I find that I am having to watch this in about 20 minute intervals, because I start to get so mad I can’t concentrate.
The thing that floored me right off the bat was that Greenspan was a Keating hack. I had never heard that before.
by John Cole| 89 Comments
This post is in: Movies
I find that I am having to watch this in about 20 minute intervals, because I start to get so mad I can’t concentrate.
The thing that floored me right off the bat was that Greenspan was a Keating hack. I had never heard that before.
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Liberal Sandlapper
Watch what?!?
cleek
inside job
arguingwithsignposts
Told you so.
John O
Must have been pretty distracting.
cathyx
Greenspan is a very bad man.
John O
Ah. Never had the stomach to rent it.
FreeAtLast
OT:
David the Dean Broder, dead at 81.
beltane
I take it this isn’t a good movie to watch with the husband on Saturday night. I’ll have to watch it with the kids instead, never too early to instill a lifelong hatred of greedy assholes in them.
John O
Greenspan can’t be a bad man. He’s married to Andrea Mitchell, and she’s an impartial observer.
Mark S.
I’ll have to check it out. It’s funny, I’ve sat through some gruesome, depressing documentaries, but the one I couldn’t get through was the one about Wal-Mart.
BGinCHI
@John O: I hope she beats him every night before bed.
At least then she’d be useful for something.
Violet
I remember back in the day when I had a lot of contacts in the financial/Wall St. world, oh how they worshiped Greenspan. The fact that Clinton re-appointed Greenspan was one of the very few things they believed Clinton did right.
cathyx
Andrea Mitchell started out as a reporter in Pittsburgh long long ago.
BGinCHI
Breaking WI news.
Go to TPM right now and check it out.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Fuckers. Not you, WI GOPs….
RSR
cheer yourself up; read about WI on the twitters
Violet
@beltane:
Be sure to have them watch The Corporation too. And “The Smartest Men in the Room” about Enron. That would make a nice “greedy asshole” trilogy.
birthmarker
I got Inside Job from Netflix to watch tonight! I read somewhere, I think the Taibbi book Griftopia, (which is really good, BTW,) that Greenspan was highly involved with Ayn Rand, even to the extent of signing the “excommunication” from Objectivism of her unfaithful lover.
patrick II
The single moment I most remember from that film was that asshole Larry Summers sitting next to a lady (whose name I don’t recall) testifying at a congressional hearing. The lady was testifying that mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps were dangerous and needed regulation. Summers was sitting right next to her, turned in his seat to face her and glared at her, trying to intimidate her into changing her testimony.
Of course, as it turned out, she was exactly right, Summers monumentally wrong, and Summers became Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Obama
urbanmeemaw
Inside Job is excellent. Also saw the Walmart video and The Smartest Guys In The Room (about Enron). But what really stoked my pissitivity level was Greg Palast’s Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I was boiling at the end of Chapter 1 but became more outraged as I progressed thru the book.
BGinCHI
Maddow was excellent last night and Naomi Klein was spot on.
Need to read her book (Shock Doctrine).
piratedan
you might as well follow that up with Capitalism, a love story
BGinCHI
Bill passes in WI without the Dems in the state.
Now let’s see how fucking angry folks in the middle and lower classes can get.
Hunter Gathers
OT – Wisconsin Repubs throw gas on the fire.
Violet
@piratedan:
I don’t think “Capitalism” was nearly as good as it could have been. The grandstanding with the bullhorn was silly and took up time that could have been used for highlighting other issues.
Elia
@BGinCHI: You can find much better sources for similar arguments than that book. I’m not a Klein hater per se but there are just a lot of problems with that book.
gex
The people who need to see these documentaries never do.
beltane
@BGinCHI: If people get hungry enough it will be the GOP that’s on the menu. Roasted Republicans: the other white meat.
jwb
@BGinCHI: Warrant the calling of a general strike, I’d say.
Ronc99
John,
Checkout the White House “visitor” logs — Alan Greenspan is #2 in visiting Obama the most times. It kinda removes the *glow* off Barack, eh?
Napoleon
Sweet Jesus on the WI story. So they come right out and basically admit what a fraud that they needed to bust the unions as a budget measure by making it a not budget measure and passing it.
dmsilev
Re: the Wisconsin atrocity. So, by declaring Walker’s union-gutting bill to be “non-budget” and jamming it through on about 5 minutes notice, the WI GOP has just admitted that they and their governor were liars liars liars for the last few weeks when they claimed that this was “all about the budget”.
This will not end well.
dms
Ronc99
Oh and the #1 visitor? Henry Kissinger *groan*
Just Some Fuckhead
@beltane:
Oh please. Everyone knows brown meat has all the flavor.
