Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

It’s the corruption, stupid.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

No one could have predicted…

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Republicans in disarray!

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Infrastructure week. at last.

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Reader Interactions

170Comments

  2. 2.

    NorthLeft12

    The picture at the top of this post is my favourite news photograph on the internet, and its not even close. I haven’t had a chance to watch the video, but I will when I get home.
    The banksters need to be called out and publically shamed as often as possible. I look forward to Sen. Warren’s roasting of the odious Wells Fargo exec./potential convict.

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    She didn’t just kill Strumpf. She pretty much indicted the whole of the Wall Street baking industry. And it was glorious.

    She’s gonna have knives out for her come her next election. Fortunately Massachusetts loves her.

  5. 5.

    Trollhattan

    Whoa. Do not mess with the senator-professor-mom-awesomeness factory.

    He’ll go home to a damn nice house (one of several) of course. Skin grafts sometime tomorrow.

  6. 6.

    singfoom

    She should stay in the Senate indeed, we do need her there. But while this display is satisfying, what would be more satisfying is actually prosecuting white collar criminals with the same (or hell maybe half) of the zeal our justice system displays for prosecuting low level drug offenders, or sellers of loose cigarettes.

    Unfortunately, I think despite Senator Warren’s heartfelt and correct assertion that this needs to be given over to the DOJ for investigation and prosecution, the U.S. Government (even with awesome awesome Obama who has accomplished MANY a great thing) decided long ago in 2008 (and before) to let high net worth white collar criminals (commonly referred to as bankers) off with a warning. The Government will make a deal with the company and the company will pay a fine that’s pennies on the dollar of the money they stole, but no one worth anything will be charged with any actual crimes. John Stumpf and Carrie Holsted (the head of the division where the crimes took place) should both go to jail. But they won’t. Because Democrat or Republican in the White House or in charge of the Senate or the House, this shit never changes.

    Indeed, JUMP YOU FUCKERS

  7. 7.

    RaflW

    Hmmm, this may be why the impotent little twerp Ryan was tweeting anti-CPFB crapola the other day. His paymasters don’t want to face this sort of public thrashing again. If the facts don’t get uncovered, Warren can’t whack the perpetrators.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yutsano:

    Wall Street baking industry

    Is that a new fall show on Food Network?

    (I know it’s a typo, but it made me LOL at work, so now you must pay.)

  11. 11.

    RaflW

    Oh, and since we’re all hot to unsubscribe from the NYT, can we get our money out of these shit-ass big banks?

    I could use a bit of accountability on that. I’ve been meaning to move my day-to-day acct out of US Bank and into a credit union or community bank. Who’s with me? Can we set timelines for each other? I’ve held off because it is sort of a pain in the butt. But these banksters are carbuncles on the ass of our country, and they could stand to lose a few customers.

  13. 13.

    andy

    Every time I see something like this I always wonder if these fat cats realize they could be hanging and kicking under the lamp posts financial districts are so well equipped with the next time they crash the economy.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    @singfoom:

    The prosecutions don’t necessarily change (unfortunately) but having Democrats who are willing to pass new regulations is important. Better to at least try to stop the bleeding and not create new wounds than to say, Eh, fuck it, let’s just kill the patient and sort it out later.

  15. 15.

    singfoom

    @RaflW: I’ve been banking with USAA since 2008 because fuck all the megabank casinos. I’m not sure if they accept new members who don’t have military service at this point, but I love them.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    Wow, that’s an ass-scorching that fat-cat piece of shit isn’t going to forget anytime soon!

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @RaflW:

    I’ve been with a regional bank ever since BofA pissed me off for the last time 25 years ago. Union Bank of California, owned by a Japanese bank, so the three language options at the ATM are English, Spanish, and Japanese.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    @singfoom:

    the U.S. Government (even with awesome awesome Obama who has accomplished MANY a great thing) decided long ago in 2008 (and before) to let high net worth white collar criminals (commonly referred to as bankers) off with a warning.

    After the S&L crisis, which saw a few people going to jail, a whole lot of bags of money were dropped on enough Congress critters to make sure that it would not happen again.

    And banking in a global industry. Nobody anywhere does serious jail time for this.

  22. 22.

    singfoom

    @Mnemosyne: Listen, I get what you’re saying and on one level I agree. Democrats will pass better regulations than Republicans, but don’t kid yourself. The deregulation of the financial industry was a bipartisan deal. They shovel money at both sides. The behavior of rampant criminality that pervades the financial sector of this country will NOT FUCKING CHANGE until those pieces of shit on Wall Street see a couple of their own perp walk in their 20K suits and then go to jail for decade(s). Right now, it’s clear that you can get away with it as long as you steal enough money.

    This is the shit that drives people away from the Democrats and into the 3rd parties.

  24. 24.

    BlueNC

    I’m honest to goodness physically aroused.

    That’s disgusti…..(watches video)….Um….anyone got a cigarette??

  25. 25.

    laura

    Unvarnished, badassery like that makes my day!
    The DOJ and SEC, on the otherhand, make me furious. When actual investigation and enforcement -with criminal prosecution and jail time instead of settlement without liability finally occurs . . . Well I’m damned tired of waiting.

  26. 26.

    Wapiti

    In the Army there was a “senior occupant” rule. If a military vehicle was pulled over by the MPs, the senior occupant (normally riding shotgun) was cited, not the driver; the driver is under the supervision of the senior person.

    I wish there was a way to translate that for civilian law.

  27. 27.

    Mary G

    I am a cisgender person, but that arouses me too. I have often said that the worst job I ever held was as a bank teller. What a sweat shop a local branch is.

