Hands Up

I'm just gonna run this whole post from Balloon Juice.  It pretty much says it all.

Via Memeorandum, this interview with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, which had this snippet:

If this had been law prior to 2008, would we have seen the bailouts that took place? Would we have seen capital injections into banks?

BAIR: No. You could not do an AIG, Bear Stearns, or any of that. Those were all one-off things, capital or asset guarantee transactions. This bill would only allow system-wide liquidity support which could not be targeted at an individual firm. You can’t do capital investments at all, period. It’s only liquidity support. No more capital investments. That’s banned under all circumstances.

You can do systemwide liquidity support. But you can’t do anything on an individual basis. They would have to be generally available.

Do you see any way left for the government to bail out a financial institution?

BAIR: No, and that’s the whole idea. It was too easy for institutions to come and ask for help. They aren’t going to do that. This gives us a response: “Fine, we will take all these essential services and put them in a bridge bank. We will keep them running while your shareholders and debtors take all your losses. And oh, by the way, we are getting rid of your board and you, too.”

The whole idea is to get market discipline back.

That’s what ending “too big to fail means.” It means debtors and shareholders understanding their money is at risk and especially the debtholders starting to look at the balance sheet of these big institutions and asking their own hard questions instead of relying on government support.

When Mitch McConnell took to the cameras spewing his Frank Luntz talking points, this is what pissed me off the most (once you get past the instant “CAN’T YOU MOTHERFUCKERS EVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING!”)- what he was doing was trying to kill a bill that would end the bailouts. And if he succeeded, he would be doing the banksters bidding.

They don’t want what Bair just described. They like things just the way it is right now- they can put a gun to the head of the economy and tell us “If I go down, I’m taking everyone of you with me.” They like how things went down the last time- Goldman got every penny off their bets with AIG, all paid for by you and me. Then they went around and lavished huge bonuses on themselves when they weren’t busy writing whiny op-eds about how unfair it is everyone hates them.

With this bill, if the legislators and regulators have it right, these scumbags screw up again, they get wiped out. Shareholders get destroyed, and the board is replaced.

Wall Street and the bankstas don’t want that- which is why they flew Cornyn and McConnell to NY, told them they would bankroll the Republicans if only they killed this bill, and McConnell went right to the Senate podium and lied his ass off. Not only was he lying, but he was doing everything he could to make sure there would be bailouts forever. Understand what he was doing.

It’s just that simple. McConnell was selling the country and the American taxpayer down the river for a chance at flooding the airwaves with campaign ads funded by Wall Street, made possible by the right wing Supreme Court.

Spoiler Alert

The Young Turks

Not usually this straightforward; and not quite the perfect articulation, but damn - we're gettin' closer.

What's Wrong With The South?

We've had more than our share of cringe-worthy moments of late; especially here in Virginia where we get to stand in slack-jawed stupefaction every few weeks watching our Governor and our Atty General make themselves (and the rest of us) look like complete dicks.

They started out by issuing an executive order telling the whole state bureaucracy that they don't have to worry all that much about discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Next up: Ken Cuccinelli decides to sue the Obama Administration to prevent implementation of Healthcare Reform.  And to top it off, his office then says it only costs us the $350 filing fee.  I called his office 6 times and can't get anybody to answer any questions or call me back.

Then Governor Bob issues a proclamation designating April as Dumbass Redneck Month.

Most recently, any ex-felon in Virginia who wants to get back his right to vote has to write a letter to the government in Richmond explaining why he deserves the same rights as everybody else, now that he's paid his debt to society.  Can you say, "literacy test"?  I knew you could.

I get a weird feeling that there's something about the culture down here that makes this kind of Fantasy-Land-Alternate-Reality thing more probable.  It's certainly not particular to The South, but maybe Southerners are a little more susceptible to the temptation to revise the parts of their history that don't fit well with the basic human need for self-esteem.

A few examples:
Slavery was and still is often referred to as "our peculiar institution".
Secession and armed rebellion (aka Treason) becomes "defense of our homeland against an invasion from the north".
Rob't E Lee - a slave owner fervently in favor of beating slaves to keep them in line - is later said to be an abolitionist.

I think it also has something to do with wanting to let yourself off the hook.  If the truth about who you are and where you came from always seems to point up the fact that you're just the latest in a long line of assholes, you have to be looking for a little relief.  If somebody comes along and spins out a version that helps you feel a little less shitty about it all, then you're probably not going to be overly concerned that he's just makin' shit up.

