I wonder how that GOP minority outreach thingy is going. What, with MC Macaca bustin routines and rhymes all night, I’m sure the voter registration drive is hotting up. In the interest of offering the GOP a bit of friendly advice, however, may I suggest setting up some booths in Harlem and distributing a condensed version of the following in flier form:
National Review‘s Mark Krikorian notes that (1) Washington Mutual became the largest bank to fail in American history yesterday and (2) its last press release touted the fact that it was named one of America’s most diverse employers, having been “honored specifically for its efforts to recruit Hispanic employees, reach out to Hispanic consumers and support Hispanic communities and organizations”; for being “named [one of] the top 60 companies for Hispanics”; for “attaining equal rights for GLBT employees and consumers”; for having “earned points for competitive diversity policies and programs, including the recently established Latino, African American and GLBT employee network groups”; and for being “named one of 25 Noteworthy Companies by Diversity Inc magazine and one of the Top 50 Corporations for Supplier Diversity by Hispanic Enterprise magazine.”
While juxtaposing these two facts — (1) WaMu has a racially and ethnically diverse workforce and (2) WaMu collapsed yesterday — the National Review writer headlined his post: “Cause and Effect?” He apparently believes that the reason Washington Mutual failed may be because it employed and was too accommodating to large numbers of Hispanics, African-Americans and gays. Is that why Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bear Sterns and so many others also failed — too racially diverse of a workforce?
What I’d pay for a front row seat on 125th Street. Jonah, perhaps you could lend a hand as well? I’m sure you could get some plucky young intern to put together a pamphlet containing the key points of your ”There Was No Racism in America as of 1968” thesis.
My friends, that’s not obstruction of justice you can believe in:
A Democratic state representative in Alaska asked state troopers Wednesday to investigate possible witness tampering in a legislative investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to fire the state’s public safety commissioner.
Since Palin became Sen. John McCain’s running mate, at least three witnesses have declined to cooperate despite receiving subpoenas in the investigation, Rep. Les Gara said Wednesday in a letter to the director of the Alaska State Troopers.
… This occurs to me: perhaps she’s not retarded. Perhaps she is using the Burroughs “cut up technique” of answering questions, in which fragments of sane answers are arranged, at random, to give an answer which blows open the doors of perceptions and allows one to glimpse the infinite hidden possibilities of the universe beyond our bourgeois “reality”; or, if not, at least an answer which blows. I get spam which makes more sense than this. I get spam which makes more sense as an answer to Couric’s question than this. Jesus.
Spare me. Let me guess: the debate should be postponed until October 2, which, sadly, will mean eliminating the vice presidential debate entirely. What a bummer, eh? And the guy whose campaign is funded by federal funds thinks all fundraising should be suspended. Imagine that. And the senator who hasn’t showed up for a roll call vote since April suddenly thinks Capitol Hill is the place everyone needs to be. That should speed things up, shouldn’t it?
Fuck that. Obama should point out that sometimes presidents have to deal with multiple challenges at the same time, and that Obama feels he’s up to the task. Tell Mumm-ra to give his walker a tune-up and chug a Red Bull.
Like Matt Yglesias,I think it is extremely important that we incorporate punitive measures into the eventual bailout legislation. After all, government subsidized welfare creates all the wrong incentives, and discourages good behavior. Not just in poor people remarkably enough. So unless there is pain associated with cocking up our economy so bad that a trillion dollar band-aid is needed, the “greed is good” set is going to continue gambling our taxpayer dollars in pursuit of high risk, instant gratification because, well, its not their money. And they’re greedy.
Reining in obscene executive compensation would be an excellent place to start (not just CEOs mind you, these entities have multiple tiers of executives). Even if such mean restrictions, sniffle, cause some banks to choose not to gorge themselves on my hard-earned tax dollars, served over a mesclun mix in the bailout trough.
But there are wider implications from this truly enormous budgetary expenditure that we will need to reckon with. For one, it will make it exceedingly difficult for Obama to implement badly needed, if expensive, legislative initiatives like health insurance for tens of millions of Americans that are suffering for want of care. Touching up the crumbling infrastructure wouldn’t be a bad thing (I prefer my bridges to remain intact while I’m traversing – I’m spoiled like that). Oh, and treating the global warming crisis in an adult manner will likely involve some financial costs. But consider this: Wall Street, situated roughly at sea level in lower Manhattan, could literally disappear from the effects of Global Warming. Kind of changes the meaning of “underwater” don’t it.
Further, tacking this trillion dollars of debt on to the ten we already got will bring the filthy tax jihadists like Grover Norquist that much closer to achieving a goal that has been a preoccupation of the GOP since the days of FDR: Getting the Wise Men in Washington to come together for truly sensible, deeply serious entitlement reform (translation: gutting Social Security and Medicare – drowning each in the proverbial bathtub). The politicians will explain to the American people how they have no choice. How the money simply wasn’t there. How deficits do matter after all. How they had to do it. Sadly. There will be no mention of Iraq, the Bailout or Bush’s mind-boggling tax cuts for the already-super wealthy. That would be finger pointing and just as now, it will not be the time for finger pointing then.
Yglesias touches on one means to evade the trap as set:
If anything should be done, the case seems clear for wildly higher tax rates on high-income individuals than prevailed during the Clinton years. Are we afraid of stifling the kind of fat cat activity that’s brought us to our current situation?
