Month: March 2009

Dog The Blue Dogs

by digby

Campaign for America’s Future is taking on the Blue Dogs and not a moment too soon. Here’s Bob Borosage:

Who stands in the way of the reforms vital to get us out of the deep hole we are in?

Republicans, of course, have decided to be the party of “no,” staking their future on Obama’s failure. But that isn’t a surprise.

The entrenched interests whose oxen get gored are suitably enraged, and mobilizing million dollar lobby efforts – Big Oil, Big Pharma, insurance companies, agribusiness, global corporations, Wall Street. But we knew that was coming.

The timidity of conventional wisdom – particularly in dealing with the Wall Street banksters – has delayed the necessary restructuring of the insolvent banks. As the AIG bonus scandal suggests, the president’s economic team may well be shooting itself in the knee.

But the most treacherous opposition comes from within the Democratic Party itself, from so-called “moderate” and conservative Democrats, particularly the Blue Dogs in the House and their cousins in the Senate who are working to block the changes that we need. House Blue Dogs threaten constantly to join with Republicans to cut vital investments and limit basic reforms. New Dems ingloriously worked for banks in weakening judges ability to adjust mortgages in bankruptcy. But it is in the Senate, where the opposition is most damaging.It was Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska, who gave Republicans their legs in weakening the vital stimulus package. Joining with the Maine Republican Senators, Nelson succeeded in reducing the size of the stimulus package and in cutting investment to support more tax cuts, particularly the egregious “fix” of the alternative minimum tax that goes to high end earners and is least effective in generating jobs. Nelson not only turned on the president’s plan, he made it much weaker. Now Evan Bayh, the Ken doll handsome Senator from Indiana, has joined with Tom Carper of Delaware and Blanche Lincoln to organize the equivalent of a Blue Dog group in the Senate. Bayh objects to early reports that described them as working to obstruct the president’s reforms and water down his budget, arguing “we’re not a counterweight to anybody. We’re not here to obstruct anything. We’re here to help get to 60 votes,” referencing the threshold that’s needed to overcome filibusters. Exactly. That is the threat that enables them to obstruct the president’s reforms and water down his budget. Bayh and his colleagues have joined with Republicans to insist that the president gain a super-majority of 60 to pass any of his major reforms. Bayh joined with others to warn the president not to use existing budget rules that require only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass either his clean energy or his health care reforms. The rules around what are called reconciliation bills are one procedure in the Senate wherein majority rule still governs, because filibusters are not allowed. On all other major votes, Republican obstruction promises a filibuster that requires 60 votes to overcome. Not surprisingly, major changes often are packed into reconciliation bills. That is how, for example, Reagan and Bush got their top end tax cuts passed. Bayh is joining with other conservative Senators to deprive Obama of the very means he needs to pass his major reforms.

CAF is coordinating an action to pressure these Blue Dogs.

Call (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you to one these conservative Democrats in your state:

House
District numbers in parenthesis. Alabama Bobby Bright (2) Parker Griffith (5) Arkansas Marion Berry (1) Mike Ross (4) Arizona Gabrielle Giffords (8) California Joe Baca (43) Dennis Cardoza (18) Jim Costa (20) Jane Harman (36) Loretta Sanchez (47) Adam Schiff (29) Mike Thompson (1) Colorado John Salazar (3) Florida Allen Boyd (2) Georgia John Barrow (12) Sanford Bishop (2) Jim Marshall (8) David Scott (13)	Iowa Leonard Boswell (3) Indiana Walt Minnick (1) Illinois Melissa Bean (8) Bill Foster (14) Indiana Joe Donnelly (2) Brad Ellsworth (8) Baron Hill (9) Kansas Dennis Moore (3) Kentucky Ben Chandler (6) Louisiana Charlie Melancon (3) Maine Mike Michaud (2) Maryland Frank Kratovil (1) Minnesota Collin Peterson (7) Misssissippi Gene Taylor (4) North Carolina Mike McIntyre (7) Heath Shuler (11)	North Dakota Earl Pomeroy New York Mike Arcuri (24) Ohio Zack Space (18) Charlie Wilson (6) Oklahoma Dan Boren (2) Pennsylvania Christopher Carney(10) Tim Holden (17) Patrick Murphy (8) South Dakota Stephanie Herseth Sandlin Tennessee Jim Cooper (5) Lincoln Davis (4) Bart Gordon (6) John Tanner (8) Utah Jim Matheson (2)

