but that is comical to me.
As to the rest, it seems like your argument is really with the style and not the substance. From what I know, absent a few minor errors, he’s actually very accurate in his facts. His opinions? Fine, you don’t agree, I do, along with a bunch of full time financial bloggers who favorably cite each of his articles. Ritholtz for example, pointed me to this one.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting the complaints, but some of it reads to me like “shooting the messenger” for pointing out some inconvenient facts….
Elie
@scudbucket:
Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha, —
Best post on this whole thread!
scudbucket
@John S.:
Yes. It’s like the proverbial train wreck: I just can’t stop watching/reading.
Olly McPherson
@Elie:
Ha! You have to be a joke, right?
Corner Stone
@Elie:
You have been incapable of recognizing any argument, much less refuting one or making headway against one. Instead you continue to throw out some bizarre claptrap, say it was the argument being made, then argue against it in a highly illogical manner. And failing!
Even when you make up someone else’s argument and attribute it to them you fail to make a cogent case against it.
Frankly, it’s baffling to me. I mean, if you’re going to straw at least throw straw that you have an argument against.
Corner Stone
@Elie:
And absolutely no one ever said that! I haven’t made any argument at all except for the fact that the stat quoted did not support an argument that was being made. I haven’t said any opinion at all about the state of US unemployment, or anything at all!
You read something in a post, put it through the wurglerburgler and then just make up shit and argue against it. Then you end each of your posts with a really weaksauce jab. And then you play the victim!
Underlying your critique?…
Please tell me where anyone on this thread, or even on the entire internets, stated that unemployment HAD to go from a large number to zero or there was fail involved.
And that’s just one example of a really odd set of bad thought process on just this one thread.
Corey
Here’s a question for the Obama worshipers:
The stated goal, as well as the political best interest, of the Administration and Congress is to maximize employment (or minimize unemployment – however you want to look at it). But in practice that power lies with the Federal Reserve chairman, who has made it clear that his priority, rather, is to fight inflation, a threat that doesn’t have much evidence behind it at all. Unemployment generally hurts the poor and middle class; inflation hurts the rich (whose assets depreciate).
Bernanke is up for confirmation again soon and the Obama administration has made clear that they want to keep him in the job. Why?
If you answer “three dimensional chess” or “calmness” or “coolness” or “seriousness” I’ll slap you through the interwebs. It is, quite frankly, a move to appease the very rich who funded Obama’s campaign and the campaigns of every other Democrat in Washington. That’s the only possible explanation.
Remember – you do not have to defend this! Isn’t it great to be a liberal?
kay
@Jasper:
I think he writes opinion.
There are now a whole cadre of freshly-minted populists, on both the left and the right. Populism is now popular, and profitable!
I’m more comfortable with the people who have been in this for the long haul, and it has nothing to do with “tone”. It has to do with hard-earned knowledge of this stuff.
Krugman, Warren, etc.
Jasper
@kay:
Or, like guys who blog at Naked capitalism:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/12/matt-taibbi-obamas-big-sellout.html
Or
Jasper
@kay:
Ritholtz is one who’s been in it a long time who favorably cites Taibbi’s articles. Same with some folks who blog at naked capitalism too, zero hedge, and others. They’re Wall Street people, not populists.
Cat
@Elie:
I’ve reread your posts and posts you supported and your defense of Obama’s economic team and policy has so far been based on an incorrect statement of fact an error you acknowledge making.
We are still waiting on the results of Obama’s economic policies. You are right in that countering this downturn requires a large number of policies and staying the course for several years. One quarters GDP numbers or one months unemployment numbers is not a defense.
I don’t trust most of the people Obama’s put in place to articulate the right policies or do the right thing over the long run. There are many reasons for this distrust. They got it wrong while they were in the Bush43 administration or they worked for the Institutions who got it wrong. I find it baffling we now think they’ll get it right because Obama’s the president. The people who I do trust, don’t seem to be the ones making policies.
J. Michael Neal
I don’t know. It’s one of the things that have disappointed me, too. However, the choice to wave goodbye to Bernanke isn’t as easy as a lot of people would like to think. Like it or not, one of the reason that Wall Street has the pull it does is that they really do have the capacity to wreck the whole economy.* Simply doing things because Goldman Sachs opposes them is a good way to get them to exercise that power out of a combination of spite and self-interest. We need to pick our fights judiciously to get out of this mess. I happen to think that disappointing the Street by replacing Bernanke was a fight that we should have picked, but that isn’t entirely self-evident.
We are in a position where we simultaneously have to fix the mess we’re in, avoid reigniting a full blown financial panic, AND deleverage the financial world in a political sense as well as a financial one. We need to make Goldman less powerful, and less capable of making lots of money, without provoking them to go nuclear. The fact that we are facing both a CRE disaster and a sovereign debt crisis (go read up on what Greece is on the threshold of doing to the entire EU if you really want a scare) doesn’t make it any easier. Having to get legislation through the same Congress that is beholden to the financial industry makes it worse than that. Simply threatening Wall Street with lots of new regulation is both pointless and counterproductive, because it’s a toothless threat. It won’t pass. That’s a pretty damning indictment of Congress, but it’s also true. Try to imagine what could possibly get 60 votes in the US Senate, at work backwards from there. Asking Obama to do any more than that is a waste of your time.
