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You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / We’re Already Ruled by Teabaggers

We’re Already Ruled by Teabaggers

by John Cole|  May 26, 20107:07 pm| 81 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Assholes, Going Galt

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Everyone is linking to this John Heilman piece, which contains this quote:

“Today, it’s hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry, I heard the president described as ‘hostile to business,’ ‘anti-wealth,’ and ‘anti-capitalism’; as a ‘redistributionist,’ a ‘vilifier,’ and a ‘thug.’ A few days later, I recounted this experience to the same Wall Street CEO who’d called the Volcker Rule a testicular blow, and mentioned I’d been told that one of the most prominent megabank chiefs, who once boasted to friends of voting for Obama, now refers to him privately as a ‘Chicago mob guy.’ Do all your brethren feel this way? I asked. ‘Oh, not everybody—just most of them,’ he replied. ‘Jamie [Dimon]? Lloyd [Blankfein]? They might not say Obama’s a socialist, but they come pretty close.’”

Much like the teabag morons showing up to HCR debates screaming “KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE,” the CEO’s are on the dole for billions and are then bemoaning socialism. I guess they think those no interest loans that allows them to keep giving themselves huge bonuses is just a special reward for their capitalist genius.

Just hang them all.

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Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    The Dangerman

    May 26, 2010 at 7:15 pm

    I might not say these fuckers should be lined up against a wall, but I come pretty close.

  2. 2.

    Maude

    May 26, 2010 at 7:15 pm

    Hanging’s too good for them

    Point for Obama.

  3. 3.

    jenniebee

    May 26, 2010 at 7:16 pm

    Wall Street has an unfortunately low lamppost/douchebag ratio. So some of them will have to share.

  4. 4.

    Alan

    May 26, 2010 at 7:17 pm

    No doubt they all tune in to Glen Beck each evening.

  5. 5.

    Tonal Crow

    May 26, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    What a bunch of whiners. Will they just Go Galt ™ already and let us adults run the show? If you can’t make big money as a big bank in America, you’re doing it badly wrong. The spread between the rates you pay and the rates you charge guarantees success to all but those on the Everest of incompetence.

  6. 6.

    TR

    May 26, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    @The Dangerman:

    They really are clueless, aren’t they?

    Seriously, if they keep talking and acting like this, it is only a matter of time before someone tries to kill one of them. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet, frankly.

  7. 7.

    Starfish

    May 26, 2010 at 7:19 pm

    Wait, aren’t you the person who was calling out people for wanting to hang some BP execs the other day?

  8. 8.

    Starfish

    May 26, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    @TR: The people who want to kill them are waiting for 2011 so the estate tax is no longer repealed.

  9. 9.

    Jim C.

    May 26, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Hmm. Sometimes you know somebody is doing something right when they have the right enemies.

    If Wall Street wasn’t ticked at this point then I’d be ticked at Obama.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    May 26, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    Just so’s you know, Mr. Cole — I already linked to Heilemann’s article late Sunday/early Monday. So “we” were near the front of the pack, at least. (Ya gotta start skimming your own site, dude.)

  11. 11.

    Violet

    May 26, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    They should count themselves lucky that people armed with pitchforks and torches haven’t overrun their secured fortresses.

    Is there any way to charge retroactive interest on those loans? Like, for any bonus granted to one of these scum suckers their bank has to pay interest of 10% on all the money the government loaned them. So it would be fine if they wanted to increase their pay or pay themselves a bonus. They’d just have to be willing to let their bank pay interest on that interest free soshulist loan.

  12. 12.

    Alan

    May 26, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    @Tonal Crow: They could go Galt but none of them would fit Rand’s profile–none of them create anything. They all forewent the creator requisite and went straight for the money. All they are is money sucking leeches.

  13. 13.

    John Cole

    May 26, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    @Anne Laurie: I suck.

  14. 14.

    Keith G

    May 26, 2010 at 7:24 pm

    In my view, the really weird thing is how those feeling are echoed in various groups in all social economic levels from the jet set to the double-widers; coastal bankers to laid off carpenters.

