Plutocrats...and Democrats

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Saturday January 16, 2010 · 5:01 AM PST

2010/01/16 · 05:01

Interesting results in a recent National Journal poll getting attention elsewhere for different reasons.

In question 22, 1,200 American adults were asked the following:

Thinking back over all the actions the federal government has taken to respond to the financial crisis over the last 12 months, who do you think has benefited most from these policies?

The results are surprisingly far worse than even I expected:

Beneficiaries of Federal Government Actions
Banks and investment companies - 40%
Major corporations - 20%
Wealthy individuals - 16%
Middle class individuals - 9%
Low-income individuals - 8%
No one - 2%
Don’t Know - 4%
Refused - 1%

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Wednesday December 30, 2009 · 10:13 AM PST

2009/12/30 · 10:13

It sure would appear to be so:

During the bubble, Goldman Sachs and other financial firms created complicated mortgage-related investments, sold them to clients and then placed bets that those investments would decline in value. The practice, detailed in The Times by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, allowed Wall Street to profit handsomely as its clients tanked. It also amplified the financial meltdown, spreading the losses to pretty much everyone. These deals are now the targets of various government and industry-led investigations...

..To be thorough, investigations of these and other questions would have to reach into the Obama Treasury Department. One of the most aggressive creators of the questionable investments was a firm called Tricadia, whose parent firm was overseen by Lewis Sachs, now a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

That's right, our Treasury Secretary took on as a key adviser, Lewis Sachs to help determine how to spend taxpayer money ~~to clean up the mess he played a major part in creating~~ to bail out the bankers his products screwed.

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Tuesday December 29, 2009 · 2:31 AM PST

2009/12/29 · 02:31

While Daily Kos was busy arguing the relative merits (or, depending on your perspective, de-merits) of the Democratic Health Care Reform bills emanating from House and Senate, an interesting thing happened at the Obama administration's Treasury and FHFA. As Bruce Kasting at Naked Capitalism recounts, Geithner's Treasury took another $200 billion dump on the American Taxpayer, picking the slowest of news days, Christmas Eve, to announce it:

I was disappointed with the Christmas Eve ditties from Treasury and FHFA re: the Agencies. To be honest, I was appalled. The two releases contained significant information. The timing was obviously an attempt to slip in some bad news while everyone is drinking eggnog.

Of course that backfired. The blogs, and yes, the MSM disintegrated those that sent the emails out on Christmas Eve. The smell that these announcements have created is not likely to go away anytime soon. (Diarist's note: serious sarcasm here)

If you are reading this you know the story. Treasury ponied up for another $200b for Fannie and Freddie and the management of these entities are getting serious paychecks.

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Monday December 28, 2009 · 9:39 AM PST

2009/12/28 · 09:39

Recently, a quite well-written diary by a fellow French kossack, French Imp, explained to Daily Kos how the French health care delivery system works. Aside from explaining post-war developments in our health care system here in France, the spirit of the diarist's thesis was the even our excellent French public health care system was the product of a long series of incremental improvements, ending only recently, in 1999.

Many kossacks, especially those inclined to celebrate the Democrat's recent achievement of a modest set of health care reforms, took encouragement from French Imp's celebration of French health-care incrementalism.

Unfortunately, his characterization of our health care progress here in France is largely false.

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Saturday December 26, 2009 · 2:49 AM PST

2009/12/26 · 02:49

Look people, I know that diaries decrying the left for being suspicious of Barack Obama and especially his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel are popular hereabouts these days. And, I know how strong the instinct can be to get behind the team now that the Democratic party has finally crafted a Health Care bill which at least makes purchasing health insurance slightly more accessible (if compulsorily so) to millions of Americans. After all, even the great "progressive" economist, Paul Krugman, has rallied behind the legislation, so those of us on the political left should be happy for this exercise in Democratic party incrementalism, just like we were happy when Santa brought us underwear instead of the toy train or porcelain doll or whatever it is we really wanted.

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Wednesday December 16, 2009 · 2:16 PM PST

2009/12/16 · 14:16

I guess we were wrong, the White House has been just as hard on Lieberman as it has been on progressives like Sherrod Brown and Tom Harkin:

Asked if Obama is as demanding of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn), whose opposition to a public option and Medicare buy-in provision led to their removal, as he has been of progressives like Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), both staunch supporters of a public plan, (White House Press Secretary Robert) Gibbs affirmatively replied: "Yes."

"The president was clear with members of the democratic caucus, including independents who caucus with the Democrats," he said.

If Gibb's claim is that President Obama has ben hard on independents who caucus with the Democrats in the Senate to compromise, he must mean Bernie Sanders, the other independent, because lately, it's been hard to see Holy Joe doing anything but hogging cameras, holding court and smiling away and how he took the Democratic caucus in the senate for a ride.

Poll

29 votes Show Results

Name your least favorite Senator from CT

29 votes Vote Now!

