Look who Ted Cruz has recruited as his economic advisor:
If it’s true that a man can be judged by the company he keeps, what are we to make of the appointment of former Sen. Phil Gramm as economic advisor to the Presidential campaign of Ted Cruz?
Cruz made the appointment Friday, when he collected Gramm’s endorsement of his quest for the Presidency.
As Micheal Hiltzik points out in his coverage of this — what’s the word?– curious appointment, Gramm is exactly whom you’d choose if one global financial meltdown just wasn’t delicious enough:
Gramm left a long record as a dedicated financial deregulator on Capitol Hill, with much of his effort aimed at freeing up trading in derivatives. That’s why he’s often identified as one of the godfathers of the 2008 financial crisis, which was spurred in part by banks’ imprudent trading and investing in these extremely complex financial instruments.
Gramm himself is undeterred by his own disastrous record, and clearly Cruz is equally unbothered. That would be why both men are ignoring Gramm’s last appearance as a campaign surrogate:
Gramm’s previous stint as a Presidential campaign advisor ended inauspiciously. That was in 2008, when he served as co-chairman of John McCain’s Presidential run.
Gramm’s most notable moment in that position came on July 10, 2008, when he dismissed the developing economic crisis as “a mental recession” in an interview–and video–released by the conservative Washington Times. “We’ve never been more dominant,” he said. “We’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today. We’ve sort of become a nation of whiners.” McCain immediately disavowed the remarks, and a few days later Gramm stepped down as his campaign co-chairman.
I’m assuming that Ted Cruz does actually hope to become president, and thus makes his choices in the belief that they will advance him to that end. So I can only see two possible interpretations for this exhuming of one of the most egregious poster children for GOP economic failure.
One is that this is what epistemic closure looks like when it’s at home. It takes a hermetic seal between you and reality to think the “nation of whiners” trope is a winner this year (or ever, really, but especially now).
The other is that this is just trolling, or rather yet one more instance of believing an action is simply good in itself, transcendently so, if it pisses liberals off. Which lands Cruz — and the GOP — in exactly the same place as option one: doubling down on the crazy for reasons extremely clear only to those with the correct implants in their upper left second molar.
All of which is to say that I remain firm in my belief that the entity identifying itself as Senator Cruz is in fact one of these guys.
“Where are we going?”
“Galt’s Gulch”
“When?”
“Real soon!”
Image: J. W. M. Turner, Sunrise With Sea Monsters, 1845
mclaren
Meanwhile, the Netherlands (several of whose cities have now implemented a guaranteed minimum income) now finds that it must close 5 of its prisons because crime keeps falling.
dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/03/more-prisons-to-close-as-falling-crime-leaves-cells-empty/
Ever get the feeling you’re living in the wrong country…?
Ked
Wait. That’s not a Nine Inch Nails album cover?
tsquared2001
Option 3: Cruz is Goldman Sachs’ bitch.
I am going with Door No. 3
JPL
Why not just rid the company of all laws and regulations. FDIC never did anything for the big guys did it.
NotMax
Guessing DeLay and Armey weren’t at home when Cruz called and Gramm happened to be next on the list.
JPL
Tom, If you have time read the interview that Trump gave the Post.. link
We live in strange and frightening times.
I wonder if you can find a painting to match this rant.
Cermet
Wow, and this guy went to Harvard?! What did he study – The Stupid Person’s Guide to “How to Ruin a Country’s Economy”?
Brachiator
Cruz is a zealot. Religious, political, economic. I doubt that he spends a nanosecond of time on what might upset liberals, no more than he apparently cares about what might upset his fellow Republicans.
But it says much that Terrible Cruz is apparently so committed to the ideal of free markets and deregulation that he would have an advisor who helped to destroy the economy.
raven
@Cermet: He got his doctorate here at Georgia.
SteveinSC
Delay, Livingston, Gramm and Armey, the real Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If there were war crimes for economic treason, Gramm would be the first to swing. The most disgusting piece of shit ever to claim a professorship, until Yoo.
JPL
Phil was my rep when he was a dem, and I proudly voted against him. Of course, I didn’t vote for him when he changed parties either.