    Thankfully these trans-status groups are not vary large, just amazing in their diversity.

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    May 26, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    @John Cole: But as long as you can get John Heilemann to write your bio, you’ll be on the record as a blog-omniscent superjeenyus. Just a suggestion.

  16. 16.

    Derelict

    May 26, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    Not hanging. Not shooting. No bodily harm.

    Just take away all their money. Put them AND their families out on the street and let them rely on the same services and safety nets that the average laid-off Joe or Jane has.

    That should be the punishment, since it surely fits the crime.

  17. 17.

    TR

    May 26, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    @Starfish:

    Heh. Well played.

  18. 18.

    FormerSwingVoter

    May 26, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    I can’t believe how tone-deaf the Wall Street bigwigs are. Do they not understand that every time they talk, they remind us all how much we wish they were in a rocket headed for the center of the sun?

  19. 19.

    The Dangerman

    May 26, 2010 at 7:31 pm

    Here’s an idea for a new reality TV show; make these fuckers live out in the street for a while (with apologies to the Mel Brooks film with this basic premise). It should be called:

    “Dude, Where’s My Caviar?”

    Derelict: Jinx, owe you a Coke.

  20. 20.

    RSR

    May 26, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    They really believe they are the catalyst; that this economic engine cannot run without their financial innovations. And in a sense, they’re right: almost the entire last decade was financed by their recycling the same money over and over again through different instruments to keep the peons flush enough to keep purchasing.

    The fact that a lot of that money probably couldn’t be paid back? Nobodycoddanode! (or however you spell that).

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 26, 2010 at 7:35 pm

    Just hang them all.

    I say we feed them to Tunch, instead. Or perhaps not, he might get food poisoning.
    BTW How is our favorite kitteh?

  22. 22.

    Citizen Alan

    May 26, 2010 at 7:39 pm

    @Starfish:

    Wait, aren’t you the person who was calling out people for wanting to hang some BP execs the other day?

    Why, yes. I do believe he was. I guess what’s acceptable discourse depends on whose ox is getting gored on a particular day.

    Tony Hayward and Lloyd Blankfein are both oligarchs, John, and they act the way they do because that is the way oligarchs act. They will continue to act this way as long as our society remains an oligarchy. So what do you propose to do about the fact that we live in an oligarchy, John? Other than write scathing blog posts, of course.

  23. 23.

    Bruce (formerly Steve S.)

    May 26, 2010 at 7:44 pm

    Just hang them all.

    That would be a waste of rope.

    My suggestion for capping the oil leak is to sail a supertanker directly over it, then sink it. We’ll need some ballast, of course. Let’s see, what do we have far too much of that has no redeeming social value. Hmm. Can’t quite think of it but it rhymes with Ball Fleet Wankers. Also something that rhymes with Boil Consecutives. Somebody help me out.

  24. 24.

    Kryptik

    May 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    Why is it that the ones who act the most entitled are the ones that decry ‘Entitlement Programs’ for people who actually could USE them?

  25. 25.

    scav

    May 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.): well, mentally they’re dense but physically they’re a little pudgy and fat floats.

  26. 26.

    El Cid

    May 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    They’re pretty used to getting what they want by shouting loud and demanding it and whining, and hiring right wing minions & fart tanks to go out and scream for it, so, why not?

  27. 27.

    jl

    May 26, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    ‘Just hang them all.’

    Cole is shrill yet? That sounds more like Tunch has taken over Cole’s computer and hijacked the blog again, except the natural Tunch conclusion of ‘and eat them’ was left out.

    edit: I second schrodinger’s cat, let’s have a pic of Tunch, eating some bank. That would work and the idea should be submitted to the WH, for, nothing but nothing is too big for Tunch!

  28. 28.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 26, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    @scav: Well, they can be on the Biggest Loser, first!

  29. 29.

    Kryptik

    May 26, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    @jl:

    Nah, Tunch has better taste than to eat other fatcats.

