Ok, glad I didn’t slit my wrists after that NYT piece. This interview with Obama was reassuring:
OBAMA: No — well — absolutely. No, keep in mind the point that I’m making here.
It was the right thing to do for us to salvage the financial system, and I make no apologies for that, at all. But we knew at the time how politically toxic that was.
What it gave people a sense of is, “We’re spending all this money, but I’m not getting any help.”
And, “Gosh — I wanted Obama to come in there to start making sure that I was getting help; not the big special-interest and the institutions.”
Now if I tell them, “Well, it turns out that we will actually have gotten TARP paid back and that we’re going to make sure that a fee’s imposed on the big banks, so that this thing will cost taxpayers not a dime,” that’s helpful. But it doesn’t eliminate the sense that their voices aren’t heard, and that institutions are betraying them.
And I think that’s been expressing itself all year. And they’ve gotten increasingly frustrated over the course of the year.
So I take complete responsibility for the fact that — A — we had to salvage a financial system that could have made things much worse. We had to take the steps that we did at the beginning of the year, in order to stabilize the economy.
And I am actually glad to see that the economy’s now growing again, and we have the prospect of a much better economy in 2010. But that doesn’t negate the anger and the frustration that people are feeling.
Read the whole thing.
The Populist
Everytime I get frustrated with O, he makes a rational point like this. He’s right. Too bad America listens to the idiots in the media.
General Winfield Stuck
In the fourth dimension of reality here on planet earth, we know this thing to be true. Shit sandwich true, but true just the same. Carry on Mr. President, sir.
My Plastic Unicorn, just gave ME a hug.
Uriel
I have to admit, I’m always amazed at how poorly he speaks when he doesn’t have a teleprompter…..
Max
Little Sully-esque this evening, Mr Cole. Glad to see you back in the fold.
Kryptik
It’s good that Obama gets it.
It doesn’t mean much if the shitwits in Congress don’t. Here’s to hoping that Obama can lean on Reid and Pelosi to get the ship turned around, rather than let them preside over a collective gathering of fetal curled cowards.
beltane
So many people would have liked to have seen the ritual immolation of a TBTF banker on the steps of the Capitol on the day of Obama’s inauguration. The fact that not one of them has suffered any serious consequences for their criminally reckless greed is a major cause for the country’s sour mood. Elizabeth Warren is supposed to meet with David Axelrod tomorrow; it is a sign that they are turning their attentions from the needs of Wall Street to the needs of normal people.
Glen
Please read up much more on the bailout – what it’s actually cost, if TARP has really been paid back. or whether account tricks were used to “pay back” TARP.
Here’s some good starting points:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
http://baselinescenario.com/
http://motherjones.com/bailout/2009/06/big-bank-bamboozle
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/
As for the real costs so far:
$14 Trillion
$12.2 Trillion to Wall St.
$1.8 Trillion to Main St
mr. whipple
Dood, I’m whiplashing!
And for some really good Obot news, this was linked to below:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/one-year-later-did-obama-win-iraq-war.html
mcd410x
It might be helpful to give interviews/speeches more often if you want to sell your programs.
My feeling is that the left and right will both fire up the circular firing squads while Obama carries on governing. To what end, I’ve no idea.
NYT
I feel your pain ain’t gonna work this time.
Yeah he’s not a clueless dimwit like Bush and he gets it. He’s just going to do nothing about it that tees off his lobbyists.
Noonan
Yeah, he’s right about most things. That’s why I voted for the guy. The problem comes in on the messaging. It’s a sad irony that the greatest political marketing campaign we’ve ever seen somehow can’t figure out how to sell HCR — even though Sarah Palin scribbling on a Facebook post did more to move the needle.
schrodinger's cat
We need some Tunch to lift our spirits.
Montysano
I thought that this was brilliant:
Initial Reaction To Scott Brown’s Senate Victory In Massachusetts: An Imagined Monologue By The Republican Party
A taste:
Violet
I’m glad he gets it. But the WH and the Dems need to have some strict messaging to make sure the American people get it too. Come up with some short, to-the-point soundbites that make it clear how all this is going to help them. And make sure they know it’s the DEMS who are doing it.
The Republicans know how to get on TV and get their message out there. The Dems should take lessons.
Bubblegum Tate
@The Populist:
Absolutely agreed. But of course, this means Obama is Spock, which is great news for McCain!
Chad N Freude
Definitely NOT presidential. See Bush, G. W.
NobodySpecial
If Obama is Spock, this is terrible news, because Lizard poisons Spock.
BR
I’m still calling my rep daily until they pass the HCR bill.
Svensker
Yeah but. Part of being The President is getting people behind you and understanding what you’re doing and pulling for what you’re doing. You gotta explain and you gotta inspire. If not…well, see Carter, Jimmy.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
John, I honestly don’t understand why this quoted material reassures you. It’s a bunch of politician gobbledegook. For that matter, I don’t know why you were so discouraged by the previous statement regarding accommodating Republicans, it’s Obama boilerplate. Let’s see what he does in real life.
Uriel
@Montysano: My god, that’s AWSOME! It’s like someone took the obilisk from 2001 and stuffed it full of nothing but win.
I just got to put his here, for further appreciation:
Joshua Norton
Hate to lay this on you, but there’s still a lot of smoke and mirrors here. They put the status quo back together. That’s nothing to strike up the band about. The built in greed is still there, the corruption is still there, the outrageous “bonuses” are still there. Any sort of reform has been handily shot down.
So he put something that was broken back to the state where it started to break in the first place.
Golf clap.
Michael
And at the GOS, a diary on the rec list is squealing about the evil of cruise ships porting at Labadee (which is 100 km as the crow flies from P-a-P and several hours over broke dick roads even when times are tough). Of course, there’s plenty of righteous outrage at all those wealthy cruise passengers and calls for confiscation.
It is moments like these when I’m pleased to finally be banned from there…..
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: How have you been my fellow tea drinking elitist? Any new culinary adventures?
Chad N Freude
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): It doesn’t look like gobbledygook to me. It’s lucid and to the point. The problem as I see it is that he doesn’t step up to the cameras and do this frequently. Of course, if he did that, the networks might have to cancel a money-making reality show or football game, so it might not actually happen.
Darryl
Cause for hope, fellers:
from Ezra Klein.
Turgidson
In any parallel universe, it might be admirable that he wants to respect democracy and wait for Brown to be seated before moving on HCR. But in the reality I inhabit, it’s just fucking stupid. If there’s a way to get this done quickly, he and Congressional leadership should take it.
Other than that, yeah, I still have faith in Obama and everything. He really needs to follow through on the “speak to the people” part from now on, though. I’m sure the WH has been exceedingly involved in the HCR process, but the messaging has sucked. I mean, the teabaggers don’t even know what they’re mad about, but they just won a fucking Senate seat in MA.
General Winfield Stuck
@Violet:
They do. it’s just not a single one. All the dems in congress think they would be a better president. Always been that way.
Ask Carter, Clinton. LBJ was pretty good at delivering messages that couldn’t be refused and getting his dem troops marching in lockstep. Until they swallowed the phony Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and the rest was sad history/
But Johnson was from West Texas, same as the last Godfather of Congress, the wingnut one, GWB, Iraq.
This is the problem with military like top down strict message discipline. It works great, as long as the ideas to follow are good and don’t turn into disasters.
But I get your drift, some improvement short of winger type drone messaging would be a good thing, though with dems it’s usually- Butterfly’s that need to spread their own wings.
Martin
@Svensker: So, what does that say about our attention span? We’ve been hearing the message but not 3 hours ago half this place was ready to cast him adrift.
Maybe keeping 300 million people focused on the ball is too much for one person to do.
SteveinSC
Well, I think Clinton showed his resilience when the republican lynch mob came after him. He managed to be a good President and still slip the noose. Obama might be able to do the same, but he will have to rise to the occasion. The good analysis must be converted to good tactics and strategy. I for one am not finished, maybe not even started to be finished, with these fucking republican political terrorists, Maybe Obama needs to take a lesson from Rep Grayson from Florida who flamed their asses. Many others are all still out here, pitchforks and torches still in hand, waiting to be led into the fight.
Montysano
There’s one place where I think the Obama administration has been particularly tone deaf.
Even among the Lizard Brain and I Got Mine crowd, there’s been this nagging feeling that govt isn’t working for them; instead, it’s working in service of various lobbys. Nothing brought this into sharper relief, simultaneously, than the Wall Street bailouts and the HCR debates. During HCR, it was openly discussed on the MSM as to how much reform the corporate interests would allow. Allow!?!?
Suddenly, it’s as if The Man Behind The Curtain has just said “Fuck it”, taken down the curtain, and is operating in plain view. If Obama can manage to at least give the perception of reining in these fuckers, he’ll have an easier go of it. Right now, the perception is quite the opposite.
Heresiarch
Man, nothing gets the electorate going like a reasonable discussion on how the TARP funds will get paid back eventually.
Chad N Freude
@Michael: I read that some of the passengers chose to frolic on the beach, causing other passengers to be outraged at their crassness.
Comrade Jake
@mr. whipple:
Wow, that’s quite the piece from Juan Cole. Thank you for posting that again.
mr. whipple
I think asking Obama to cure institutional and personal ‘greed’ is like asking him to find a cure for cancer. I’m not sure what he can do about the bonuses. The corruption, however, should be prosecuted.
Citizen Alan
So yeah, I read the whole thing. (Well, not the whole thing, just down to where they changed the topic from HCR to Haiti), and frankly, this is what I have come away with.
First of all, I will cheerfully admit that it is a nice change to have a chief executive who can speak like a human being and not some kind of simpering baboon who someone trained to mouth rightwing talking points in exchange for the occasional banana.
That said, once I get past the pleasure of literacy and articulation, here is what it sounds to me like he is saying:
Yes, I understand why everyone in America is pissed at me. Despite that, I don’t think I would have done anything significantly different over the last year (except maybe not let things take so long, which is possibly the most banal observation ever made). And I don’t really have any plans to do anything different in the future. And I still plan to try and work with the people who think I’m a fundamentally debased mud-person and a deep-cover terrorist operative.
I do not see what possible encouragement anyone could feel in response to this interview in which
CarterObama announces that the biggest lesson he has learned in the last year is to keep doing things that don’t work. IIRC, that’s one definition of insanity.fraught
I’m glad Obama is so cool, even Spock-like, but it makes people like Jane Hamsher and John Aravosis get hysterical and go all Overton window on everyone all over the place. This whole “the president doesn’t get it” thing began with Reagan and then escalated with Bush and after eight years of having to lower our expectations for that moron, some of the less stable bloggers can’t stop feeling superior to this very bright and capable guy.
lamh31
I tell ya, all day while I’ve been reading the articles and post about the few Dem reps who have made statements about halting HCR, I’m reminded of a song my grandmother used to sing all the time:
Nothing From Nothing
This song should be in every House Rep’s mind right now. Cause if nothing is passed, then they will def get nothing from me and mine.
Svensker
@Martin:
A leader leads. That’s the whole point. Jimmy Carter was smart and right but he couldn’t inspire people. Ronald Reagan knew how to get people behind him, didn’t much matter that what he was saying was all hooey. I was there and I remember how shitty I felt when Carter was prez. and how much better Reagan made me feel. I KNEW it was hooey, but it still worked, because Reagan was a leader.