Think of it this way. If you’re reduced to claiming that Barney Frank is a tool of Goldman Sachs, you’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and should rethink some of your premises.
*One of the reasons that they got the power that they have is because it really was easy to come to the conclusion that they had the power to make us all a lot better off. I’d find the shrillness of the populists a lot more credible if most of them had arrived at the conclusion that wide scale homeownership, which financial innovation really was making possible, was problematic at any point prior to 2007. Even the ones who were taking shots at the mortgage industry before that, or most of them at least, didn’t recognize the fundamental fact that there were a lot of people buying houses who really shouldn’t.
The CRA didn’t have anything to do with causing the crisis, but that doesn’t mean that much of the view that drove the bubble doesn’t have its origin in the same philosophy that drove the CRA. (Lest one think that I’m casting aspersions only one way here, Republicans were just as enthusiastic about promoting the same fiction, just so long as we weren’t making it easy for black people to participate.)
A lot of the populist outrage against Wall Street still doesn’t recognize that we need to shift to renting more and buying less. You can see this in the demand that we figure out a way to prevent foreclosures, as if that is actually a good way to help most of the people staring at that possibility. They, and we, would be better off spending that money easing the transition out of home ownership.
There are a lot of elements to this. A lot of you seem to think that, because you opposed financial deregulation in the 1990s, that everything should have been clear and that anyone who disagreed with you at the time is obviously corrupt or too clueless to be given any responsibility. This is laughable, because most of you had just as many opinions that, in retrospect, were just as flawed. However, because you think that figuring out the problems and what needs to be done are so glaringly simple and obvious, you haven’t bothered to examine your own beliefs and figure out which ones were erroneous. Given that, I don’t trust you in the slightest to have any idea what the proper solution is now. Park your outrage, engage in some self-examination, and get back to me when you are ready to have a rational discussion. Yes, I was wrong ten years ago when I supported some of the financial deregulation; there was also some of it that I opposed, and some of it that I was correct to support. I admit that. Can you do the same about what you thought?
Cat
@Jasper:
Naked Capitalism is pretty wonkish and comes of very credible, did I mention cuddly pictures too?
Zero Hedge comes across as a bunch of 20 somethings building a cult of personality.
I mean the communities, not the bloggers themselves. Though some of the ZH crew take the whole “Fight Club” meme too far and you get the feeling they really want to burn the whole thing down rather then just make it workable.
gwangung
The sovereign debt is the issue that’s really underexamined as far as I can tell. It seems to be tied into the AIG debacle and with Goldman Sachs, but is totally ignored in any discussion on what to do about them. And unintended consequences are really bad when you’re at this level…
Cat
@J. Michael Neal:
My father, a retired Air Force Master Sargent with only a high school education, saw this simply based on the people who bought their house when they sold their house in 2005 and has been renting since then. My father is pretty bright, if under education, and if he could figure that out based on a sample size of one I can’t figure out why everyone else couldn’t without factoring in bad intentions.
J. Michael Neal
This was true long before 2005. If it were really as simple as you claim, then a *lot* of people would have recognized it *long* before 2005. That they didn’t is very strong evidence that you are wrong. If your argument boils down to a belief that 90% of everyone is really stupid or corrupt, it means either that your argument is wrong, or that it is completely pointless. If 90% of everyone is that stupid, then you are going to have to build a system that works given that there are that many stupid people. Your approach of getting angry about it doesn’t help move us towards that system.
If your whole goal is simply to be angry with no desire to be constructive, then fire away. I have different objectives in mind.
El Cid
I think it’s not so much that I thought I had all the answers then; it’s just that the arguments for undoing banking regulations that seemed to be serving very important purposes were so very flawed and weak at the time.
If an argument at the time is weak and unconvincing, I don’t see any reason to feel bad about being unconvinced by it at the time, nor do I see some reason to place some burden upon myself of having to know the perfect paths to follow on every policy.
In this case, yes, a conservative approach saying ‘maybe we should continue doing mostly what seems to have worked and not try out this badly argued, radical scheme which risks a great deal of damage to the nation and to the public but which may nonetheless benefit a small number of the very wealthy’ simply does make more sense, and there’s nothing laughable about it.
J. Michael Neal
The intended consequences are really bad when you are at this level. Yes, this crisis is tied in with AIG, though less so with Goldman. AIG wrote a ton of swaps with European banks that are now staring down the barrel of a howitzer.
Greece is a much more worrisome case of a sovereign debt crisis than any country looking at one that isn’t in Europe. Given the way that the rest of the euro zone is tied to them by a single currency, and the rest of the EU by convergence, it’s a different scope of issue. It isn’t really the same problem that the US faces with figuring out what to do with states like California and Michigan, which are also staring at insolvency.
The euro zone is structured in some strange ways. It isn’t just that an EU bailout of Greece poses moral hazard issues with regards to other members. It isn’t just that not bailing Greece out would lead to attacks that could quite likely take Ireland, Spain and Portugal down, too. There’s also the problem that each member government of the euro zone actually has its own access to the printing press. If backed into a corner, the Greek government *could* decide to just start printing a whole bunch of euros. Sure, it would be illegal as all hell for them to do that, but it isn’t clear exactly what could be done to stop them.
