I don’t know why we continue to hear this bullshit, even from a doofus like Charles Lane:
Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell made Castle’s vote for the bailout fund a major issue in the campaign. No matter that TARP probably saved the U.S. and world economies at a cost to taxpayers that will end up at far less than the initial $700 billion outlay, due to earlier-than-expected repayments by the major banks. It’s a reminder that the Tea Party is as much an anti-Wall Street movement as an anti-Washington one.
Here is how Tea Partiers actually feel about large corporations:
Teatards don’t like TARP because they see it as SOSHULIST government plot, not because they don’t like big business. This isn’t that complicated.
Stefan
Look, who are you going to believe? Facts or The Narrative? This isn’t that complicated….
kommrade reproductive vigor
Actually, I don’t see how this poll proves your point. In the teabaggateer mind, Big Corporations = Successful Corporations and therefore corporations that didn’t get assistance from TARP. Just as Anything Teacons Like = Conservative.
Mark S.
It’s just an anti-Democratic party movement. Anyone with half a brain can see that, or they’re too busy sucking Koch.
DonkeyKong
The Baggers oppose TARP because it is a Kenyan form of genital mutilation performed on our Galt Overlords.
Zifnab
@Mark S.: Given the habit of ousting incumbents, it’s more than that. The Tea Party is the Pro-Jim DeMint party. Just like Republicans aren’t really Pro-Business or Pro-Rich-People, they’re Pro-Businesses-and-Rich-People-that-give-money-to-Republicans.
It’s a distinction worth making. Because if the Tea Party walks into office in November, we’re not going to see Bush Senate Republicans Part 2. This is more likely going to turn into the kind of madness we saw in the House, back between ’02 and ’05. Jesus Camps and Justice Sundays and gay-bashing constitutional amendments.
These guys are going to be the kind of social conservatives that keep you up at night.
Eric U.
teabaggers can hold more than one conflicting idea in their minds at once. They just don’t think about them at the same time.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Zifnab: Given that most of the teatards victories have been in the Senate, and given the Senate’s arcane rules, part of me is looking forward to the fuck-ups these clowns cause. After all, Rand Paul thinks you can filibuster budget bills in the Senate(which you can’t do). Sure, there are other ways of slowing down the process, but it seems Rand wanted to make a big spectacle about it. Offering endless amendments on the Senate floor is less sexy then going all Mr. Smith Goes to Washington because Rand Paul won’t get the balanced budgets he desires. Given that his primary was a few months ago already, you’d think the idiot would have read something on Senate rules so he looks like less of a chump.
Mark S.
@Zifnab:
That’s true. It’s interesting that as much as the Teabaggers try to avoid social issues, most of their candidates are religious nutcases.
Has there ever been a case where right wing populism hasn’t been based on resentment?
bago
Can I coin a term? Neo-feudalism. People believe that inheritors of wealth know best when it comes to questions of economy. Letting the rabble participate in a democratic fashion is inherently un-meritocratic as defined by values and wealth passed on via inheritance. They got pooped out of the right vagina, so obviously they know more about how to allocate wealth than you do. Old money deserves respect, because it’s old, not because it has invented anything new.
TR
He thinks the Tea Party is anti-Wall Street?
Does he not remember Rick Santelli? The Tea Party was literally created on the floor of a stock exchange.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
If, as appears to be the case, TARP was indeed a distasteful but huge success, then why the hell are the Dems, once again, so inept at making that point in the media to the American public?
I remain of the opinion that upper management at all the TARP-saved outfits should have been forcibly shit-canned as a condition of TARP, an action that would have gone a long way toward improving the PR optics of this episode.
So naturally, that wasn’t included. Which just makes it look as thought the taxpayers saved the asses of a bunch of fat cat fuck ups who paid no price and are right back in the fat cat bird seat.
jl
Story below says at least 38 House Democrats don’t want to end Bush tax cuts for rich.
Anyone know who these people are? Anyone have a list? A list would be nice, so people can, to put it gently, strongly prioritize their contributions for the election.
It probably would be a waste of money to give to them anyway, for they are losers.