I was hoping Obama was a combo of the best of Carter and Reagan — someone smart who could lead. So far, I ain’t seeing that.
maye
@General Winfield Stuck:
the WH communications shop has been AWOL for a year. They need a whole new team. Give Gibbs a gold watch and move on.
demkat620
Well, I have to tell this story. A neighbor of mine has been running his mouth for months about the tea parties and how HCR sucks ass and last night how he wished he could vote for Brown in MA. Hannity, Beck, soc-ial-ism, blah, blah, blah.
So guess what? Asshole comes home tonight slamming car doors po’d. Just found out he got turned down for coverage at his job.
He has a pre existing condition. Says dumbass tonight as the light finally dawns “I never thought they would do this to me. And I can’t do anything about it.”
Says me “Welcome to the party, pal”
Uriel
@Violet: God, you kids crack me up, with all your new fangled ideas. Like I said on the earlier on the “burn the white house down and scatter salt on the ashes” thread:
In times of crisis, message discipline will always be something you’re going to appreciate grudgingly in Republicans, not point to proudly in Dems.
Thus is has been, thus it is and thus it always shall be. Learn it, live it love it.
I like to pretend it gives them “character,” if that helps.
rootless_e
“Ronald Reagan knew how to get people behind him, didn’t much matter that what he was saying was all hooey. I was there and I remember how shitty I felt when Carter was prez. and how much better Reagan made me feel. I KNEW it was hooey, but it still worked, because Reagan was a leader.”
Well, Reagan’s every word was treated as god given wisdom by the press and his lies/failures/errors were ignored. Can you imagine what would be the press coverage of Obama if, god forbid, we’d have a repeat of something like the Lebanon Marine Barracks Slaughter?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Reagan was a hired manipulator, an actor.
It’s okay with me if you want to talk like you were in love with Reagan, but I lived in California when he was governor, and I detested him deeply. So, I am going to bark when you lavish him with praise. He was a cold, phony sonofabitch as far as I am concerned. He “lead” people who were not paying attention and would think that the copy on the side of a box of Tide(tm) was leadership.
Comrade Jake
I don’t know, I really grow tired of the Carter comparisons. I just don’t think they hold water. Some of the circumstances are similar, sure, but Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter.
He’s not going to be a liberal Ronald Reagan either. These sorts of comparisons are just so shallow.
JAHILL10
Thanks JC and Darryl for this!
I have been avoiding the noise machines all day, sick at the thought that they could let HCR go down the tubes because of some stupid Democratic infighting in Mass. Yet, somehow it looks like all the adults have not left the building. Called my reps, even some who were not mine(!!), today to push for the passage of the Senate bill. Urge everyone to do likewise again and again.
robertdsc
He renominated Bernanke. He doesn’t get it.
Brian J
Perhaps all of this talk of scaling back everything is really a set up for his next big public appearance: the State of the Union. If the story of the week becomes the Democrats caving yet again, and then he comes out swinging, it will be more dramatic.
And damn it, one of these days, these predictions of mine will be right.
General Winfield Stuck
@Svensker: He is the first black man president, so I think the rules are different. At least for now. I think he has the potential to be a great motivator and leader, but is holding back, and I think smartly so. It has only been a year, and even many of his supporters are watching for any sign of black anger, or even the slightest sign he has any prevailing hostility toward the white majority. See the cop and professor incident.
It would be so so easy for well intentioned assertion on his part to be misread and misconstrued as hostility or arrogance. The good news is this will lesson with time, as folks get more comfortable and trusting. And Obama is way smart enough to know his limits in this area and expand his will as the situation will allow.
Robin G.
I actually have big, important, incredibly clever things to say here that would make you all acknowledge my impeccable wisdom, but I’m too drunk to articulate it properly.
eemom
too late. TBogg thinks you’ve drunk the Jane-aid. Click his link.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/01/20/i-have-no-leadership-i-must-scream/#comments
Citizen Alan
@Comrade Jake:
It is my strong belief that in January of 2013, Obama and Carter will be very comparable to one another in at least one way very obvious way.
Brian J
@Robin G.:
You know, I’d so much more respect for the Republicans if they had their guy who was giving the response to Obama’s speech next week say that and noting more. Not a lot, but more than I have now.
SteveinSC
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: Yeah Reagan reminded me of some Twilight Zone or some similar macabre show in which a woman fell in love with a ventriloquist. She went to all his shows, and became enthralled with him, handsome, deep voiced and perfect with his little dummy. Finally she worked up the courage to meet the great man, and it turned out the object of her infatuation was a puppet himself, operated by the little dwarf who sat on his lap. Reagan and his handlers to a tee. America was in love with an animatronic contrivance.
AkaDad
From Kos:
The Democrats clearly need to move further to the right.
rootless_e
hey jdw – nice juan cole article.
SiubhanDuinne
Kind of O/T but I don’t care. Just watching Gov. Rendell on Rachel and I must say, the more I see of him the more I like him. He may or may not be an effective state governor, I don’t know — but he’s throwing down the gauntlet, challenging his fellow Democrats to *do something* — “game on,” as he just said. And he helped airlift a slew of Haitian orphans out of harm’s way today.
Could one of you who lives in PA or knows something about Rendell give your views? Is he term-limited, and might he be a candidate for an important and high profile job in the Administration in the next couple of years? Or does he have other plans, such as a Senate run?
Robin G.
@Brian J: That would be fuckin’ sweet.
For anyone feeling angst, Long Islands improve one’s outlook.
DPirate
Well, its all basically bullshit, isnt it? Yes, the fed gets the money back, but that money is never going to leave circulation, I’ll bet. All the debt that was vapor has now been made real, basically, not to mention the fact we pay the fed for the use of the money; we pay, not the bank uness that was factored in, which i doubt.
Am I wrong about all that? That alot of vapor has been now made into money.
Montysano
@rootless_e:
During my tenure at the New Orleans Convention Center, I ran sound for a Reagan speech during the 1988 convention. A couple of minutes into his speech, and I got it. For good or ill, the dude electrified the room.
Later in the convention week, I got to run sound for a speech by Louis Farrakhan. Also electric. Good times…
eastriver
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I gotta kinda agree. Nice, well-meant words. But that and a cup of coffee will get you a cup of coffee.
WereBear
@General Winfield Stuck: I salute you, sir.
Exactly. It does seem to suit him, but it also works for him.
Reminds me of that All in the Family episode, where the mild-mannered refrigerator repairman is cutting an apple with a penknife, but as Archie tells the tale, he’s wearing a dashiki, with a broad afro, and a machete.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@SteveinSC:
You nailed it.
Comrade Darkness
I have an idea for the Democrats. So, easy, even they can pull it off.
*Make the republicans actually filibuster*
The republicans got nothin’ but obstruction. Zero. They are the party of zero. Make them brand their lame ass selves with it for as long as it takes. Screw these stupid boy’s club nicey nicey rules of Senate procedure and make them actually stand there and read Going Rogue or whatever they got hidden under their desks, I don’t know Valley of the Dolls, I’m sure for some of the geezers.
Imagine it, Citibank starts to stumble, BofA and the other freakin’ massive zombie banks start crumbling down and the republicans are standing there 24/7, 7 days a week, reading the fucking phone book. This is all they’ve been doing all along, in reality, but they own the soundbite machines, so they never ever take the heat for it. Make them fucking own it.
Robin G.
By the way, I’m watching Larry King right now, and they’ve got some kind of “Musicians for Haiti” thing on, and all I can think is, “We’re sending our love down the well (All the way down!)”…
I suppose most of America is happy that this election has changed the focus of the news. After all, dead poor people are sooooo yesterday.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@AkaDad: Clearly the Democrats don’t understand the first rule of governing: You’re party can’t govern if they are not elected. It’s not a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary one.
Amok92
Half serious question, has Josh Marshall ever posted as much in one day as today?
rootless_e
Montysano
ok. although i have to say I never got either of them
Anonsters
I’ve noticed two trends on this site:
(1) BAAAAAAAAAWWWW! The Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats generally are ruining everything for us! They’re hacks, dressed up Republicans, they’re useless, they’re fucking useless!
(2) BAAAAAAAAAWWWWWW! The crazy left-wing of the party is so crazy. Liberal Democrat is too liberal. We can’t govern like this. We can’t expect everything to come at once. We need more moderation. Be realistic!
JFC, people. Oh, no, wait, what am I saying? Balloon Juice and its readership are perfect, realistic, ideologically aligned, sensible, left-leaning but not too left, in the middle enough to get shit done, and why does the rest of the Democratic party suck so much, and and and and….
This crowd really does think that virtually everyone in the Democratic party, excepting them, is not only wrong, but disastrously impeding Doing Good Things for America. If only everyone else would agree with me!!1!1!!oneoneone!
mr. whipple
Maybe he means Reagan was like The Dead, you had to see him live to get it.
Montysano
@Comrade Darkness:
My god, my good man, what an outlandish, rude, and uncivil suggestion that is! Harumphh! Perhaps you weren’t paying attention when President McCain spoke so movingly about the Comity of the Senate.
Besides…. can they still be forced to actually filibuster, or did that go away back in the ’70s?
demkat620
@SiubhanDuinne: Have a drink and let me tell you about a man named Ed.
No, no way, no how. He’s exhausting and during Iggles season we get his delightfully DLC ass on our Post Game Live show. Talking about how “we” won or “we” lost.
And just so you know, he was the first Dem to call for Gore to concede.
He’s been an okay governor but that’s about it. Wife’s name has been tossed around for SCOTUS.
Bad Horse's Filly
I second and third the motions for Tunch photos, though I know it might be difficult with John’s broken wing.
My prediction: after the State of the Union, Obama goes back up to 58% approval and the wingers declare his entire agenda FAIL.
That is all.
valdivia
@General Winfield Stuck:
aww Stuck you made me lol and want to cry. Can I have my plastic unicorn back? I almost threw it away in a fit of pique today.
Sleeper
@Comrade Darkness:
argh. Will people stop saying this? The rules for filibusters are not what they used to be, they were changed almost 40 years ago. They don’t have to stand there and read recipes or phone books, despite what The West Wing would have you believe.
Annie
@Svensker:
Exactly. A leader needs to lead. And the administration is not perceived as leading. The Republicans are perceived as leading. Even Lady Sarah and Lady Michele are perceived as leading.
Obama and the administration need to come down from the mount and with fire and burning bushes lead. They need to attack, attack, and keep on attacking. They need to preach — couch sane arguments behind fiery rhetoric that for whatever reason the majority of Americans respond too.
Obama did this during the campaign and he needs to do this while governing. The majority of Americans don’t absorb intellectual posts from the NYT. Unfortunately, millions of Americans respond to a crying Glen Beck, who wants to take back the country, while never realizing that taking back the country means people will vote against their own interests.
As I teach my students, PROCESS is everything. How leaders chose to communicate is everything. A leader can’t chose to communicate one way if the majority of people respond another way. That is the administration’s fundamental mistake.
Reason and intellectual won’t bring change. Obama has to become “Rocky,” an image that people respond to — one man fighting against a corruption opposition.
rootless_e
“Maybe he means Reagan was like The Dead, you had to see him live to get it.”
Too many layers of meaning in that.
wasabi gasp
He got a black guy elected president. I’m inclined to think that getting “It” should have been thoroughly gotten on November 4, 2008.
