Wall Street Ethics: In a survey, 500 banksters honestly admit just how dishonest they are. (read the full report here.)Winners always cheat, and cheaters always win. If they're caught, their regulating paramours give them 50 lashes with a wet noodle and life goes on. But on a brighter note, Libor is not going away. Little by little, the fact that the rigged interest rates affect all of us, that the whole world has been literally robbed of trillions of dollars, is sinking into the consciousness of the hoi polloi. It'll be fun watching the politicians on this side of the pond squirm and twist themselves into pretzels in a desperate effort to ignore it and just make it all go away because they're so busy being bribed by banksters at campaign fund-raisers. Which brings us to.....
Liberal Democrats: With more and more people falling into poverty and becoming eligible for food stamps, Democrats are joining their Republican pals in gutting the program. The Senate has already bi-partisanally snatched $4.5 billion in food aid from the mouths of the vulnerable, and some House Democrats seem to be on board with another $16 billion in cuts in food stamps from the Farm Bill. This has some other Democrats "fuming" over the inhumanity. But the top Democrat on the House Committee on Agriculture says making nice with the subsidized farmers is more important than coddling millions of starving people. All this theatrical fume and doom is simply a smokescreen allowing them to cut yet another sleazy deal behind closed doors while publicly posturing so as to be seen "trying." Which brings us to....
Pragmatic Progressives: Chronic capitulators who twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify the Democratic Party's descent into a right wing corporate pit of corruption.
Compassionate Conservatives: Republicans who suddenly pretend to care about the lesser people in the four months preceding the election. See today's column by David Brooks. It's a doozy, even by his standards. Be sure to read the comments too.
You can continue the discussion (or start a new one) from yesterday's forum here as well, since I just closed down that thread.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
TARP Terror Tuesday
How's this for irony: although the almighty deficit is running lower this year through a combination of government austerity and modest increases in tax revenue, the gains are being offset by a one percent increase in federal spending. And guess where that one percent increase is going? Toward the continuing bailout of the big banks! Even as Congress cuts programs for the poor, even as cities go bankrupt and schools shut down, even as chronic unemployment is creating a permanent underclass of tens of millions of people, the bankster class is still getting theirs.
The latest report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says federal spending on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) grew by $62 billion through June -- offsetting most of this year's corporate, individual and payroll tax revenue growth. (Contrary to popular belief, the banks have not paid back all the money "lent" to them by taxpayers. ProPublica has the facts and figures, and Zero Hedge further debunks the myth that Main Street made some kind of profit from TARP.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as the rich get richer, the poor get screwed. Republicans can scream all they want that the Democrats are spending us into a national suicide, and Democrats can promise till the cows come home that if only we all share the sacrifice and the wealthy pay "just a little more" everything will be hunky-dory in about a century.
Meanwhile, the banksters get their $62 billion welfare check in the form of forgiveness for their late TARP payments, and put it toward their bonuses and salaries and perks and bribes to their political friends in Washington and all 50 states. Congress does its part by cutting $28 billion from Medicaid and saving another $20 billion through ending benefits for the long-term unemployed. The one percent increase in spending this year is being squandered on a subset of the one percent at the very tippy top of the pile. Imagine that.
It's not that we weren't warned. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano spoke about the looming threat of domestic terrorism years ago. She just forgot to mention that the terrorists are elite corporate psychopaths and their political minions.
The latest report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says federal spending on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) grew by $62 billion through June -- offsetting most of this year's corporate, individual and payroll tax revenue growth. (Contrary to popular belief, the banks have not paid back all the money "lent" to them by taxpayers. ProPublica has the facts and figures, and Zero Hedge further debunks the myth that Main Street made some kind of profit from TARP.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as the rich get richer, the poor get screwed. Republicans can scream all they want that the Democrats are spending us into a national suicide, and Democrats can promise till the cows come home that if only we all share the sacrifice and the wealthy pay "just a little more" everything will be hunky-dory in about a century.
Meanwhile, the banksters get their $62 billion welfare check in the form of forgiveness for their late TARP payments, and put it toward their bonuses and salaries and perks and bribes to their political friends in Washington and all 50 states. Congress does its part by cutting $28 billion from Medicaid and saving another $20 billion through ending benefits for the long-term unemployed. The one percent increase in spending this year is being squandered on a subset of the one percent at the very tippy top of the pile. Imagine that.