Violet
@BGinCHI:
Will they get angry or just grumble and get on with things like usual? I’ve got no idea how this will go.
BGinCHI
@beltane: I just hope the momentum from what these assholes are doing carries over to the next election cycle. We can’t go on like this.
Class warfare, it’s what’s for breakfast motherfuckers.
piratedan
@Violet: true Violet, but at least Moore is pointed at the proper windmills imho, because lets face it, the banksters are mutants who are missing the capacity to feel shame.
Phoebe
Reading Nixonland has depressed me into concrete. I stopped reading at the end of “Book One” and will someday drag my ass back to it, then look up all the old discussion threads I missed too. But that day is in the future. And I’ve been avoiding this blog because just glancing at the headlines makes me want to curl up in an open grave. You people are much, much, stronger than I am. I’ll watch Inside Job, but not by myself, that’s for sure.
Spaghetti Lee
Is there a way for someone with no car and not much money to get from Columbia, Missouri to Madison? Any buses that go that way?
Southern Beale
So the WI GOP did the “nuclear option.” Let’s hope this galvanizes the recall effort.
Violet
@BGinCHI:
It’s a long, loooong time until the next election. Momentum is a hard thing to sustain.
Studly Pantload
@BGinCHI:
Maddow’s been on fire as of late — but it looks like she was premature in declaring that WI (the people, that is) had won the anti-union battle with Walker.
The only plusses I can see are a) such assholery will not endear them to the WI voting populace, and b) perhaps a Dem majority in the next legislative session can undo this.
&*$@!
Naomi Klein’s book, btb, is in my mind one of the most important books of our time in detailing how conservatives plan to drag our society back into the 1800s.
Kryptik
Things will not end well in WI.
But it will also not end with the law being overturned if full passage goes through and it gets signed. That’s the most infuriating thing about this newest bullshit. It will take enough Dems in the WI legislature to bypass a little Scotty veto to overturn this total shit sandwich, and even if it does mean the resurgence of labor as a Dem constituency, we’re still left with Unions and workers being totally powerless in both Ohio and Wisconsin, and soon to be far too many other states.
BGinCHI
@Violet: I wouldn’t say they’ll be riots and general strikes (too bad WI doesn’t have more cities). But I would definitely predict that in the Midwestern and eastern states, labor and working class groups are going to come out in greater numbers in 2012, as well as having a much easier time with gotv.
The consciousness-raising aspect of this is by far the best we could hope for. People can’t be passive now.
Class war.
I’d start with: Bust unions? Now, pay MORE taxes, rich motherfuckers.
Violet
@Spaghetti Lee:
Try Megabus. You’ll have to connect in Chicago or elsewhere, but it’s not terribly expensive. Probably under $100.
cleek
WI.
elections ? consequences ? how do they fucking work ?
BGinCHI
@Studly Pantload: Yeah, she was playing the short game there. But it’s rhetorical, so that’s what you get.
Guessing she’s gonna hit this thing hard now, and I bet she goes to Madison before too long.
This weekend in WI is gonna be huge.
Jim C
@Spaghetti Lee:
Greyhound will get you there. 2 transfers (St. Louis, Chicago), 19 hours and 100 ameros.
Studly Pantload
Fucking representative democracy – how does it work?
(Someone has to say it)
piratedan
@Studly Pantload: pretty sweet fait accompli, he gets the unions busted, now the dems are powerless to stop him and now he can ram through his budget giveaway bonanza because the reason for the Dems to be gone is now moot. Granted he’ll have things his way until he’s recalled and those folks will have to repair/unfuck everything he’s done. Kinda like what happened to the nation when Bush left but different because Bush was more… subtle….go figure
birthmarker
@Phoebe: Read Griftopia. It will make you mad but at least it’s funny. The Rick Santelli takedown alone is worth the price of the book. (I got it on Audible.)
Studly Pantload
@Studly Pantload:
(Cleek beat me to it.)
BGinCHI
@Studly Pantload: Fucking Citizens United and Koch money and low info voters and Fox, how does it fucking work?
When non-rich white folks who vote GOP get unemployed, and find their wages going down, I hope they remember who to blame.
God this shit pisses me off. I’m gonna ask Rahm if we can invade that fucking state.
MikeTheZ
Now that they passed it, commence Democratic Electoral Protocol Alpha: Forget the issue is a winner for you, and never, ever campaign on it.
gbear
@Violet: I think the people in WI are going to feel like war has been declared on them. This is going to get extremely loud very quickly. What the republicans are doing in Madison is beyond madness.