Jim
@demkat620:
Ed Rendell? I’m surprised and disappointed. I always had vaguely positive feelings about that guy. I wonder if he thought that was the first step in RENDELL ’04! Of course, if he’s telling Dems to get off the stick about health care, I’ll forgive him (a bit) for that.
AkaDad
That would be a good thing in theory, but it would make Liberals happy, so it’s a non-starter.
mr. whipple
@rootless_e:
Heh.
Sleeper
I wish I could see what it is about this particular interview that’s got you feeling so reassured, John. I don’t see anything new here.
Not that this interview makes me think it’s all over, either. It’s basically just the President repeating what he’s been saying for at least six months, trying to calm down people by saying he’s still on top of everything. It didn’t leave much of an impression on me either way.
Neutron Flux
@Svensker: Well hey, on the upside none of this will be a problem for you when you move to Canada.
You did say earlier that you are moving there, right?
Brian J
@Robin G.:
Unlike all of you, I’m sipping a cup of instant coffee right now. I’d love to be downing a bottle of pinot noir I opened a few nights ago, but I’d be done after just a glass or two. My alcohol tolerance has sadly gone to shit ever since I left college.
Also, I’m writing this from Long Island.
AB
Can someone please explain to me why TARP was necessary to save the financial system? I really do not understand.
Also, what Sleeper said. There’s nothing innate to this interview that is that much different from what he has been talking about. “I know you’re frustrated”+ is a good effort, but it really isn’t enough.
Jim
@Sleeper:
Kinda where you are. This, in itself, doesn’t reassure me, or piss me off. I certainly don’t see in that interview what led to Krugman’s “He Is Not The One We’ve Been Waiting For” post (and yes, I know PK has been pre-disposed to saying that since early ’08), as if Obama had joined in the drawingboard panic. I suspect he’s playing platitudinous while waiting to see what Pelosi and Hoyer can do, but I think he needs to at least give some strong hints of what he wants, if indeed he wants the pass it/fix it solution.
Jim
@rootless_e:
Hey rootless. Used to see you offering inconvenient perspective to the PUMA drama monarchs at that blue blog. Have you given up yet?
bayville
I would say he came across impressively, I agreed with almost everything… except his take on the economy & TARP which, unfortunately, is what his Presidency will be judged on.
His contention TARP won’t cost taxpayers a dime is poppycock. And this claim:
Big deal! 2009 was the worst year since 1940. His goal should be to get the Unemployment rate under 9% by the end of the year. But based on the seeming lack of urgency with regards to this (Jobs “Listening” Tour begins Friday) I highly doubt that is going to happen. Hope I’m wrong.
Comrade Darkness
@Montysano: Weird, all I ever got out of Reagan was stilted robot man with funny hair, summarized perfectly by the Robin Williams routine where he describes the difficulty behind the scenes of puppeting his movements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX3w8xMI6-8&feature=related
About 4:28 in.
And I remember the press conferences where his staff would run in and cancel the whole thing after two questions, because Reagan’s answers were frighteningly non-sequitur.
rootless_e
jim:
yes. couldn’t take the harrowing sorrow of their sensitive feelings a moment longer.
eastriver
@AB:
The banks were insolvent. They had more debt than credit. They were bankrupt. If enough of the big banks close, HUGE PANIC. And justifiably so. The Fed pumped billions of dollars into the banks, and gave lines-of-credit for trillions more.
Got it?
mr. whipple
@Jim:
” I certainly don’t see in that interview what led to Krugman’s “He Is Not The One We’ve Been Waiting For” post ”
I don’t, either. WTH?
SiubhanDuinne
@demkat620: Thanks for the info about Ed Rendell. If I ever knew that about his calling for Gore to concede, I had sure forgotten it. I don’t doubt you for a moment, but I do feel bound to say that I didn’t get *any* of those feelings from seeing him on Rachel earlier tonight. Not that he was doing Eagles post-game of course.
ellaesther
Here’s what I did today:
1) Put on my Hope Won t-shirt.
2) Mostly managed to duck most of the analysis, uber-analysis, analytical analysis, and analysis of the analysis of the Scott Brown Phenom. Even here (though I did call my representative, per Tim F). We will all be much smarter in two or three days and I cannot bear the thought of actually paying close attention to all the thrashing around. When the thrashing around is done, I plan to try to help the party achieve its objectives.
3) Looked at lovely and inspiring pictures of the President’s first year at TPM.
4) Made my family an O’Brownie (first invented for election night and then reprised on inauguration day: Brownies made in a round cake pan, decorated to look like the Obama “O”) in order to celebrate the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration.
5) Read the ABC report of that interview and watched the clip.
This Administration is not perfect, and I have some very genuine concerns. But the raging void of hubris and hate that characterized the Bush years is no longer a reality, and indeed, we have a guy in the White House who can talk like this. Who respects his job, his people, and the challenges before him.
I’m telling you, people: It will not be all as we want it, but bottom line, long run, it’ll be ok. Hope won, and I still have hope.
maye
@AB:
He could have done a Herbert Hoover and let the banking system fail and let the unemployment rate get to 25 percent. He opted for a different remedy. I think he did the right thing. Unfortunately no one who lived through the 1930s is still alive and the rest don’t know any history.
Jim
@rootless_e:
Well you fought the good fight. I gave up arguing after one primary fight. They’ve turned the place into a painful circle-jerk of petulant, self-righteous sarcasm and junior high yearbook mutual adoration. Too bad. Some damn funny people there at one time.
Mike in NC
An asshole. Also. 20+ years later and I still know GOPers who have little altars in their homes to his memory. That was a Cult of Personality like this country has never seen.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
I would say he came across impressively, I agreed with almost everything… except his take on the economy & TARP which, unfortunately, is what his Presidency will be judged on.
His contention TARP won’t cost taxpayers a dime is poppycock. And this claim:
His claim that TARP won’t pay the tax payers a dime is highly accurate. Now, if he had claimed that the Fed’s actions won’t cost the taxpayer a dime there might be some room for dispute. But, TARP, the 700B dollar piece of legislation? That will be paid back in full.
Big deal! 2009 was the worst year since 1940. His goal should be to get the Unemployment rate under 9% by the end of the year. But based on the seeming lack of urgency with regards to this (Jobs “Listening” Tour begins Friday) I highly doubt that is going to happen. Hope I’m wrong.
If progressives want to make serious waves they will unite around the notion of pushing strongly for a new Fed Chairman or a Fed who realizes its mandate to pursue full employment.
arguingwithsignposts
Ahh, a long day spent studying complicated computer textual analysis theory. Much nicer than the headlines I’ve been scanning here.
And as I’m in a politics-free zone today, I’m going rogue: Kitteh attack!
Comrade Darkness
@Sleeper: The current easy peasy system is a terrible one. We’ve gone from 9 filibusters a senate *term* to: “We have crossed the mark of over 100 filibusters and acts of procedural obstruction in less than one year,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said on the floor on December 20, 2009. “Never since the founding of the Republic, not even in the bitter sentiments preceding Civil War, was such a thing ever seen in this body.”
Some amusing filibuster history from the senate site:
Mnemosyne
I know I’m behind (that’s what I get for doing actual work at work today) but I’m very glad that Barney Frank walked back his statement from yesterday.
I’m sitting on the couch eating macaroni and cheese with a cut-up hot dog in it. That’s the kind of day it’s been.
Brian J
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
I’ll one up you and say it goes to 158 percent approval. Unfortunately for us, that will still not be enough for Republicans.
rob!
Can anyone explain the sheer, blind rage so many people have for Obama? I don’t remember this level of unadulterated vitriol being lobbed at Clintion–sure, things were a lot better then, economically, but still…
It can’t be his policies–as we’ve seen, over and over again, people generally don’t know/care about policy details. So what is it? FOX News, racism, economics, all three?
People had concrete, observable reasons for hating Bush–Iraq most especially. But I just can’t see what these people point to when they get into a sputtering rage over this guy–its all just incoherent RAGE. Where is that coming from?
AB
@eastriver: @maye: I get it, I’m just frustrated that they get to have all that money without consequence.
bayville
@maye:
TARP was passed by Bush.
Brian J
@Mnemosyne:
Try it with fried chicken, perhaps with some buffalo sauce. You won’t be sorry.
Martin
@Comrade Darkness:
Ok, you seriously need to pay closer attention. The Republicans ARE filibustering. There is no standing there reading any more – that went away in the 70s. The only way to bring back the talking thing is with a 2/3 vote, which I suspect the GOP is not about to sign on for.
Now, what the Dems could to is force a cloture vote right before the SotU, have it fail 59/41 and then have Obama talk about how 59% of the Senate voted for health care but the Republicans are forcing a supermajority vote on everything, and that’s why nothing is passing even with majority support and if Americans think it’s wrong that a minority of members can hold up key legislation, that they need to make their voice heard or else Congress will continue to be paralyzed.
That’s about as loud a voice as Dems could put out there.
Chad N Freude
@Brian J:
Then you should be drinking Iced Tea.
mr. whipple
“Can anyone explain the sheer, blind rage so many people have for Obama? I don’t remember this level of unadulterated vitriol being lobbed at Clintion—sure, things were a lot better then, economically, but still…”
On the left or right?
Brian J
@rob!:
Just as they considered Clinton illegitimate, they consider Obama to be the same. He’s allowed to occupy the office because he goes against their thinking. That doesn’t square with the rejection of their policies, such as they are, by the public, but they have never been one for consistency.
jeffreyw
@arguingwithsignposts: Good evening sir, and kitty. Been littering the threads myself with food and whatnot. No joy in Mudville. Sigh.
Comrade Darkness
@maye: There is a HUGE difference between “saving the banking sector” and “saving the banks”. The Swedish (get over problems quick model) versus the Japanese (stay stuck in depression for DECADES) which is the one we are following.
Funny enough saving the banking sector itself results in far healthier banks. Partly because you get to kick the idiots responsible to the curb. Here we are, we bailed out the banks and have 8 or so huge zombie, failed banks tottering along, terrified to lend money to anybody, too big to be closed down by the FDIC. Epic Bailout Fail.
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
Bit late for that, I think. Bernanke’s up for a vote on Friday, and he has the full backing of the
CarterObama Administration, which presumably has a scheme to pass a jobs bill in spite of both Republican intransigence and the opposition of the Fed Chairman.Ailuridae
@mr. whipple:
I think Krugman’s minor freak out was in relation to the same bad reporting Cole freaked out to earlier.
SIA
I hope some of the congresscritters read Ezra Klein today.
Of course, he’s young and idealistic. Silly boy. (I love you Ezra!)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/political_courage.html
Sleeper
@eastriver:
True enough, but there were other options. The banks could have been taken over and broken up, there could have been major conditions on taking the money, etc. The way it played out, it looks to many people like we just handed them a fuckload of money without interest and let them pay back what they felt like when they felt like it, without making them change their practices in any substantial way.
The banks just aren’t afraid of Obama. The last time he summoned their CEOs to Pennsylvania Avenue for another scold-op, two or three of them didn’t even show. Just blew off the fucking President of the United States. Why? Because they could. This administration, just like the last one, has done nothing but blink when it comes to the banks.