It's not that we weren't warned. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano spoke about the looming threat of domestic terrorism years ago. She just forgot to mention that the terrorists are elite corporate psychopaths and their political minions.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Monday Open Forum
Some early links:
Paul Krugman asks what Mitt is hiding besides the gray in his hair. There have been some recent disturbing revelations and allegations about his secret financial history, such as how in the world did he end up with as much as $100 million in his IRA? Why does this potential president not release all his tax returns and why does he have the need to hide money overseas? I rhetorically ask (my comment is number two in "Oldest") why the hell the Obama Justice Department doesn't investigate him if he is as crooked as the campaign is making him sound?
Meanwhile, here's a preview of Biennial Bush Tax Cut Extension Kabuki, in which President Obama pretends to bravely buck his own party by calling right now this very minute for a one-year extension of cuts for poor people earning less than $250,000. It's a theatrically bold slap in the face to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, starring as millionaire Democrats who think that anyone earning $999,999 is just plain struggling folks in the middle class. Barry plays Errol Flynn throwing down the gauntlet to the piratical GOPers, who don't believe gazillionaires should pay a penny more, ever and into perpetuity. Arrrrgh.
The Libor hearings continue in the U.K. I think another reason why this scandal is not getting much attention in the American press is that Barclay's CEO Bob Diamond got his grilling on our national Fourth of July holiday and the merikun pundits were not working to provide it for us on the telly. Plus, the name sounds like one of those British minority parties -- a Cockney cross between liberal and labor. Yawn. I did watch a snippet last week, and the first thing I noticed was what a smarmy arrogant jerk this Diamond was, calling members of Parliament by their first names. Even Jamie Dimon has the good taste to not call his U.S. senator "Chuckie". The Brits sensibly consider Diamond to be a proper annoying twit. Meanwhile, Bank of England honcho Paul Tucker gets his turn today. What did he pretend not to know and why does he not know it, etc.
Tom Junod scathingly examines The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama in Esquire, concentrating on the murder of a 16-year-old American boy by drone strike. An excerpt from the piece, written in the form of a letter to the president:
And where in the world is Occupy in all this? Alexander Cockburn has a depressing take.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Monday.
Paul Krugman asks what Mitt is hiding besides the gray in his hair. There have been some recent disturbing revelations and allegations about his secret financial history, such as how in the world did he end up with as much as $100 million in his IRA? Why does this potential president not release all his tax returns and why does he have the need to hide money overseas? I rhetorically ask (my comment is number two in "Oldest") why the hell the Obama Justice Department doesn't investigate him if he is as crooked as the campaign is making him sound?
Meanwhile, here's a preview of Biennial Bush Tax Cut Extension Kabuki, in which President Obama pretends to bravely buck his own party by calling right now this very minute for a one-year extension of cuts for poor people earning less than $250,000. It's a theatrically bold slap in the face to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, starring as millionaire Democrats who think that anyone earning $999,999 is just plain struggling folks in the middle class. Barry plays Errol Flynn throwing down the gauntlet to the piratical GOPers, who don't believe gazillionaires should pay a penny more, ever and into perpetuity. Arrrrgh.
The Libor hearings continue in the U.K. I think another reason why this scandal is not getting much attention in the American press is that Barclay's CEO Bob Diamond got his grilling on our national Fourth of July holiday and the merikun pundits were not working to provide it for us on the telly. Plus, the name sounds like one of those British minority parties -- a Cockney cross between liberal and labor. Yawn. I did watch a snippet last week, and the first thing I noticed was what a smarmy arrogant jerk this Diamond was, calling members of Parliament by their first names. Even Jamie Dimon has the good taste to not call his U.S. senator "Chuckie". The Brits sensibly consider Diamond to be a proper annoying twit. Meanwhile, Bank of England honcho Paul Tucker gets his turn today. What did he pretend not to know and why does he not know it, etc.
