Month: May 2010

Psycho-Galts

by digby

So Jamie Dimon came down from Mt Olympus this week to personally lobby members of congress:

Lawmakers crafting the final language for U.S. financial regulatory reform are being lobbied by their colleagues, consumer groups and industry leaders including JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon.

Dimon placed telephone calls to House members’ offices yesterday. He also sent an e-mail outlining his concerns with the House legislation passed in December and Senate bill passed on May 20, according to two House aides who saw the e-mail and were briefed on the calls.

Interested parties have a little more than a week to press their specific changes before a committee of lawmakers from the House and Senate begin reconciling the bills passed by the two chambers.

“What we’ll see over the course of the next couple weeks will be a tremendous amount of jockeying,” said Kevin Petrasic, a Washington-based lawyer at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP and former counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision. “Everyone realizes that the next agreement could be the law.”

Dimon, who maintains regular contact with lawmakers, raised concerns over a rule that would restrict banks’ proprietary trading — the so-called Volcker rule named for former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, according to the aides. He also raised concerns about the “swipe” fees charged to retailers on debit-card transactions and a derivatives provision that would bar commercial banks from having swaps-trading desks.

Dimon insists that he supports the bill, saying that Too Big Too Fail is a bad idea and should be dealt with. Too bad that didn’t make it into the senate bill, darn it all to heck.

For some reason, this brings to mind an interesting post by a pseudonymous investment banker that Jonathan Schwarz sent to me recently:

Watching Barney Frank and the House Financial Services Committee attempt to grill the heads of the eight largest bank recipients of TARP funding in front of the cameras recently, I was reminded of a conversation I had with the Chairman of a very large and prestigious private equity firm several years ago.

It transpired at a small dinner party, held at the Chairman’s summer home in the Hamptons. Wives, children, and sundry other non-combatants were present, so the occasion was strictly social. Nevertheless, amidst the introductory chit-chat, Your Humble Correspondent revealed the slightly tawdry fact that yes, he was indeed employed at a certain not-to-be-named investment bank and therefore responsible for all sorts of reprehensible behavior. The Chairman chuckled indulgently at that—being, by virtue of his own profession, no stranger to unarmed robbery—and turned the discussion toward those individuals at NTBN Bank whom we might know in common.

Naturally, being a relatively lowly worm in the vast and ever-expanding bowels of NTBN at the time, I could not profess close acquaintance with many of the senior grandees the Chairman was familiar with—people he knew from their frequent trips to his Midtown offices to lick his shoes—but I offered a diplomatic comment or two on a couple of them. I ventured that one particularly poisonous specimen was indeed extremely bright, successful, and ambitious, and we both agreed that he was blessed with quite a remarkable quantity of self confidence.

Apropos of nothing, the Chairman turned contemplative for a moment. Then, looking straight at me, he remarked that, in all his many years in the business, he had never met anyone who had risen to head an investment banking operation who possessed the least measure of humility. I think, in retrospect, this was his kind way of warning me away from ambitions above my station, given my deplorable failure in our conversation to claim sole credit, as a junior investment banker, for more than 50% of NTBN’s annual earnings.

* * *

Since that evening, Dear Readers, I have become older, wiser, and more traveled in my industry, and I have seen nothing or no-one that disproves my old friend’s comment.

In fact, I will go further and say that I have yet to encounter a senior executive manager at a large investment bank who does not demonstrate a very substantial number of the commonly accepted markers for psychopathy.

read on …

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Smoking The Homegrown

by digby

Good news. The government has decided to focus on homegrown terrorism. Well sort of. Allison Kilkenny reports

John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism and homeland security, has announced a new national security strategy that will focus on the threat posed by homegrown extremists. Except, the target of this strategy doesn’t seem to be all domestic terrorism, but rather domestic terrorism with foreign roots.