Senate
Mark Begich (Alaska) Michael F. Bennet (Colo.) Robert C. Byrd (W. Va.) Thomas Carper (Del.) Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.)	Kent Conrad (N.D.) Kay R. Hagan (N.C.) Herb Kohl (Wis.) Carl Levin (Mich.) Joe Lieberman (Conn.) Claire McCaskill (Mo.)	Bill Nelson (Fla.) Mark L. Pryor (Ark.) Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) Mark Udall (Colo.) Mark Warner (Va.)

Chris Matthews just interviewed Roger Hickey and harangued him about where this strange, freakish, unknown group of Dirty Hippies called “Campaign For America’s Future” is getting the money to do this. And then he asked what Hickey did for a living. I guess Bob and Roger don’t get invited to the same parties as the five million dollar man.

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Shameless, Empty Fools

by digby

Republican John Boehner says that Geithner’s request before congress today is an “unprecedented” executive power grab.

I know. It’s hard to believe that any Republican can say that with a straight face, but they are.

Blind To The Zeitgeist

by digby

There’s lots of commentary on the new bank bailout out there, most of which is hinging today on the fact that the plan seems to be designed for the investors to game the system. Here’s economist Yves Smith commenting at Firedoglake:

I am told by someone close to Barney Frank that the details of the public-private partnership plan are still very murky, I get the sense mechanics will not be discussed. The comments get geeky, but you might have a look at this post (problem is someone will need to brief questioner a bit on retort). Basically, it looks like there would be TONS of ways to game a public private partnership plan. And even if they put rules in to try to prevent chicanery (doubtful, it’s a feature, not a bug), if there is no oversight mechanism, the provisions are empty words. I would like to give a hypothetical example to Geithner on the public private partnership and make him explain how it works. Who gets what, profits to each. If he can’t do it live, say the Congressmen will submit hypotheticals in writing, want details. For Geithner: NYT says many assets carried at 60 cents on dollar, market value now 30 cents. For purpose of illustration, say bank carries assets at $60 million, market only $30 million, assume value that can be realized over time is $45 million. How does process work? Banks presumably will not want to show a loss. How do you see this working? If they sell $60 million of assets for $50 million, even if it is over what the true value is, they still show a $10 million loss. How will the loss be made up? Or will banks be permitted to set a reserve or submit anonymous bids to prevent assets from being sold at less than their book value? Will the investors be permitted to pledge the assets acquired to TALF now that TALF will accept existing, not just new loans? Is this how the investors will realize a profit? Will banks be prohibited from subsidizing or insuring the public private partnership investors’ equity, such as through non-recourse loans to them, total return swaps, or credit default swaps? There is big time opportunity for collusion here. read on.

More on the same subject from Hilzoy and Karl Denninger and Joseph Stiglitz. And here is a NY Times roundtable with Krugman, Simon Johnson, Brad DeLong and Mark Thoma. What I’m gathering is that this plan will not fix the problem — and that it’s not meant to. That’s why there is so much consternation among the economists. They expected a serious, comprehensive plan and what they are getting is a piecemeal (and terribly expensive) plan. A plan which is pleasing only to the banksters who will make big bucks and the market which is in bipolar mode, swinging wildly back and forth. There is a slim hope that it will magically unlock the credit markets, but nobody really has much faith that it will.
The politics of this are probably more important than most people realize. The administration believes it is caught between the Wall Street Suicide Bombers and the Pitchfork Wielding Mob (congress) and have come up with this “plan” in the hopes that it at least staves off one of the groups from going off the deep end.
According to Brad DeLong, the administration is saying that they can’t get the congress on board for much of anything at the moment so this is all they can do. (And if that’s true then Geithner’s appeal for more authority today is kabuki.) But that doesn’t explain this plan, which has been in the works ever since Paulson first proposed it. The populist anger caught fire just last week and there is not a solid consensus about the financial sector even among Senate Republicans. I just don’t buy it.
And silly villagers like AB Stoddard on CNN today are confusing matters with explanations that both misrepresent the plan and make Obama look like a wimp:

Stoddard: What’s happening is that the president is at the mercy of the private sector, trying to keep the trust of the private sector, in order to use their money to successfully partner with the government to buy up these bad assets. He needs that money, otherwise he’s left with nothing, just another government bailout. And so, when he heard from these people in the middle of last week, you know the testimony on Wednesday with Edward Liddy of AIG and later on Wednesday and Friday, what he was hearing from Wall Street was “we don’t need this, we don’t need to come before congress and take a lashing, we don’t need to be retroactively taxed and punished, and we don’t know what kind of arrangement we’ll be getting into with the government.” So once he heard some cool heels in the insudtry, you saw him change his rhetoric.”