I don’t mind Obama making an honest case for TARP, in fact I think it’s a good thing. I don’t agree with all of it, but that’s fine. It’s just that he’s not doing that great a job of it. He comes off as distant and condescending sometimes, as if families without jobs and mortgages to pay and kids to feed can just tread water for six, nine, twelve more months until that uptick shows itself. If nothing else, Obama needs to communicate a sense of urgency and drop the unflappable coolness now and then. That doesn’t mean run screaming through the streets, but it does mean convey the sense that he realizes that a bad month for unemployment means more than just a bad news cycle and a minor inconvenience for him. This is just anecdotal, but personally, when I hear people I know complain about Obama, the complaint is that he just seems to be on cruise control a lot of the time and doesn’t seem to realize how fucking horrible things are getting out here.
Just my two cents.
Mnemosyne
@Brian J:
Maybe another day. Today I need to have it the way Mommy used to make it. But I’ll keep the buffalo sauce in mind for next time.
maye
@bayville:
in consultation with and supported by Obama.
Ailuridae
@Citizen Alan:
Obama could pass a trillion dollar jobs bill and it wouldn’t do as much as changing the priorities of the Fed. This was a known known and if progressives wanted to beat a drum the last year they should have been going after a change in policy at the Fed. But they weren’t because progressives were more concerned with other issues like TARP that, Frankly, didn’t amount to shit.
Chad N Freude
@Martin: I like your proposal. But this year, The State of the Union speech may be very short: “The Union is in the toilet. Thank you and good night.”
rootless_e
The right’s blind rage at Obama is expected – he’s even black to seal the deal. But the sheer raving on the so-called left, which began during the primaries, remains mysterious to me.
Keith G
@arguingwithsignposts: First rate pic. Thanks for the smile.
Ailuridae
@Mnemosyne:
That’s good comfort food. Also works great with a can of tuna.
rootless_e
“They’ve turned the place into a painful circle-jerk of petulant, self-righteous sarcasm and junior high yearbook mutual adoration. Too bad. Some damn funny people there at one time.”
Should be put up on the tombstone.
gwangung
My impression is that interest is indeed being charged (at least, that’s been mentioned in all the press releases I’ve seen) and the government has the power to take over the banks, but not the holding companies that own the banks nor the investment bodies that are the real problems. (Though I have absolutely no problem with more punative terms on using TARP money; it’s the mildness of punativeness, I think, that makes the public think there are fewer strings than there actually exists).
Citizen Alan
@rob!:
The internet. It was less of a communal thing back then. The term “blog” did not even exist until 1999, and before the advent of blogging software, social interaction on line was not very user friendly. The idea of elderly grandmothers communing with one another on the internet to coordinate political activity would have sounded preposterous during Clinton’s two terms.
Consequently, even though Clinton did a metric shit-ton of things which should have pissed off his own left flank (DADT, DOMA, DMMC, Welfare reform, NAFTA, racing back to Arkansas to execute a mentally handicapped guy), there was no virtual space for people bothered by all this to come together and form a nucleus. And of course, by the time of the impeachment, the progressives (IIRC) were lockstop in support of him, viewing the impeachment (correctly in my view) as an attempted coup d’etat.
Nick
@Annie: Remember when the President came out every few weeks and talked to the press on prime time and made his case for his agenda and the media bitched and bitched that he was “overexposed” “trying to do too much” and “preempting everyone’s favorite shows and costing the networks millions of dollars in a recession”
yeah, that.
Comrade Mary
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE, can someone please tell me what to drink tonight so I can sleep?
– There’s no beer or wine in the house. NONE.
– I do have lots of lovely gin, but no vermouth, tonic water, club soda, 7-up or Tom Collins mix. I do have some fresh lemons, some bottled lemon and lime juice, ice, some generic full sugar cola (bought by mistake) and some diet Pepsi (bought on purpose).
– I may be an Obot, but I have no koolaid.
– I have way too much Amaretto, but also don’t have the sweet tooth I used to have. I suppose I could put it in some hot chocolate, but I feel more like a cold drink than a hot one.
– I have some “dry” “Australian” “sherry”.
– I have a few ounces of Southern Comfort, but I also still have my will to live.
– I have potatoes, but no Hawkeye to build a still.
– I have some frozen raspberries and mango, and some nice plain probiotic yogurt that could possibly counterbalance the alcohol.
– I have no tiny paper umbrellas.
Any useful suggestions will be gratefully considered.
Mnemosyne
Speaking of mac and cheese (because I feel like it) the beer drinkers on the thread may be interested in this recipe: Black and Tan Irish Mac and Cheddar. I haven’t tried it yet, but the judges liked it in the recipe showdown.
Comrade Darkness
@Sleeper: @Martin: Yeah, I get that they are ‘filibustering’ in that they register that that’s what they want to do. That’s so easy it’s open for rampant abuse. Hence the problem.
Explain to me where this guy goes wrong in his analysis And also, why if these new rules started in the 70s did Reid perform a “real” filibuster in 2003.
Citizen Alan
@Ailuridae:
I’m not going to argue with you about that. Personally, I would be thrilled if there were 40 votes in the Senate to filibuster Bernanke’s reappointment. I am curious as to how you and John Cole would respond to that — a filibuster of a presidential nominee by his own party is, to my knowledge, utterly unprecedented and, by the metrics that have been applied both in the media and on blogs like this one, would probably be far more damaging to
CarterObama than anything the progressives have done so far to undermine HCR, despite all the poo being flung their way.(and I think, I need to check out and go to bed here in a few — looking back, I’ve misspelled five short words in a single paragraph)
Jim
@rootless_e:
He’s not Hillary.
He’s not Bill (I mostly liked the president and mostly like the man, but the hero-worship he’s inspired in hindsight bewilders me).
He’s not a flame-thrower.
He won, which forces his supporters to get in the game, get dirty, compromise, admit that things are more complicated than they seem(ed) from the outside (I think this is Taibbi in a nutshell, so easy and so gratifying to sneer from the sidelines).
There are a lot of things he’s done that are questionable, even wrong (and I am a ‘Bot), which give the preceding causes a veneer of respectability, even idealism, that they cling to all the more ferociously so they don’t have to admit there’s any other cause.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Citizen Alan: Definitely. Even a name for it in psychology, group polarization.
jeffreyw
@Comrade Mary: Pour the gin into a glass, take a lemon in hand. Drink the gin from the glass, put the lemon down. Repeat as needed.
bayville
@Ailuridae:
Couldn’t agree more about the Fed Chairman.
As for TARP, the fact that some of the major banks have already paid the $$$ back in full is alarming and suspicious. Buried at the bottom of a Treasury Dept. press release (looking for the link) last month was the note that 55 banks missed their TARP payment deadline.
But the most important indication to me the banks are still insolvent is that NOBODY is lending $$$. The Fed Fund rate can’t get any lower thus why aren’t they lending.
Businesses can’t function without the banks functioning as banks.
Robin G.
Sometimes I think liberals forget that “successful” and “satisfying” are rarely the same thing in governance.
Jim
@Comrade Mary:
Puree some rasberries, squeeze in half a fresh lemon, a shot or two of gin and drop in some ice cubes? I am no bartender, I’m winging it.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Comrade Jake:
But… ever so easy to swallow and digest…
Citizen Alan
@Comrade Mary:
Do you have a blender? Coffee or hot chocolate + ice +amaretto + FRAPPE’
Jason Bylinowski
Just dipping in to say that vodka helps. It helps a great deal. I prefer it Polish, potato-based, on the rocks, or in the shot glass, but it’s also great with V8 and tabasco.
@Montysano: Oh, fuck yeah, this was my saving grace at work today, it’s great to see that more folks have seen it because I just think it is a classic essay, one of the best ever.
OT: can someone give me the skinny on the commenter known as matoko_chan? Not gossiping here, just curious. He/she/they are EVERYWHERE I go on the internet and it’s just strange to me. Loved, hated, always noted by the blogger at hand. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a series of coincidences.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Mary:
Maybe you could substitute a little Amaretto in this recipe? It does require simple syrup, which you may or may not be in the mood to make.
John S.
@Comrade Darkness:
Um, first of all, he has no fucking clue what he is talking about:
No Senator occupying the floor can be compelled to speak. Period. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was a movie, not reality. So this is a ‘tradition’ that does not exist.
Which he cannot do.
Do I need to dissect the rest of his deeply flawed argument?
EDIT: I went into this earlier today.
Will
Martha Coakley could fuck up Spaghettios.
Uriel
@Ailuridae:
People always act like I’m completely insane when I bring that up. Even one guy who, god help me, used to put peas in his mac and cheese.
I don’t know if its a regional thing or what.
Also, diced ham and a little chipotle Tabasco sauce is good.
Ailuridae
@Citizen Alan:
It wouldn’t be 40 Democrats voting against it that’s for sure. Bunning would certainly join in and if there were a movement more Republicans especially from the South would do the same.
There’s a difference between opposing a nominee (or, more accurately, a nominee’s policies) because they are detrimental to the country and opposing a hugely progressive bill based on vague innuendo and outright lies from people who didn’t feel that bill went far enough.
Again, there were people who were furious at how little the first SCHIP did. A decade later its a huge building block in assuring a basic progressive goal: that children’s health and health care shouldn’t be determined by their parents financial situation.
rob!
@Brian J:
Sure, they consider all Dems illegitimate, they’re idiots. They really hate the Democratic process, and all that it stands for.
@Citizen Alan:
That explains how it grows, but doesn’t the rage need to be there to begin with? Or is it a mob mentality thing? Without FOX, Red State, and WND telling them where to go, would they just be sitting on their front porch bitching about “that n*gger in the white house”, and that would be as far as it would go?
I really am trying to understand why they hate this guy so relentlessly, after one year in office. I had a discussion with two online friends last night about the MA election, and I was shocked by how two relatively reasonable-sounding guys could turn on their HATE so completely.
Comrade Darkness
@bayville: I was heartened to watch the fed refuse to let BoA pay back their TARP. The banks got the make-to-make believe accounting they wanted, but that doesn’t mean the fed has to give actual credence to it.
If the long-term plan is letting them earn their way out the hole, we are going to be stuck like this for most of the decade. Aside from Goldman Sachs, who have various licenses to skim off the top of wall street, the rest are only dog paddling along at best.
Next time you get your cc bill, realize that the bank loaning you money at 12-33% is getting it for 0% and still can’t turn an honest buck.
Darryl
@Sleeper: Exactly. And saying “okay, just change the senate procedure” misses the point, because the filibuster is part of procedure. If you could easily change how the filibuster is performed, you could easily change its existence. But you can’t. It’s fairly hard to change Senate procedure.
bayville
@Comrade Darkness:
Some system we have here, eh?
Comrade Darkness
@Uriel: bag of frozen corn is my favorite. Add it in the boiling water when the pasta is finishing up and stir to thaw it. drain, mix in the cheese. Something about the texture. mmmm mmm.
rootless_e
one common obama-hate line is something like
“If he just fought for something, even [esp. if?] he lost …”
makes me think a lot of the discontented wanted a cheeleader and don’t really care if the team wins or not
Kryptik
OT, but leave it to The Daily Show to make me actually smile over the whole situation by making an allusion to the whole Late Night show clusterfutz.
Sleeper
@Will:
I think Jon Stewart said it best. “She went into the bar from Cheers and didn’t know anybody’s name.”
Comrade Luke
@Martin:
That sounds like a great idea, and would really get the point across.