  30. 30.

    schrodinger's cat

    May 26, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    @Kryptik: Are you calling Tunch, fat? Blasphemy!

  31. 31.

    El Cid

    May 26, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    @Kryptik: Because that’s not money going to them, and also it suggests that one of the proper functions of government is to use money and institutional service to improve the lives of ordinary citizens, which is completely not the view of the role of government by the capitalist class (and, yes, there really is one, and they themselves identify as a social group, it isn’t just ‘Marxist’ critics).

  32. 32.

    jenniebee

    May 26, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Speaking of BP, is anybody else following @BPGlobalPR on Twitter?

  33. 33.

    Geeno

    May 26, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    There MAY be enough piano wire, but I doubt there’s enough lampposts on Wall St. Seriously, these fuckers need to be killed for the good of society.

  34. 34.

    hal

    May 26, 2010 at 7:55 pm

    Meanwhile, some Liberal/Progressives accuse Obama of being BFF’s with Wallstreet.

    Why the dichotomy in perception from left to right?

  35. 35.

    Lurking Canadian

    May 26, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    To me, this is the money quote of the article:

    To be that casual and dismissive about it, you know, I think that captures a part of it where there is a certain arrogance of power—like, ‘We can do it without them.’ Well, it might be that you can do it without them, but it’s a dangerous way of thinking.

    If you didn’t read that far, “do it without them” means “get reelected without Wall Street’s money”.

    I can’t imagine a clearer example of the role of money in politics. Wall Street is pissed off because they aren’t getting what they thought they paid for. The president is “arrogant” for the “dangerous” thought that he doesn’t need their money. They really, honestly think the country belongs to them.

    Or, shorter: How many divisions has Goldman Sachs?

  36. 36.

    bobbo

    May 26, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    It’s a good thing everyone’s linking to it, because for some reason I can’t fathom, Obama doesn’t seem to want people to know.

  37. 37.

    mcd410x

    May 26, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    Digby describes the White House as flaccid. Sounds correct.

  38. 38.

    PeakVT

    May 26, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    Just hang tax them all like Eisenhower.

    Legalized. Until the competition to have the largest number of zeros in one’s salary becomes pointless, these guys won’t stop their antics.

  39. 39.

    Yutsano

    May 26, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    @hal: Mostly because he didn’t instantly and unilaterally nationalize Wall Street and re-distribute the seized wealth to the firebaggers huddled masses of hard working Americans. It’s really all about blog hits, they keep up the poutrage they get more hits.

  40. 40.

    jl

    May 26, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    I will add a positive note, since Cole seems to at his gloomy pole today.

    I read an article about financial reform during the Great Depression. Took seven years of partial fixes, followed by set-backs, before final system was put into law that worked so well for 50 years or so. And in the face of similar opposition from Wall Street.

    The Pecora Commission was designed to be an ineffective whitewash. But a combination of an educable leader in Pecora, and cricumstance, made it effective.

    So, we are going down that same road again. Complete with deluded fiscal hawks doing their best to mess up the slow, weak, and partial recovery.

    OK to get mad, OK to (in a responsible way, of course) get even.

    But, it has only been about two years since the crisis, and we are still at the beginning of what is likely to be a five to ten year struggle to fix the system.

    Unless things move so much quicker now, that another crisis will blow us out of the water in three to four years. But I will not think about that right now.

  41. 41.

    Emma

    May 26, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    Derelict: Yeah. Perfect.

  42. 42.

    El Cid

    May 26, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    I don’t imagine this being the focus of much coverage here:

    Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.
    __
    The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.
    __
    The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.
    __
    The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa’s post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky’s request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week’s nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.
    __
    They will also undermine Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a “responsible” power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.