Southern Beale
@piratedan:
Right, and that’s just SO easy to do, what with the Koch Brothers and Fox News busing in Teabaggers from all around the country to scream and holler “Naz1” every time someone tried to fix the damage. I mean cripes, look how well Obama has done undoing the Bush era damage. Not so well.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)
@Phoebe: I’m with you. I haven’t been able to get back to Nixonland. I’ve given up all my other political blogs except this one, because at least everyone hear takes things with a sense of humor.
But, hell, the news is just so bad lately. The latest was hearing how my esteemed Governor Corbett thinks that wrecking the water supply of Western PA for eternity is a good deal to get 15 years worth of natural gas out of the ground. Because the regulations are just too tough on business.
The idealogues have won. I weep.
Southern Beale
@BGinCHI:
Yeah but so many people will forget about this and go back to worrying about Mooslims and abortion and shit.
BGinCHI
@Southern Beale: If they do then they are going to be living in a shittier and shittier country.
Time to have some courage.
gbear
@Studly Pantload: The reason that Maddow has been saying that WI won is because they’d managed to stip the facade from Walker’s bill being about budget issues. She’s right on that count. The republicans were forced to go bald faced about the fact that what they want to do is strip WI workers of their right to collective bargaining. This issue isn’t over with what has happened in Madison tonight. Tonight, a button was pushed that is going to result in an explosion.
piratedan
@Southern Beale: no argument from me SB but this kind of high-handedness screams “Nazi” to me and based on the game plan that these guys are following and their ruthlessness in which they are implementing it there’s gonna be some scary days ahead. They’re already using the Big Lie and they’ve followed it up by breaking down everything in society that they don’t like, unions, schools, media, social safety nets. I wish I understood what their end game is because I sure don’t understand their inherent need to subjugate everyone.
Kryptik
@Southern Beale:
In other words, pass the valium, because the only way we’re making it through sane the next few years is by being heavily sedated.
Christ, is there even a point to all this anymore considering the fucking cons manage to get their wins almost all the fucking goddamn time no matter what the situation is, and at best we manage to undo their damage for maybe a couple months before us dirty hippies get all the blame for the bullshit they thrust upon everyone else? And then get 2, 4, 6 more years to institute and institutionalize their fuckups even more? Christ, let me make it easy on you, give me a ball peen hammer and I’ll just nail my fucking head right between the eyes, it’ll save me from the massive rage-stroke later.
Southern Beale
@Kryptik:
No, I’ve given up. America is spiraling downward at the hands of tyrants and idiots and there doesn’t appear to be anything anyone can do. Every single thing seems to have failed.
I just need to figure out how to get my husband to move. And where.
I’m over this shit.
djork
So, any solidarity protests this weekend? General strike plans? where do I sign up?
Omnes Omnibus
Big and angry crowd at the Capitol. Dens are setting up hearings so the building can stay open. I am using my iPhone so I will report when I can. Fuckers.
Kryptik
@Southern Beale:
Well, good luck there. Me, I’m too poor to pick up and move any time soon, so it’s either sedation or I end up blowing up my heart in between sheer vein-pulsing rage and cover-huddling despair.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey OO, was thinking about you and hoping you were there.
Keep us posted.
There’s a thread after this one too.
justanotherjones
This movie just showed up in my mailbox today, but I probably won’t be able to see it til Friday. Hopefully you’ll have me prepped by then. ;-)
jwb
@cleek: Yes, and you pray to dear god that people are paying attention. Because governance should also, you know, have consequences.
Chuck Butcher
GOP fucks it up, Dems clean up a bit, GOP fucks it up a bit worse, Dems clean it up a bit less – VOTE GOP AGAIN.
Repeat as needed to completely wreck the place.
John O
@Southern Beale:
Capturing my zeitgeist. This.
Arundel
God damn it. Just reading about this is blood-boiling. Are there any sane grown-ups left? This is a Republican coup, this is a stick-up, this is a disgrace.
Why DOES the GOP hate America? Fucking piggish thieves at this point, just brazen. I’m already dreading the media shitheels justifying this caper on television. IOKIYAAR isn’t just a funny-true acronym anymore, it’s a cultish mass delusion in the media, and it’s disastrous. Ok, I need some Rachel right now.. (which sounds so DFH I know, whatever!).
And thanks to Omnes for the updates in WI , very appreciated. Keep warm!
Calouste
@Southern Beale:
People don’t worry much about Mooslims and abortion and such when they can no longer afford to pay the rent and buy food. You can play that trick on them if they never could afford to pay the rent and buy food in the first place, but if people remember they had it better before, they are a bit more itchy.
Anne Laurie
@Arundel:
Because all those words about “all [people] are created equal” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are against their religious principles.
chines
Before I started watching it last night, I said, “I shouldn’t watch this; it’ll just make me mad.” Five minutes after it started, my 6 yo son asked me, “Mommy are you mad yet?” Not at 5 minutes in, but by 20 minutes, I certainly was.