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid:
Maybe, though this isn’t nearly as clear as you would like to think. The problem with your argument is that this was just as true of a lot of other things that the people complaining about financial deregulation thought were true. Most of them engaged in thinking that was every bit as flawed as those of us in favor of deregulation were guilty of.
What you seem to want to do is cast the people who engaged in flawed thinking that you disagreed with out of polite society, while handing the reins over to a bunch of people that weren’t any better to examining the situation, but whose errors you happened to share. Pardon me if I find your outrage to be more than a bit much. Unless you can seriously examine all of your beliefs at the time and tell me with a straight face that you were right about everything, you’re in the same boat. Paul Krugman is in the same boat, because he got a bunch of things critically wrong, too. So is Paul Volcker. (If you do try to tell me that you were right about everything, I’m going to ask for some evidence, and laugh at you when you can’t provide it.)
I’ve given one example: the case that we should do everything we could to increase home ownership was not only just as flawed, but it was just as obviously flawed. Yet you don’t pour the same scorn on people who held that belief.
Spare me your outrage until your prepared to be critical in an honest fashion.
Leelee for Obama
@Cat: @J. Michael Neal:
I predicted the mortgage/housing debacle in late 2004-since I watched 4 hurricanes turn my area of Central Florida a Harlem by the Sea kind of dystopia. I couldn’t believe the suction didn’t pull all of us at least as far as Maryland. But, idiots were still buying into the ownership society here, even though floods and wind and pestilence were looking more and more like the usual thing.
I watched people I thought might have a clue invest so deeply in houses built on sand, literally, and said, to anyone who would listen (damn few) that this wouldn’t end well. I have 3 months of college, and most of that was pre-reqs. So, smart doesn’t necessarily mean right.
gwangung
@J. Michael Neal: What I got out of this is that bailing out the fat cats is a Bad Thing. But not bailing out the fat cats means a very large, non zero possibility of Even Worse Things (like 2nd Great Depression)(because the minute you talk about multiple bankrupt countries, you’re talking unmitigated disaster, instead of the mitigated disaster we have now).
I’m not sure everyone is clear on this. I’m not sure anyone is capable of being clear on this. But those unconsidered variables, in the real world (as opposed to blathering on blogs) have to be looked at.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal:
Like what?
What other things did the people complaining about financial deregulation think were true?
ETA – what flawed thinking did they engage in on other things? People who compained about financial deregulation also engaged in flawed thinking on topics x, y, or z?
Corey
@J. Michael Neal:
You talk about a whole lot of things other than the one I mentioned, which is the question of Ben Bernanke’s reappointment. He is not entitled to reappointment and has done and said enough for a progressive administration to nominate someone else. The financial world is not going to melt down if there’s a new fed chair, one that is willing to fight the actual threat of unemployment rather than the fake threat of inflation.
Remember, you do not have to defend the administration’s willingness to keep a Randian conservative in charge of the Fed.
El Cid
It’s not what I believe, and it’s a terribly, terribly bad argument.
What matters is not whether I was some awesome or shitty person in the 1990s, nor whether I was right on everything.
What matters is whether or not my arguments about the proposed deregulation of the banking industry were strong or weak at the time and whether or not I am making strong or weak arguments now.
And the way that this intersects biographies of individual people is whether the same people who made weak and unconvincing arguments in favor of apparently (and later proven) harmful policies still make the same arguments today with the same justifications.
People change, they learn stuff. I do. But things that I thought were bullshit, libertarian, Reaganite, stupidly ‘free’ market arguments which threatened great harm to me and the nation then are still bullshit, libertarian, Reaganite, stupidly ‘free’ market arguments now.
The arguments were highly ideological, not based on any particular technical understanding or non-bullshit citation of science, but utter nonsense about ‘innovation’ and quite typical ‘free market’ horse-shit. But there were a number of people poised to make a shitload of money, so it happened.
There is a matter of trust, sure. I’d rather not have to see that government is mostly filled up with people whose judgment I simply don’t trust, but then, this is a world in which they’d likely be substituted by even crazier people.
Conditions change, I understand that. Context matters. I don’t much blame Clinton, say, for the horrendously awful “Commodities Futures Modernization Act” by the financial terrorist and giant, snapping-turtle thief Phil Gramm given how it was slipped into a budget at a last moment after a Presidential election and basically done so that it was included or the budget wouldn’t have passed.
That doesn’t make it any less shitty or less harmful. Maybe Phil Gramm was right about some stuff. Who cares? I sure wouldn’t ever let him near any god-damn thing having to do with the U.S. financial system if I had anything to do about it, which I don’t, except that he was one of John McCain’s leading economic advisers, so thankfully he is not currently heading the Treasury or whatever.