The best macroeconomic policy, to get the most bang for the buck for both long run budget reduction and short run fiscal stimulus would be to cancel all of the Bush Jr. tax cuts, and use the tax revenue for infrastructure programs (with energy conservation and community health center projects given high priority), education, and support of local and state governments.
The only tricky item is support for local and state governments, since some states, including mine (CA) have disfunctional governments that might do stupid counterproductive things if they had access to more money, and where local and state spending is so intermingled that it is difficult to separate the two But there must be a way to design a good program.
I actually agree with Orszag that after the economy recovers, the middle class tax cuts should go too, or at least the lower income limit for keeping them be dropped substantially. The current administration proposal is a very distant second best policy that can only be justified on the basis of political feasibility.
Keeping the Bush Jr. tax cuts for the rich is inexcusable, which are one of the most unsuccessful and damaging tax programs ever enacted. All it takes is digging up that clip of that Bush Jr. speech with the dollar bills in his hands, and Dub explaining how the policy was supposed to work. Nothing nothing nothing turned out like he said it would.
End the hostage crisis: Just make them vote
by Jed Lewison at GOS
Fri Sep 17, 2010
“At least 38 House Democrats have now come out publicly in favor of at least a short-term extension of current income tax rates for couples earning more than $250,000 and individuals over the $200,000 threshhold”
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/17/902736/-End-the-hostage-crisis:-Just-make-them-vote
kay
I don’t really believe any of it. They’re all going to accept endorsements and the assist of issue advocacy ads from the usual GOP donors and affiliated groups in a general election. Who do pundits think is “new and different” about the US Chamber of Commerce or Americans For Tax Reform or the NRA?
They’re also all Republicans, and they’ll all benefit from state and national Party support.
Rand Paul is already doing that.
The differences between the Tea Party and the Republican Party are being vastly overstated, as a practical matter, in a general.
The ads are going up now. I can call a US Chamber of Commerce-backed attack ad campaign anything I care to, but what the hell’s the difference if the candidate is a “Tea Party candidate” or any other Republican?
When do you think pundits put this incredibly complex puzzle together and end up back at “Republican”?
dj spellchecka
nyt 4/14/2010: “while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the greatest number of Tea Party supporters blame Congress.”
& ” The percentage holding a favorable opinion of former President George W. Bush, at 57 percent.”
so: they luv bush and hate tarp.. sensible!
DonkeyKong
Didn’t TARP effectively lend the initial 700 billion to banks but set up the Fed to hold around 7-8 trillion in reserve to move into the banks to keep them afloat through the current deleveraging crisis?
Isnt that 700 billion figure misleading. Anybody know the answer to that?
Kryptik
@kay:
This is the thing that galls me the most. There are literally no new ideas here. It’s the same tired shit from barely years before, and yet because the name is different, and because Dick Armey and friends get to bus people around, it’s a ‘new, salient movement’ and somehow Dems have been totally discredited?
Jesus, fuck all, I really hate this goddamn place sometimes. Like the sighted demanding they be lead by the blindest motherfucker around.
James E. Powell
Teatards don’t like TARP because they see it as SOSHULIST government plot, not because they don’t like big business.
Not exactly. Teatards don’t like TARP because the corporate propaganda told them to say that they don’t like TARP.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Uhm, upper management at almost all of the banks that needed TARP (as opposed to the larger set that received TARP money) was shit-canned. Very few of them survived in their positions.*
The optics we have are the optics that produced, namely that most people don’t even know that that happened.
*This can be obscured by the fact that some of them were forced out before TARP actually passed, and so the people at the top at the time of TARP are still there, even though the ones that made the decisions that led to it aren’t.
Socraticsilence
I think it should also be noted that being against the bank bailout as a congressional rep from Delaware is like being against the Auto bailout and repping Michigan- whatever you want to say about “being the rep for the Bank and Credit industry” if you rep Delaware its kind of legitimate constituent service- I mean its basically your key industry of course you don’t want a cascade failure that destroys your state (and the nation but that’s not the point here). I mean other congressmen could go “let them fail” and pretend the reverberations wouldn’t reach their states but for a guy like Castle wouldn’t a “creative destruction” mindset basically have meant he’s cool with some of his states biggest employers going under?
licensed to kill time
Dick Armey and the Koch bros bought the Republicans a new Tea Party dress and sent them out to fool the rubes.