Patricia Kayden
@mclaren: Good for them. That’s a nice problem to have.
Roger Moore
@tsquared2001:
That would be Heidi Cruz.
Mike in NC
Cruz and Gramm: twin Texas turds (where they grow everything bigger)
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
Clearly you don’t (since you haven’t emigrated), so why should anyone else?
geg6
Speaking of advisors, anyone catch the list of foreign policy advisors Drumpf put out today? Never heard of a single one them. Anybody have any data on any them?
burnspbesq
@tsquared2001:
Wait a sec. The Sanders people keep trying to tell me that HRC is Goldman’s bitch, and they can’t possibly be wrong. Can they?
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
I don’t think Goldman is monogamous.
raven
@burnspbesq:
I go down to Speaker’s Corner I’m thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they’re Jesus one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer singing a protest song – he says
‘they wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to keep their factories
Mike G
Gramm is who you bring in when you’re running a full-tilt looting operation and don’t give a shit about appearances.
mclaren
@JPL:
Because then Goldman Sachs would be selling crack out of its headquarters and pimping 9-year-old girls on the streetcorner.
You really can’t imagine the moral bankruptcy of those people.
PsiFighter37
Anyone know if the hairpiece got received well at AIPAC?
I don’t really give two shits about their opinion, but I’m guessing that if he bothered to speak from a teleprompter, someone got him all the right lines this time.
piratedan
tyvm for the Buckaroo Banzai shout out, quite possible one of Lithgow’s favorite films because he got to overact so wonderfully from beginning to end…..
In a way, YoYoDyne is the perfect GOP company… and I think the perfect nickname for Ted Cruz is John Smallberries.
Linda Featheringill
@Roger Moore:
LOL!
leeleeFL
@mclaren: all the flippin’ time! My parents were supposed to re-locate to Canada when I was a baby. I think of that a lot. i love this country, sometimes very much; but it seems to be none too bright sometimes. A conundrum, I beieve it is called.
Mart
What was wrong with Gramm’s policy (signed into law by Bill)? Banks pyramid scheme collapses and blows a $23 trillion hole in world economy. Middle income and poor pay them back for their efforts. Collect bonuses not jail terms.
Getting close to time to rinse and repeat, isn’t it?
Watched “The Big Short” last night. Pretty damn good at explaining the massive financial industry fraud with some humor thrown in. Shocked to learn it was not the blah’s in Gary, IN who schemed with Fannie May to collapse the world economy.
Ripley
@geg6: Here’s Kevin Drum’s take on what he calls Trump’s C-list foreign policy team.
mike in dc
Trump’s speech at the annual Likud Salad Toss* seemed to go over well there.
Poopyman
@piratedan: The New York Film Festival screened Buckaroo Banzai a few years back, and had Lithgow and Weller there giving a lot of the backstory.
(Warning: That’s an hour-long Youtube video, but BB fans won’t be sorry.)
Villago Delenda Est
If you’re looking for “unsound”, “unfiduciary”, or “utterly bankrupt” economic advisors, Phil Gramm is your go to guy, fer sure.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mart: I loved the way The Big Short broke the fourth wall and explained stuff to you.
hueyplong
AIPAC likely ain’t monogamous either.
piratedan
@Poopyman: ty, I’ll check it out!
HRA
I bet Cruz got to Gramm before Kasich.
Trump got standing ovations.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: The mindless ideology of the “free market” is the only thing that matters. Never mind Adam Smith would politely tell these jackholes, ala Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, that they know nothing of his work.
tsquared2001
@Roger Moore: Nah, Mrs. Cruz is an employee.
Calgary Ted, on the other hand, is a Prosperity Gospel preaching, fuck the proles, awaiting the End Times, whiny ass little bitch whose own children don’t seem to like him.
When I call a woman a bitch, I ALWAYS mean it as a compliment.
JPL
@mclaren: Hey .. every man for them self.. Why should the government support the bad players. I thought you would like this idea.
Bob In Portland
@burnspbesq: No, Clinton just accepts millions from Wall Street and doesn’t put out, although I hear she gives Wall Street “good word”. You just have to use your imagination as to why they pay to play with her.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Worked well with Bill.