  29. 29.

    singfoom

    @Davis X. Machina: Yes, capital can strike. But remember Obama told them that he was all that stood between they and the pitchforks. He could have fucking wrung whatever agreement he wanted out of them. Unfortunately, his advisors at the time decided to not prosecute and we got TARP and all of the other bailouts which they decided not to pass on to the little people.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    Vox has a very nice article pointing out that the Republican senators who are so angry at Wells Fargo are also eager to eliminate the CFPB, which was responsible for discovering and pursuing the wrongdoing. I wish more of our media could make simple points like that.

  32. 32.

    singfoom

    @schrodinger’s cat: It’s better than nothing. It’s not an achievement to be crowed about. It was significantly weakened in committee and they’re still fighting the rulemaking in the courts. So it’s better than chopped liver, but it’s not good enough for the country.

  33. 33.

    Miss Bianca

    I looked at the title of this post and thought, “did JC become a zombie sometime during the house renovation?”

  34. 34.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: I tell people all the time: personal banking should always be done at a credit union. I haven’t been at an actual bank since they screwed me over after I got sick.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    @singfoom:

    This is the shit that drives people away from the Democrats and into the 3rd parties.

    Which is, of course, the way to guarantee that NOTHING will get done. Because no third party is going to change things without a serious ground plan for actually, you know, winning power – which is something that most purity ponies, at least of the lefty persuasion, see as inherently suspect in and of itself.

  36. 36.

    singfoom

    @Brachiator:

    After the S&L crisis, which saw a few people going to jail, a whole lot of bags of money were dropped on enough Congress critters to make sure that it would not happen again.

    And banking in a global industry. Nobody anywhere does serious jail time for this.

    Hundreds of bankers went to jail during the S&L Crisis. Hundreds. That’s more than a few and a higher percentage than how many have gone to jail for 2008.

  37. 37.

    Trollhattan

    @BlueNC:
    Distinctly recall after one of her TDS appearances–pre senate–J-Stew saying, “I so want to make out you with you right now.” He was in awe of her, as are we all, yet. My paradigm for an uncorruptible politician.

  40. 40.

    Miss Bianca

    @RaflW: Wells Fargo has held my mortgage – and another account – for a number of years now. Back before the meltdown of ’08, it seemed like every damn year my mortgage was being shuffled around to some different bank. They’ve held it for the longest. Now I wonder whether I ought to try to get it shifted to my local bank or, maybe, just sell the house and get out of the business entirely, since I’m not even living in it right now.

  41. 41.

    singfoom

    @Miss Bianca:

    Which is, of course, the way to guarantee that NOTHING will get done. Because no third party is going to change things without a serious ground plan for actually, you know, winning power – which is something that most purity ponies, at least of the lefty persuasion, see as inherently suspect in and of itself.

    I didn’t say it was smart, I just said it was a reason. If two parties that are both fucking you, one whispers sweet nothings in your ear first but still does it while the other doesn’t even ask permission, what’s the difference? You’re still fucked. I’m all aboard the HRC train for this election, but the party still needs to get better on this score.

  42. 42.

    Starfish

    @RaflW: What happened then was that the House passed some legislation to weaken CFPB the day after the huge fine against Wells Fargo.

  43. 43.

    les

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    With low inflation it makes sense to sit on your cash reserves rather than invest them in risky ventures.

    Security markets at record highs, bond markets at record lows. There’s more money in the hands of people who don’t need to spend it than ever, and it ain’t sitting in any pockets or under any mattresses. I will be shocked, shocked I say, when the next balloon pops.

  46. 46.

    catclub

    But the reality seems to be messier and more boring: Wells Fargo wanted its employees to push lots of real accounts, it asked too much of them, and the employees rebelled by opening fake accounts to get the bosses off their backs. The fake accounts weren’t profitable for Wells Fargo, and no rational executive would have wanted them, which is why Wells Fargo kept telling the employees not to open them. But the employees did anyway because they felt like they had no other choice. It was not an evil high-level plot. It was just dumb. It was a form of employee resistance that was channeled into fraud by bad incentives and bad management.

    from Matt Levine at Bloomberg.

    Stupid wins again!

  47. 47.

    andy

    @RaflW: Did that some time ago- it was easy! I tried to get a small loan through US Bank years ago to buy a computer. I was considered a poor risk despite the fact I paid off a car, though since it was through Ford Credit it somehow didn’t count. I couldn’t even qualify for the “generous” 18% interest rate they offered to somewhat less-poor risks. So I went a couple blocks down the street, joined the credit union and got my loan. A few months later, sometime after I had deposited my tax refund, I withdrew everything, closed my US Bank account, and walked the check over to the credit union- it was that simple. The funny thing was that the same US Bank representative that turned me down gave me an exit interview, and asked me why, after eighteen years, I would close my account with them…

  48. 48.

    les

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I am not talking about individuals and mattresses but cash rich Fortune 500 corporations.

    Big corps aren’t using money market accounts or giant pots of money either. Know what else is up? Corps buying back their own stock. I wonder who that helps?

  49. 49.

    catclub

    @les: Yes, bonds as assets are so far very high – who knows if and when they will fall. I guess when interest rates go up substantially. If you ask Japan, that is still in the indefinite future.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yutsano:

    I also have a credit union account but, frankly, they kinda suck (it’s the credit union for the Giant Evil Corporation’s employees). When I was buying my car, I got a much better interest rate through the dealer than I did through the credit union — 4 percent vs 8 percent.

    So I am satisfied with my Japanese banking overlords for now.

  51. 51.

    singfoom

    @schrodinger’s cat: I know the regulations of the bill. I’m not regurgitating shit, I’ve been hopping mad about this since 2008. Yes, the capital stress tests and requirements are good. Yes, the new reporting requirements are good. Do we still see cases of criminal behavior in the banks where no one goes to jail? They pay a fine and ok, sorry. If something else happens here with Wells Fargo, let me know.