The fact is that this is another government bailout, probably with as little upside for the taxpayers as the earlier bailouts. Maybe it will work the way they think it wil work. Most economists from across the spectrum don’t think so, but they could be wrong.

But the argument is as much about the politics of this as it is about the plan itself —that is, whether Obama will have the ability to come back for more if this thing fails. And that’s where Stoddard’s description of Obama tugging at his forelock and bowing and scraping to Wall Street (even if true) is a big, big problem. Apparently, the village still doesn’t get that the political zeitgeist has shifted and that populist anger is real and legitimate.

The AIG bonus scandal was a watershed moment in this crisis. The White House did not handle it well (and should have known it was poison before they put it back in the stimulus in the dead of night in the first place.) The minute it hit, people all over the country viscerally understood what was happening and formed a new definition of the crisis, thus narrowing the options for the president. But the options weren’t narrowed the way these insiders think they were. This new populist environment made the plan they already had in the works less politically viable, not more. Doing a giveaway to these hold-up artists now is going to make it much, much harder for them to come back for another bite down the road.

I don’t believe the congress is the problem. And let’s just say that if it is, if the majorities the Democrats have, the amount of popular outrage and the magnitude of the crisis we face aren’t enough to push through real reform of the financial sector in the face of Wall Street screeching, then let’s kiss health care and everything else goodbye. If the political will isn’t there for something this vital, it’s not there for anything and we are simply screwed.

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The Revenge Of The Haggis

by dday

Arlen Specter joins the obstructionist caucus on worker’s rights.

Some big news emerged Tuesday in regards to the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act, with a prominent Republican strategist declaring that Sen. Arlen Specter will vote against cloture on and passage of the bill.

Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist broke the news during a speech at the Capital Research Center Labor Summit, saying that Specter’s chief of staff had let it be known that he would oppose the legislation, which would make it easier for unions to organize. Norquist’s remarks were subsequently reported on the Twitter account of Larry Farnsworth — the former Speechwriter and Deputy Press Secretary to Speaker Dennis Hastert — and seconded by Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent.

It’s Norquist, so wait for confirmation, but apparently Specter will make a statement available today, so let’s see if that happens… Updated, Greg Sargent confirms that Specter said this on the floor of the Senate a couple minutes ago. He had no good option, so now labor will pummel him in the general election instead of Pat Toomey pummeling him in the primary. A pummeling either way.

If it does, I think the Labor Department and the Justice Department need to look at what regulatory authority they have to put employers in jail for illegally firing and intimidating workers attempting to organize.

I know what I extrapolate. Republicans (and a handful of Democrats, probably) do not want to give workers the free choice to peaceably and legally assemble in support of their own rights. That’s the bottom line. The working conservative majority in the Senate remains. Lots of work still to do.

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Fiscal Twit

by digby

Claire McCaskillsays it’s absolutely essential that old and sick people don’t ruin everything:

Just came from bipartisan meeting on fiscal discipline. We must deal with entitlement reform. Very hard, but absolutely essential.
20 minutes ago from web
Entitlemnt reform is making sure Medicare & Soc Sec don’t devour every penny of our budget leaving nothing for education or other services.
12 minutes ago from web

Apparently, they didn’t receive the memo that Peter Orszag has transformed the argument from “entitlement reform” to health care reform. Somebody ought to get Claire a copy.

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Slow Walking Over The Cliff

by digby

I was just reading this interesting piece about narcissistic personality disorder and musing about the mindset that believes it’s ok to take down the world economy and then dictate the rules by which it is fixed.(Not to mention turn a profit at it!) And then I read this:

In recent days, in spite of public furor over huge bonuses paid at American International Group Inc., the administration has concluded that it needs the private sector to play a central role in fixing the economy. So over the weekend, the White House worked to tone down its Wall Street bashing and to win support from top bankers for the bailout plan announced Monday, which will rely on public-private investments to soak up toxic assets.