In the alternative, we can help to defer costs by outsourcing our punitive measures-related-program-activities to India. They have a cost-effective methodology:
Corporate India is in shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
It’s not clear whether the taped confession McCain gave to his captors to avoid further torture has played a role in his post-war behavior in the Senate. That confession was played endlessly over the prison loudspeaker system at Hoa Lo—to try to break down other prisoners—and was broadcast over Hanoi’s state radio. Reportedly, he confessed to being a war criminal who had bombed civilian targets. The Pentagon has a copy of the confession but will not release it. Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a non-redacted copy of the debriefing of McCain when he returned from captivity, which is classified but could be made public by McCain.
So, in all seriousness, I’m not going to fault anyone for anything they did in a fucking Vietnamese POW camp. I generally make a few anti-American commie propaganda tapes before I go out for phở, just to be on the safe side. I’m what they call in military jargon “a big fucking coward”, and consider myself a living example of why conscription is a bad idea.
Also, Bob Dornan, Ted Sampley, Ross Perot etc. – these are crazy, crazy people, sad drifters in the psychic badlands of Outer Wingnuttistan. I have not looked into the whole POW/MIA issue, because I have limited free time and have found that fitting my shoes into Congressman Dornan’s unfortunate footsteps is a poor use of it, and will tend to make me feel like Major Tom floating away from all that is solid and sane. I can empathize with the families who pursued this issue in the 70′s, 80′s, and beyond, who were tormented by loss and a dreadful uncertainty, and I can understand how they would want there to be some way to hold out hope for their loved ones’ return – but that doesn’t make them, you know, factually correct.
And, finally, while The Nation is in many ways a wonderful publication, they often appear willing to publish literally any bullshit by writers who can produce their authentic 1968 SDS Inner Circle commemorative roachclip, so the fact that it appears in those pages does not necessarily make it any less crazy. The queasiness you are experiencing may not be evidence that you have been wrenched into a parallel perpendicular universe where up is down and black is white and Ross Perot is occassionally something other than Verne Troyer with a Scrooge McDuck money and a pulsating brain tumor made out of psilocybin crystals. You might just be lactose intolerant.
Anyway, this itself isn’t a proper ratfuck, as no one who reads the Nation was going to vote for McCain anyway. However, it might lend some legitimacy to cynical outflanking-from-the-bonkers-right maneuvers, so perhaps a rodentine marital aid of some sort? Now if you will excuse me, I need to get my drank on.
I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.
I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.
I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.
THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.
PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.
What do The Editors think? wonders the economic policy community, turning their lonely eyes to me. Well: the primary fault here lies with the institutions who wrote bad mortgages, then with the institutions who laundered these into ridiculously-overvalued securities, and finally with the financial geniuses who bought this nonsense and are now left holding big piles of shit. The sins range from poor risk assessment to professional malpractice to flat-out fucking lying. As this albatross-laundering scheme was carried out in what was at best (I gather) a regulatory gray area, it’s hard to see how the government holds any particular liability here, except for not adequately babysitting the private business transactions carried out by adults. As these under-regulated securities carried no FDIC-type guarantee, I can see no reason for the government to feel obliged to back them up. Which is to say: I am enough of a free marketeer that my prejudice is to let failing enterprises fail, and I’m sure that, were it anybody else’s ass in the fire, the good people who run these failed enterprises would be taking to the pages of the WSJ to editorialize in support of this view. Now, I am sympathetic to the argument that the overall consequences to the economy of letting Big Shitpile fall apart naturally would be too horrible; but, if that is the case, I would like my pound of flesh, please.
Six months ago, I compared the nation’s financial crisis to the K-T extinction event which caused the dinosaurs to file for Chapter 7. This naturally led people to reallocate into small, rodent-like mammals, hoping for a big return on investment when they evolved into a race of investment bankers. However, in light of the recent spate of investment bank failures and the deepening crisis, this portfolio no longer seems promising. I would like to change my answer, and say that this is clearly the worst crisis humanity has faced since Carl Lewis tried to become a pop star.
The Bush administration sketched out a multi-faceted effort on Friday to confront the worst U.S. financial crisis in decades, outlining a program that could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to buy up bad mortgages and other toxic debt. Relief washed over Wall Street with a surge of buying.
President Bush, flanked by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, acknowledged that the program will put a “significant amount of taxpayers’ money on the line.”
The plan being, I gather, to clog the toilet with taxpayer money to prevent real money from being lost. And how much money are we talking about?
The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, D-Conn., warned on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Friday that the United States could be “days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system” and said Congress would work quickly to prevent that.
Later Dodd told reporters that the government’s rescue plan will be costly, and demanded more details. “We’re anxious to hear the specifics. None of us have any idea what the details are. We understand the gravity of the moment,” he said. predicted the new bailout plan would cost at least half a trillion dollars. [...]
The federal government already has pledged more than $600 billion in the past year to bail out, or help bail out, some of the biggest names in American finance.
So we’re planning on breaking the trillion dollar mark this year – $3,000 for every man, woman and child in America, sent to “the biggest names in American finance”. And this is nobody’s fault, and there’s no need for any plan to pay for it. Just one of those trillion dollar “oopsies” that very responsible people sometimes make. Just cover your ears.