There has been a surge in right-wing extremism in the U.S., copiously documented by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, but which was also predicted by Homeland Security. In fact, the report warned that right-wing extremists, who are “angry at the economy and the election of a black president” might recruit GWOT veterans.

I have been writing about how white domestic terrorism has slipped from the media’s radar, but sadly, it seems like the government is also uninterested by the surge in right wing extremism — possibly because such violence doesn’t fit the helpful war narrative of the “dangerous other” being brown, and from a desert landscape.

There have been a couple recent domestic terrorist attack that have been largely ignored by the media and government:

Robert Joos Jr.

A firearms and explosives expert suspected of involvement with two white supremacist brothers in the sending of a bomb to the office of a municipal diversity officer was sentenced to 6½ years in prison in Missouri on Tuesday.

And then there is the unknown man who bombed a mosque in Florida.

Unlike in the case of Faisal Shahzad, these bombs actually detonated. In a rational world, these stories would probably receive considerably more coverage than the Shahzad incident, but again, Shahzad, a Muslim Pakistani-American, fits the narrative of a “dangerous domestic threat with foreign roots.” Joos and the unknown man don’t fit that character description.

We seem to have an very high tolerance for domestic rightwing violence. Indeed, a good many of us celebrate it. But some African Muslim teenager lights his pants on fire and we run shrieking to hide under the bed and demand that daddy tear up the constitution because we’re so scared.

Do people believe that Al Qaeda is going to take over the United States? Really?

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Incomprehensible

by digby

We have our class war. And the Blue Dogs are on the side of the uppers. Dday reports:

The House of Representatives passed a jobs bill shorn of multiple stimulative efforts today, barely getting enough votes from Blue Dogs more concerned about short-term deficits and political considerations than public health. In order to ensure passage, House Democrats took out an extension of the 65% COBRA study and funding for the states for Medicaid. Progressive Democrats tried to object to the rule bringing the bill to the floor, but their protest fell just short, with 36 Democrats opposing.

[…]

The Senate plans to take up these two bills, now, after the one-week Memorial Day recess. Jobless Americans who wanted to keep their old health insurance with their 65% COBRA subsidy, or poor Americans who hoped that their states would get a boost for Medicaid so they could qualify, won’t be so lucky. Surely the Blue Dogs will sleep well anyway.

Let’s hope not. This is simple cruelty at this point.

It’s also sickening considering that the prsident announced this week that he will spend 500 million on unnecessary “border security” to try to appease a bunch of nativist asses who are unappeasable.

I am honestly gobsmacked that this government has decided that pretending to care about the deficit on the backs of the unemployed is good politics or good policy at a time of 10% unemployment. It’s mind boggling. I guess they figure the other 90% are employed so to hell with those losers.

Empathy is now officially no longer considered a virtue. Good to know.

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Blame The Victim, Giggle Like Schoolgirls

by digby

As far as this Sestak matter going away, I think MSNBC and the Politico is probably are probably good gauge of Village sentiment. Here’s Eamon Javers on Andrea Mitchell’s show:

Mitchell: They’ve dumped this out on a quiet Friday in Washington, which is not unusual, the president alluded to it yesterday …

Javers: (laughter)Friday night news dump…

Mitchell:And the president didn’t want to go into details yesterday, but interestingly, the president was with former president Bill Clinton at the White House yesterday, they had lunch, they had an event with the world soccer team, so they certainly had a chance to discuss what was going to be announced. [Uh oh — were they “getting their stories straight?”]

First of all, the Bob Bauer memo, it says that the White House did not discuss these options for an unpaid job [read portion of the memo]

Therefore, they’re talking about an unpaid position, not secretary of the Navy as has been alleged, they have concluded that the allegations of something improper or illegal are just not true. Is this going to put it to rest? Not as far as Republicans are concerned.

Javers: Yeah, I think Republicans are going to be pretty skeptical here. But it looks like the White House has settled on the politics as usual defense, I mean Bob Bauer in the this memo says that president throughout history have offered to toss bones like to politicians to redirect their ambitions in a politically convenient way for the White House and is nothing new.