  54. 54.

    catclub

    @andy: Credit unions are good.

    Kasasa Banking I signed up for still pays substantial interest on deposits. How substantial? About 20 TIMES the Money market rate.

    I wonder if it is still being offered.

  55. 55.

    Mike in Pasadena

    During the Bush Administration, we heard people at the top say, “I take full responsibility for” fill in the blank for some terrible thing. Nothing ever happened for the asshole who “took responsibility.” It was always a few bad apples at the bottom who were fired or fined or prosecuted. I am glad she made it personal. “HOW did you take responsibility?” He is going to need a colostomy bag with the reaming she gave him.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @singfoom:

    If two parties that are both fucking you, one whispers sweet nothings in your ear first but still does it while the other doesn’t even ask permission, what’s the difference?

    In most states, that’s the difference between consensual sex and rape.

  58. 58.

    singfoom

    @RaflW: I’ve been with USAA since 2008. I love them. I’m not sure if they take non military accounts anymore but they did then.

  60. 60.

    karen marie

    @RaflW: This suggestion is made every time shit like this happens, including after the 2008 implosion. Unfortunately, the majority of people neither have the will to do it, the awareness to do it, nor enough money that it would make more than a blip on the banksters’ bottom line. Not to mention the time cost of looking for a credit union or giving up the convenience of having access to their account at the branch in their grocery store. Infuriating as it is, people assume that no matter where you go, there you are. I move my money to a smaller bank, a bigger bank buys them. In the 1980s my bank changed four times yet I never moved my account.

  61. 61.

    germy

    I’m guessing Stumpf punched his fist through a window in a blind rage when he found out he’d be testifying in front of Warren.

  62. 62.

    catclub

    @singfoom:

    a whole lot of bags of money were dropped on enough Congress critters to make sure that it would not happen again.

    The Keating 5! John McCain, represent.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @singfoom:

    Also, you missed Brachiator’s point: S&L bankers went to jail because the laws to send them there were in place, so bankers donated millions of dollars to get those laws changed, and here we are.

    The only way to get more prosecutions is to get more and better banking laws. The only way to get more and better banking laws is to elect politicians who will pass those laws. And, like it or not, in our two-party system, voting for someone other than the Dem pretty much guarantees that those laws will not pass.

    We’re standing at the bottom of a mountain. We can start trudging up it, or we can futz around trying to build a flying machine to go around it.

  64. 64.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Miss Bianca: I shifted most of my banking to a small credit union in my community years ago, and couldn’t be happier. People there know my name, they smile and say hello when I walk in, they invest in local projects and support local charitable causes. I feel good about banking with them.

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    @catclub:

    Stupid wins again!

    Not really. Guess which 5000+ people got layed off, which business entity might ever end up paying the full fine, and who got all the bonuses in the interim?

  67. 67.

    schrodinger's cat

    Why do we not have postal banking? It will kill two birds in one stone, make the post offices more vibrant and economically viable and let people have access to banking with paying fees to write checks etc.

  68. 68.

    ET

    Justifiable homicide.

    And bankers think they deserve less regulation….. As Bill the Cat would say TTHBFT!

  69. 69.

    Keith G

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Berner talking points….

    Lordy. What Singfoom was typing about about is not about the failed Sander campaign or it’s talking points. It is about the one weakness that Democratic Party shares with the GOP. And that shared weakness (a seemingly go slow and gentle approach toward Wall Street) is a reason why some young’uns have a “Let them both burn in hell” feeling about the two party establishments.

    Now, I think the kids are wrong about this, but they come by their feelings honestly.

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    @Mnemosyne: Funny enough this credit union account was started by my dad when I was a kid as a small savings repository. It’s been my most reliable holder of my accounts since then (although my car loan is through Capital One and they’ve been mostly good about it) and I couldn’t think of doing personal banking with anyone else. Of course if I end up moving back to Seattle there’s a few over there I will consider but my current credit union account I’m always going to hold on to.

    @schrodinger’s cat: Well not all credit unions are equal. And to be honest mine is one of the largest in the state of Washington. So I guess it’s perspective.

  71. 71.

    singfoom

    @schrodinger’s cat: What Iceland did with it’s banks. They should have been allowed to fail, put into recievership, their boards replaced, their CEOs replaced and criminal prosecutions laid out for everyone involved in all of the mortgage fraud. Would have it been painful? Absolutely. It was painful anyway, we’re just getting back to pre crisis economic levels now.

  72. 72.

    Corner Stone

    Credit Unions really are not all that. I had to close one of my accounts at a local CU because they were charging me money each month for not meeting a certain level of activity. No matter the amount deposited.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Of course, Warren outlined precisely why management pushed “cross selling” so hard. It was a key indicator as far as Wall Street analysts were concerned of Wells Fargo’s profitability and strength of its market value. So management pushed it and pushed it and as long as the cross selling numbers were good, they DID NOT CARE if it was fraudulent, because they’d make their pile and be gone before the shit hit the fan.

    Our “business press” is amoral as well, as amoral as our political press is.

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @Just One More Canuck:

    True story: a friend of mine closed her account at Bank of America while screaming in the middle of the lobby, “My money would be safer in a mattress than it is with you people!!!”

  79. 79.

    Corner Stone

    @singfoom:

    Yes, capital can strike. But remember Obama told them that he was all that stood between they and the pitchforks. He could have fucking wrung whatever agreement he wanted out of them.

    That was a laughable fanboi story at the time and has grown no legs the longer the farce has gone on.

  80. 80.

