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Friday, March 21, 2008

Now here is an issue that should be getting more attention

Posted by Jill | 6:19 AM

This morning Joe Scarborough is trying desperately to draw attention away from the breach of Barack Obama's passport file by having the vapors about Obama referring to his grandmother as having the response of "a typical white person" to black men she doesn't know (and if you're white and you say you have never, ever in your entire life clutched your handbag, even if you weren't consciously doing it, when a black kid iwalks into the elevator with you in a major American city, you're a goddamn liar). Because EVERYONE's a little bit racist:

And the whole point of Obama's speech, and this remark, is that we can't address the problem until we admit it's there.

But if we can just examine every word out of Barack Obama's mouth, perhaps we can keep people from wondering why it is that people are living in FEMA trailers two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina but the goverment can come up with over $200 billion within 24 hours to help J.P. Morgan Chase buy up Bear Stearns at garage sale prices? It keeps them from wondering why the president vetoes SCHIP because $35 billion is too much but over $200 billion to bail out a private company from its own mismanagement and bad investments is a necessary expense.

The New York Times has an editorial today that should be hammered by BOTH Democratic candidates: The bailout of Bear Stearns, and why it's not OK to provide health care for everyone in America because that would be socialized medicine, but it's OK to socialize the consequences of financial risks taken by the private sector:

There should be financial accountability for the man who led Bear Stearns as it gorged on dubious subprime securities to boost its profits and share price, helping to set up one of the biggest financial collapses since the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s. Some might argue that he should have lost it all.

But that’s not how it works. The ongoing bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve underscores the extent to which financial barons socialize the costs of private bets gone bad. Not a week goes by that the Fed doesn’t inaugurate a new way to provide liquidity — meaning money — to the financial system. Bear Stearns isn’t enormous. It doesn’t take deposits from the public. Yet the Fed believed that letting it implode could unleash a domino effect among other banks, and the Fed provided a $30 billion guarantee for JPMorgan to snap it up.

Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation’s financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration. It’s not simply a matter of fairness, though. The Fed is probably right to be doing all it can think of to avoid worse damage than the economy is already suffering. But if the objective is to encourage prudent banking and keep Wall Street’s wizards from periodically driving financial markets over the cliff, it is imperative to devise a remuneration system for bankers that puts more of their skin in the game.

Financiers, of course, dispute that they are being insufficiently penalized. “I received no bonus for 2007, no severance pay, no golden parachute,” E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told a House committee recently. That doesn’t seem like much of a blow to Mr. O’Neal, who was removed earlier this year following gargantuan subprime-related losses.

[snip]

Bankers operate under a system that provides stellar rewards when the investment strategies do well yet puts a floor on their losses when they go bad. They might have to forgo a bonus if investments turn sour. They might even be fired. Their equity might become worthless — or not, if the Fed feels it must step in. But as a rule, they won’t have to return the money they made in the good days when they were making all the crazy bets that eventually took their banks down.

But this is the same American public that decided in 1988 that the issue of whether the Pledge of Allegiance should be mandatory was an important enough campaign issue to affect their vote. So we'll continue to dump money into Iraq, and bail out more troubled investment banks, give more no-bid contracts to Republican campaign contributors, and bridges will continue to fall into the rivers they cross, but gosh dang it, we ain't gonna put up with no black people dissing their white grandmothers. [/sarcasm off]

Labels: Barack Obama, economic death watch, hack journalism, racism

4 comments

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

We've known for some time that the goal of W's group was to enrich themselves at our expense.
As if the questionable Iraqi contracts weren't enough, now we have him simply opening the vaults and inviting his buddies in to help themselves...
"Get it while it's still worth something, fellas!"

I wonder if 2-cent dollars was on the original agenda, or if he truly did screw up this time???
Or is there something in worthless dollars that I'm not seeing??

3/21/08, 8:56 AM

Anonymous said...

The supreme question, as yet to be asked: Where did all the money go?

Remember, those bundled* sub-prime securities were sold for cash by someone. As is usual with any Ponzi scheme, the last ones in hold an empty bag. The first ones in are always elusive.

This same scenario existed with the S&L debacle in the late 80's. Estimates of anywhere from $600 - $900 billion just.....disappeared!
And, gee, wasn't there a Bush bro involved with that one too?

You can be sure that in another 10-20 years, it'll happen all over again cause Wall Street don't need no stinkin' regulations.

Bundling: The financial equivalent of hiding a haystack in a needle.

3/21/08, 12:40 PM

Anonymous said...

maya,
An honest, but probably lengthy, search could easily find the money in the pockets of the usual suspects. [Did you hear that a mutual fund run by Carlyle -- ie, the Bush boys -- went bust!? Wonder where THAT money went??]

But as someone said not too long ago, it's impossible to get it back because "the crooks always spend it!"

3/21/08, 3:55 PM

Distributorcap said...

Joe Scarborough is exactly why America is going to the cesspool --- NEVER does he EVER mention the fact that bailing out BS is just socialized corporatocracy.

but he went on and on about the grandmother -- and he keeps draping himself in his own putrid patriotism --

as long as the media is complicit in so many things - illegal wars and now race baiting -- for their own self interest (ratings).. we have no chance

even if obama doesnt ever make it to the WHite house -- he has done something for this country that Scarborough (who is just a nicer Limbaugh) could never do --- address issues upfront and without remorse or without tiptoeing... and not wrap it up in smugness and arrognace. he says he admires obama but then makes the grandmother story into the proverbial mountain out of a molehill

FU scarborough for being what is SO wrong with america

3/22/08, 6:30 AM