    Peres of course denies the information in the declassified documents, but I don’t really comprehend what he’s supposedly saying:

    “There is no foundation to, and no basis in reality for the report,” the statement read. “To our regret, the newspaper article was based on documents that merely constitute written interpretations on the part of government elements in South Africa – not on documents that present facts.”
    __
    “The publications do not include any original and signed Israeli document that confirms the existence of talks or negotiations on a subject of this kind,” the president’s spokesman said. “The president’s residence is distressed by the fact that The Guardian did not see fit to approach senior government officials in Israel to request a response on the matter. The presidential residence intends to send a sharp letter about this to the editor and to demand that the correct facts be published.”

    Clearly if the documents are found from another nation and not the words of the state of Israel, they don’t exist and are not facts. The proper way to investigate is, of course, to ask the Israeli government what they think you should write and how you should characterize official declassified documents from non-Israeli nations which are presumably not portraying fictional meetings and negotiations.

  43. 43.

    Geeno

    May 26, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    @jl: Sorry – I won;t feel complete without a few rotting bodies dangling in the wind.

  44. 44.

    frankdawg

    May 26, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    I have to believe that the current crop of capitalists are going to cause an resurgence of communist success. Once the teabagger crowd wakes up to find they are living a company town, being paid in company script and end the month deeper in dept to the company Marxism is going to sound pretty good.

    I just don’t think these assholes have thought out the end game for their relentless greed and abuse of power.

  45. 45.

    Allison W.

    May 26, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    @bobbo:

    Obama doesn’t want people to know? How do you figure that?

  46. 46.

    PeakVT

    May 26, 2010 at 8:07 pm

    I don’t really comprehend what he’s supposedly saying

    Peres is calling you an anti-Semite for talking about the issue.

  47. 47.

    JMG

    May 26, 2010 at 8:10 pm

    I wonder what would happen if unknown terrorists took one or two Wall Street CEOs off the count. My guess is martial law and the indefinite suspension of the Constitution. But it might be worth it.

  48. 48.

    Allison W.

    May 26, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    @mcd410x:

    How do you want the WH to behave? Oh never mind……just like Bush.

  49. 49.

    Doctor Science

    May 26, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    Is the article worth clicking through all those damn pages for?

  50. 50.

    El Cid

    May 26, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    @hal: In Roosevelt’s moves to rein in the death spiral of capitalism of the 1920s, he was backed by a portion of the capitalist class which saw their stability at risk both domestically and internationally (i.e., Rockefellers). However, the standard Liberty League nuts and certain industries (for example, as represented by the National Association of Manufacturers) decried the reforms as soshullist, red, commonist, etc.

    Simultaneously, actual soshullists were often pushing for the reforms (many of which resembled earlier planks of the Soshullist Party election platforms of the 10s and 20s), while those hoping for a soshullist revolution rightly recognized that reforms would likely maintain a system they hated while blocking what they felt would be a possible and needed transformation away from the capitalism which had brought the crisis about.

    Backing away from applying this the current President and his policies, there really would be no contradiction and no innovation to suggest that American policymakers were objectively quite close to and assisting of the capitalist class while that same class and/or its hired spokestongues denounced any attempts to limit or tax them as Bolshevik heresy.

    Sure, you might characterize such a relationship as the best possible for the moment and/or much needed changes, but there’s no fundamental contradiction to suggest that the American nation-state in reality acts to buttress the fortunes and well-being of the super-rich while that class or its minions scream about their ill-treatment by their lessers in government.

  51. 51.

    DonkeyKong

    May 26, 2010 at 8:28 pm

    Pump Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti using a colonic hose until they explode a la Mr. Creosote.

    At $23,000 a bottle thats worth every dime.

  52. 52.

    Citizen Alan

    May 26, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    The thing about Obama that breaks my heart is that he’s a brilliant politician, but I increasingly think he’s just the wrong man for the times. The problems which are tearing this country apart cry out for an FDR or a Lincoln. I’d settle for an Eisenhower. We appear to be stuck with Neville Chamberlain.

  53. 53.

    Mike Kay

    May 26, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    HOW CAN THIS BE!

    The firebaggers tell us obama is a corporatist and a puppet of wall street.

  54. 54.