Who will point out that the Tea Party has no (real) clothes? It’s the same old Repubemperor, the TeaPeeps just don’t want to see it.
Oscar Leroy
Who the heck had the idea to represent “cool” with orange? Were they out of blue?
Omnes Omnibus
@Socraticsilence: You can prove anything with facts and logic. If you want to impress me, try doing it without either one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Socraticsilence: You can prove anything with facts and logic. If you want to impress me, try doing it without either one.
Roger Moore
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
There was a practical problem with that: TARP wouldn’t have worked. The executives priorities are screwed up; it’s the gambler’s ruin in reverse. The most executives can lose is their job, since they can keep any kind of clause that would claw back their salary in the case of catastrophic failure. If they had been presented with a choice of taking TARP money and losing their jobs or not taking TARP money and having a tiny chance of pulling the company through and keeping their jobs, they would have refused the TARP money and taken their chances. Since the point of TARP was to shove money down the banks’ throats as a way of guaranteeing they wouldn’t fail, firing the executives as a condition of taking TARP money would have undermined the whole deal.
catclub
@Zifnab:
“These guys are going to be the kind of social conservatives that keep you up at night. ”
Love is …
staying up all night with a sick child
…
or a healthy adult.
Napoleon
@jl:
Anyone have a list?
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/31-dems-to-pelosi-extend-the-bush-tax-cuts-for-everyone.php
liberal
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal:
That’s the wrong way of looking at it.
The right way of looking at it is to consider the set of financial institutions which would have collapsed if Uncle Sam hadn’t conducted all the interventions, of which TARP is just one. How many would have survived?
Hawes
That might be the worst graph/chart I’ve ever seen.
Can anyone actually read the difference between “lukewarm” (yellowish-orange) and “tepid” (orangish-yellow)?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: How much of that $46 are you gonna donate to the ActBlue account here as penance for bothering the fuck out of all of us with your doubling down?
Sentient Puddle
@DonkeyKong:
Well, there’s two parts here. The $700 billion figure is misleading, but not really in a way that relates to the Fed. The Treasury got the authority to take out up to $700 billion (or so) at a time, not that TARP had a hard cap of $700 billion. Thus, the actual figure is probably higher, though I don’t know what exactly it looks like.
As far as the Fed goes, them holding ungodly amounts of cash in reserve for use with banks is, well, what the Fed does, crisis or not. This is how they keep tabs on the money supply. It’s just not particularly telling to say that they threw around lots of money (and why that whole movement to audit the Fed was a total distraction and useless in regards to financial reform).
Martin
@Roger Moore: Thank you for yet another demonstration that firebaggers like GG(fT) aren’t interested in actually solving any problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I know you love reading what I write, so I am giving you the chance to read it twice. Quite honestly, you should thank me.
sukabi
no, it’s not that complicated, but that would interfere with the narrative that the pols and media conglomerates want to push.
Lynnehs
So many great comments that I think I’ll just list whose I liked:
Mark S
Zifnab
bago
TR
jl
Kryptik
slag
@Napoleon: Much obliged!
@jl: To you as well!
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal:
Well, ok, so you kind of make my ignorant point way more strongly than I so feebly tried to: VERY FEW PEOPLE KNOW THIS, and knowing so would go a long way toward easing the dominant meme that the Dems helped let fat cat crooks survive and thrive.
So…assuming that what you say is accurate, and I do, then why the fuck are people like Lloyd Blankenfuck still around at their firms?
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Martin:
fuck off.
Roger Moore gave me a coherent response, with some added info to shade my thinking. You? You’ve just got bile.
kay
@Kryptik:
Agreed.
Conversely, Grover Norquist does not care what Russ Feingold’s position is on civil liberties or executive power.
Even if he and Feingold share views on that.
He does not care.
Grover Norquist will pour money into defeating Feingold on tax policy alone.