But weeks of searing criticism by politicians and the public had left bankers leery of working with the government. After brainstorming about what to do about that problem, the White House resolved to try to take control of the debate, according to several administration officials. In weekend television appearances, President Barack Obama and other administration officials tempered their criticisms of the financial sector.

President Obama met with members of the National Conference of State Legislature at the White House speaking adamantly about how his $787 billion dollar bailout must be used wisely and that wasteful spending will be avoided. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his colleagues worked the phones to try to line up support on Wall Street for the plan announced Monday. They told executives they don’t favor using the tax code to retroactively penalize specific individuals who had received bonuses, according to people familiar with the calls. They asked officials to sign on “in pencil, not ink,” and to “validate” or “express support” for the plan, these people say.

Some bankers say they turned the conversations into complaints about the antibonus crusade consuming Capitol Hill. Some have begun “slow-walking” the information previously sought by Treasury for stress-testing financial institutions, three bankers say, and considered seeking capital from hedge funds and private-equity funds so they could return federal bailout money, thereby escaping federal restrictions.

Well that certainly clearsthis up:

“It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger,” President Obama said on Thursday of the banks he’s chosen to bail out. “You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk [to] them, ease that finger off the trigger.”

No kidding. Reading that WSJ article, I can’t help but be reminded of another president who was shown in no uncertain terms who was really running the show:

Clinton’s experience shows what such pressure can do to a president’s agenda. Promises of spending on education, public works and a middle-class tax cut fell by the wayside as advisers led by Robert Rubin, who later became Treasury secretary, convinced the new president the best thing he could do for the economy was to show investors his resolve on fiscal discipline.

“You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Clinton raged at aides, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s book, “The Agenda.”

As it was then, so it is now. (And you can bet that the fucking bond traders are getting ready to strap on the IED over health care and energy…) The owners of America will be appeased or they will destroy everything in their wake. In another world, they would call this economic terrorism.

I am not averse to Wall Street making money. It’s capitalism and god bless them for it. But this is a crisis. But these people is so arrogantly grasping that it defies reason. But then this isn’t a rational situation. They are telling the US Government to sit down and shut up — and getting away with it:

Despite the public outcry over $165 million in bonuses awarded at troubled insurer AIG, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) showed little inclination Monday to bring the explosive issue to the floor this week or next. Instead, Reid is likely to delay action on executive compensation until late April, after the Senate returns from a two-week recess starting April 4.

The lack of enthusiasm to expedite the bonus legislation comes after Obama said over the weekend that he didn’t think it was a good idea for Congress to target individuals with tax proposals.

“As a general proposition, I think you certainly don’t want to use the tax code … to punish people,” Obama said in the interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday.

Reacting to a frenzy of media coverage, the House last week passed a measure that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses received this year by executives at AIG and other companies collecting more than $5 billion in federal aid.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) last week introduced a less stringent proposal that would impose a 35 percent tax on bonuses. Both employers giving bonuses and executives who receive them would pay.

But even this modified proposal is being placed on the backburner.

Reid told colleagues that they would spend this week instead debating legislation to promote national service and volunteering, a process that could last well into the weekend.

“Nice little country you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”

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Taser Tots

by digby

Because 15 year old boys fighting is a mortal threat to police everywhere, it’s a good thing that they now have a non-lethal weapon to use so they don’t have to kill them.

Or not:

Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him

BAY CITY, Mich. – Police in Michigan say a 15-year-old boy has died after being Tasered by officers who were trying to break up a fight.

Police didn’t release his name and say state police are investigating.

A Bay City police news release says officers answered a report of an early morning fight on Sunday. The statement says two males were arguing in an apartment, and one of them “attempted to fight the officers.”

Police say officers Tasered him, and his reaction led them to immediately call for emergency medical help. He was pronounced dead at Bay Regional Medical Center.

Deputy Chief Thomas Pletzke tells WNEM-TV police placed one officer on administrative leave.

I don’t know why. It is pretty much accepted these days that police have a right to taser children at will. A few gay commies disagree:

The United Nations Committee Against Torture declares that electronic stun guns — or Tasers — are a form of torture that can kill.