J. Michael Neal
@Leelee for Obama: No, smart does not necessarily mean right. However, if you are going to claim that something is so *obviously* an error, then the fact that it was such a widely held belief is a pretty high bar to overcome to support that claim. The underlying problem shouldn’t have taken looking at four consecutive hurricanes, because it’s more widespread. Doing so much to encourage home ownership wasn’t just a problem in Florida; it was just as true in lots of places that aren’t prone to natural disasters. It’s something that should have been obvious *before* the bubble even started.
The fundamental belief that it was a good idea was horribly flawed before George W. Bush even took office. Just as El Cid claims that the problems with deregulation were so obvious to him that we should now dismiss the credibility of anyone who advocated for them, the flaws of all of these programs, starting with the home mortgage interest deduction, were that obvious to me. Clearly, though, most people didn’t get it. The fact that I think it was obvious as early as the mid 1990s is not sufficient reason for me to just declare that anyone who advocated for these programs should be excluded from all further participation in setting financial policy. The only logical outcome of that approach is to end up with no one in charge, because we all made some really dumb mistakes.
J. Michael Neal
@Corey:
How very generous of you, since you seem to have missed my comments that I think it was a bad call. What I am saying is that we can’t just decide to do everything we’d like to rein in the financial sector. Aside from the fact that most of it would never pass the current Congress, Wall Street still has too much control. Do it all at once, and they bring the house down.
We need to pick our battles. Sure, nominating someone else to be Fed chair wouldn’t have collapsed the financial system by itself, but it was on the list of things from which the administration had to pick and choose. I think they chose poorly, but I recognize that there was a choice involved.
Your confusion of Ben Bernanke with the Randian beliefs of the previous Fed chair doesn’t do a lot to inspire me that your opinions are very well informed.
El Cid
@J. Michael Neal: Are you suggesting that there are neither unjustified trends, fads, and ideologies in U.S. politics, nor that there are substantial economic interests capable of pushing through favored policies along with appealing yet bad arguments based on PR techniques and flat out propaganda?
If it’s your belief that if some majority of elected officials seem to be backing some flawed argument, then it’s simply impossible for ordinary people to correctly reject those officials’ bad arguments, or that the strength or weakness of arguments is formed by some sort of consensus process among a nation’s population or a tiny subset of politicians, think tank employees, lobbyists, spokespersons, and pundits or media figures, then say so.
Let me make it clearer: If 99.99999% of my fellow Americans find a bad argument to be convincing, they’re still wrong. Or, at least, I’m still going to argue that.
Otherwise, why would anyone be here, on this comments blog? Why are people arguing things? Why don’t they just view the national consensus among the powerful and assume that it’s correct, because, otherwise, look, why else would all those powerful and smart people say they believed them?
And since we’ve all been wrong about something or other at one time or another, who are we to not go along with what seems to be flawed and unconvincing?
Leelee for Obama
@J. Michael Neal: I agree with you. The idea of home ownership as a necessary foundation for participation in the Dream is a flawed construct. When people stayed at the same job, in the same place for their entire lives, there was an argument to be made for it. But, somewhere in the late 70s, early 80s jobs stopped being like that. Most people moved from job to job and place to place and a house was a problem. Not the anchor they once were, but an albatross in many cases. Throw in economic volatility, and things were really ugly. But, the brain trust of years decided that was an anomaly, and proceeded to push home ownership as the key to all things American. Keep the bubble growing and clap louder and everything will be fine.
I don’t think all these people should be cut out of the process. They just need to accept the wrongness and try to fix what’s broken, before it’s too late.
El Cid
And for what it’s worth, I have never (well, at least as far back as I can recall thinking about the issue) backed the principle of home ownership as some sort of broad ideologically desirable goal or moral attainment, and I pretty much saw it as one of those largely unchallengeable things in the U.S. political system, as well as being something which can make a great deal of economic sense or at least perceived economic sense for a lot of people.
(A relative of mine had certain financial habits ‘inherited’ from his parents’ experiences in the Great Depression, so there were certain things he really valued or opposed, and so certain things were a relative good which weren’t necessarily based on a simple cost-benefits analysis. But that’s how people are.)
burnspbesq
@Leelee for Obama:
It is hyperbolic. Constitutional scholars have been using the Federalist Papers as an interpretive aid for a very, very long time – long before there was a Federalist Society. The right-wing lawyers who came of age in the Age of Reagan have simply taken the process beyond where it belongs.
If you are a die-hard Originalist, then the Federalist Papers are Holy Writ. If you think that the genius of our Constitutional system is its inherent adaptability to changing times, not so much.
burnspbesq
@liberal:
Who would you have preferred?
J. Michael Neal
How many of them thought that making it easier for people to buy houses was a good thing?
How many of them thought that giving poor people better access to credit was a good thing?
How many of them thought that it was important to keep interest rates low during the first half of this decade in order to produce growth?
How many of them thought that it was important to keep lots of people working in the relatively well paying construction industry?
How many of them thought that austerity requirements imposed on relatively poorer countries in order to keep their public debt from exploding were an unacceptable burden on the poorer people of those countries?
All of these were beliefs widely held by opponents of financial deregulation. All of them had very obvious flaws that should have been recognized well before the crisis. All of them were significant contributors to the crisis.