    RobertB

    @Davis X. Machina: IANA Economist, but I think that this is the big idea behind Keynesian Economics. Business can (and will) sit on their cash and not invest it, nor borrow money, even if the cost of the investment is zero. This doesn’t have to be, “I’m going to take my bat and ball and go home,” it can be, “Nobody’s buying cars, so why should I expand my factory?”

    However, Stumpf could use some time in Federal PMITA prison.

  81. 81.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Corner Stone: What about Iceland? United States is not Iceland. United States economy in free fall would have brought down the global economy. But singfoom would have been happy because the bankers would be punished, he doesn’t care about the collateral damage.

  84. 84.

    eldorado

    just a reminder. i have open sourced my DIY tumbrel plans with the MIT license. so feel free to build as many as you like.

  85. 85.

    Tom

    @les: actually it’s interest rates that are at record lows. Bond prices, being inverse to interest rates, are at record highs.

  87. 87.

    Gelfling 545

    @Yutsano: There’s no guarantee with a local bank. My daughter just got yet another check from a local bank, this one for $15 bringing the total they’ve had to repay her over the last 5 or so years to about $800 for the illegal fees and late crediting of deposits they finally got caught in. At the time she was a customer she was making about $8 an hour & they seriously messed up both her finances and her credit for a while. Another local just got caught redlining. On the other hand, I had HSBC (yeah, I know) for years, since it was Marine Trust, Marine Midland, etc and never had a problem. A few years ago they sold out to a more or less local bank & it’s been a nightmare. They clearly were not prepared to handle that volume of business. They, in turn, have now sold out to Key Bank so Dog knows where I’ll be next. I do have a credit union acct. but there are some things they can’t seem to handle.

  90. 90.

    tobie

    @RaflW:

    I’ve been meaning to move my day-to-day acct out of US Bank and into a credit union or community bank. Who’s with me?

    Moved from BofA to a credit union in 2008. No regrets.

  91. 91.

    smintheus

    The entire time Strumpf has a look on his face exactly like that big groundhog I finally caught in my garden inside a cage trap.

  92. 92.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, you missed Brachiator’s point: S&L bankers went to jail because the laws to send them there were in place, so bankers donated millions of dollars to get those laws changed, and here we are.

    ep.

    I also had a relative who worked on one of the teams that examined the records of the S&Ls and helped put some of the crooked execs away, or at least saw that they got heavily fined.

    In 2008, the ground had shifted to “too big to fail,” and “we must bail them out.”

  94. 94.

    Fair Economist

    @Mnemosyne:

    Also, you missed Brachiator’s point: S&L bankers went to jail because the laws to send them there were in place, so bankers donated millions of dollars to get those laws changed, and here we are.

    Partially but not completely true. Many laws and regulations were repealed, but there are still laws that make much of what went on in the bubble prosecutable (although it’s now too late for those specific deeds because of statues of limitations). However, the Obama administration made a political decision to go easy on prosecutions. When they have prosecuted, juries have been prone to not convict, and when convicted the judges have generally let them off on appeal. The last at least may get better if we can finally get a majority on the court.

  95. 95.

    les

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I am not following your argument can you flesh it out some more?

    I don’t think I’m arguing with you, just not being very clear–or maybe I jsut hijacked your comment to vent on a peeve. Pretty much every form of investment is at record highs–junk bonds are even up. The world’s money is so concentrated in the rich and the big corps that they can’t find places to invest, so they’re all bidding up whatever there is. And the economy is stagnant, basically. ’cause the people who would buy shit and make things move don’t have any money. Vote for Hil: dump the carried interest rule, raise marginal rates at the high end, maybe get a securities transaction tax, up the estate tax.

  98. 98.

    Mnemosyne

    @singfoom:

    We don’t have postal banking because Republicans in Congress.

    We’re not going to fix that by voting for the Green Party or refusing to vote at all.

  99. 99.

    catclub

    Kasasa banking:

    Gulf Coast Community Federal Credit Union
    Eligibility Requirements | Locations (3) | Receive alerts for this credit union
    REVIEWS
    Based on 2 reviews
    HEALTH RATING
    A
    View health report
    CURRENT TOP RATE
    3.00% APY
    Kasasa Cash
    View all rates

    example. 3% interest on checking.

  100. 100.

    Fair Economist

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Why do we not have postal banking? It will kill two birds in one stone, make the post offices more vibrant and economically viable and let people have access to banking with paying fees to write checks etc.

    Because this would make the post office more viable and let ordinary people pay less to banks. Both are anathema to Republicans.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @les:

    IANA economist (and I’m bad at math, too), but it does seem like all of those much-derided tax shelters of the 1970s were at least funneling money into infrastructure projects rather than the money just sitting around.

  102. 102.

    JCJ

    @singfoom:

    But remember Obama told them that he was all that stood between they and the pitchforks. He could have fucking wrung whatever agreement he wanted out of them. Unfortunately, his advisors at the time decided to not prosecute and we got TARP and all of the other bailouts which they decided not to pass on to the little people.

    So Obama’s vote for TARP in the senate in October 2008 actually happened when Obama was president? I are confused by what more he could have done regarding TARP.

  103. 103.

    les

    @Mnemosyne:

    IANA economist (and I’m bad at math, too), but it does seem like all of those much-derided tax shelters of the 1970s were at least funneling money into infrastructure projects rather than the money just sitting around.

    Yeah; some of that still happens, but the concentration of money means there aren’t enough real projects to absorb it unless the gov’t starts fixing some of the broken shit, or does railroads, or something. But we can’t have that, it would move some small fraction of the wealth into workers’ hands. And the job creators (has there ever been so transparent a lie so uncritically accepted?) might have to pay taxes instead of playing trader games.