Tom Junod scathingly examines The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama in Esquire, concentrating on the murder of a 16-year-old American boy by drone strike. An excerpt from the piece, written in the form of a letter to the president:
This is not to say that the American people don't know about the Lethal Presidency, and that they don't support its aims. They do. They know about the killing because you have celebrated — with appropriate sobriety — the most notable kills, specifically those of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; they support it because you have asked for their trust as a good and honorable man surrounded by good and honorable men and women and they have given it to you. In so doing, you have changed a technological capability into a moral imperative and have convinced your countrymen to see the necessity without seeing the downside. Politically, there is no downside. Historically, there is only the irony of the upside — that you, of all presidents, have become the lethal one; that you, of all people, have turned out to be a man of proven integrity whose foreign and domestic policies are less popular than your proven willingness to kill, in defense of your country, even your own countrymen ... indeed, to kill even a sixteen-year-old American boy accused of no crime at all.We are a nation of the willfully blind, which is probably why fully two-thirds of Americans polled say they are just fine with the targeted killings of Americans and all manner of unknown victims far, far away. As Chris Hedges points out in his latest essay, we have forgotten how to even think.
And where in the world is Occupy in all this? Alexander Cockburn has a depressing take.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Monday.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
The Mean Season
Wolf Blitzer doth protest too much. The guy is absolutely salivating over the nasty Congressional race between Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh and disabled Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth. Yet he pretends to eschew the nastiness. He wants the duo on his show to have a debate on the "substantive" issues.
"No name calling! No nasty words!" he huffily warns the victim of Joe Walsh's nastiness, then proceeds to litanize every last blasted quote from the politicians, instead of giving us a clue about the so-called important stuff. Although Walsh is widely viewed as the crazoid instigator, having complained that Duckworth flunks his heroism test by spending too much time talking about herself and other wounded warriors, Blitzer felt it vital to have Duckworth on his show yesterday for a good old-fashioned dose of his stentorious false equivalency. She'd had the chutzpah to correctly call Walsh a belligerent extremist, and Wolf was not about to let such language, especially from the mouth of a woman, pass.
"Do you have a problem?" he asks her at one point during the interview. "Is it appropriate to use that kind of language to a sitting Congressman?" (Duckworth had also quoted Walsh as proudly referring to himself as the poster child for the Tea Party.)
Watch the clip here. It is blessedly short, to jibe with Wolf's attention span.
Wolf Blitzer obviously fancies himself the Cotton Mather of cable news. He's the lord of discipline who made Hilary Rosen apologize (over and over and over again) on the air to Ann Romney for remarking how Mrs. Mitt had never worked a day in her life. But thankfully, Tammy Duckworth did not falter under the scheisse-blitz.
What I would really like to see is Wolf hosting a substantive name-calling debate between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the true American hero who accosted him on the boardwalk the other night, demanding that he show a little respect to the teachers. The more airtime Chris Christie can get, the more the mythical low-info American voter will sit up and take notice of politics, the higher the ratings and revenue of cable snooze shows.
Christie, who truly deserves to be picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, has been looking more than usual like a cardiovascular accident waiting to happen. Watch the Jersey Shore gubernatorial episode here. It, too, is blessedly short. Just like Christie's temper.
Want more? Do you crave some irony to go along with the substance and the nastiness? Well, how about a congress critter named Phil Gingrey complaining that President Obama shows too much gum when he smiles? Gingrey, who along with his gum-flapping compadre Newt Gingrich hails from Georgia, told CNN (surprise!) that Barry is all style and no substance because he smiles and swaggers a lot.
As an M.D. specializing in Ob/Gyn, Gingrey should probably stay away from periodontic diagnoses, despite having a name reminiscent of a gum disease. To his credit, though, he admitted to Stephen Colbert that he is low-hanging fruit. Ain't that just peachy.
"No name calling! No nasty words!" he huffily warns the victim of Joe Walsh's nastiness, then proceeds to litanize every last blasted quote from the politicians, instead of giving us a clue about the so-called important stuff. Although Walsh is widely viewed as the crazoid instigator, having complained that Duckworth flunks his heroism test by spending too much time talking about herself and other wounded warriors, Blitzer felt it vital to have Duckworth on his show yesterday for a good old-fashioned dose of his stentorious false equivalency. She'd had the chutzpah to correctly call Walsh a belligerent extremist, and Wolf was not about to let such language, especially from the mouth of a woman, pass.
"Do you have a problem?" he asks her at one point during the interview. "Is it appropriate to use that kind of language to a sitting Congressman?" (Duckworth had also quoted Walsh as proudly referring to himself as the poster child for the Tea Party.)