The problem with most of these arguments, and I’ll pick on El Cid since he’s stated it most explicitly, is that the flaws of most of these programs were obvious and well recognized, though I don’t think that very many people recognized the troubles lurking in widespread home ownership. What the argument invariably omits is that there were also well understood virtues of all of these programs. Regulation is *always* a trade-off. Keeping lots of people employed in well paying construction jobs has a lot of very obvious benefits. Those benefits are large enough that it led a *lot* of people to decide that they outweighed the downside. In retrospect, that appears to have been wrong.
The same thing is true of financial deregulation. El Cid thinks that the case against it was really simple, because he chooses to look only at the flaws. He completely omits any consideration of the benefits. Allowing freer flow of capital across borders really does allow it to improve lives more efficiently, and has helped to produce truly spectacular increases in living standards in poor countries. Allowing the merger of commercial banks and investment banks really does permit capital to be more productive. Allowing companies easier access to credit and equity markets really does allow for more small start up companies to produce innovations that benefit everyone. Allowing greater freedom for the creation of credit derivatives really did allow more people to move into houses they could call their own. Deregulating finance really did help to create some spectacular wealth creation that, if you didn’t understand the flaws in the other assumptions, looked like it was providing great benefits to lots and lots of people.
Claiming that the problems of financial deregulation were so obvious that anyone who advocated it should be disqualified from policy making is dishonest, because it focuses on only half of the equation. There were real benefits. Like many things in life, the benefits were apparent in actual data and people’s lives before the flaws were.
Most people got at least some of this right. Almost all of them got at least some of this wrong. That’s not because they are stupid or corrupt, at least not most of them. (Phil Gramm’s corruption I will readily concede.) It’s that the relative value of the costs and benefits weren’t calculated properly. Even more, it’s that the costs and benefits of all of these things happening simultaneously weren’t well understood at all. There isn’t much of the pieces of financial deregulation that could have caused this by themselves, or that wouldn’t have been beneficial given a different set of other policies implemented.
There are very, very few things in life on which a misjudgment tells us enough about someone’s ability to analyze things that it ought to be disqualifying of all future ability to make policy. That is true of certain moral decisions, but not judgment. As progressives like to point out selectively, the world is really fucking complicated, and assessing all of the moving pieces is hard. More honest progressives don’t conveniently forget this when it suits them.
For christ’s sake, is there no one willing to defend Hunter Thompson from that attack I made? It’s bring a little variety to this thread.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal:
I don’t know. How many?
J. Michael Neal
You are, quite simply, very, very wrong about this. The arguments used to advance the proposals were not nonsense. There is a lot of truth to them. There have been some very real benefits to financial deregulation, and some other parts of it where it was perfectly reasonable to think that benefits would flow from them, though that turned out not to be the case.
In retrospect, the whole package of all of the policies enacted over a more than a decade built up into a catastrophe. Trying to sort out which ones were serious errors, which ones were reasonable mistakes, and which ones really were unforgivable is not at all clear. It’s also, contrary to your claims, a discussion that is heavily dependent upon technical knowledge. If you want to make the argument that we need to listen to experts in order to understand global warming, then you have no business claiming that we should just ignore the experts when looking at financial institutions. Finance and economics are, in fact, a hell of a lot more complicated than the carbon cycle.
Let’s look at one example: Glass-Steagel. I’ve come around to the view that, on balance, it was probably a bad idea to repeal it. However, I haven’t seen any evidence that its absence really made much of a difference. Until you can explain global cash flows in a way that shows that the huge dollar surpluses in China wouldn’t have found a way to flow into the US housing market, produce a ridiculous bubble, and threaten to bring down the financial markets even if the commercial banks weren’t involved, you don’t have the technical expertise to explain to me why it was so self evidently a mistake to advocate the repeal. If you can’t, you are simply relying on the judgment of one set of experts that disagree with a different set of experts.
Your claim that we should prevent anyone whose judgment you don’t trust into policy making positions over matters in which your own technical judgment is lacking is less than persuasive. It’s not completely without merit, but you shouldn’t expect it to convince anyone else. Thinking that your opinion on their trustworthiness is sufficient really isn’t any different in kind from people on the right who argue that, since they don’t understand something, they don’t trust anyone in Washington. I’m pretty sure that it’s a lot different in magnitude, as you’ve never struck me as being wingnut crazy, but it is a very junior version of the same thing. It runs into a wall when I, a member of the same party and a supporter of a lot of the same policy ideals that you support, say that my view of the same evidence that you are looking at leads me to the conclusion that I have a lot more trust in the same people.
More, it’s a crazy way to approach assembling a government in a democracy. There isn’t any way to assemble a governing coalition of people whose judgment a clear majority of the country trusts. This is exacerbated, of course, by the fact that we have far too many members of Congress, in both parties, who don’t really care all that much about policymaking. Compromise, both on specific policy goals and the choice of who we’re going to trust to make policy, is essential. Going on a holy crusade about it, even if I thought you were right, is pointless.
El Cid
This is an argument for a variety of things.
It wasn’t, for example, an argument for things which were actually proposed or being considered.
Like the foolish ideological trend at the time, it’s an argument for the idealized essence of a thing, and an advocation that we should focus on our fantasies of idealized models of things being proposed, while looking at what was actually being discussed was some sort of base and flawed dirtying of the beautiful, generalized ideas under discussion.