  105. 105.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Fair Economist: One of the reasons that you rarely see bankers go to jail is that it is hard to get a conviction. Financial crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute for a number of reasons- the transactions are so complicated that judges and juries (and prosecutors themselves) wont understand them, and the defendants often have deep enough pockets that they can spend enough on experts to muddy the waters even further.

  106. 106.

    ? Martin

    BTW, we wouldn’t have ever discovered this if not for the CFPB that Republicans blocked at every turn and said wasn’t needed.

  108. 108.

    les

    @Just One More Canuck:

    One of the reasons that you rarely see bankers go to jail is that it is hard to get a conviction. Financial crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute for a number of reasons- the transactions are so complicated that judges and juries (and prosecutors themselves) wont understand them, and the defendants often have deep enough pockets that they can spend enough on experts to muddy the waters even further.

    Plus years of Repub congresses meant a lot of what went on was not technically illegal; and the Bush maladministration actively prevented states from investigating or prosecuting fraud. Which, unfortunately, tends to be a thing that is executed at low levels, even when encouraged from above.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    IANA economist (and I’m bad at math, too), but it does seem like all of those much-derided tax shelters of the 1970s were at least funneling money into infrastructure projects rather than the money just sitting around.

    Nope. Many were simply generating paper losses for investors with no economic purpose whatsoever.

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The fringy left has little to offer that is of substance. They just like to sit in the corner and pout with self righteous indignation.

    True enough. Also the indignation of the fringy left typically stops with the idea of putting someone in jail. They have no clue when it comes to reasonable regulation or effective operation of financial markets.

  111. 111.

    James E Powell

    @JCJ:

    I don’t know enough to argue whether it would have been better not to do TARP or to hold off and demand more concessions or something else. What I will always complain about and never understand was the “looking forward not backward” attitude that moved ahead with such alacrity and the general population never really learned what the hell happened, why it happened, and who benefited. This allowed the RW to blame the whole thing on Barney Frank forcing banks to give mortgages to black people who didn’t make the payments. That story was put out there every day with nothing coming from the administration or from Democrats to contest it. It is now fully embedded in the American historical knowledge bank and thus the notion that the banksters are over-regulated can be discussed free of any burden to prove the case. If it weren’t for Senator Warren, there wouldn’t be anyone in office who spoke against the bankers.

  113. 113.

    Felonius Monk

    @delk:

    Too bad she can’t moderate the debates

    JeebusCrispus, she’d tear the Donald three new assholes before he could get a complete sentence out of his mouth.

  114. 114.

    Death Panel Truck

    @Yutsano: Yakima Federal Savings & Loan holds the mortgage to our house. The bank manager who worked with us said, “Yakima Federal never sells its mortgages. You’re not going to wake up someday to find out we’ve sold your loan to the Peanut Bank of Georgia.”

    When we went in to get a car loan, she said, “You’d be better off at HAPO. Their rates are better than ours.” I admired her honesty. HAPO financed our car and motorcycle.

  115. 115.

    ted mills

    Welcome to the Elizabeth Warren Cafe, where we serve…YOUR ASS. You can have it grilled, or flambéd, or toasted, and we can serve it on a platter or just hand it to you.

  117. 117.

    Shell

    Everytime I hear the Spawn of Trump’s Skittle tweet, can’t help thinking. “Three poisoned candies in a whole bowl? Homer Simpson would say, ‘Ummmm, I like those odds!’ “

  118. 118.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne: The problem now is that there’s huge uncertainty in terms of what kind of infrastructure will actually pay off. The internet has managed to upend just about every pre-internet infrastructure driven sector in one way or another. The energy sector now seems as though it has tipped fully from base load + peak over to forecast and balance. That not only changes how the grid works, but basically how everything else works – how you design buildings, how you design anything that uses electricity so it can broadcast its needs, how you finance energy infrastructure. Homeowners are now leasing the use of their roof to buy back power from a 3rd party power provider whose equipment sits over your head.

    We’ve lost 25% of our gas stations and there are now more EV outlets than diesel pumps in the US. If self-driving cars becomes a thing, how you build roads and highways will completely change. The role of rail will completely change. The role of air travel will at least be affected. You have sea freight on the verge of financial collapse, in part because it’s becoming too slow for any kind of high dollar value shipping. I can get free 2-day shipping from China on some things I buy. A 7 week container ship can’t compete with that, so what role will ports play?

    So where do you invest when it’s almost completely unclear what infrastructure will be needed 10 years from now?Infrastructure is usually a 20-30 year return. And how do you finance it when you can get consumers to finance a chunk of it and you can eliminate the investment need for anything that goes to software? We have negative interest rates in many markets and about $12T in negative rate bonds. We very literally don’t know where to spend money any longer. $12T not only doing nothing, but doing less than nothing. At some point governments are going to look to seize that money to pay off debt.

  120. 120.

    JCJ

    @James E Powell:

    I agree. When I heard someone making the claim about banks being forced to make mortgage loans to black people I pointed out that one of the big Wisconsin banks that was in trouble was M&I Bank. Their problems primarily came from loans made at their branches in Arizona or some such place. I then asked if they had only loaned money to African Americans in Arizona and not to white people looking to buy retirement property. The conversation changed quickly.

  121. 121.

    Brachiator

    @Just One More Canuck:

    One of the reasons that you rarely see bankers go to jail is that it is hard to get a conviction.

    From a Bill Moyers piece on the S & L crisis

    William Black: Sure. The savings and loan debacle was one-seventieth the size of the current crisis, both in terms of losses and the amount of fraud. In that crisis, the savings and loan regulators made over 30,000 criminal referrals, and this produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice. But even that understates the degree of prioritization, because we, the regulators, worked very closely with the FBI and the Justice Department to create a list of the top 100 — the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history.