    Robert Waldmann

    May 26, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Am I defending bankers ?!?!? Fraid so. The loans are not no interest loans. I think the Treasury made an annualized return of 20% off its loans to Goldman Sachs. The Tarp loans were in exchange for preferred shares with interest payments of 5% per year (preferred shares means if they banks prefer not to pay that interest they aren’t bankrupt but they all have paid so far). Plus warrants (warrents ?) them thingies. The Treasury got them thar thingies too.

    I think it is reasonably likely that the Federal government will make a profit bailing the banks out (counting of course the interest it pays on the bonds it sold to raise the money to bail out the banks). The current guess of the cost of the whole shebang is $ 87 billion and that includes GM, Chrystler, Fannie and Freddie (and AIG but since the money to AIG went straight on to banks I call that a bank bailout). The just banks part is around zero give or take ten or twenty billion.

    I think the current guess is pessimistic (the estimated cost has been falling like a stone).

  55. 55.

    Robert Waldmann

    May 26, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    Of course the bankers are arrogant idiots who almost destroyed the world economy. Obama has been much too soft on them.

    But they didn’t get no interest loans.

  56. 56.

    asiangrrlMN

    May 26, 2010 at 9:14 pm

    @Citizen Alan: What more can Obama himself do? Wrest total control from Congress and declare a fiefdom? Neville Chamberlain? Gah.

    @Allison W.: Or, what you said. Obama is not Superman. He cannot fix everything all by his lonesome. No one could.

    @Derelict: I actually have been a proposing a variant of this for awhile, but with congress critters. Make them live on an average American household wage and see how they fare. Not well, I bet. What a bunch of WATB these guys are.

  57. 57.

    Marked Hoosier

    May 26, 2010 at 10:04 pm

    This article really needs that “Jump Fuckers” picture.

  58. 58.

    Jamie

    May 26, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    I wonder what the bankers would do if Obama was actually a socialist.

  59. 59.

    Kyle

    May 26, 2010 at 10:44 pm

    Once the teabagger crowd wakes up to find they are living a company town, being paid in company script and end the month deeper in dept to the company Marxism is going to sound pretty good.

    I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. Most American sheeple conditioned by corporate media still identify with the assholes who are screwing them blind. The Europeans are ahead of us —

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Herrhausen

    Alfred Herrhausen (30 January 1930 – 30 November 1989) was a German banker and Chairman of Deutsche Bank. Herrhausen fell victim to a sophisticated roadside bomb shortly after leaving his home in Bad Homburg on 30 November 1989.

  60. 60.

    Gian

    May 26, 2010 at 10:51 pm

    @hal:

    the right wing has had a good thrity year cycle of it’s policy being thought of as conventional wisdom, deregulate deregulate, deregulate and don’t tax the rich

    anything that runs contra to that central thesis is a direct attack on their power and wealth. that they would hate reform is a no-brainer

    that the real leftists are upset? most of the real left would keel over in shock if anyone advocated the same tax rates and regulation policies the feds had after JFK passed his tax cut, that the current proposals aren’t there is the problem.

    and if I was to get all 1960s-1970s marxist I’d go into “superstructure” gobbledegook but the marxists, the real ones have never given up the idea that capitalism will fail because it plants the seeds of its own destruction, and the modern version where people supposedly have constitutional rights that they learn about in school – when they find out that some citizens, like BP are more equal than they are, the fertilizer will hit the ventilator. meanwhile the right wing has astroturf and think tanks working to direct that anger to mexican peasants looking for work outside a drug war kill zone in their own feudal state.

    short answer – from the left – nowhere near enough
    from the right, don’t take our toys!!!!! scream kick kick kick

  61. 61.

    Resident Firebagger

    May 26, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    Really hard to process Obama as Wall Street’s sworn enemy with Geithner and Summers in his administration and Goldman as his biggest campaign contributor.

    I mean, it isn’t as if Obama — and, yes, Congress — have really done anything to keep the MOTU from bringing down the economy again.