Name your least favorite Senator from CT

Lieberman

7 votes

Lieberscum

6 votes

Liebertool

0 votes

Lieberstool

1 vote

Lieberputz

0 votes

Lieberswanz

0 votes

Lieberhole

5 votes

Lieberroid

3 votes

Lieberschmuck

7 votes

Who cares about Sarah Palin

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Tuesday December 15, 2009 · 9:10 AM PST

2009/12/15 · 09:10

when it’s Democrats fucking us now.

For those who insist on content: The Senate "compromise" that is emerging as worse than nothing. It enacts a government mandate to force Americans to fork over thousands of dollars a year to much-hated health insurance leeches for shitty health insurance.

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Monday November 23, 2009 · 3:20 PM PST

2009/11/23 · 15:20

Interesting juxtaposition between the NYTimes front page and the column by its star columnist today. First, the (web) front page:

...as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Wednesday June 17, 2009 · 3:03 AM PDT

2009/06/17 · 03:03

Remember when Bernanke's Fed was giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the banking industry?

Remember when that wasn't enough to bail out the corrupt US banking system, and Hank Paulson asked for $700 billion more to cover executives bonuses?

Remember when President Obama was so angry he was declaring the end of the golden parachute era? It looked like the era of casino capitalism might be coming to a close.

Remember when congressional anger over insane pay packages for corrupt bankers and insurance executives was so high the House actually voted for 90% marginal tax rates? (The legislation died in the Millionaire-controlled Senate, of course.)

If you don't, you are not alone. No one in Washington seems to remember, either. Andrew Clark in today's Guardian examines how the Obama administration is helping Wall Street get its greed back.

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Tuesday June 16, 2009 · 2:56 AM PDT

2009/06/16 · 02:56

Well, at least a significant part of them:

A legal battle has erupted among the creditors who hold debt from the $8 billion acquisition of Extended Stay Hotels, a symbol of the easy-credit era. The chain was served a notice of default in late May.

Two investors...filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that lenders (diarist note - Bank of America and Wells Fargo via their taxpayer-guaranteed acquisitions of Marrill Lynch and Wachovia, respectively) that provided $7.4 billion in financing...are engaged in a "scheme" to take over the property and wipe out the...investors...Creditors have been negotiating...a possible restructuring of the debt.

U.S. taxpayers also have had an interest in the talks because another lender in the buyout was Bear Stearns Cos., whose stake was taken over by the Federal Reserve after Bear collapsed in March 2008...The Fed declined to comment.

Well, we know that the Fed took a lot of toxic financial assets on to it's balance sheet in order to bail out the banking system whose rank corruption has caused the economic mess the US is exporting to the rest of the world. But a bankrupt hotel chain?

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Sunday June 14, 2009 · 12:42 PM PDT

2009/06/14 · 12:42

Nobel Prize-winner in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, writing in the Guardian this weekend in an aptly titled article, America's Socialism For the Rich, describes the evolution of the American response to the global financial crisis its policies have led to. Beginning with a discussion of the reasons why the US and the Obama administration are still loath to do proper regulation, Stiglitz dives into America's evolving policy of confronting the crisis. Whereas deregulation created banks to big to fail and, Stiglitz says, to big to manage, the Obama administration has gone one step further and declared them too big even to restructure, a logic which is no less than socialism for the rich:

So, we not only can't touch the bondholders, we also can't even touch the shareholders – even if most of the shares' existing value merely reflects a bet on a government bailout.

I think this judgment is wrong. I think the Obama administration has succumbed to political pressure and scaremongering by the big banks. As a result, the administration has confused bailing out the bankers and their shareholders with bailing out the banks.

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Monday June 08, 2009 · 1:27 PM PDT

2009/06/08 · 13:27

In an otherwise pretty mediocre analysis of European Parliament elections which ended yesterday, the New York Times led with this: :

Center-right parties emerged Monday from European Parliament elections claiming triumph over left-of-center groupings that failed to draw political advantage from their adversaries’ handling of the global economic crisis.

First of all, let's dispense with all the talk about the victory of the right. None of the mainstream parties did well, generally speaking. So, while it is correct, as far as it goes, that the center-right parties did relatively better than their center-left counterparts, the parliamentary right-wing grouping in Strasbourg actually went down, in membership, from 36.6% of total seats to 36.2% (Though it is true that the Tories in the UK pulled out of that grouping, presumably to maintain Eurosceptique bona fides in advance of a potential withdrawal of the UK from the EU for which many of the rest of us would be grateful.)

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Plutocrats...and Democrats

NY Times calling for high-level investigation of Geithner Treasury Department?

Geithner Must Go.

France's Real Long March to Universal Coverage

Clapping harder will not make the Health Care bill any better.

White House: Lieberman sacrificing too! Now with poll!

Who cares about Sarah Palin

Paul Krugman: Gliberal

The casino is still open for business.

Congrats, US Taxpayer. Now You Own 684 Bankrupt Hotels, Too

Time to Eat the Rich.

EU Elections: What the Times Isn't Saying.