Now the problem politically for President Barack Obama is that he promised to be the president who wouldn’t do politics as usual in Washington and now here they are copping to that in the Bob Bauer memo.

The other sort of tricky thing here for the White House, is if this is all it is, something as innocuous as Bill Clinton reaching out over the summer to Joe Sestak, why haven’t they been willing to say this …

Mitchell: Exactly!

Javers: … since Sestak first made these allegations in February? They’ve been very, very squirrely about this and they haven’t wanted to provide any official readout or timeline at all on who said what to whom here. Now we’re getting a sort of condensed version of all that a day after Obama and Clinton had a chance to meet, as you said, personally. So there’s some question here about why, if there’s just this, why didn’t we hear about this much,much sooner than today, the Friday before a holiday week-end.

Mitchell: And a day after the White House reached out to Richard Sestak, who was the campaign manager for his younger brother Joe Sestak.

Javers: right

Mitchell: Uh, they do point out correctly that the nomination for secretary of the Navy had been made and confirmed a month before Arlen Specter even switched parties, so it seems to me really ham-handed that they didn’t come out right away and say “that offer was never made.” The only possible reason is that they couldn’t be sure what the former president might have said. I mean they’re talking about a conversation between former president Bill Clinton and Joe Sestak. they don’t have great relations with Joe Sestak and they may not have been sure of everything that was said.

Javers: That’s right, except that it looks like Rahm Emmanuel, from this chain of events, was the one who asked Bill Clinton to reach out to Joe Sestak. It’s not like Rahm Emmanuel had no idea this was happening and it came out of the blue. The Obama white house was clearly involved in setting this up. If they were involved in setting it up, they presumably could have been involved in figuring out what was said during that phone call. It wouldn’t have taken all that much investigating for them to call Bill Clinton and ask him. he does take their phone calls. So there’s a lot of mystery here in the timeline on all this, but it looks like the White House is arguing now that there was nothing legally improper, that this was just typical politics as usual and they don’t have to worry about any special prosecutor going forward.

Mitchell: Yeah the last thing Bill Clinton wants to hear is the word “special prosecutor.”

Javers: Yoooou better believe it.

Mitchell: You could not come up with a worse perfect storm than that.

Javers: hahaha

Mitchell: You can’t make this up. This may be politics as usual, but this is politics played so ham handedly, it’s a lot worse than usual in terms of the amount of finesse involved. Thank you very much. You’d think that these guys were pros at it…

This reminds me of the Gore coverage. They justified their puerile attacks by saying he deserved what he got for being a stiff and boring poll who didn’t parry the nonsense that the GOP freakshow was throwing at him and that disqualified him for the presidency. Hazing politicians on behalf of GOP operatives really should not be part of our political press coverage. It rewards the worst kind of politicians who have more “savvy” than integrity and perpetuates a political system that creates incentives to damage and destroy people on the basis of trivial nonsense, thus obscuring the very serious substance of their business. This really isn’t a parlor game and politicians should not rise or fall based upon how they anticipate and deal with the GOPs mendacious machine, which is designed solely for the purpose of ruining their enemies.

My favorite thing about the exchange above is their wide-eyed wonder at why in the world the administration and Sestak didn’t just “come clean” to begin with — right after they slammed them for “politics as usual” and snickered and smirked over Bill Clinton being involved. They had to hope it blew over because they knew they were screwed no matter what they said. That’s just how these things work. Issa kept it up, Sestak won, the press is mad at the white house — et voila. (And now Bill Clinton is involved and they are breathless with arousal)

It may go away, but you can be sure that Issa and his minions will do everything they can to make sure it doesn’t. And if the press decides this is too much fun to let go of, they have settled on the excuse that even though nothing illegal took place, “ham handedness” should be a crime and therefore Obama and Sestak are to blame for this assault because they were asking for it. Same as it ever was.