They never, ever change. They pursue the same goals, year after year after year, and every year we draw these bogus distinctions, and every year conservatives join together to destroy liberals.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Roger Moore:
Would the banks’ shareholders not want to see the fuckup execs out the door if their continued presence at the helm was what stood between their companies and complete ruin?
catclub
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
I think the difference is between the Banks that NEEDED
the TARP money, and the banks that _Treasury_ needed to give money TO, so that no one would know which ones really needed the money – and would start runs on those banks.
Lloyd was in the second class ( I bet you will correct me if I am wrong on this), and if Treasury had said:
You have to resign and take the money. He would just say no.
Naturally, this does not include the money they got when US paid 100% on AIG’s debts. That was when the giveaway
took place.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@catclub:
thank you!
Would it be insane to suggest that Obama, upon taking office, should have had given a series of Oval Office speeches, complete with a blackboard and/or powerpoint presentation, to make this complicated issue crystal clear to the masses in such a way that the media wouldn’t be able to muddy the message?
I’m sure I will be mocked as naive or whatnot, but there has to have been ways of explaining this all so that the responsibility ends up where it should be. I’ve always felt the information was being needlessly muddled by the administration itself.
And please note that I am not the president, it is not MY job to figure out how to do that if indeed he wanted to do it.
I casually read the news and blogs every day, and there is still much I don’t understand about the TARP program; and if I’m part of a tiny minority in this country that even do THAT, then it’s no wonder most willfully ignorant Americans have no clue at all.
Uloborus
@licensed to kill time:
See, I don’t really agree with this whole chain of logic. I agree that this was the PLAN. It’s exactly what the Republicans wanted, and that’s why FOX started it. The Teabaggers are 90% the Republican base, the ignorant tribalists the Southern Strategy has been courting. This was completely an effort to mobilize them with their Old White People Anger to vote Republican while convincing moderates that the utter failures of conservative governance the last eight years were somebody else’s fault.
It’s just blown up in their faces. The GOP who would have benefited from this are getting primaried out. Any GOP figure that doesn’t scream crazy now gets tossed to the wolves. The lunatics are forcing nominations of candidates who have turned Sure Things into Probable Losses, and moderates loathe raving extremists. Sarah Palin was not exactly a boon to the McCain ticket, and Bush only won by pretending to be a moderate. None of this crap is good for the GOP’s overall political power. It makes crazy Birchers like the Kochs feel good about themselves and lets a few people like DeMint adopt a scorched earth strategy to increase their own power at the expense of the party itself.
Uloborus
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
And the shareholders have been booting a lot of these assholes. But the execs still have no motivation to take anything but a blank check. You’ve seen the way executive compensation works. Whether the ship sinks or sails smoothly for years, they get rich. If they can make a fat profit in a short time at the expense of long-term gain, the execs get richer still. If they scuttle the company entirely, they STILL get rich and get moved to a nicely paying position at another company they’re on the board of.
The top-level corporate culture is disturbingly incestuous and rewards failure, especially on Wall Street. I wish I saw any way to fix that. If there are ways, you can be sure Cheney did his damnedest to remove them during the Bush years.
Roger Moore
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
I’m sure they would, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot anymore. One of the major problems with corporations these days is that stockholders have lost a lot of control over their companies. In many companies, the CEO has the power to nominate candidates for the Board of Directors, but actual stockholders have to jump through hoops to do so. The result is that the Board tends to represent the CEO rather than the shareholders. Naturally, the CEO fills the board with cronies who will rubber stamp his decisions and approve outrageous compensation. It’s hard to reform corporate governance for about the same reason: the CEO has a much easier time proposing changes to the rules than stockholders do. Unless a substantial share of the stock his held by a few active shareholders, the CEO tends to get more and more power until the shareholders have a hard time doing anything.
licensed to kill time
@Uloborus:
Ok, it’s more like the Tea Party dress they stitched together has turned their creation into a Frankenstein that has run amok and is now terrorizing the creators. I get that. I like that.
I really just wanted to use the Tea Party dress bit.
Uloborus
@licensed to kill time:
It WAS a good bit.