Which is why it will never happen, but still…
Citizen Alan
@Jim:
To the people on the Left who have viewed the years 2001-2008 as akin to living under a brutal occupation, the Obama Administration has been like seeing American tanks rolling into France and then listening in amazement as the American commanders encourage all the French Resistance members to come out of hiding and give the defeated Nazis a big warm hug.
Well, at least, that’s what it feels like to me. As far as I’m concerned, if there is Evil in this world, it votes Republican, and Obama is a fool for refusing to recognize a mortal enemy when he sees it. If the next three years proceed like the last one, I foresee the next Republican president doing everything Bush did and worse, while Obama gets banished off to Habitat for Humanity or something.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@rootless_e: Oh, if he lost, he wouldn’t be getting any mercy from anyone. The fact that he’s actually planning to do so much is what makes me respect him.
Comrade Darkness
@bayville: Yeah, TARP was all Bush, “to hell with it, I’m out the door.”
I can see why obama is stuck. He can’t wind it back. Criticizing it alone could destabilize things. Although, he may be entirely honest given the thieves he brought in with him in this area. I can see have a few hangers on who know where the bodies are buried, but not in charge, please.
John S.
I swear, the two biggest Zombie lies that exist on the liberal side of the blogosphere are regarding:
1) How the filibuster actually works
and
2) How reconciliation actually works
John, DougJ, Tim F., Anne Laurie — can one of you please post about these two topics so we can just link back to them ad nauseum anytime someone brings out a Zombie?
Darryl
I am not a financier, but just off the top of my head, probably half or more of the Fortune 500 companies finance their operations through short-term commercial paper, issued and traded by the big investment banks. Letting the big investment banks implode would freeze the operations of the top several hundred corporations in America. Coke, Ford, Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Exxon, GE, Verizon, Proctor and Gamble, Wal-Mart, Johnson and Johnson, Target, Boeing, UPS…
Starting to see how the meltdown would happen?
fraught
@Mnemosyne: Mac’n’cheese /w cut up hot dog sounds good to me! Dieting on paste’n’crumbs.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
No the argument that banks aren’t lending because they are insolvent ignores a pretty obvious different course: banks aren’t lending because they have an easier way to make money than lending.
Also, those 55 companies in question? What’s their total TARP outlay? Yeah, 5.1B. Far less than the interest on the big banks and all of which will easily be offset by the bank tax. TARP will be paid back in its entirety. There is no need to confuse it with the Fed program or the FDIC’s actions.
For what TARP was (and its not the solution I would have pursued) it is clearly successful. There isn’t any dispute about this
Citizen Alan
@Comrade Darkness:
Okay, now I really need to go to bed because i thought for a second that was another drink recipe. With frozen corn!
Violet
@maye:
This. The team was good during the campaign. Heck, pretty much everyone can remember their messages – “Yes We Can!”, “Hope & Change!” Sure those were campaign slogans, but they worked. It can’t be that hard to come up with compelling slogans to get the message out there about what’s happening with health care, the economy, etc.
And Obama’s gotta step up and sell the message. That’s not his strong point, but it’s part of the job. This country likes their president to be A Leader. And that comes with certain responsibilities. It’s stupid, but that’s the way it is.
Sleeper
@rootless_e:
Well it’s easier to go out and fight for someone when you know he’ll be fighting alongside you. Right and wrong, that’s the perception many have now.
Uriel
@Comrade Darkness:
This explains it in a nut shell, with the added convienence of being from the same site:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/23/the-myth-of-the-filibuste_n_169117.html
It’s been looked into, procedurally. It isn’t going to happen.
Comrade Luke
Now this is interesting.
That whole thing should be blockquoted; FYWP.
(also, h/t Digby)
Comrade Mary
Ah, big thanks to all you hardcore drinkers for the fabulous ideas. Now I just have to decide …
Brian J
@John S.:
I’d show you the current “argument” I am having with a coworker via my Facebook wall on the filibuster and checks and balances (which he feels is somehow validated by Brown’s victory), but I don’t hate you, so I won’t do it.
mcc
@Comrade Luke: And for everyone not over 50, or anybody over 200% of poverty? Absolutely nothing.
Not only is that not reform, it’s not.. anything. It seems engineered to appeal to nobody except people who hate the health care bill but have no idea what it actually does.
Sleeper
@Citizen Alan:
THIS!!!!
I can’t agree with this strongly enough.
Comrade Luke
@mcc: Yup, pretty much. Also – the ones that vote.
I’m not saying that’s something I agree with, but it is the reality.
Sleeper
@Sleeper: should read right OR wrong.
Darryl
LOL.
An old apocryphal quote attributed to Churchill says the proper way to make a martini is to pour the gin while glancing briefly in the direction of the vermouth.
The Raven
Well, if he’d actually done it, yes. But see. Scroll down to “Current US Issues.” And. And.
He’s lying, just as much and in the same way as Reagan did.
Zach
I don’t think people understand that, assuming you can get the Senate to do something it doesn’t necessarily have to do, it will be easy to pass changes in the funding mechanism through reconciliation. Basically, few of the major interest groups will mind if the funding mechanism shifts from taxing care to income tax surcharges (possibly the chamber of commerce), and there are probably 51 Dems who will back the change. As far as pharma, insurers, hospitals, etc go, everything objectionable is already in the Senate bill.
This would leave Stupak as the only hurdle, and I think that this is a manageable problem. Things aren’t as bad as they seem on the HCR front.
Anonsters
Move along, nothing to see here:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006395
Ailuridae
@Comrade Luke:
And that’s it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what’s already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election.
Sigh. No Medicare buy-in had nearly 59 votes as a part of a bill that included the cost controls, insurance reforms and the ilk. The Conservadems, sans Lieberman, will willing to compromise their opposition to to a public health care expansion to get that done if they got other priorities included in the legislation (which is where the anti-trust exemption went0 Open Left actually polled the Democratic Caucus and got 44 firm Yays for a strong public option with two possible. There have never, ever, been 50 votes in the Senate for a large expansion of Medicare or a public option as standalone measures. Repeating this might be fun for the pony-wishers and allows them to confirm their tendency to think everything is just
John StewartBarack Obama not knowing how his ring works, but its just utter, complete bull shit.And we are about to find that out in painful detail if the house does the right thing and passes the Senate bill
Martin
@AB: TARP was triggered by a run on money market funds that started in mid Sept 2008.
Throughout 2008, as the housing security problem made itself more clear, hedge funds started to lose their investors. Hedge funds are basically unregulated money market funds. These are where the rich people invest. Quite a few hedge funds went under in early-middle 2008, but the money markets held up okay.
On Sept 16, The Reserve Fund, one of the first money markets ‘broke the buck’ – basically the value of a $1 investment was now worth less than $1. Money markets are designed to be minimal risk investments, almost as good as being in the bank – so while you may not make much money, you are virtually assured of not losing any. These are where little people invest and many retirement funds are dumped in money markets. So the first money market was presenting investors with a situation where they might lose money, and in order to recover the value of the fund, they were forced to sell off investments at the same rate that investors were withdrawing money. The faster money flows out by investors, the faster the fund needs to sell stocks, bonds, whatever they hold.
This spread to other money market funds. The next day, $140B was withdrawn from money markets and other funds reported they were potentially in trouble because the market was falling rapidly in response to all of this asset selling, which was triggering more withdrawals. The banks were caught up in this because many were managed by banks, but also because the bank assets were falling as the market fell.
The banks don’t keep $140B of cash on hand. They keep a few billion at most, and so as this run started, the banks stopped lending money, stopped investing, and instead started to hoard cash, which only caused the market to fall faster, to cause more of a run, but it was the only reasonable action they could take.
At risk was $1.7T in assets that could potentially have been withdrawn over the next few weeks, effectively bankrupting the nation. If $1T had been withdrawn, the stock market would have lost $1T in assets, the banks would have almost nothing to draw on to lead money, and all of those corporations that rely on loans to function (most of them) would stop dead.
In response to this, the fed guaranteed the money markets to slow the run, so at least nobody would lose money, but they needed to give the banks enough money so that if the withdrawals continued, that they could pay customers without having to stop doing all the other things we need banks to do.
Now, should all of this have happened? No, but all of this transpired over 2 weeks. We couldn’t reinvent the financial system during that time. There wasn’t anyone with any free time to actually work on the problem because they were desperately reacting to the crisis. TARP stopped the crisis from being a crisis. It did what we needed it to do, but it didn’t do anything to fix the underlying problem. We’re still waiting for that.
The Raven
@AB:
Krugman.
He also ended up writing, “Yuk, phooey, pass the thing, then fix it.”
Of course (if you’ve followed the links above) we know it has not been fixed.
Darryl
I’ve been trying to turn friends onto the glory that is the chipotle ‘tabasco’ sauce! It’s wonderful stuff.
(tabasco is a particular kind of pepper, whereas chipotle is a smoked jalapeno, so chilpotle tabasco doesn’t literally make sense, but it’s the chipotle version of the ‘tabasco sauce’ brand, if that helps)
fraught
@mr. whipple: I don’t remember liberal rage at Clinton. All the hatred then was from the Newt led mobs which started the day after his inauguration with gays in the military, travel gate, Vince Foster, Hillary’s health care, whitewater, etc. There was very little snark from the left because there were no blogs and everyone who wasn’t an idiot loved Clinton and had his back. Obama doesn’t have that support because bloggers go where the traffic is and Jane and Arriana and aravosis are trolling for the advertising dollar and that means they have to flog the cat and make noise to rev up their numbers. Arriana, imho, is a contrarian and just positions herself in opposition, period. Right against Clinton, left against Bush, right against Obama. She sees coin in opposing.
Martin
@Comrade Luke:
It doesn’t solve the problem that the Senate needs to solve – Medicare still becomes insolvent before the decade is out. That’s most of the point of the current legislation.
Jim
OT
This and JD Hayworth could make things a bit awkward for Senator Walnuts.
And I am forced to respectfully tip my cap to someone I dislike.
General Winfield Stuck
@John S.: It’s no use, I have ranted and ranted on the facts of both for months, and still the prog pony rears it’s head on myth and magical thinking. The only minor success is we hear less of nuking the filibuster as a solution to pass legislation. Something there is no chance of happening as no senator on the dem side would support it because it is insane.
reconciliation can work on a PO as long as it is constructed with enough offsets to not increase the budget past ten years to get past the Byrd rule. But the other reforms are subject to points of order and the Byrd rule and would likely come out looking like Vincent Price in the original The Fly. And or be sunseted.
At least that is my understanding, unless you know something I don’t/
Ailuridae
Apparently I can’t edit my own comments.
Here’s the open left whip count thread (but not the last of them)
http://openleft.com/diary/14574/latest-public-option-whip-count
There were never, ever 50 firm votes for a public option. And Lieberman was pretty clear that he was a “No” which makes the White House initial decision to not include the PO in the Senate bill all the more prescient. Reid operated in good faith with the snake and banked on 20 years of history etc and got burned.
kvenlander
You don’t need actual physical vermouth for a martini. Just find a picture of a vermouth bottle and pour very cold gin into a glass in front of it. An ice cube maybe if you’re going to be dawdling over your drink. And olives are a plus.