    In the current crisis, that same agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, which was supposed to regulate, among others, Countrywide, Washington Mutual and IndyMac — which collectively made hundreds of thousands of fraudulent mortgage loans — made zero criminal referrals. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is supposed to regulate the largest national banks, made zero criminal referrals. The Federal Reserve appears to have made zero criminal referrals; it made three about discrimination. And the FDIC was smart enough to refuse to answer the question, but nobody thinks they made any material number of criminal referrals [either]..

    Fair point that nothing much was done during the Bush or Obama administrations to pursue criminal prosecutions.

  124. 124.

    germy

    Seven weeks before Election Day, the earliest numbers from advance voting for president show initial strength for Hillary Clinton in swing state North Carolina, good news for Donald Trump in battleground Iowa and a record number of requests for ballots in Ohio.

    Question: Who are the people requesting ballots? Are they drumpf fans who have never voted before and will probably never vote again, but want to put their special guy in the white house? Or are they voters determined to put a stop to him?

  125. 125.

    Roger Moore

    @les:
    It’s important to distinguish the situation you’re describing from a bubble. When interest rates are very low, you expect equities prices (and P/E ratios) to rise; that’s a rational response to near-zero real interest rates.

    That’s very different from a bubble, which is when people respond irrationally to rapidly rising prices. In theory, high prices are a signal that future returns should be low, i.e. you’re buying high. But when prices rise rapidly for long enough, people get their signals crossed, see that as a sign of high returns that they expect to continue indefinitely, and choose to invest more, continuing the rapid rise in prices. That’s a bubble. The bubble pops when the price rise stalls, money stops flowing into the market, and people who were buying with the hope of selling to somebody else are left holding the bag.

  128. 128.

    germy

    I wonder what sort of questions Scott Brown would have asked, if he’d beaten Ms. Warren in the election?

  131. 131.

    Gindy51

    @singfoom: From USAA website:
    Active Military
    Individuals who are currently serving in the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marines or Navy.
    Former Military
    Those who have retired or separated from the U.S. military with a discharge type of Honorable.
    Family
    Widows, widowers and un-remarried former spouses of USAA members who had USAA auto or property insurance while married and individuals whose parents have or had USAA auto or property insurance.
    Cadets and Midshipmen
    Cadets and midshipmen at U.S. service academies, in advanced ROTC or on ROTC scholarship, plus officer candidates within 24 months of commissioning.

    We’ve been with them for everything (banking, insurance, investments) for decades and our daughter since she was born.

  132. 132.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    The problem now is that there’s huge uncertainty in terms of what kind of infrastructure will actually pay off.

    I don’t think that’s really true. We know that we have a lot of infrastructure that we’re trying to use right now that’s in terrible shape; we could do a lot of good by catching up on deferred maintenance- patching potholes, replacing leaky water mains, etc.- without worrying too much about ideal infrastructure for the future.

  133. 133.

    D58826

    @Roger Moore: The Goopers are angry because election day is coming up and they have to put on a public show for the folks back home. I rather suspect that after the hearings the Goopers took Stumpf out for a nice drink and told him that Sen. Warren just suffers from raging PMS and to ignore her. Once election day is past they will repeal Dodd-Frank if they have the votes and the WH.

  134. 134.

    jl

    When I have time I need to check out this guy’s testimony. I know some people from low to pretty high at WF who have been talking about very intense pressure to push cross sales, no matter what, always and everywhere and way, regardless of what was good for the customer.. Some left because they were sick of the BS. Don’t sound like it was due to a few (thousand!?) rotten apples who just happened to fall into poor Wells Fargo’s employ.

    Edit: now that I know the extent of it, I need to follow up. If the corporation is saying it was just bad people taking advantage of a poorly designed incentive scheme, that sounds very fishy. From what I have heard, it was far more.

  135. 135.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Keith G:

    a reason why some young’uns have a “Let them both burn in hell” feeling about the two party establishments.

    A very, very small number of younguns base their feelings about political parties on ideas about banks being bad and what’s to be done about that.

  136. 136.

    shomi

    To be honest, Warren can be a bit too crude and direct for my liking sometimes. Her whole agenda here was obviously to talk down to this guy and not really accomplish much else. Regardless of whether he deserves it or not, this is not unlike stuff I see on the right with their dog and pony shows about their favorite pet peeves.

  137. 137.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Roger Moore: Forget it Roger, its Martin. He likes to make everything complicated and Tom Friedman like with lot of buzz words. At least we should be happy that he didn’t suggest we contract out infrastructure development to Apple, it starts with an i already!

  139. 139.

    les

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s important to distinguish the situation you’re describing from a bubble. When interest rates are very low, you expect equities prices (and P/E ratios) to rise; that’s a rational response to near-zero real interest rates.

    That’s very different from a bubble, which is when people respond irrationally to rapidly rising prices.

    I get that. But what’s going on is pretty much every investment vehicle is at record highs, while the underlying economy is stagnant or worse. Highly rated bonds return below inflation–which is itself ridiculously low. Growth stocks grow by acquisition, not by growing sales. Corp profits rise on cost cutting, not on sale increases or investment in infrastructure. Money is going mostly into the financial world, not the real world. Yeah, not a classic bubble; yeah, I’m generalizing; but someday they’ll figure out that prices are going up because a bunch of rich fuckers are buying and selling shit to each other, with no underlying real economics.

  141. 141.

    liberal

    @schrodinger’s cat: there are ways to keep the economy running while banks are restructured. Recall all the backstops the Fed created during the crisis. Eg money market funds and the commercial paper market.

    Dean Baker, who saw the bubble in housing long before almost anyone else, has pointed this out repeatedly.

  144. 144.

    Mary G

    You can tell it’s an election year.

    The CEO of Mylan, which drastically raised the price of its lifesaving EpiPen, is in for a rough day.