RosiesDad
Wanna find out just what a hack Greenspan was? Read Griftopia.
Ferguson deserved the Oscar that he won; it is amazing that no one has gone to prison. Or been assassinated. (It would not be surprising if some poor schlub who lost everything went down to Wall Street with the intent of killing someone. Or a lot of someones.)
And if this didn’t make you mad enough, listen to the first story from the This American Life episode “Crybabies.”
moe99
Hey John, the movie gets worse, ie makes you even madder, as you go along. I remember my jaw dropping at the point Matt Damon said that there were no regulations covering the CDO insurance sold by AIG to the banksters. And that you didn’t have to hold the CDOs to get it. Like me buying insurance on your house, and getting paid off if it burned down. WTF?
Time for another stiff drink to rinse out the ashes in my mouth from today. I hope the voters of WI come roaring back and turn the Rs out of office.
RosiesDad
@Chuck Butcher: I think they are pretty close to done.
It does make you wonder just how much farther the people need to be pushed before they take to the streets with the intent of burning it all down.
Triassic Sands
The question of who wins in Wisconsin will be settled either next year — if the people of Wisconsin successfully recall Walker and some of his fellow thugs — or at the next two elections, when Wisconsinites will have the opportunity to replace all of these clowns.
Stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights won’t matter until it is necessary to renegotiate contracts. If Walker somehow uses the “fiscal crisis” to create the need to negotiate or if negotiations are already looming, then damage will be done sooner, rather than later, but nothing that is being done can’t be undone. Walker has only four years at most. If the people of Wisconsin re-elect him or another Republican, then not only are the battles lost, but so is the war. If the people are that stupid, then there is no hope for the state and everything that is going on now is just a prelude to the real disaster.
My most fervent hope is that the people of Wisconsin will successfully recall Walker next year. It’s a tall order, but that would be the post powerful repudiation of Republicanism possible. If they let him stay in office, and then re-elect him and his fellow thugs, then the future will be bleak indeed.
Triassic Sands
What’s going on in Michigan sounds even worse than Wisconsin. Democracy, not just unions, appear to be under full frontal assault.
Republicans are horrible people.
Triassic Sands
Hey, John, how about getting the techies to fix the “Edit” feature. (And why not make the “Edit” feature indefinite?)
Democracy, not just unions, appears to be under full frontal assault.
James E Powell
@gbear:
In 2000, the Republicans on the Supreme Court stripped the facade of the rule of law that covered our elections. Not enough people cared. I expect the same will be true of Walker in Wisconsin. All people will remember is that he won.
Elia
Well I just watched this movie for the first time. Been meaning to forever, but didn’t know it was available until I saw this post.
I knew all this stuff going in, and I expected to be upset. But I’m still experiencing a burning ball of rage in the pit of my stomach, especially when I had to endure the head of Columbia’s Business school. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such visceral hatred for someone crop up in me almost instantaneously as I did when he said, “Give it your best shot.”
The end of this movie’s some real firebagger shit, btw. I’ve spent most of the past 2 years defending Obama and being an O-bot…but I don’t think I can do it anymore. This shit with Bradley Manning and the predictable but still inexcusable capitulation on Gitmo…I’m just worn out. Ugh.
Brandon
You’re not alone John, I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to finish this movie too.
urbanmeemaw
@Arundel: This is a culmination of a coup that began on 11-22-63. And Repuglicans are only the tip of the iceburg.
Barry
About Greenspan, Inside Job, etc.:
One thing that I’ve learned over 30-odd years of watching these guys is that by the time we hear of them, they’ve got a record, and they will *never* *ever* get better.
Greenspan was a lying Randroid corrupt maggot from the start, and has maintained that for several decades now.
bob h
I knew that Greenspan was a Republican ward-heeler, but what really surprised me from Inside Job was the whoring of the economics profession in pursuit of bank consulting agreements. That Chairman of the Harvard Economics Department looked so bad I felt sorry for him.
someofparts
Never thought I’d live to see a general strike. Wow.
Can you imagine what this place would have been like the last forty years, or would be like going forward, without fascist predation?
KXB
I saw Inside Job in a theater back in November. Yes, we were an older crowd on a Saturday night. But several scenes in the movie elicited a unified “Whoa!” from the audience. The one that sticks out is the pompous head of Columbia Business School who pretty much told Charles Ferguson, “I don’t have to answer to you.” and later, “Take your best shot.” The segment on how financial firms bankroll economic departments at universities to produce favorable reports was the most eye opening.
jetan
Great flick. Hubbard, among others, certainly comes off as a detestable worm. My favorite part is where he sneers at the filmmaker to “give it your best shot.” And they do.