Watch the clip here. It is blessedly short, to jibe with Wolf's attention span.
Wolf Blitzer obviously fancies himself the Cotton Mather of cable news. He's the lord of discipline who made Hilary Rosen apologize (over and over and over again) on the air to Ann Romney for remarking how Mrs. Mitt had never worked a day in her life. But thankfully, Tammy Duckworth did not falter under the scheisse-blitz.
What I would really like to see is Wolf hosting a substantive name-calling debate between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the true American hero who accosted him on the boardwalk the other night, demanding that he show a little respect to the teachers. The more airtime Chris Christie can get, the more the mythical low-info American voter will sit up and take notice of politics, the higher the ratings and revenue of cable snooze shows.
Christie, who truly deserves to be picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, has been looking more than usual like a cardiovascular accident waiting to happen. Watch the Jersey Shore gubernatorial episode here. It, too, is blessedly short. Just like Christie's temper.
Want more? Do you crave some irony to go along with the substance and the nastiness? Well, how about a congress critter named Phil Gingrey complaining that President Obama shows too much gum when he smiles? Gingrey, who along with his gum-flapping compadre Newt Gingrich hails from Georgia, told CNN (surprise!) that Barry is all style and no substance because he smiles and swaggers a lot.
As an M.D. specializing in Ob/Gyn, Gingrey should probably stay away from periodontic diagnoses, despite having a name reminiscent of a gum disease. To his credit, though, he admitted to Stephen Colbert that he is low-hanging fruit. Ain't that just peachy.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Big Banks No Fail, Say Big Banks
No, that's a misleading headline. According to Reuters, the accurate quote is "Top Banks Say They Not Too Big to Fail." Actually, according to FishbowlNY, a Neanderthal headline writer at Reuters misquoted The Big Banks.They never said they not too big to fail. They said that if they do fail, they will not require taxpayer assistance to hasten their own destruction. They can self-immolate all by themselves, thank you very much. Or, if they do decide to live, they can administer their own CPR without government aid. These banksters no longer believe in public-subsidized health care, good little libertarians that they are. Or so they say.
According to an obscure portion of the monstrously defanged and defunded Dodd-Frank Act, bank regulators would supposedly put the failures out of their misery and bill the patient for their services. But if the Jamie Dimon situation is any example, regulators and CEOs are the same animal. There is no murder-suicide pact in Dodd-Frank. (I am of course writing figurately and not suggesting that Jamie should physically harm either of his selves: either the JPMorgan Chase self or the regulator on the New York Fed.)
Here. according to Reuters, is a subtle hint that the banksters' "Living Wills" are not worth the paper they're written on:
According to an obscure portion of the monstrously defanged and defunded Dodd-Frank Act, bank regulators would supposedly put the failures out of their misery and bill the patient for their services. But if the Jamie Dimon situation is any example, regulators and CEOs are the same animal. There is no murder-suicide pact in Dodd-Frank. (I am of course writing figurately and not suggesting that Jamie should physically harm either of his selves: either the JPMorgan Chase self or the regulator on the New York Fed.)
Here. according to Reuters, is a subtle hint that the banksters' "Living Wills" are not worth the paper they're written on:
But some experts doubt how hard regulators will push the banks for changes or how useful hypothetical resolution plans will be in major financial crisis.
The public portions released on Tuesday and are a few dozen pages per bank summarizing thousands of pages submitted confidentially to regulators.
The banks argued in the public documents that their resolution plans will work, with no cost to taxpayers or great consequence to the financial system. They used technical generalities in their conclusions without specifically addressing the unpredictable and vicious nature of a credit crisis.Viciously and unspecifically unpredictable. "Big Banks Say They Lie Through Their Predatory Fangs" is the real headline, folks. Just like LIBOR should really be LIE MORE -- although it's actually a great big bore to the un-outrageable general public.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Premature Ignition
Still trying to get my act together after my big Fourth of July extravaganza, which consisted of watching Twilight Zone reruns with one eye, and simultaneous bursts of natural lightning and cheesy fireworks through my open door with the other eye. Thanks for sharing all your medical and Independence Day adventures on the open thread yesterday. I am keeping it open because, lets face it -- the afterglow of the glorious Fourth is still wafting through the blogosphere.
