With a little moxie and enough spin, anyone can play the victim in today's America. Testing the limits of this theory today are our latest contestants, the much-suffering hedge fund industry.
Prominent fund manager Cliff Asness, speaking for the financially loaded but politically oppressed everywhere, is putting his mouth where his money used to be, claiming that our new president is mad with power because he had the gall to draw the line a little short of the ultimate demands of the money men that derailed the whole Chrysler rescue.
Tech Ticker quotes Asness as saying:
"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."
(Get ready to jump!)
Well, now we are drilling down into the heart of the abscess that is our financial crisis, and those residing within the infection such as Mr. Asness are so far gone that they can no longer recognize healthy tissue from diseased. It feels to me like the point in the movie about two-thirds of the way through where the ultimate villain takes center-stage and makes the big threat.
The problem for the beleaguered hedge fund crowd is that the plot has already gone so far awry. Like it or not, they were among the biggest of players in setting up and running the shadow banking system scam, which was a damn good scam as long as no one cried "Bernie Madoff!" at the wrong moment in the cycle of shuffling money, revealing what kind of fraud so many players were trying to pull off in the name of glorious, garish unfettered profit.
The banks we had no choice but to save, but for Mr. Asness to now try making a virtue out of the "no bailout" status of hedge funds is the worst kind of deception. The question has been publicly asked, "So where is all this bailout money going?" and the answers in many cases is into the chasms of hedge fund accounts left gaping with debt when the CDOs and other exotics went kaput. The simple goal all along since September has been to try and keep the financial system from eating itself alive by letting a vicious cycle play out in ways that would destroy too many.
So Mr. Asness and his ilk that he claims to speak for in his letter believe they are now the victims. How rich! (literally).
There's also this assertion by Asness, straight out of the GOP "How to Play Dirty" playbook:
"The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power."
This maneuver goes hand-in-hand with the victim card that is being played here. You've accused someone of doing you wrong; now give everyone the motive.
It's a worthwhile ploy. After all, a significant segment of the American people have shown themselves willing to vilify Democrats, liberals and the working class no matter the preponderance of evidence that points in the other direction. If there's one thing this crisis has shown, it is that it is so complex at its heart that the average person can only begin to understand it by spending great investments of time even learning how things were supposed to work, let alone how they went bad. So why not give the public an easy-to-understand accusation to chew on?
I don't know, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. This crisis has never been anyone's fault, just an unforeseen quirk that spoiled all that beautiful Friedman-ite free market largesse. Now that Obama and co. are getting to the point where they have unraveled this chaos enough so the pain is being pushed back to those who originated it, I have little doubt we are going to hear much more in the coming months along the lines of the arguments put forward by Mr. Asness.
For the sake of the country, Main Street and the everyday citizen, I say if the hedge funds see Obama as a bully today, let his position grown only stronger for tomorrow and the day after.