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The BP Disaster Is Like Katrina In One Important Way

by tristero

Kevin Drum:

…Katrina would have been an immense disaster no matter what. But it was far worse than it had to be because a conservative administration, one that fundamentally disdained the mechanics of government for ideological reasons, decided that FEMA wasn’t very important. Likewise, the BP blowout was made more likely because that same administration decided that government regulation of private industry wasn’t very important and turned the relevant agency into a joke. If you believe that government is the problem, not the solution, and if you actually run the country that way for eight years, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we shouldn’t pretend it’s inevitable.

Yep. The response to both disasters could not be a better illustration of the sheer stupidity and madness of conservative/libertarian ideology. “Less government versus more government” is a grossly false dichotomy. The valid one is decent government versus incompetent and corrupt. As Kevin reminds us in his post, FEMA was a competent, well-run agency until Bush trashed it.

Vernon Jordan In The Library With A Candle Stick

by digby

Oh now I get it. Greg Sargent gets the story on Sestak:

Senior White House advisers asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Joe Sestak about whether he was serious about running for Senate, and to feel out whether he’d be open to other alternatives, according to sources familiar with the situation.

But the White House maintains that the Clinton-Sestak discussions were informal, according to the sources. The White House, under pressure to divulge the specifics of its interactions with Sestak, will release a formal statement later today outlining their version of events, including Clinton’s involvement.

According to the sources, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel asked Clinton and his longtime adviser, lawyer Doug Band, to talk to Sestak about the race. It’s unclear right now whether the White House will say that Clinton was asked to suggest specific administration positions for Sestak, whether Clinton floated positions on his own, whether Clinton discussed other options not related to the adminstration, or whether employment even came up at all in the talks.

But the news that Clinton is at the center of this whole story is noteworthy on its own because of the former president’s stature, and underscores how heavily invested the White House was in dissuading Sestak from running.

That’s noteworthy, for sure. But more noteworthy for the Village is the fact that it was a) Clinton and b) it features an alleged “bribe” for a job.

Why is this noteworthy? Well, Bill Clinton was impeached for arranging for Vernon Jordan to offer Monica Lewinsky a job, remember? There is no doubt in my mind that the Villagers are salivating over this. So many “questions” remain. So many “concerns.” So many titillating possibilities.So much fun! (And keep in mind that these things are always trivial — that’s the point. It’s a show of strength to be able to turn a nonsensical scandal into a political threat, which is a skill the villagers greatly respect.)

During the impeachment I always used to say that it was actually proof that things were going pretty well in this country because otherwise nobody could justify wasting that kind of time and money on something so stupid. We can’t say that about this era. So I’m hopeful that the sheer volume of real news and the scope of the various crises confronting us will drown this idiocy out and that the public will reject such scandals for the trumped up nonsense they are. So far the polls for Sestak look as if that’s happening. But you can see the outline of the plot if they do care to pursue it. And the point of these things is to plant doubts and build upon them.

The bottom line is that no matter what, it isn’t illegal to offer someone a job, much less to turn one down and it is no crime for a politician to be miffed at the party establishment trying to muscle him out of the race and mentioning it on the trail. There is literally no there there besides the usual “process” story by which we are supposed to judge politicians on how well they play village games, the rules for which change on a daily basis and which always seem to turn petty, non-stories into major Democratic scandals while excusing far more egregious Republican offenses. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what mechanism makes that happen.

Update perfect illustration of press justification for its own malpractice. Cillizza:

And so, the report this morning that former president Bill Clinton was tasked by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to make such an approach to Rep. Joe Sestak — allegedly offering him an unpaid advisory role on an intelligence board in exchange for getting him to drop his primary bid against Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) — would not normally raise much of a stir in official Washington.

That the story has become a major controversy, a regular fixture on cable news chat shows and a momentum-killer for Sestak following his come-from-behind victory against Specter in last week’s Pennsylvania primary is evidence of how the White House mishandled the controversy, according to conversations with several high-level Democratic strategists.