  62. 62.

    Svensker

    May 26, 2010 at 10:57 pm

    My Wall Street friend was moaning to me today about how MEAN Obama is being to BP and how O is just savaging and destroying the capitalist system, case in point the damage he is doing to BP. So I ask, hoping to hear that O IS doing something to BP, “What exactly is Obama doing to BP?” “Well,” says my friend, “his stooge, Salazar, said they will keep a boot on BP’s neck!” “Yeah,” says I, “but what are they actually DOING?” “They are ruining BP’s reputation by denigrating them constantly!” says my friend.

    So there you go. Pretty horrendous. But what else can you expect of a sockalist like Obama? (My friend is a Democrat, by the way.)

  63. 63.

    El Cid

    May 26, 2010 at 11:00 pm

    @Gian:

    and if I was to get all 1960s-1970s marxist I’d go into “superstructure” gobbledegook but the marxists, the real ones have never given up the idea that capitalism will fail because it plants the seeds of its own destruction

    I’ve never been one to enjoy the 8 million articles / essays ending with ‘and this is why the current crisis indicates the end of the system and/or needs to be replaced by a workers-oriented state etc.,’, but, in fairness, we don’t yet know whether or not capitalism has planted the seeds of its own destruction, mostly because it’s 2010, and not 3010 or 4010. A couple hundred years ain’t that long.

  64. 64.

    Ash

    May 26, 2010 at 11:03 pm

    Obama must feel like he lives in the fucking Twilight Zone. The bankers all hate him because apparently he’s a socialist and taking all their money, and the firebaggers all him him because apparently he’s a corporatist and handing them money like mini Kit Kats on Halloween (mmmmm, Kit Kats)

    He probably slaps himself each morning.

  65. 65.

    Bob

    May 26, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    @John Cole:

    It was worth linking twice. I feel better about that financial reform legisaltion now. When one of these guys goes postal, we will almost be to the point of a good bill.

  66. 66.

    MaryQ

    May 26, 2010 at 11:30 pm

    Much as I love the other Balloon Juice bloggers, I always know a John COle post before I read the byline. Because I read the post and I say “F*&k, yeah!” Every. Single. Time.

  67. 67.

    Nick

    May 26, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    The thing about Obama that breaks my heart is that he’s a brilliant politician, but I increasingly think he’s just the wrong man for the times

    lay off the Jane Hamsher juice, you’ll feel better.

  68. 68.

    Gian

    May 26, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    @El Cid:
    had to read the 60s marxists stuff in undergrad, honestly haven’t tried to keep current. the blind spot that the teachings had to me was rather simple. If this was just plain gonna happen, why had some 4000 years of recorded time failed to see it happen. In some respects the marxists lack the same basic psychological understanding of people the libertarians do. I suppose that goes with utopian thinking they both have.

  69. 69.

    Mike Kay

    May 27, 2010 at 12:01 am

    @Svensker: there are Democrats and then there are wall st democrats and then there are firebag/naderite democrats.

    Here we are with wall street screaming Obama is a commie on one side, and the firebaggers screaming Obama is a corporatist on the other.

    Sometimes I just want to line all of them up against the wall.

  70. 70.

    Boston Yankee

    May 27, 2010 at 12:21 am

    Obama does not look back. Bank robbery by CEO’s, Cheney’s various transgressions, torture, mistaken wars, all are apparently forgiven since Obama does not dwell on the past. Only problem, since none of these cancers have been removed, they continue to grow and poison the future.

    Just maybe, we should look back, and then we can understand the present.

  71. 71.

    someguy

    May 27, 2010 at 12:26 am

    @jl:

    ‘Just hang them all.’

    Cole is shrill yet? That sounds more like Tunch has taken over Cole’s computer and hijacked the blog again, except the natural Tunch conclusion of ‘and eat them’ was left out.

    Screw that noise. Hang all of them but one, and let the one serve as a warning to future would-be banksters. Chain him to the statue of the bears and bulls and give him enough food to subsist on, so everybody working at that end of Manhattan would have to see him every single day on the way into and out of work.