Luckily for us wiser heads have prevailed in the land of the free and the home of the brave:

• DentonRC: Image of Taser use lingers (May 18, 2008)
• The Age (Australia): Police had ‘no other option but to Taser boy (February 20, 2008)
• Daily Mail: Now police are told they can use Taser guns on children (September 2, 2007)
• Jacksonville.com: Police defend use of Taser on girl, 13 (March 2, 2005)
• CNN: Police review policy after Tasers used on kids (November 15, 2004)
• WFTV (Miami): Deputy Uses Taser On 12-Year-Old Girl Skipping School (November 15, 2004)
• Jacksonville.com: Tasers in schools trigger disputes (November 8, 2004)
• FOX11AZ (Tucson): Officer’s Taser is used on girl, 9 (May 24, 2004)

You all remember this one, right?

“It felt like I couldn’t breathe, they did mess up, obviously they did, because I’m underage and all I did was skip school, which is something everyone has done, and I know that for a fact.”—12-year-old taser victim

“If there’s three officers, it’s nothing to tell a 6-year-old holding a glass, if you feel threatened, ‘Hey, here’s a piece of candy, hey, here’s a toy. Let the glass go.'”—Mother of six-year-old taser victim

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An Ugly Little Episode

by digby

From Spencer Ackerman:

According to knowledgeable sources, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has hired John Kiriakou, the former CIA official who supervised the 2002 interrogation of al-Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah, as an investigator. Kiriakou, who served in Pakistan from 1998 to 2004, will start work this week, focusing on the Middle East and South Asia for the committee. In late 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly acknowledge participating in an abusive interrogation. He was part of a team that interrogated Abu Zubaydah, a member of al-Qaeda whom author Ron Suskind claims is mentally challenged, after the operative’s capture in Pakistan in 2002. CIA officials waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, and while Kiriakou told ABC News and The Washington Post that he was not present for that abusive technique — he had left the interrogation team by that time — he has said he considers the waterboarding to be both necessary but immoral. He told The Post:

“Maybe that’s inconsistent, but that’s how I feel,” he said. “It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we’ve moved beyond that.”

I sure hope he didn’t forget to pay his nanny’s payroll taxes 15 years ago or got an extramarital blowjob from a consenting party. They take a hard line on that kind of immorality and lack of ethics in the US Senate.

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A New Way Forward

by dday

My assumption about the favorable market reaction to Tim Geithner’s plan to buy up Big Shitpile is that the Big Money Boyz got the answer they wanted to this question:

But some executives at private equity firms and hedge funds, who were briefed on the plan Sunday afternoon, are anxious about the recent uproar over millions of dollars in bonus payments made to executives of the American International Group.

Some of them have told administration officials that they would participate only if the government guaranteed that it would not set compensation limits on the firms, according to people briefed on the conversations. The executives also expressed worries about whether disclosure and governance rules could be added retroactively to the program by Congress, these people said.

CNBC’s latest Howard Beale for the overclass, Mark Haines, echoed these fears, as a paid echo is wont to do, despairing over how “scary” things are getting, what with Americans paying attention to the massive ripoff being undertaken at their expense and all.

HAINES: There were some scary stories in the paper over the weekend.

BURNETT: Mmm-hmm.

HAINES: About this kind of thing, regulating or somehow impacting executive pay, even among financial companies that didn’t take government money. It’s getting scary.

For the record, the bad asset (I’m sorry, “legacy asset”. Bad framer!) plan could very plausibly fix the near-term problem while doing absolutely nothing for the long-term one. If the credit markets loosen and economic activity restarts as a result of this proposal (and I’m dubious), that would be wonderful. But if it restarts in the exact same fashion as the recent past, by allowing a small band of financial sector elites to make absurd profits, literally stolen from the taxpayer, and to keep their share of the overall economy unsustainably and unaccountably large, the long-term forecast on a host of fronts will be grim. Not only would it simply reinflate a bubble that could just as easily pop, but it would cement the viewpoint that corporate behemoths own government and took it over in a bloodless coup.

And contra Mr. Haines, what I heard this weekend were more stories of looting by the big banksters, as well as a growing impression that Goldman Sachs holds an unelected place inside the government.