“How do you make something out of nothing?” asked one such operative who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the matter. “By acting guilty when you’re innocent.”

Another senior party official said that the White House “has a lot of egg on their face” and described the events as a “PR nightmare.”

The unfolding of events since Sestak told a local television host — albeit obliquely — in February that he had received a job offer from the White House speaks to one of the oldest political adages about the presidency: Stonewalling almost never works. (The full White House report on the matter is here.)

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was repeatedly asked in the intervening months about Sestak’s allegation but deflected comment. As the story became a bigger deal in the wake of Sestak’s primary victory, the statements out of the White House grew more and more opaque — as Gibbs insisted over the weekend that “nothing inappropriate happened” but refusing to engage in the more basic “what happened question.”

The matter came to a head during President Obama’s news conference yesterday when, asked by Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett about the details of the Sestak job offer, the president said only: “I can assure the public that nothing improper took place. But as I said, there will be a response shortly on that issue.”

Republicans gleefully highlighted every incident of the White House’s practiced silence on the matter, using the Sestak allegation to undermine one of the pillars of the Obama brand: transparency and accountability.

Note the passive voice. The press had nothing to do with this. It magically became a “regular fixture on cable news.” (And don’t forget the White House press corps is very, very unhappy about not being treated to Dove bars and back massages.)

It’s now officially morphed into how the White House “mishandled” it, which will turn into finger pointing at Sestak for his “exaggerating,” which will be a mark of his bad character. This is the way that the Village keeps politicians in line, let’s them know who’s in charge. And as I wrote earlier, the triviality is the point. To be able to make the White House sweat over something this stupid is an exercise of power.

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The All That Know Him Movement

bny digby

Have you heard about “The All That Know Him Movement?” Perhaps you think it has something to do with Jesus Christ or perhaps Martin Luther King?

Close. Very close.

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Oh Heck

by digby

Krugman:

For some reason today’s papers made me feel especially grim about the prospects for economic recovery — not the economic news so much as what one sees about the mindset of policy makers.

Here’s where we are: growing GDP, but mass unemployment still the law of the land, with only tiny progress so far. What can be done?

Well, we could have more fiscal stimulus — but Congress is balking even at the idea of extending aid for the ever-growing ranks of the long-term unemployed. Fiscal responsibility, you see — hey, and let’s make sure estate taxes stay low!

We could get tough with China, which continues its currency manipulation and, in the face of a world of grossly inadequate demand, is actually tightening monetary policy to avoid an overheating economy — when basic textbook economics says that it should be appreciating its currency instead, which would not only rebalance China’s economy but help the rest of the world. So given China’s outrageous behavior, Geithner went to China, got nothing .. and pronounced himself very pleased.

We could do more through monetary policy. Macro theory suggests that the theoretically right answer, if you can do it, is to get central banks to commit to a higher inflation target. But the Fed and the Bank of Japan say no, because … well, that’s not what central bankers do.

It’s depressing: shibboleths and conventional wisdom are blocking all routes out of this slump. And I worry that policy makers will just sit there, for years and years, all the while congratulating themselves on the soundness of their policies.

I agree with everyone who blames the essential corruption of our political system. Big money is a poison in our system. But there is also a generalized failure to challenge conventional wisdom, born of a hidebound, ruling elite that reinforces and recycles itself. Regulatory capture is far more problematic than just the professional revolving door — it’s a self-reinforcing social culture. It’s the “very serious people” syndrome and it’s failing this country badly.

Update: Krugman has more today:

What’s so scary about this is that the OECD virtually defines conventional wisdom; it’s a numbered-paragraph sort of place, where a committee has to sign off on everything, policing the nuances as they say. So what we get from this is that among sensible people the idea that you should undermine recovery to appease those who think there might be inflation even though actually there isn’t has become conventional wisdom — so conventional that it’s treated as self-evident.

This is really, really bad.