Furthermore, it was something that ‘critics’ were quite aware of. ‘Deregulation’ of banks in such a way that you were not only removing what appeared to be inefficient and not helpful rules but things which were in place to protect against systematic threats to the banking system were risky.
This is sort of an argument for why people \should withdraw lots of money from pension retirement funds and take them to Vegas or to buy lottery tickets, because casinos and lotteries allow you the potential to win lots and lots of money.
Why are you against these people who want to have better lives? Don’t you understand that if they win lots of money from casinos and lotteries that their lives will be better? Why do you dour bureaucrat Marxist types just want these workers to suffer and scrimp by on their meager pensions?
Don’t you want these people to have nice things? You don’t know that they will lose their money! And just because I’m a prominent member of a think tank funded by casinos and lotteries doesn’t mean that my opinion is worthless, because, life is complicated! Haven’t you been wrong about things before?
Yes, yes, there were people who said there would be risks, and in retrospect, maybe we shouldn’t have told all these people to withdraw money from their pensions and, yes, most of them lost all their money and are living quite poorly now, but some people won!
What I have learned from this is that you sad and overly cautious types hate these retirees and want them to suffer, whereas I at least tried to give them a brighter future.
El Cid
Fair enough.
No one should ever more try to consider the degree of trust they have in public officials as one of the reasons an individual would or would not be given a powerful position of public trust and decision-making.
Furthermore, elected officials need to be kept from talking about their character, so that the electorate won’t be immorally tempted into thinking about whether or not they trust these individuals for the office for which they’re running.
Also, I see no reason whatsoever to bring one’s technical qualifications in for any reason, because there is no evidence that a person with zero technical qualification is not capable of successfully running a program or institution with immense technical guidelines.
And that’s because the future hasn’t happened yet. Sure, people might tell us that we need a technical specialist on cancer to run some important cancer treatment program; but think of the potential if a New Age crystal healing enthusiast were to be correct!
Sure there could be risks, but you can’t really know unless you had perfect amounts of data in both directions that the same number of people wouldn’t have died had the cancer center been run by someone not of a New Age crystal healing persuasion.
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid:
No, I am not. I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion. What I am saying is that support of some of the same policies as those interests (keeping in mind that the set of people we are talking about, even the hated Robert Rubin, disagree with those interests about other, related polices) is not necessarily evidence of corruption or fatally flawed judgment.
I won’t, because this is another creation of your own imagination. I have a couple of beliefs regarding this which you have misinterpreted:
1) If there is a majority in the legislative body that is adamantly opposed to a policy for which passage is required for enactment, or even a minority empowered to block passage by some crazy and terrible parliamentary rules, then it is a bad idea to insist that anyone who is not committed to battering their head against that opposition in futile defiance must, obviously, be in cahoots and hate your ideas. That’s true no matter how essential you think enactment of the policy is.
2) You shouldn’t assume that any disagreement with you when you express your criticism must be in bad faith.
3) Oversimplification of an issue because it feels good to be outraged is a bad idea.
4) As a general rule, if it is really hard to build a consensus in favor of something, it means that it probably isn’t as clear cut as you think it is. That’s not always true, of course, (think global warming, for instance), but is particularly likely if smart people who spend a lot of time studying it can’t come to anything vaguely resembling a consensus. (That’s where the comparison to global warming breaks down.)
We’re in complete agreement on that. Where we seem to disagree is with your assumption that, if 99.99999% of your fellow Americans believe something that is wrong, that their error is extremely obvious and clear cut, and that disagreement with you means that they should be ignored in the future. You may be right, but it’s a pretty strong indication that there are at least some plausible arguments that you aren’t.
No one is asking you to go along with anything. What I, at least, am asking you is to stop assuming that those who disagree with you are, ipso facto, untrustworthy.
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid:
That’s certainly true of some of the people who pushed for deregulation. It is absolutely not true of all of them. It is particularly not true of those of us who advocated for deregulation while also thinking that that idealized essence was a bunch of bullshit. You are projecting beliefs on to people who did not hold them. Because your assumptions of what they believed are so badly flawed, your assessment of everything else that they did is off the mark. Your dogmatic insistence on believing it is not only wrong, but insulting. You didn’t have to be a Randroid to think that some deregulation was a good idea. Some of us, as I have tried to emphasize, understand that there are trade-offs in these sorts of things. That the perfectly unregulated market is a bad thing does not mean that the absolutely regulated one is a good thing.
Uhm, duh. You aren’t going to find a lot of people in the financial world who don’t understand that. The ones you find are likely to have a rather unhealthy gleam in their eyes, though they often wear some fabulous clothes.
Of course regulation was meant to prevent behaviors that were risky. Even the guys with that unhealthy gleam in their eyes and a great tie know that. *Everything* that goes on in the financial world is risky, except maybe buying 30-day Tbills. I guarantee you that you have never run into a group of people as exquisitely aware of risky behavior as a bunch of high finance people. A lot of them aren’t nearly as good at assessing risk as would be nice, but they understand that it surrounds them.