It still makes me a little nuts, but I think I can understand it.  And that gives me a slightly better chance to counter it.

Read this from Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The Logical Extreme

Ten Years Of Hell

These posts are usually about bad news or warning signs, but this one looks like a win - at least they've managed to forestall a real meltdown in Greece for a year or so.  Unfortunately they haven't fixed the problems of the debt itself - problems that could still bring it all crashing down - problems that the banks are helping to create.

The biggest threat to our economic wellbeing is our inability to deal with all the debt we're piling up.  We can't just push "The Reckoning" farther down the road.  We can't keep borrowing, thinking it'll get better if we just wait for inflation to catch up with us; or that the economy will "grow us out of trouble".  We can't go on thinking we never have to worry about paying any of it back.

So Greece is settled down a bit, and now everybody seems to be worried about Portugal, but the real problem may be right here at home.

We dodged a bullet (for now anyway) by pouring massive amounts of dollars into the banks. We haven't fixed anything yet, but we're still standing - so far.

I've been mostly worried that the next shoe to drop will be Commercial Real Estate - one estimate is that by next year, half of all commercial real estate loans will be underwater.  We'll see; and it'll be a big fuckin' problem if it comes to pass, but it's nothing compared with everything bad that can happen if there are many more stories like this one in Birmingham AL.

In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street

As usual, I hope I'm wrong, but I fear I'm not.

Ten Years Of Hell

When the crash (and then possibly, the revolt) finally gets here, maybe it won't be so bad that the mob just burns everything down - but that's not how it usually plays out.

If any system of government/economy is to sustain itself over time, there has to be a broad appreciation for a kind of Societal Extortion.  The top tier (where all the money and power is) has to figure out a good way to buy the cooperation and the acquiescence  of the lower tiers.  The mob below has to be pacified somehow.  The Tsars and the Caesars and Kings and Emperors tried various things - sometimes they just hanged a bunch of peasants and burned out their settlements to keep them bottled up, but the really  smart ones built roads; or they put on elaborate shows; or they portioned out grain directly to the people; or they allowed some freedom of commerce.  They knew that even as absolute rulers, if they wanted to stay in power, they had to have the rabble's approval to some extent.

We've evolved a different system here in the US.  We use a lottery system to determine whether or (usually) not someone else is allowed to move up a rung or two.  We call it "The American Dream", but it's set up as the same very exclusive club as any previous system of ruling class(es).  It's just that here you get to pretend that if you work really hard, and if you adhere to a strict code of self-reliance and rugged individualism, then you can rise out of your lowly station and take your place among the Ruling Elite.  It may have been more possible not all that long ago, but in the last 30 years, the transfer of wealth to the upper echelon has been accelerating, and is approaching a point where the Great American Middle Class could actually be in danger of collapse.  From here on out, it's all just a shot in the dark.

And here's the kicker:  Most of us have accepted the notion that what we have here is a Meritocracy.  ie: "If I earn it, then I get it", which morphs into, "I have it, therefore I've earned it".

And the flip side is "If you don't earn it, then you don't get it"; which then morphs into "Your life is shitty, therefore you've earned a shitty life".

The Newness Of It All

I picked a different look for the blog because I wanted the wider aspect.

If it doesn't work for you, lemme know - not that I intend to do anything but ignore your complaints, but hey.

Just pretend you're in one of those meetings at work where The Suits say they're soliciting your input on this important issue, but you know deep down that they're just giving you a chance to agree with decisions they've already made.  Yeah, like that.

Crock Of The Week

Tro Da Bums Out

Since the beginning of 2009:
-we've averted a true economic catastrophe by stabilizing the banks.
-the economy has posted positive growth for 4 quarters in a row.
-we were losing 700k jobs per month, and now we're adding 100k.
-the car-making industry (and all the ancillary businesses) are coming back.
-green business is beginning to take hold and expand.
-troop levels in Iraq are being drawn down.
-DOW is up 3,000 points in the last 12 months.
-American prestige and public image have improved a jillion percent.
-32 million more Americans have a chance to get health insurance, and insurance companies can longer engage in some of their most egregious practices.
-the scope of the world's most destructive weapons is being rolled back.
-taxes for 95% of all Americans are down.

So of course there's only one thing to do - we need to find the assholes who did nothing but fuck everything up and put 'em all back in charge!  Yeah, we should do that.

Don't get me wrong - we still need to clear out a whole big bunch of moldy old politcos who've been around way past their freshness dates.  Let's just try to remember how we got to this dance, and who brung us.