Martin
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): Hey, you’re the one who told us to not comment in DougJs posts because you said he was a troll, and here you are commenting in one with your usual not-thought-out knee-jerk bullshit. You’re also the one who feels as though anyone should fucking care about your opinions on how this country is being run right after giving us your rundown on why you can’t bother to vote.
So yeah, I save my bile for the people that are too fucking lazy to do even the minimal amount of participation in democracy.
Martin
@Roger Moore: More directly, and this is an important point because it underscores the incorrect thinking on the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United Not Timid, is that direct shareholdership is increasingly uncommon. I own a mess of shares of all of the S&P 500 stocks through a number of mutual funds, but I don’t get a proxy vote because I’m a shareholder of the mutual fund, who in turn is the shareholder for those companies.
Increasingly, the shareholders of these banks and other companies are banks themselves, pension funds, and other retirement/investment funds, and they wind up with the most influence in the end. Individual influence is massively diluted by the intermediary. Not sure how to fix that.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
At least in terms of governance issues, you’d hope that large shareholders like banks and pension funds would be more effectively activist than masses of individual shareholders. One of the things that makes shareholder activism hard is that there are rules requiring a specific fraction of shareholders to sign on before you can push a slate of Board candidates or governance reforms. If a company is owned by thousands of small shareholders, it’s going to be very hard to get the require fraction- often something like 10%- to sign on. If instead the shares are held in common through banks or pension and mutual funds, it’s a lot easier to put together a big enough block to be heard. CalPERS has been a leader in pushing for corporate governance reform, since they’re big enough to be heard.
Martin
@Roger Moore: I agree on CalPERS, but I have yet to see any other investment group push in the same manner. CalPERS is also in a slightly different situation in that none of the companies they are invested in have a say in the CalPERS board, or have any other kind of reciprocal relationship. CalPERS is therefore very independent – they don’t need the boards of those companies for anything, and those boards can’t even prevent CalPERS from buying their stock.
But in the case of investment banks, you have reciprocal arrangements all the time. Is Goldman, speaking on behalf of its investors really going to push the BofA board hard on any issues knowing that BofA will push back on behalf of theirs?
I’m not talking about 8th grade retaliatory shit, but more principled things such as how and to what degree to place the blame for bad investments that they *all* made. How on earth is Goldman in a position to wag their finger at BofA for bad bets? For paying out too much in bonuses? For not kicking executives’ asses out the door?
And to underscore the nature of the problem, I have both a defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plan with my employer (state employee). The defined contribution plans were turned over to an investment bank to be managed, which makes good sense for the institution because truly that’s not an area of expertise we’re going to preserve, so here I am as a public employee with money contributed by myself and by taxpayers going into a fund whose proxy is almost certainly not going to reflect my interests, let alone the interests of the taxpayers that are paying into my pension.
I’m very uncomfortable with that kind of arrangement.
A. J.
Hawes (#28) is right.
Worst. Chart. EVAR!
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Martin:
Sorry, I’m not a political science expert like you. Didn’t know BJ was limited to participation by those who are.
Also, too, if you had a brain, you’d do a little BJ research to discover the background to my tongue in cheek DougJ post, fool.
Perhaps unlike geniuses like you, I’m not as afraid to reveal my ignorance or misapprehensions; it’s the best way to learn something. YOu might think about trying it.
Finally, I love your desperate need to project yourself, through your junior high use of the “us” and “we” as a member of the BJ cool kids, haha. Oh well, whatever it takes to make you feel you belong to…something.
toodles.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Martin:
Furthermore, douche…
…it’s not that I can’t be “bothered” to vote. I used to do so. I choose specifically NOT to.
Think of my vote as a pearl, which I no longer choose to cast before swine.
Politician swine, most of whom I imagine, are nearly as arrogant and sure of their own fabulousity as are you.
Jbird
I have to admit even I’m surprised.
These numbers indicate that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, a pro-Wall Street movement.
“The Tea Party protests, which began in 2008 among defenders of Wall Street,”
“The Tea Party campaign allowed Republican activists to put pro-banker Americans in a position to aid Goldman Sachs,”
there’s little that can’t be done with that.
SpotWeld
The Tea Party: The political party of the some of the people that can be fooled all of the time.