Of course, all of life is risky, but we don’t just don an oxygen tank and roll ourselves in bubble wrap every morning. You have to accept some risk. It’s, as I’ve said, a trade-off.
Sometimes, you accept too little risk. Sometimes, you get it right. Sometimes, you accept too much risk. Then there are the crazy guys who think that no one should ever be prevented from accepting any risk they like. They are, as I said, crazy.
On the other hand, what I am learning is that you have no ability to weigh things against each other, and want to argue that a willingness to accept any risk whatsoever indicates that we should never trust that person’s judgment ever again.
Or, I am learning that you are willing to pretend that you don’t understand these sorts of trade-offs when it suits your desire to bash those who disagree with you. I’m not sure that that’s better than the first option.
bayville
…..
Sounds like your argument(s) is a massive group of non-sequitors. Apples, oranges and kumquats.
El Cid
No, because “plausibility” is found in the arguments, not in the people.
Then again, it doesn’t really matter, since as you’ve argued, the impact of repealing Glass-Steagall (or using that act as a representative of a number of policy programs) was likely minimal and/or nearly impossible to measure, and therefore there could have been no political representatives nor economic interests who were strongly motivated to support its repeal. It was probably an accident or something, and is basically a technical subject on which I should allow experts whom I’m told have my best interests at heart to do their work.
El Cid
At no point, ever, did I suggest that regulations should be imposed which were not arguably necessary nor helpful, nor that regulations should be measured as simple qualities, and I resent the suggestion that somehow those in favor of what appears to quite many experts to have been a largely dangerous and ideologically driven program of irresponsible and incautious deregulation are more philosophically able to deal with complexity or the suggestion that rules and the contextual environment which created them can vary over time.
The notion is as simple as can be: an arguably needed and arguably beneficial regulation should exist and should be properly enforced; and those that are not should not.
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid:
So what? My argument what you are claiming that it is. My argument is that, if that large a block of people find plausibility in the arguments, then there is likely some plausibility there. Actually, I’d go farther and say that, by definition, there is some plausibility there. The actual correctness of an argument may be objectively true. Plausibility is, inherently, subjective. You seem to believe not only that you are incredibly discerning, but also that you are capable of determining what is persuasive. That is a level of arrogance that even I find breathtaking.
El Cid, you have reached a point bordering on deliberate misrepresentation of what I am arguing. This paragraph is directly contradicted by the post that you are responding to. In some circles, that’s called lying.
I expressly said that, not only could there have been interests strongly motivated to support its repeal, there were interests who supported it repeal purely out of self-interest.
If you can’t be bothered to be honest, we’re done here.
J. Michael Neal
@bayville:
Ah. So, some serious flaws in thinking are disqualifying. Some just aren’t relevant. Arguing that some mistakes that helped set up the crisis should be treated like others is a non-sequitor.
I love the logic.
El Cid
I want to take this apart for a second. There’s an attitude behind it. It suggests that I care who you are. It suggests that I have some sort of respect for you. And that I should.
It suggests that I really, really need to demonstrate an enormous amount of admiration for the suppleness and subtleties of your arguments — after all, this is Balloon Juice, and not the place for abbreviated versions of our arguments.
Hey, you know what? Don’t dialog with me. Find that I’m not sufficiently respectful toward you. Find that I am a baser element, an ideological simpleton, a hack whom you can summarize with silly repeated assertions about TRUST but, by God, don’t I dare suggest you incapable of seeing many sides of an issue.
I think that’s about the right phrasing, because I think you’re the type of person who spends a great deal of time thinking about what the exact amount of arrogance needed should be.
Your arguments really have been tendentious and unconvincing, and, worst of all, uninteresting. I’ll save you the time of coming up with yet another reason why I’m unworthy of dialog with you, and, besides, I’m not really technically qualified to comment here at Balloon Juice any way on matters of which laws and reforms my own government should pass.
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid:
Hmmn. I notice the complete absence of even an attempt to defend your honesty. To you, it seems, lying about someone isn’t really very important. It’s much better to be a weasel and avoid dealing with the fact that you claimed that I said things that I didn’t. God forbid that I should be uninteresting, because that would be worse than you being dishonest. Given that you do it again in your last paragraph of this post, lying just doesn’t bother you.
I was wrong. You actually are as bad as the wingnuts.
JMY
Maybe if we just voted for Kucinich, everything would have been a lot better.
:sarcasm:
J. Michael Neal
@JMY: I doubt it. I mean, he voted against the cramdown provision. Clearly, Dennis Kucinich is a tool of the financial industry.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal:
You are one fucked in the head motherfucker.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal:
The argument is simple, even though you’ve done your level damndest to obfuscate it with a metric fuckton of irrelevance and false equivalencies.
It was clear at the time that making certain changes would benefit a small group of actors and leave open a whole industry to potential systemic risk. This didn’t take a technically proficient financial genius to see in real time.
fraught
@El Cid:
“Let me clear something right up for you, then. I don’t give the slightest hint of a fuck what you think of me, and what views of mine you would or wouldn’t respect, and you can take your weird thoughts that I might give a shit about it and cram it way, way, way back up your ass, where your silly convictions about the threat of Leninists wandering the American landscape should more properly reside.”
