Give him a bottle and put him to bed

Give him a bottle and put him to bed

by digby

I had been ignoring the the Paul Ryan and his 350 dollar bottle of wine story because well — it’s been well covered elsewhere and I had nothing of interest to add to it. But Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution brings a new dimension to the story that I haven’t seen before:

It’s confusing to see the snarling red faces of America’s financial overlords. Of all the people on earth, what do they have to be angry about? They almost obliterated the world economy, and as punishment, we opened up the U.S. treasury and told them to haul off as much as they could carry. Meanwhile, everyone else is just praying the Medicare age won’t be raised beyond 82.

However, their fury makes perfect sense if you understand that they live inside an all-enveloping fantasy world. You may have seen that Paul Ryan was recently spotted downing two $350 bottles of wine with Cliff Asness, a hedge fund manager. When a woman approached and criticized them for that kind of extravagance as Ryan plots to slash all social spending, Asness apparently said to Ryan “fuck her.” Asness was previously known for staging a memorable public freakout about the Obama administration’s bailout of Chrysler in an open letter titled “Unafraid in Greenwich, Connecticut.”

So far so normal in 2011. But I don’t think anyone’s noticed this, from Asness’s bio on his company’s website:

He received an MBA with high honors and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Chicago where he was Eugene Fama’s student and teaching assistant for two years (he is still respectfully scared of Gene).

In other words, Asness is a protege of Fama, who’s an extremely schmancy figure in right-wing economics. (And John Cochrane, a University of Chicago finance professor who was also eating with Asness and Ryan, is Fama’s son-in-law.) This is the milieu in which Asness spends his days.

And here’s the significance of that: Fama was recently spotted confidently telling everyone that the sky is green:

But suppose we buy into the more common negative current view of finance. There is still a big open question. Beginning in the early 1980s, the developed world and some big players in the developing world experienced a period of extraordinary growth. It’s reasonable to argue that in facilitating the flow of world savings to productive uses around the world, financial markets and financial institutions played a big role in this growth. Despite any role of finance in the current recession, are the market naysayers really ready to argue that worldwide wealth would be higher today if financial markets and financial institutions didn’t develop as they did?

I urge you to read on as to why that Bizarroworld statement is not just false, but delusional. And there’s lots more about Asness, a jackass of the highest order.

Update: Here’s a little reminder of that big baby’s temper tantrum back in 2009.

Let’s also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing. Some useful programs, like those designed to help finance consumer loans, won’t work because of this irresponsible hectoring.

Last but not least, the President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying. The TARP recipients had no choice but to go along. The hedge funds were singled out only becausethey are unpopular, not because they behaved any differently from any other ethical manager of other people’s money. The President’s comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet, somehow I don’t think the hedge funds will be following ACORN’s lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protestors soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer.

Boo fucking hoo. There are literally no greater Rodney Dangerfields than the vastly wealthy masters of the universe. I tell ya they get no respect. All they have in life is their money and privilege. Can you really blame them for needing to soothe their hurt feelings with a nice 350 dollar bottle of wine and a mellow evening with a fellow Randroid fool once in a while?

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