Anyway, did you hear about the Big Bada Bing Boom in San Diego? For anyone who ever wondered what would happen it they accidentally shot off all the fireworks at once, this is it. Although I have to say the video is less than impressive, probably because it's just a video on my cheap computer screen. It kind of reminds me of that Jean Shepherd story about an old codger so drunk and befuddled that he blew up a whole neighborhood with about a ton of fireworks. Aided and abetted by the kids, of course. The San Diego fiasco will probably go down in the annals of Fourth of July legend, too.
Here 's the link to the late great Shepherd reading "Ludlow Kissell and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back" on his old radio show. (complete with his mocking of the commercials. At the end of the spiel for the long-defunct Palisades Amusement Park, he says "Have fun, Serfs!")
I know, I know.... I'm a day late and a dollar short as usual. But, as the new T-shirts Barry is peddling on his site to make a buck off ObamaCare tell it: Still a BFD!
So let us therefore go in search of the healing bomb and the true meaning of Independence Day: a national shellshock and celebrated concussion to better honor our glorious American past.
Anyway, did you hear about the Big Bada Bing Boom in San Diego? For anyone who ever wondered what would happen it they accidentally shot off all the fireworks at once, this is it. Although I have to say the video is less than impressive, probably because it's just a video on my cheap computer screen. It kind of reminds me of that Jean Shepherd story about an old codger so drunk and befuddled that he blew up a whole neighborhood with about a ton of fireworks. Aided and abetted by the kids, of course. The San Diego fiasco will probably go down in the annals of Fourth of July legend, too.
Here 's the link to the late great Shepherd reading "Ludlow Kissell and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back" on his old radio show. (complete with his mocking of the commercials. At the end of the spiel for the long-defunct Palisades Amusement Park, he says "Have fun, Serfs!")
I know, I know.... I'm a day late and a dollar short as usual. But, as the new T-shirts Barry is peddling on his site to make a buck off ObamaCare tell it: Still a BFD!
So let us therefore go in search of the healing bomb and the true meaning of Independence Day: a national shellshock and celebrated concussion to better honor our glorious American past.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Linkin Lollapalooza
Well, the title sounds better than "Open Thread" which is what this is. The response to the weekend forum was huge by this blog's standards, so feel free to weigh in on whatever. Crooked banks, unaffordable health care, war ships in the Strait of Hormuz, your aches and pains.... the sky's the limit.
Meanwhile, some links: Twitter received more government demands for data during the first half of this year than all of last year. And it's releasing the information on such requests in the name of transparency. And sometimes it's forced to comply with a court order no matter how hard it has refused to cooperate. A federal judge has just ordered Twitter to hand over the Tweets of an Occupier arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall, despite the company's best efforts to resist.
You have a better chance of going to jail if you're an Alabama traffic scofflaw than if you're a millionaire price-fixing fraudster whose last name happens to be Diamond. It seems that debtor prisons are making a comeback.
Alabamans are screwed in more ways than one. A federal bankruptcy judge has ruled in favor of -- you guessed it -- a too big to exist bank over cash-strapped Jefferson County in a case stemming from corruption and Wall Street greed and a sewer system. What a stinkin mess.
On a happier note, Katie flings her ring.
On a sleazier note, sexter Anthony Weiner says Regrets, he has a few.
Meanwhile, some links: Twitter received more government demands for data during the first half of this year than all of last year. And it's releasing the information on such requests in the name of transparency. And sometimes it's forced to comply with a court order no matter how hard it has refused to cooperate. A federal judge has just ordered Twitter to hand over the Tweets of an Occupier arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall, despite the company's best efforts to resist.
You have a better chance of going to jail if you're an Alabama traffic scofflaw than if you're a millionaire price-fixing fraudster whose last name happens to be Diamond. It seems that debtor prisons are making a comeback.
Alabamans are screwed in more ways than one. A federal bankruptcy judge has ruled in favor of -- you guessed it -- a too big to exist bank over cash-strapped Jefferson County in a case stemming from corruption and Wall Street greed and a sewer system. What a stinkin mess.
On a happier note, Katie flings her ring.
On a sleazier note, sexter Anthony Weiner says Regrets, he has a few.
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