Political Advice From BPs Handmaiden

by digby

Has there ever been a more loathsome hypocrite than Mary Landrieu? I don’t think so:

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) says President Barack Obama will pay a political price his lack of visibility in the Gulf region during the catastrophic BP oil spill.

“The president has not been as visible as he should have been on this, and he’s going to pay a political price for it unfortunately,” Landrieu told POLITICO. “But he’s going down tomorrow, he’s made some good announcements today, and if he personally steps up his activity I think that would be very helpful.”

Landrieu has certainly been visible — fluffing British Petroleum in an unseemly way from the very beginning. Perhaps she will not pay a price for that politically — I’ve been schooled recently that the people of Louisiana love their corrupt politicians and expect them to keep Big Oil happy.

If that’s what Landrieu is talking about in terms of the president, I hope he doesn’t listen. The last thing I want to see is President Obama on TV telling all of us that BP is blameless and that we need even more offshore drilling as soon as possible, as Landrieu has been doing. Somehow, I think the “political price” for doing that might be a little bit higher for him than it is for her. (And I don’t think she should count on being rewarded for her servile obeisance to the oil industry at this point. It’s not quite the political winner it used to be.)

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A Visit To The Land Of Truth And Understanding

by digby

I just heard Chris Matthews say that people don’t want the Sheriff of Nottingham to handle the oil spill, they want Robin Hood. (Obviously, Tweety just went to the movies.) I think BP was supposed to be the Sheriff in this tangle metaphor — but isn’t the Sheriff the government? I got the feeling he meant Robin Hood to be Obama, but then wouldn’t he actually be King John? I don’t even think there’s a Robin Hood in all this unless Tweety believes there’s some crack team of Roughnecks out there like in Armageddon — but I think they’d all work for BP, right? I’m guessing the answer to this conundrum is to not let Chris Matthews go to the movies.

Meanwhile, he’s still haranguing Richard Blumenthal for being a liar and says he couldn’t vote for him. Then he predictably characterizes the president as creating a “secret little story” and Alfred Hitchcock mystery around the Sestak non-scandal and compares Obama and Sestak to the Menendez brothers getting their story straight. Lovely.
And then he gave Jim Webb a big, slurpy, very macho, metaphorical soul kiss.

Finally, he featured Bill Clinton talking about Limbaugh and Fox News with John “Drudge rules our world” Harris, scoffing because Clinton’s been talking about this since 1994. Matthews, Andrea Mitchell,and Harris smirked and snorted at the ludicrous claim by “the Clintons” of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy at which point Matthews lets fly with this:

“it’s true now by the way. Just like Jerry Ford, it finally was true about Poland.”

Tweety just woke up about the malevolent noise machine but that means anything that happened while he was asleep was a dream. It doesn’t even occur to him that he might have been wrong. It never does:

CM: Michael, Michael, there’s a big difference between what happened to Al Gore and John Kerry. John Kerry got hit unfairly by the Swift Boats attacking his service to his country. They conflated his opposition to the war when he came back which we can all argue about, and his service to his country which is not really arguable. They trashed him.

But in terms of Al Gore, he’s the one who said he created the internet, he’s the one who put out the word that he’s the subject or the role model for Love Story, that he pointed the country’s attention to Love Canal. He stuck himself into that story.

And when Marty Peretz’s daughter wrote that story in Vanity Fair a couple of months ago, I’m sorry, she didn’t make the case. Gore got himself in those problem areas by vanity and showing off an trying to make himself cool. But John Kerry got unfair treatment. I think it’s a big difference guys.

Crowley: that may be so, but it’s not how many Democrats feel.

CM: Well, why would expect a partisan to think anything more than partisan? That’s what partisans think? Of course they think they were rooked. Everyone who loses an election thinks they were rooked and they blame it on the umpire.

Crowley: That’s the audience they’re speaking to.

CM: Yeah, well how about getting into the land of truth and understanding?

Vintage Hardball. Good times.

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