Cheers!
mcc
It seems like the interesting question is less “did we have 59 votes for medicare buy-in as a standalone proposal in December” and more “could we obtain 51 votes for buy-in in a few months if there were a serious push for one, for example with the endorsement of the AARP or something”.
(On a totally random note, checking Google to see if the AARP has an opinion on the medicare buy-in, what I find is this position paper from July in which they summarize their position by saying that medicare buy-in is a good idea but if and only if subsidies to purchase the medicare buy-in are available. And I would take this to mean: Medicare buy-in as an add-on to the exchange in the current HCR bill helpful, medicare buy-in as a completely standalone idea not helpful.)
Martin
@bayville: Not suspicious if you understand what it was originally designed to address.
And its worth noting that TARP was in response to a run on money markets, not on hedge funds. A lot of rich folks got the shit kicked out them in hedge funds, which never got bailed out, but when it came to retirement funds for regular people, the fed showed up with a solution.
There’s still plenty of blame to throw out there for allowing this to happen to begin with, but TARP wasn’t a bad plan. Would have been nice if it carried more consequences for the guys that fucked up the ship, but that was no reason to not do it since there were plenty of other mechanisms to achieve that outcome which have yet to come to pass.
mcc
*blinks*
I made a post and it disappeared into nothingness. Let me try that again.
It seems like the interesting question is less “did we have 59 votes for medicare buy-in as a standalone proposal in December” and more “could we obtain 51 votes for buy-in in a few months if there were a serious push for one, for example with the endorsement of the AARP or something”.
(On a totally random note, checking Google to see if the AARP has an opinion on the medicare buy-in, what I find is this position paper from July in which they summarize their position by saying that medicare buy-in is a good idea but if and only if subsidies to purchase the medicare buy-in are available. And I would take this to mean: Medicare buy-in as an add-on to the exchange in the current HCR bill helpful, medicare buy-in as a completely standalone idea not helpful.)
Ailuridae
@General Winfield Stuck:
There don’t need to be offsets for a Medicare plus expansion or a public option as they should be, satisfactory to any Parliamentarian’s whim, deficit neutral or better by design.
mcc
It seems like the interesting question is less “did we have 59 votes for medicare buy-in as a standalone proposal in December” and more “could we obtain 51 votes for buy-in in a few months if there were a serious push for one, for example with the endorsement of the AARP or something”.
(On a totally random note, checking Google to see if the AARP has an opinion on the medicare buy-in, what I find is this position paper from July in which they summarize their position by saying that medicare buy-in is a good idea but if and only if subsidies to purchase the medicare buy-in are available. And I would take this to mean: Medicare buy-in as an add-on to the exchange in the current HCR bill helpful, medicare buy-in as a completely standalone idea not helpful.)
Jim
@Ailuridae:
And, flame away, six months ago I think it was more reasonable to think that Snowe and her shadow would back health care*, or at least not back a filibuster, than to think that Lieberman wouldn’t. In fact, I’m still more than a little surprised that Lieberman voted with the Dems at all. Nelson wasn’t on my radar, but at this point, I count him as Lieberman Jr.
*(But at this point, without some very clear, very public commitment, it is folly to think Snowe is anything but Mitch McConnell’s tool)
Uriel
@Darryl:
It really is. Goes with just about everything. It’s one of the three “must have” staples in my house. Along with coffee and 5 lb. bags of frozen strawberries.
I have a strange diet.
(Edited to add- the strawberries are not, I should point out, one of the things the tabasco sauce goes with. My diet isn’t *that* weird.)
mcc
This post keeps getting eaten by the spam filter. Let me try without the link.
It seems like the interesting question is less “did we have 59 votes for medicare buy-in as a standalone proposal in December” and more “could we obtain 51 votes for buy-in in a few months if there were a serious push for one, for example with the endorsement of the AARP or something”.
(On a totally random note, checking Google to see if the AARP has an opinion on the medicare buy-in, what I find is a position paper from July in which they summarize their position by saying that medicare buy-in is a good idea but if and only if subsidies for the medicare buy-in are available. And I would take this to mean: Medicare buy-in as an add-on to the exchange in the current HCR bill helpful, medicare buy-in as a completely standalone idea not helpful.)
AB
@Darryl: @Martin:
Okay, so coming back for seconds here – it seems to me that all of this stuff is an event concerning a lot of money but relatively few banks. If all that money was handed out so fast, why would it affect unemployment, and what did it have to do with other, smaller banks getting “EATED”, as Atrios frequently posts about?
arguingwithsignposts
Re: TARP and the financial meltdown, two resources:
Frontline: Inside the Meltdown, The Warning and Breaking the Bank
and
This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show about the Economy.
General Winfield Stuck
@Ailuridae: Well, your the wonk expert on these things, so I defer. Though I would think that eliminating the Med. advantage subsidies would help with the cost and deficit neutrality. but the politics of it all is my bag, right or wrong.
gwangung
@Martin: So, are they still trying to unwind all the debt? Because I think I would get why nothing punitive has been enacted or more oversight enacted if all that debt is still wound up in these intractable balls and they still can’t figure out what debt goes where and who needs to take baths and who can afford to take baths without taking the system down even now.
Elie
@Svensker:
I don’t think that Carter or Reagan had the internet and 24/7 cable to deal with…might have been different for them and us if they had
Jean
@mr. whipple: Isn’t this rather HUGE news about the situation in Iraq that is covered nowhere? I mean, really. It’s like there’s never any good news about serious accomplishments.
AxelFoley
@Citizen Alan:
Yeah, we’ll see about that shit, dude.
My belief is Obama will be preparing for his second swearing in as President.
arguingwithsignposts
Comment in moderation.
For info on the financial meltdown, I highly recommend
Frontline.org: Inside the Meltdown, The Warning and Breaking the Bank
and
from thisamericanlife.org: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show about the Economy.
Just search for them. Frontline is video, TAL is audio.
Uriel
@fraught:
It was there, but since there were fewer outlets to disseminate it, you didn’t see it as readily as you do now, unless you sought it out or happened to be in the right place.
Being in academia at the time, I happened to see a lot of it. And I do remember Limbaugh making a special point of pounding the stuff endlessly in a “see, even liberals hate Clinton” meme.
But on, say, on the network news shows- not so much.
mcc
@Jean: There’s no disciplined message machine to hype up Democratic victories.
There are 2 (ideologically-opposite) disciplined message machines to hype up Democratic failures
Ailuridae
@mcc:
It seems like the interesting question is less “did we have 59 votes for medicare buy-in as a standalone proposal in December” and more “could we obtain 51 votes for buy-in in a few months if there were a serious push for one, for example with the endorsement of the AARP or something
As a functional question I agree with you. And its something progressives could actually push towards. Instead of, you know, the nonsense that gets bantied about in these threads that all ObamaRahma needed to do was want a Medicare buy-in or Public Option and it was done. Follow that openleft link; Harry Reid and whomever was involved from the Administration did some tough fucking sledding to get it as far as they did.
But, yes, going forward and partnering with a group like the AARP (whose membership open at 50) makes a lot of sense.
(On a totally random note, checking Google to see if the AARP has an opinion on the medicare buy-in, what I find is a position paper from July in which they summarize their position by saying that medicare buy-in is a good idea but if and only if subsidies for the medicare buy-in are available. And I would take this to mean: Medicare buy-in as an add-on to the exchange in the current HCR bill helpful, medicare buy-in as a completely standalone idea not helpful.
It wouldn’t be a subsidy but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t scale cost by income for everyone <50 who bought private insurance and not scale it for Medicare.
Martin
@AB: It in and of itself didn’t affect employment. The fact that people started to wake up to the realization that negative savings rate were dangerous things and started saving rather than spending (about 10% of discretionary spending by the public vanished), plus the end of cheap money for business to expand beyond reasonable means.
The unemployment came because banks got more careful (as they should have been all along) and because consumers got more careful (as they should have been all along). In other words, we should have always had 10% unemployment for the last decade.
Ailuridae
@Jean:
Juan Cole is funny Looking. Why would he be on TV? Its not like Steve Forbes is ever asked anything about anything. Oh, wait.
I have no idea who Juan Cole pissed off to not be a regular contributor on Countdown or Rachel but apparently he did it. They don’t even have decent Middle East experts.
Jim
@Uriel:
It was there, but since there were fewer outlets to disseminate it,
It’s still there, too; NAFTA, DOMA, DADT, Glass-Stiegel (Fairness Doctrine? or was that Reagan).
MikeJ
@Uriel:
I remember the day I stopped listening to I think it was Democracy Now, railing at Clinton for being so mean to Iraq. It was like they really didn’t understand what would happen with a republican pres. And now that they’ve found out, they don’t care how much worse it is.
mcc
I remember liberal rage at Clinton very clearly; I was one of the people at the Nader rallies in 2000.
(Note for the record: Though, honestly I wouldn’t have voted for him even if I’d been eligible to vote at the time. I liked and supported all the things Nader was saying but I knew our governor well enough to know I did not want him picking Supreme Court justices.)
mcd410x
Punching hippies stopped being funny 10 minutes ago.
Jim
I don’t know that FoxNews and The Washington Post are ideologically opposite (I snark, kind of).
mcc
@Jim: * Thinks *
…Okay, okay. Three disciplined message machines, of varying ideological inclinations and impact levels, to hype up Democratic failures
The Republic of Stupidity
@Jim:
Reagan was the one who shit-canned the Fairness Doctrine, along w/ the anti-trust laws, if I’m not mistaken.
What you can blame on Clinton was Not Reinstating Them When he Had The Chance™… that, and the Telecommunictions Act of 1996, which allowed the consolidation of so much of the MSM – radio, TV, & print – into so few hands. Thanks a whole lot for signing that one, Bill.
Clinton was the most user-friendly Dem Pres GOOPers could have ever asked for, and they STILL trashed him every chance they got. Ya think Obama might have heard some of this from Bill & Hillary by now…
Brick Oven Bill
Hello.
The government loans the banks money at zero interest. And then the banks loan that same money to the government at 3% interest. The original government money is printed. This is how the banks are making money, and is a tax on all Americans, in the form of future inflation.
WaterGirl
@Comrade Mary: You could make yourself an adult lemon shake-up. I make this with vodka, but your gin should work.
Make some simple syrup (boiling water & sugar). Mix simple syrup and fresh-squeezed lemon juice, add your gin and shake with half a lemon. Serve over ice. Oh, and you could add some of your fresh raspberries if you want.
moe99
Uh, General Stuck I seem to recall that Johnson was from Texas hill country which is more central than West Texas.
themann1086
@Ailuridae: Who did Juan Cole piss off? The entire conservative movement when he took Jonah Goldberg apart over the Iraq war. Being right is the worst crime one can commit against the wingnut wurlitzer.
Ailuridae
@Brick Oven Bill:
Where are banks loaning the government money again? Oh wait, they’re not.
Its good that you gold standard nuts finally realized there is no risk of inflation any time soon and have now moved on to “future inflation”
Comrade Luke
This Clinton conversation brings up an interesting question:
If we had everything we had now – 24/7 cable TV, blogs, etc – would Clinton have made it to a second term?
Or would we be reading posts with tags of Arkansas Carter?
Brick Oven Bill
It is called a ‘Treasury Bill’.
No relation. But the money supply has doubled.
mcc
@Comrade Luke: I would like to float the hypothesis that Bob Dole was unelectable under any circumstances
AB
@Martin: So you’re saying that full employment is when unemployment rate is 10%?