    Heather Bresch will testify Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, whose top members said last week they are sympathetic to the “justified outrage” of families and schools struggling to afford the allergy treatment.

    Unfortunately, on November 10th all this will probably go away for these companies. Definitely will if, Dog forbid, Trump gets in. It’s looking like all the Republican money might hold the Senate for them. Even Evan Bayh is behind.

  147. 147.

    Roger Moore

    @les:

    someday they’ll figure out that prices are going up because a bunch of rich fuckers are buying and selling shit to each other, with no underlying real economics.

    Hopefully before then we’ll raise taxes on those rich fuckers and spark some real economic growth. We’ve actually managed to get U3 down under 5%, and even U6 is back down to a semi-reasonable level, so we may start seeing some actual wage growth. If people spend some of those new wages, it might be enough to get businesses interested in sales growth instead of acquisitions.

  148. 148.

    jl

    @les: You’re metrics on bubble-ishness of the stock market are pretty vague. PE ratios totally out of line historically, or flying in the face of low corporate profits? Not really. The economy is not stagnant in terms of growth. The recovery has been weak, but better than the dot com (or is it the com dot? I forget) bust in the early Bush II years. And now real incomes are starting to rise noticeably on a sustained basis for ordinary people. So, I don’t see bubble. And a stock bubble is not as dangerous as a housing or commodities bubble, since much less real impact on the real economy. So, reasons for some caution, but no obvious and dangerous stock bubble so far.

    And, I don’t see how low interest rates per se can keep fueling a bubble. The real rates can’t go much below zero, and most people financing stock purchases can’t get rates that low anyway. Something else needs to give incentive people to seek more and more leverage. How can simple fact of interest rates at a constant low level do that?

  150. 150.

    les

    @Roger Moore:

    Hopefully before then we’ll raise taxes on those rich fuckers and spark some real economic growth. We’ve actually managed to get U3 down under 5%, and even U6 is back down to a semi-reasonable level, so we may start seeing some actual wage growth. If people spend some of those new wages, it might be enough to get businesses interested in sales growth instead of acquisitions.

    From your key strokes to His Noodly Appendage. Wanna create jobs? Get money into the hands of people who buy stuff.

  151. 151.

    NorthLeft12

    WHOOOOOOOOOOOO BABY! Did I enjoy listening to that. Although the last two words on the video filled me with revulsion and dread; “Senator Vitter.”

  153. 153.

    randy khan

    @Keith G:

    I would be very much on board with a harsher approach to the banks and investment banks, but there is a certain amount of unknowing cynicism in the views of, particularly, young people, about Democrats and Republicans on these issues. Dodd-Frank was passed essentially on party lines and nothing remotely like it would have passed under any Republican Congress since at least 1980.

    And the benefits of that Democratic-passed legislation are concrete and help people every day. Just yesterday, I got a notice from my bank about its new policies for how it treats the timing of deposits, checks, etc., which now credits deposits first, then debits, meaning that account holders are much less likely to incur overdrafts. That’s Dodd-Frank and the CPFB, and it will save people tens of millions of dollars (maybe more) every year in overdraft fees. There are now limits on the fees charged in mortgages, and the bank has to eat any fee that exceeds those limits. This saved me several hundred dollars in a refinancing earlier this year.

  154. 154.

    les

    @jl: Dude, I already copped to “not a classic bubble.” Economy is not stagnant? Looked at Europe lately? China? The US has one year of visible income growth for the bottom 90% in the last decade? The investment slush fund is big enough that bonds consistently return below inflation? In some places, below zero? Wealth steadily moving from spending hands to investing hands? You may think that’s sustainable; I’ll agree to disagree. And I don’t agree that a financial world bust won’t have real world effects.

  155. 155.

    JPL

    @Gindy51: USAA banking is open to everyone. That list is for other services. The only reason, I know is that my son suggested that his SO use their banking services. Now that they are married, it’s not an issue.

  156. 156.

    les

    @randy khan:

    And the benefits of that Democratic-passed legislation are concrete and help people every day.

    Not said enuf. The Berners moan that the big banks aren’t being broken up; have they ever heard of GE? Big player in the big bust, out of the finance biz now; and not the only one. Investment banks can’t play with their own depository bank’s money; we don’t really need Glass-Stegall any more. Fewer big banks than 5 years ago, and they’re squealing like stuck pigs at the “too big to fail” requirements.
    We’d all love some perp walks; but we got more than nothing. Hells yeah, keep Warren in the Senate.

  158. 158.

    ? Martin

    @Corner Stone: Specialty electronics components mostly. Stuff that there’s low enough demand that it’s cost prohibitive to warehouse in the US or even to try and grab some margin as an intermediary reseller. My wife has gotten semi-precious stones from parts of Asia on similarly good deals. Basically, stuff that is so small but has decent cost density that with a bulk shipping contract they can drop ship to the US for very little cost – certainly low enough to fit inside their margins because the product you are buying is at least $10 or so.

    A larger example of this is anything that Apple sells which almost always ships straight from the factory. Apple’s eating the shipping cost in their margins, but even so it’s lower than the cost to container ship it to the US, transport it by truck to a distribution center, unload it and store it, then repack it again to the consumer. Their products fit nicely in the cost density that minimizes shipping costs. In fact, they go to great length to reduce the packaging size of the product specifically for this reason. There are more and more industries finding they can do this. The labor costs to do the warehouse step quickly outweigh the fuel costs to fly it over now that the air freight industry is so heavily automated.

  159. 159.

    TriassicSands

    Senator Warren actually expects answers to her questions. That is unreasonable and rude. She apparently didn’t read the section in the Senatorial Manual of Bowing and Scraping Before Our Corporate Overlords about “How to Question Our Corporate Overlords so They Are Comfortable While They Are Our Honored Guests.”