    Oh yeah, and let the little bastard out to go to Yankees games, but make him sit in the bleacher sets.

  72. 72.

    srv

    May 27, 2010 at 12:28 am

    I have a dream. I stand at the pinnacles of the New York skyline, looking down on Time Square.

    And I see all the senior executives of Goldman Sachs, JPMC, Morgan and BofA swinging. Swinging from the gallows. And not comfortably, as the mob is not experienced in the lynch – their inexperience has lead to the noose not being done correctly, so the captains of industry have several minutes to kick as the crowd ponders the complexities of financial innovation.

  73. 73.

    mnpundit

    May 27, 2010 at 12:47 am

    And these are the guys Obama shit on progressives for?

    How could anyone be so stupid. Or maybe he’s just greedy for campaign cash.

  74. 74.

    Mike Kay

    May 27, 2010 at 1:03 am

    @someguy: I don’t know, I think citigroup are mets fans.

  75. 75.

    tc125231

    May 27, 2010 at 1:16 am

    Just hang them all.

    Thanks for an excellent suggestion! Although, personally, I prefer a National Barber.

  76. 76.

    mclaren

    May 27, 2010 at 1:21 am

    If we hang them all, others will take their place.

    How about this…just get rid of banks. No banks. Zero. None.

    Make every financial institution in America into a non-profit. Make ’em all credit unions. Investment banks? Shut down, gone.

    Cap the salaries of the CEOs of all the non-profit banks at $40,000 a year. If they don’t like it, they can become doctors.

  77. 77.

    EriktheRed

    May 27, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Stop calling them “Teabaggers”. And I don’t mean call them “Tea Partiers”, like they would prefer to be called. Call them by what they really are: Corporate America’s Useful Idiots.

  78. 78.

    El Cid

    May 27, 2010 at 11:05 am

    @Gian: One should always remember that even Marx was just one thinker, and certainly made some very valid analysis of and critiques of capitalism. Remember also that even to the degree people feel like they learned a lot from him, he just didn’t do much serious work on how things ought be afterwards. The Manifesto, after all, was more sloganeering than his estimated plan.

    I believe that there are pretty gaping simplicities and vacuums in the arguments of both Marxists, assorted critiques of capitalism, and pro-capitalists themselves.

    But neither capitalism nor “soshullism” has nothing to do with ‘4000 years of history’ any more than the current social welfare states do, besides some precedents that could be applied. Trade or mercantilism isn’t capitalism. Most argue that this system began to emerge in the 1700s with industrial production — before that, there just wasn’t an unspecialized wage-paid set of workers producing on an industrial scale.

    So as to the question of whether or not more principles of democracy and ecological sustainability can be applied to our modern economies [such that they will be considered fundamentally altered], well, we just don’t know, and the people who argue that the current types of systems are just around the corner from collapsing have no more evidence than the people who imagine that all the basic details have been worked out and we’ll basically be organized this way until, I dunno, we make ourselves into magic energy beings or something.

  79. 79.

    bobbo

    May 27, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    @Allison W.: He should proudly wear the mantle of Wall Street’s enemy and openly criticize them at every opportunity. Bully pulpit and all that.

  80. 80.

    Remember November

    May 27, 2010 at 1:30 pm

    Obviously, forgetting that the mere fact of screwing the middle class unchecked is what makes a lot of pro-capitalists turn to more socialist thinking. Why play their game if the ref is bought off?

    That’s the thuggery here. not “Chicago way”, it’s the “Boesky plan” ( and doesn’t that sound like a commie last name eve I heard one /snark)

    Greed at all costs starts revolutions, does not keep them at bay. Saying “why punish success”, when that success is predicated on cheating is not punishment, it is justice.

  81. 81.

    Remember November

    May 27, 2010 at 1:31 pm

    @Mike Kay:

    sadly, I miss Shea and the day when ballparks were named after people, not corporations and change names ever few years.

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