General Winfield Stuck
@moe99: Well, ok then. Central Texas. I are corrected.
Jim
@Comrade Luke: If we had everything we had now – 24/7 cable TV, blogs, etc – would Clinton have made it to a second term?
I’ll say yes. As Molly Ivins liked to say, that sumbitch was good, and his principle adversary, Gingrich, was/is really bad on TeeVee. Snide, smug, nasally, nasty. And, god love him, old man Dole….? So, basically, I think the dynamic would have remained largely the same. More important, I think, is the polarization of the parties. In Clinton’s first term, you still had Jeffords, old man Chaffee, Senators Cohen, Heinz (?). Even Alan Simpson hadn’t gone completely over to the Dark Side, and IIRC a Repub Senator from California who was in the New England mode?
mcd410x
There’s nothing quite like English Breakfast Tea.
Also, Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal …
bayville
@Ailuridae:
Maybe we have a different definition of what “clearly successful” means.
Comrade Luke
Man, Clinton really trounced Dole.
So the question now is: is the combination of 24/7 news and blogs make up for almost 10% of the electoral vote, and over 20% of the electoral college votes?
Doubtful, I guess.
FormerSwingVoter
This makes me happy:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0TBXZCU4qHM&pos=2
General Winfield Stuck
@FormerSwingVoter:
But. But/ Butte. He’s a corporatist sellout. This cannot be true.
MikeJ
@mcd410x:
Since I used to live in South Kensington, I’ll go with the blue and white, Chelsea.
Mnemosyne
@mcd410x:
Can we start doing wedgies now? Hippie wedgies are inherently funnier than punching.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne: I thought hippies liked being punched, with all the steamy piles they dump on us Obot cultist Liebercrat sellouts. I am confused, which is nothing abnormal.
Whispers
Read through the interview. Obama seems to still be delusional about the state of the economy. He seems to think it’ll fix itself.
And yes, the fact that people think the stimulus package is the same thing as the bank bailout is entirely his fault. He’s been terrible over the past year at communicating exactly what he’s been doing.
Mnemosyne
@AB:
I’m pretty sure Martin is saying that consumer overspending was concealing a lot of underlying problems with our economy and when those underlying problems came to the fore, we went up to the unemployment rate we would have had if we hadn’t had all of that consumer overspending keeping the economy going.
At least, that’s how it sounded to me.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
Yep, it was going to take a loss. And the tax will make it whole again. You know, the design of the thing and the President’s point you were disagreeing with.
You simply have nothing here. You keep moving on to different things hoping it sticks. Before the tax was proposed the upper end the government would have been out was about 100B and a more reasonable estimate was 60B. Now? Its going to be paid back in full.
It would have been awesome if the braying progressives had realized this a while ago and focused on things that actually matter like pushing for stronger financial reform in the watered down bill the House passed or addressing the Fed’s unwillingness to do its job.
Taobhan
I’m certainly baffled as to why the Dems are making such a big deal about losing one seat in the Senate. With all their howling, you’d think they just lost Congress and the White House to the Repubs. I mean, they weren’t able to use their super majority in the Senate anyway – thanks to the Senate’s bizzare rules and the Blue Dog’s willingness to join the Repubs on significant legislation like HCR. It was a formula for paralysis EVEN WITH A SUPER MAJORITY!
Heck, Bush never had a super majority and he was able to get his legislative agenda passed, thanks to the jelly-spined Dems who just rolled over. What did the electorate do to deserve one party which wants to be in control but is abominable at governing and another party that can’t figure out how to use its majority status? Is there some way we can hit the “reset” button and start all over with new political parties?
TuiMel
@maye:
No one who lived through the 1930’s is still alive? I better tell my mother, my aunts, and my next door neighbor…
Brick Oven Bill
On a personal basis, I have attempted to get some of this cheap government-bank-stimulus money to open a take-out pizza place. This government-bank-stimulus money would minimize my own business risk. There is no money to be had from the government-banks.
Like him or hate him, (I am not sure why anyone hates him), Glenn Beck illustrates the doubling of the money supply. This was one of his better moments.
I will continue where Glenn left off. The $10 trillion created out of thin air for the banks, lent back to the government at 3%, generates $300 billion a year in interest, and the associated future income stream. These are the ‘bank profits’ that we are receiving in small fraction from the federal government.
These will be eventually funded by us in the form of our dollars being devalued.
Ailuridae
@FormerSwingVoter:
That’s pretty solid. And if its an idea that was brewing in Paul Volcker’s head I have almost absolute faith in it.
Wile E. Quixote
@mcc
This is like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch. “There are two disciplined message machines of varying ideological inclinations to hype up Democratic failures, Fox News, Daily Kos and the Washington Post. No wait there are *three* disciplined message machines of varying ideological inclinations to hype up Democratic failures, Fox News, Daily Kos, the Washington Post and the New York Times. No, there are *four*, no wait, *amongst* the disciplined message machines of varying ideological inclinations to hype up Democratic failures are. Never mind, I’ll come in again.”
Martin
@AB: No, I’m saying that there’s an actual relationship between jobs and stuff that needs to be done. You crank up productivity to 11 and suddenly you run out of stuff to get done, therefore you run out of jobs to hand out. For the last decade, we borrowed money in order to keep people employed.
Here are some different questions: Why is 40 hours per week such a magical number? if we had a 36 hour work week, we’d be back at full employment, right? Why has larger amounts of basic education come when unemployment was high? If nobody entered the workforce until they were 25, we’d be back at full employment, right? What if Social Security started 5 years earlier. That’d lower unemployment as well. What if we just outlawed computers in the workplace? The precipitous drop in productivity would also lower unemployment.
What variable in this equation should get changed?
bayville
In closing, anyone believing the fabrications and distortions on how successful TARP has been, here are some articles that dispel the Treasury Dept. (Geithner/Obama spin).
It’s only going to get worse.
Ailuridae
@Brick Oven Bill:
You really just have no idea what you are talking about right?
Sleeper
@MikeJ: If that’s your standard for everything, then you’ll never get anything but “slightly better than the absolute worst.” The Bush I/Clinton policy on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. That shouldn’t be criticized? All we can ever hope for is “not quite Bush?” Fuck that.
mcd410x
@MikeJ: Saw a 2-2 game with Boro at Stamford Bridge from about the 12 row behind the goal once. All 4 goals scored at my end. Back when they had Jimmy Floyd and Gudjohnsen.
Shame about the Mad Russian, South Kensington is a lovely area and where I try to stay when I visit.
Comrade Darkness
@Martin: No, actually, 36 hour work week doesn’t create any jobs. There is no panacea for unemployment on this route, the per employee costs are too high. It actually loses jobs. Look at France. All it does it push up productivity for those with jobs, and in an interesting side-effect, means that people go home for an extra half a day and do shit for themselves, on their houses, cars, mend their clothes, whatever have you. Which means hourly service-level employment is significantly lower than in a society where people will pay someone else to take care of stuff they don’t have time to do.
bayville
@Ailuridae:
Oh. that tax will make everything whole again? Oh I forgot about that. That’ll make a profit for everyone. Why don’t we give out $700 billion to the big banks all the time then if that’s all it would take?
Sheesh.
Seriously, I don’t think you have an understanding of what is going on here?
I think a little more studying is in order.
J. Michael Neal
@FormerSwingVoter: This. As I’ve been trying to tell people for months, the original Glass-Steagall was largely irrelevant to the crisis. The problem wasn’t the connections between the commercial banks and the investment banks. The problem, in this regard at least, was the connections between either and prop trading. There are actually good reasons for commercial banks to have connections to investment banks. The main problem I see with this proposal is that I’d like to see investment banks restricted in their prop trading as well, though that’s a difficult task, as the core functions of an investment bank are rather hard to distinguish from prop trading; there are elements of the latter that are very clearly prop trading, but the definitions necessary for regulation are pretty fuzzy.
The Wall Street Journal article on this talks about a few other things that are important. These includes steps to limit the size of banks, which I assume means a sliding scale of capital requirements. That’s very good. It talks about banning banks from running hedge funds, which is a really good idea, particularly if it includes investment banks.
Also, maybe this will dispel the idea that Obama has completely frozen Paul Volcker out of the decision making process, since his fingerprints are all over this idea.
Edit: However, I should note that I have zero confidence that Congress will pass any of this. It isn’t even a matter of how much Obama pushes it. I see no way that you could get 60 votes for this package, under any circumstances, no matter what Obama does. The best I’m hopeful for is that Obama is doing what Matt Yglesias has advocated for a while, which is picking financial regulatory reform as a place to push for something and fail in order to make political hay. I’m for that in a way that I’m not with health care. The latter is a place to take what you can get.
Brick Oven Bill
NY Times: Obama Bank Tax.
Here, Barry will obtain on our behalf $8.5 billion dollars from the banks that he lends money at zero percent and pays $300 billion to every year in juice.
This is only 2.8%. Christ, I think Tony Soprano got twenty percent. The Italians at least provided excellent pizza. And what a good TV show.
Martin
@Comrade Darkness:
Then what is the solution? How do you offset the loss of jobs due to productivity? We can’t just wish and make them return.
mcd410x
@Ailuridae: Atrios has been doing just this. And cramdown. And Fed/full employment.
J. Michael Neal
@Martin:
Expand services. Wait for a falling currency to make exports more attractive and imports less so, though a meltdown in Greece could stymie that by wrecking the Euro. Readjust the economy away from it’s previous focus. Saying that we would have had 10% unemployment all along is true, but only insofar as everything remains equal. It almost certainly wouldn’t, and won’t.
That said, there are some very real structural problems at work. It’s going to take a lot of changes to move things around. The next few years are going to be painful as we try to make them. There’s no getting around that.
Martin
Expand services against what income? We were borrowing just to support what we previously had. And a falling currency has a long-ass way to go to catch up to 3rd world wages.
Expanding services requires a shift in income from the few to the many so people are in a position to participate, but that undermines the efforts toward export. A shift toward non-importable consumption could work, but that’s largely public works.
Ailuridae
@bayville:
Yeah, actually the tax will make up the difference – whether it be 100 billion or more likely 50 billion.
Its good that you’ve dropped some of your sillier lines of argument from earlier in the thread though.
Ailuridae
@J. Michael Neal:
: However, I should note that I have zero confidence that Congress will pass any of this. It isn’t even a matter of how much Obama pushes it. I see no way that you could get 60 votes for this package, under any circumstances, no matter what Obama does. The best I’m hopeful for is that Obama is doing what Matt Yglesias has advocated for a while, which is picking financial regulatory reform as a place to push for something and fail in order to make political hay. I’m for that in a way that I’m not with health care. The latter is a place to take what you can get.
The prop trading stuff could be passed through reconciliation without incident.
J. Michael Neal
@Martin: Sure. Those are some of the long term structural problems that need to change. Once the debt binge is worked off, which will happen eventually, there will be more income devoted to spending, though not like what it was.
It will also help as the spending we do changes. Spending on more and bigger houses is a terrible way of investing capital. It doesn’t aid productivity, it doesn’t add additional capacity, and, given that far more houses were built than anyone actually needed, it didn’t make anyone better off. Simply reducing the amount of both investment and spending that goes to housing will make a big difference.