    Perhaps the most amazing thing about this video, apart from the fact that we virtually never see a video with this kind of tough questioning from an elected official, is the response of Mr. Stumpf, who doesn’t really seem at all phased about being told he’s a criminal who should be prosecuted. Perhaps that’s because he knows accountability will never happen and his freedom, his job, and his millions of dollars are all safe. Amazingly, he doesn’t even look annoyed, let alone offended, by being called a criminal. The other amazing thing is that he managed to remain composed and not laugh in Senator Warren’s face, because he knows that she’s among the very few elected officials who will ever call for real accountability from Our Corporate Overlords.

  160. 160.

    Corner Stone

    @? Martin: I wondered because among a few other items I have bought my son a few Shark Army watches from China and also HK. They take up to 30 days to arrive but are fairly low cost, $10 to $15 per for this model.

  161. 161.

    ? Martin

    @Chris: I work in higher ed and the infrastructure costs here are completely different than what they were 10 years ago. I’m not suggesting the spending isn’t needed – I’m suggesting the organizations that used to finance and approve that spending are lagging behind where the demand is, and in some cases nobody knows where the demand will be only a few years out from where we are. I can get money for stuff I don’t need, and can’t get money for stuff I do.

    The coal industry collapse is irreversible. There is no investment going into coal or oil powered electricity generation and I’ll be anything that nat gas falls pretty quick, even how cheap it is. It’ll remain as an endpoint utility, but I would be surprised if we see any grid level nat gas generation facilities built from here out in probably half the country where solar/wind are viable. The reason is that the shift off of base load has made fossil fuel electricity investments much more expensive than renewable. The big money finance people couldn’t figure out where to go but outfits like Solar City mostly cut them out and went to the homeowner for that money. The homeowner could work out their investment benefit faster than a big bank or hedge fund. They knew their need and tolerance for doing something new faster than others could measure it. You’re seeing a similar scramble in EVs now. This will be ongoing.

  162. 162.

    ? Martin

    @Corner Stone: Yeah, that may change a bit with time. That sounds like something they can still get resellers in the US to do, and that takes their shipping volume to consumers away. In some regards having a less efficient reseller arrangement allows them to jump to a more efficient shipping arrangement.

  163. 163.

    Roger Moore

    @? Martin:

    Apple’s eating the shipping cost in their margins, but even so it’s lower than the cost to container ship it to the US, transport it by truck to a distribution center, unload it and store it, then repack it again to the consumer.

    You also have to figure in the real cost of keeping something in the shipping chain for a couple of months, which is what happens if you use a container ship rather than air freight. For one thing, that’s a lot of capital to have tied up doing nothing. And for stuff like electronics that has very short product life cycles, you’re falling behind the rest of the market. ISTR that fashion clothing also tends to use air freight for the same reason: nobody can afford to add an extra 2 months to their time to market for shipping.

  164. 164.

    Chris T.

    @les:

    And the economy is stagnant, basically. ’cause the people who would buy shit and make things move don’t have any money. Vote for Hil: dump the carried interest rule, raise marginal rates at the high end, maybe get a securities transaction tax, up the estate tax.

    Exactly so.

    While this does lose important details, it’s the old Mariner S Eccles quote: “The United States economy is like a poker game where the chips have become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and where the other fellows can stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit runs out the game will stop.”

  165. 165.

    Mnemosyne

    @? Martin:

    So we let our roads and bridges continue to crumble while the rest of that gets sorted out over the next 20 years?

    Your head is so far in the future that you didn’t notice that the axle of your car broke on the pothole in the middle of the freeway.

  166. 166.

    Mnemosyne

    @? Martin:

    So have your students and faculty stopped driving to campus now? Are the parking lots half-empty during the semester because everyone is distance learning, so there’s no need to fill the potholes in the parking lot or repave it?

    How about in your neighborhood? Do mail and UPS trucks still drive your purchases to your house, or is everything delivered by drone? Do kids walk to school, or do parents drive them? Do most people work from home, or do they commute to work?

    Telling those people that you’re not going to repair their roads and bridges or fix the holes in the roof of their kids’ school because we don’t know what infrastructure needs will be 20 years from now is FUCKING INSANITY.

  167. 167.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    And yet shipping everything air freight doesn’t help if the runways at LAX are falling apart and the terminals can’t deal with the passenger or cargo capacity. And Martin thinks we should wait another 20 years to make those upgrades just in case things change?

  168. 168.

    1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)

    @Roger Moore: One of the first bridges in Missouri that got fixed in 2009 when Obama managed to get a stimulus package through Congress was on MO17 in Miller County–it was typical of a lot of old bridges in smaller communities with limited traffic. Places like that often get left behind when funding is available because the levels of infrastructure required in urban areas is so high and gets so much wear and tear. This bridge was in such bad shape that not only were semis not allowed to use it, but pieces of the decking were falling into the Osage River during the photo op when the repair work was announced.

    Rural infrastructure is constantly ignored, and yet it’s as essential for potential prosperity and growth there as it is in urban areas. One of the reasons Brownback is failing to accomplish his goal in Kansas is that businesses won’t come to places where the infrastructure sucks. If the people worrying so loudly over rural and small town whites (like you, James Webb) really had a clue they’d be pushing things like this like an Olympic-level shot putter. When you have to drive 20 miles one way to work, you need decent roads, whether you live in a place with 1 million people or 150.

  169. 169.

    Ruckus

    @RaflW:
    I took my money out of Bank of Assholes 7 yrs ago and into a community bank. Not as many branches but the service is dramatically better. I moved 4 1/2 yrs ago and had to find another bank, no problem, small bank extremely good service.

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