Simon Johnson gets at the real problem.

The government feels that it cannot take over large banks, there is no bankruptcy-type procedure that would work, and only deference to the CEOs of major financial institutions can get us out of this mess. This is a conscious strategy decision from the very highest levels.

I’d like to say: OK, but this is absolutely the last time we will try for a solution to our banking problems involving a private sector-led approach. Of course this would not be credible and bank CEOs know this. Instead, I propose the following.

If Secretary Geithner’s scheme works, we draw the lesson that our banks became too big and we aim to make them smaller relative to the economy moving forward. The regulatory agenda currently in progress – including for discussion at the G20 next week – would do essentially nothing to reduce the political power of big banks. We need simple caps on bank size, leverage relative to the economy and – this is harder – measures of interconnected tail risk (i.e., is everyone making the same kind of crazy loans?). Design a system with this in mind: regulators get captured and super-regulators get super-captured.

If the scheme doesn’t work, we draw the exact same lesson. And, of course, we should expect Chairman Bernanke to move forward with his Plan B (or is it Plan Z?): inflation.

In any case, our top political leadership needs to really sell some version of the following message. We let the banks get out of control and the cost will be enormous; our debt/GDP ratio will in all likelihood rise from around 40% to over 80%. We cannot afford to have the same problem again. We must break the power of banks before they break us all. And if you don’t think banks can do that much damage to economies, just look around outside the United States – the world is full of countries where growth is slowed or distorted by a financial system that becomes too powerful. This is not about tweaking the existing U.S. regulatory system; it is about complete change and – in many senses – turning back the clock to a financial system that was simpler, smaller, and much less dangerous.

This is the point missing from all the back and forth about the raw details of the Geithner plan. Under not even the rosiest of scenarios would it scale back the power and size of the financial sector relative to the economy, which in the end must be the ultimate solution for now and the future. The public fumes at scenarios that maintain a status quo that failed them and caused them undue pain, especially when they can conceive of a new way forward, where banks perform their core function under a regulatory microscope, and they never grow so large that they can possibly take down the entire economy.

Digby has been asking about the need for the left to assert itself. A group of very sharp organizers are putting together a mass series of demonstrations on April 11, calling itself A New Way Forward. Rallies are already being planned for 20 cities, and beyond just showing up in the streets, there is a careful effort to tie this into a greater movement, with a mission statement and a vision for a post-bailout, post-bubble economy.

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree on the means — Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention – no more blank check taxpayer handouts. (see Krugman on nationalization)

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. (see Simon Johnson on reorganizing)

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place– new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that’s “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function. (see Mike Lux on decentralization)

Big bankers ruined our economy and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused. They must be stopped […]

At the personal level, we know that the smart thing to do with our money right now is generally the less flashy thing. Paying off our debts and saving for the future protects us from the risks we can’t afford to take in the current market. The same rules apply to the banks. This is a time for a level-headed government to step in and steer unhealthy banks away from more risky bets, and to help them stabilize in the name of economic security for America.

Nothing tells the bankers to keep on doing what they’re doing more than an endless stream of free taxpayer money. The banks know that the government considers them too big to fail; if nationalization is off the table, what incentive do they have to act in the public interest?

In a basic sense, this is a fight against corruption. Not in the sense of a quid-pro-quo (though that may be there too), but in the sense of a corrupt ideology. For the most part, the world of economists, politicians and financiers is one elite web of influence. At some point, private profit took over as the only value to consider in building an economy, and it has never subsided. This is true of the thinking from both major parties.

Forget short-term thinking. We need a long-term rejection of the Masters of the Universe mentality and a full reorganization of the economy. I think A New Way Forward is on to something.

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Falafel Thug

by digby

This is awful. If O’Reilly actually runs this footage you will see that his paid stalker is harrassing a young woman on the street in a threatening manner. Considering that the whole “controversy” is about O’Reilly’s comments that women “ask for it” I’m not sure it will come across quite the way O’Reilly and his thug mean it to. Of course, considering O’Reilly’s audience, perhaps it will — they love him for his misogyny. Makes ’em feel like men.

Advice from Crooks and Liars to anyone who ever finds him or herself in the cross hairs of the O’Reilly Hit Squad: say the word Makris as often as possible. They’ll never show the footage.

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