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore: So he’s a cuckold? Kinky …
jl
Gramm showing up in the Cruz compartment of the clown car shows the one thing that unites the GOP against Trump, and that is their economic con game, and the economic con game is the one thing that their big money backers just love, it is their main reason for being in the game.
And the lines are exactly the same as they have been for 30 years now, packaged by the GOP and their hacks, and bought and sold by the media, as innovative new thinking:
Tax cuts for the rich to try the supply side snake oil remedy once again,
Deregulation of everything, and declaring it a free market paradise, whatever happens
Hidden crony capitalism through government contracting and privatization rip offs
Dismantle social insurance, and force what cannot be dismantled into Wall Street private investment rip offs*
Only disagreement with TL is that while this is crazy, the ideas have very influential backers in the US. WaPo and Wall St. Jr editorial pages, and increasingly their news stories, are two. Softer and more implicit pitches are made in NYT and places like NPR.
So, it may be crazy stuff, but it is still dangerous.
And too many inroads into corporate wing of Democratic Party, which complicates elections.
*Hey, why gamble with that sketchy government paper money and bankrupt social security, when I can have real gold coins delivered to my doorstep from my IRA! Better to be safe and secure than sorry.
I talked with a wingnut last night who is mad at the tyrant Obama for messing up his precious metal retirement investments. He is not sure what that SOB fiend Obama did, but it must have been something. Paper dollars will be worth zero in twenty years, this guy says he heard Ron Paul say so on the TV.
HRA
Bill Clinton has to be off the road.
washingtonexaminer.com/bill-clinton-slams-barack-obamas-awful-legacy/article/2586419
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
I think the current term of art is Cuckservative.
tsquared2001
@burnspbesq: No chance. They are supporters of Sanders so EVERYTHING they believe and express is The Eternal Truth.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
Fucker deserves to be grifted, then.
Feebog
First Frank Gaffney and now Phil Gramm. On a scale of one to ten those picks put Cruz in negative numbers.
tsquared2001
@Mike G: It is the bust out only instead of a small chain of sports equipment stores, it is the entire nation.
Fuck you, America, pay me.
p.a.
@Cermet:
Networking 101: Reptilian Symbiotics
Frankensteinbeck
I have come to value guilt by association less and less. I will go with Option Four: Cruz has a personal or professional relationship with this guy, and wanted him on the team. We don’t need to look at the people around him to know that Cruz is a flaming asshole who will gut all financial regulation given the slightest chance.
Steve in the ATL
@raven:
Dude, we don’t talk about that. Don’t want to ruin our brand.
OGLiberal
@Ripley: Heh!….the Schmitz guy is Mary Kay Letourneau’s brother. And she’s better known than him or any of the rest of the crew.
jl
@Feebog:
” First Frank Gaffney ”
Gaffney went to Cruz , huh? That explains why I didn’t see him on the Trump foreign policy masthead. I was curious about that.
tsquared2001
@Mart: I have a 2 1/2 hour lecture prepared for The Kids regarding the ’08 financial crisis.
I have yet to deliver it & demand is non-existent. The Market has spoken. I suppose.
ThresherK
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, you don’t hire Phil Gramm for that last course in charm school.
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
It’s the only one of the current crop that I
botheredmanaged to see. Excellent flick, and I also really enjoyed and appreciated the way they spoke directly to the audience.Sad_Dem
@SteveinSC:
Maybe you’re too young to remember Kissinger at Harvard?
Mai.naem.mobile
Phil Gramm is an asshole. Jeezus you want to wind up Dems to go out and vote you tell them about Ted Cruz’s economic advisor going from the Dem Senate Caucus meetings for the Budget deal of Rayguns and telling the Repubs before he jumped ship. Just as bad as George Will stealing the Carter debate papers and handing them to Reagan. For that he was an honorary pallbearer at Nancy Reagan’s funeral.
Also too,anybody see the probably fake Anonymous threat on Twitter/Facebook, to release Ted Cruz hooker stuff before Tuesday.