Again, though, it’s going to take time to work off the debt accumulation. Until that happens, there can’t be a lot of progress. This is one of the reasons why the administration is shoveling more money into the banks. They have a big debt problem, too. TARP alleviated the acute crisis, but was never large enough to fix the problem, just to prevent it from collapsing entirely. That’s why the government is letting the banks borrow for nothing and accumulate profits.
People complaining that the banks have returned to profitability, and thus should be doing more lending, are looking in the wrong place. The problem isn’t with their income statements; it’s on their balance sheets. They have to make huge profits in order to keep up with the value they’re losing on their assets, let alone building up sufficient capital reserves to restart large scale lending. The biggest problem with the huge bonuses they are paying isn’t that it’s somehow not fair; it’s that every dollar that the banks pay out is a dollar that they no longer have, and thus an additional dollar they need to get their balance sheets straightened out.
Your focus on productivity gains as the problem is just wrong. Productivity gains are a good thing. It’s that simple. There are a lot of other changes that we need to make to get the economy running properly again, but worrying that productivity is growing too fast is not one of them.
J. Michael Neal
@Ailuridae:
How? What qualifies it as a budget issue that meets the requirements for reconciliation?
This is aside from my doubts that you will even be able to get 50 Senators on board, but I don’t see how that is even relevant. Regulatory rules can’t go through reconciliation. The tax on big banks, sure, I can see that, but not rules on prop trading.
Nellcote
@rob!:
I think Prez. Obama addressed that back in the primary with his “gaffe” about people suffering and being scared in this bad economy/changing world and so they bitterly cling to their guns and bibles. Of course the media helps to personlize this on him.
Darryl
Martin is much smarter at this stuff than I am, but I’ll try to explain again, with my amateur ability.
Nike, Coke, UPS, Proctor and Gamble, Bank of America, Intel, Dell, ATT, IBM, Cisco, Johnson and Johnson, Wal-Mart, Target, Boeing, Delta, Sears, Exxon, Conoco, Visa, the list goes on to several hundred more corporations…90% of the commercial transactions in your life involve the major corporations in America. The major corporations in america fund their short term operations through commercial paper. Commercial paper means corporate bonds. Basically, 180-day loans for liquidity that gives them the cash to buy supplies, pay workers, keep the lights on, etc. Those bonds are issued, sold, and traded, by the major investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, etc. If those banks collapse, or are thrown into confusion, all that paper is jeopardized or frozen. Imagine the businesses that dominate the majority of american commerce being suddenly unable to fund continuing operations. At that point, you’re not talking about little effects on unemployment, you’re talking about the complete and total meltdown of the world economy.
Uriel
@WaterGirl:
Sorry, I just had to fix that for you. Gin. *Shudder.*
Ailuridae
@J. Michael Neal:
Sorry, I got confused between this and the tax related to TARP.
The regulation of prop trading would be a very good issue over which to push the filibuster rule.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Ailuridae:
But he does it w/ so much panache, he can’t possibly imagine he’s wrong…
When you really have no point, Style Counts For Everything™…
J. Michael Neal
@Uriel:
Hey, if you won’t drink it, that leaves more for me.
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck:
And while I’m fixing things…
Now, if you guys want an intelligent and poignant commentary on the issue of presidential politics in modern America, I should mention that Frisky Dingo season two is back on Adult swim. Boosh!
Darryl
meatwad: This is Halloween. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Shake: I don’t like you Ever. Now hold still. You’re about to be both Hall…and Oates.
meatwad: People ain’t gonna get that.
Shake: Yeah you’re right.
Uriel
@J. Michael Neal: Take it. Please. With my blessing.
I had all I’ll ever need on a rail-road track skipping school when I was 15.
I swear, you could put an eye-dropper full of that stuff in an Olympic sized pool, and it would render the thing unfit for human use.
cat48
@bayville
Ratigan keeps talking about the amt of money that the Treas would be responsible for if no one paid their loans back. That is not going to happen according to Barofsky. Ratigan is a fear monger who is pissed about the bailouts just trying to whip up anger. The $24T total he keeps using daily is the amt if no one pays back their mortgage, car loan, home loan, etc. That is not going to happen. I pay mine every month.
MikeJ
@Uriel: I might guess that fifteen year olds neither obtain the highest quality gin, nor do they appreciate quality liquor the way an adult would when they get it.
I will drink other things, but gin in the summer and rye in the winter are my standbys.
Uriel
@Darryl: Ok- this is probably obnoxiously long, but I love this bit:
Taqu’il: He’s a one-hit wonder: global warming.
Killface: Cured it.
Taqu’il: His foreign policy is unrealistic…
Killface: Global warming.
Taqu’il: His domestic policy is non-existent…
Killface: Global warming.
Taqu’il: Health care…
Killface: Global warming.
Taqu’il: Immigration…
Killface: Global warming.
Taqu’il: Welfare reform…
Killface: Global warming.
Taqu’il: Man, do you even know what these terms mean?
Killface: I…know that I cured global warming.
Taqu’il: See? He’s a one-trick pony.
Killface: Well, it’s a pretty big pony.
Move the words around, and it pretty much sums up about 80%-90% of the political class and its attendant chatterers.
Uriel
@MikeJ:
Blah blah blah, buddy. All I know, is that at the age of fifteen, I was able to fully appreciate the spender of boxed blush wine, and according to Ann Althouse, that is all the class and sophistication one person could ever need.
While on your side, the big endorsement comes from Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre.
Point. Set. MATCH! Subtle elegance for the win!
(That was probably far too self-referential, although google analytics tells me that readers of Sadly no! are over represented here. Regardless, it tickled me, and that’s all that matters.)
Chuck Butcher
@fraught:
I suppose you can just make things up as you go along and people who were in diapers during Clinton will just eat up your evil left garbage. So you’re unaware of where the anger about triangulation and the DLC comes from? Or maybe DADT? Or…
Maybe you’d like to equate the left with Hillary worship? PUMAs are seriously mocked by the left, all the left could see was WJC all over again. Well, you’re not too late for the hate the left party – but you really ought to try to ,,, not be quite so easily mocked.
Oh to be sure, the left took his back as the GOP bullshit picked up real steam, but it wasn’t because they loved him. I didn’t and still don’t, but he was a good politician. In fact, for all his short-comings I like Obama a lot more and he’s also so FOS his eyes have to be brown.
Ailuridae
@cat48:
More accurately, the 24T total would only apply if the US devolved into Mad Max like dystopia. There’s dishonest, there’s cravenly dishonest and then there’s Dylan Ratigan on the size of the bailout.
Uriel
@Ailuridae:
Golf clap. Well played.
AB
@Martin: So people can’t get jobs because everything that needs to be done is being done? That’s really frustrating to hear.
Chuck Butcher
@AB:
You probably don’t want to hear about those bailed out investment banks using that money to play in the oil market and drive the prices up in the face of falling demand or about other commodity trading?
It’ll all be fine, a pittance of a tax will change behavior…
BTW, how much of AIG do we still own and how much of that money that went 100% value to the bailed out banks is it we’ll recoup? Funny how that “paid back” gets all strange when you look at the rest of the dip the banks took.
It’s nice that Obama made you feel better, that’s much more constructive than kicking them in the nuts until they straighten up. Don’t mind me, I’m a dirty lefty.
blackwaterdog
@The Populist:
Obama’s biggest mistake this year was to treat Americans as adults.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Brick Oven Bill:
Fuck, Bill, your dollar was headed for devaluation the day that Alan Greenspan (Mister Andrea Mitchell) got appointed Fed chairman.
Try to pay attention. Everything that has happened to our monetary situation in the last ten years has hung from Greenspan’s glib policies.
Uriel
@blackwaterdog:
Chuck Butcher
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Yes, but it never hurts to remember the BushCo tax policies, either. (ok StRR as well)
There is also “free trade”
Chuck Butcher
@Uriel:
I’d find it entirely possible to argue that this hasn’t happened either. I’ve laughed at “bi-partisan” since Obama was clawing his way up against Hillary. There were a few other things I laughed at as well – but a catalogue might put me in the Hate O catagory which I’m not.
Since you were just played like a fucking child in regard to Banks I’d wonder why you picked this point to make this particular statement.
Xenos
@Brick Oven Bill:
To restate TZ, above, this is new to you?
The reason we had no inflation during the first 7.8 Bush years was that there was no real growth. The reason we have not had inflation since then, in spite of doubling the money supply, was because the cash injection offset an immense and sudden deflationary collapse.
Meanwhile, the dollar is relatively stable. Maybe you would have preferred deflationary collapse. To each his own, I suppose.
Chuck Butcher
@Xenos: @Xenos:
Virtually accurate unless you account for the top 1% and particularly the top 0.1% earners. The actual collapse that BushCo presided over was staved off by loans, particularly home loans for quite awhile but we know how that worked out. What some people don’t realize is that the entire economy was held up by spending of loaned money rather than earned money. Part of the reason the hole is so deep and long lasting now is that the consumers never had earnings to support the system and still don’t and won’t.
This economy is built on the spending of the bottom 2/3 of the economic ladder and now all that unearned money is gone out of the system. The spoils for the plutocrats is now going to be paid for – by the bottom once again.
Chuck Butcher
@Xenos:
In relation to other currencies it is, in relation to comodities it is tanking. That is what gold is all about, to use an example, and oil, and…
brantl
His problem in this, though, JC, is that he leaves it sounding as though the financial problem is his fault, and that isn’t true. The fault lies in the conservative wet-dream of no-regulation-optimizes-growth policies of the Bush Administration and the Republicans.
CynDee
@Ailuridae: It was just sick that they transported his dead body across the country so that Nancy could have him a multi-gazillion-dollar state funeral to lavishly finish off a run of unprecedented and inappropriate hubris at the further expense of the American people.
Talk about docking a luxury cruise ship in a disaster area . . .
Annie
@arguingwithsignposts:
Dont you mean kitteh attack textual conspiracy theory :)))
arguingwithsignposts
@Annie:
Yes, LOL. I definitely felt like that picture while reading dry analytical academese yesterday. Unfortunately, the forecast calls for more of the same.
Uriel
@Chuck Butcher: Since you were just played like a fucking child in regard to Banks I’d wonder why you picked this point to make this particular statement. Ok, so you were dong this over here as well. Obviously I committed some terrible offense in your eyes somewhere along the lines, but I’m pretty sure I have no idea what it happens to be.
If you would be so kind, point me in the direction of my horrible blunder- because, unless “Banks” is a brand of gin you happen to prefer, I’m pretty sure I’ve said exactly two things about banks here: “jack” and “squat.”
Really, man- unreasoning rage is a terrible drug.
Uriel
@Uriel: Blockquote fail, relating to:
xian
@Comrade Luke: @Comrade Luke:
but how likely is that in a climate where Obama’s about to endorse entitlement reform? convince me: I need hope!
xian
@xian: @fraught:
>@mr. whipple: I don’t remember liberal rage at Clinton
You must not have been reading the Nation then.
xian
i keep fscking up the attribution process here / sorry
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Of course. We’ve all known for about three years now that Obama talks a good game. Now this morning I see he’s made some sort of new proposal on financial regulation, and maybe there’s some teeth in it this time because the Dow immediately dropped 200 points. Good, he needs to keep hammering at this all the way until November, and he has to be seen by the electorate as following up on his sternly-worded speeches with meaningful action against these financial pricks.