11:17 am this morning. to Joe from Lowell
“But, no, without any profanities whatsoever, I really, really don’t seek your personal respect, and I really, really am completely unconcerned about any of your personal declarations of either agreement or dissent.
I just want to be clear about that, because often blog commenters intimate that losing their respect or agreement would in one or another way trouble me.”
11:49am. this morning. To Joe from Lowell
“It suggests that I care who you are. It suggests that I have some sort of respect for you. And that I should.
It suggests that I really, really need to demonstrate an enormous amount of admiration for the suppleness and subtleties of your arguments—after all, this is Balloon Juice, and not the place for abbreviated versions of our arguments.” 8:25 pm. this evening. To J. Michael Neal
El Cid
***
El Cid
@J. Michael Neal:
I never once lied about anything — in this discussion, so there’s no philosophical trivia games. I didn’t lie about what you said. I didn’t lie about what I said. And, again, I don’t give a shit if you think I’m worse than the reincarnation of zombie Pol Pot fucking Joseph Stalin. That’s why there’s no “attempt to defend my honesty” — one, because there’s no need, and two, because you’re nobody, you’re a fucking dude on the internet who posts comments on a blog site.
But, go ahead, keep on saying things I didn’t say. I really don’t care. The next time I post on this blog tell the entire world over and over that I recommended that third world countries not be allowed to trade, or that no one who was ever within 10 feet of Robert Rubin would be allowed to hold office. I don’t care, because you’re nobody.
And I don’t know why “fraught” thinks what I said on either occasion needs to be repeated, but I agree.
El Cid
And I guess for the last fucking heck of it:
And what I said:
What I did was, as can be seen, make a brief satirical extrapolation that if, in the same way that A + X = A that X = 0, if it didn’t make much of a difference in the negative as a consequence of having been repealed, then it could easily be argued to have not been a major goal of anyone to repeal, and so on and so forth.
It’s not complicated. It’s not dishonest. It’s not skullduggery, nor a horrific rejection of all that is holy and honored in the precious, societally enriching name that is J. Michael Neal.
Intemperate, unfair, silly, whatever — but not dishonest. Particularly not given that I was addressing you. If I were communicating with someone else, then I would quote you, and not my comments in response to what you had posted. I was supposedly lying about what you had said in order to score points in an exchange with you? And how exactly would that help?
What the fuck bullshit is this? Like I’m going to have to lie about what you’ve said given that it’s (effectively) a few screen inches up? To whom would I be lying? They would scroll up, too.
Do you have powerful blog enemies who would seize upon my reinterpretation and use it to sully your good name, but who would be powerless to scroll up and see what you had written for yourself? Do you fear that I am going to be publishing a book and making money off your name but using things that I had written? This is just weird.
You could certainly claim that it simply failed to take you and your perspective seriously enough, but, then, yes, that’s a given. Maybe you have a blog rep to maintain somewhere.
And really, I’m being honest here (it can happen!) — it really wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t take me seriously either, because I don’t care if other internet people don’t. (But then the trivia game begins again because ha! how kum yu anserd if you din’t keer etc. etc.)
J. Michael Neal
@Corner Stone: So, your argument is that, if a large majority of people believe something is true, that it doesn’t suggest that there are at least some arguments for it that are plausible. In which case, you clearly believe that there are so many completely stupid people in the world that the plausibility of an argument has no bearing on whether it is accepted. If you believe that, I guess I can understand how you think factually inaccurate rants have some value in conducting a debate. I’m just not sure how you get from there to thinking that we should be mocking the wingnuts for doing the same thing.
Corner Stone
@J. Michael Neal: No, my argument is that you are one seriously fucked up individual.
And I don’t mean that I merely disagree with you, I mean you have a real problem connecting what you say here to anything approaching a reality that most of the rest of us share.
A large majority of people believe a bearded man lives in the sky, and he also happens to simultaneously exist as his son and also a spirit thingy. Now, you can make the argument that there are plausible things to believe in that effort, but it will not diminish the fact that you are seriously fucked in the head and are clearly incapable of using what people actually say in an argument.
If you’d like to continue completely misconstruing statements, and coming to completely bullshit conclusions please do so. I can go on all night destroying your lame shit.
Ecks
What an odd thread. It swings from wild fights, to people seeming to engage each other for a while, to those people suddenly blowing up and accusing each other of gross dishonesty and worse.
[shakes head].
Biggest split seems to be between the “moneyed creeps are manipulating the system to make a killing” side, and the “yes that’s partly true, but it’s also a lot more complex and technical and context-sensitive than that” side. And each thinks the other is being willfully stupid, with the “moneyed creeps” side having the indignant tone appropriate to those witnessing massive ongoing financial rape, and the “its complicated” side getting aggravated at the perceived simplistic analysis of the other side that airbrushes past inconvenient details to stick to a preferred angry narrative. And both sides seem highly certain that they know what the other side things, and are angry as hell that the other side keeps misunderstanding what THEY say.
I think that’s about right perhaps? No?
And probably the whole lot of you are angry at this post for rendering your heartfelt and considered opinions into a little caricature, no?
Ah, humanity. What strange things the internets do to us.