Poor Obama is between a rock and a hard place. Call the bankers fat cats and they get offended, get cozy with them and be accused of bending to corporate interests. And banks are ungrateful bitches. I think this whole situation should be played out like the scene in Star Wars where they “arrest” Chewbacca and the rebels and convoy them through the enemy ship to a safe place. Except I would have a frank Joe Pesci-esque talk with them afterwards. See my previous post. Wall Street Regulation
If you remember back in March when busloads of protesters were going to AIG headquarters, Obama said to bankers that his administration is the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks. And what do we get in return? Some oversensitive fucks on Wall Street who object the name calling? You’re already getting watered down regulations that won’t make any difference. So the least you can do is shut up about it and play along.
And for my conservative friends who still worry that Obama is a socialist, here’s the latest from Matt Taibbi. In a nutshell: you have nothing to worry about. Obama’s big Sellout
I’m still not sure whether they are for it or against it. Mitch McConnell’s website had him one day saying that cutting Medicare is not what Americans want and the next day – that expanding Medicare can lead to a financial ruin. Technically, it’s not a contradiction: Yes, Americans like their Medicare and perhaps expanding it would be tough on a budget. But there’s no doubt they like THEIR Medicare, because many Republicans over 65 and that includes Mitch McConnell as well as Chuck Grassley, Orin Hatch, Dick Lugar, James Inhofe, Saxby Chambliss, you can see the full list here:
Which makes me think this is the case of “I got mine and screw the rest of you”.
Needless to say, when Social Security Act was passed in 1965 which included Medicare, most Republicans voted against it because they viewed it as a slippery slope towards Socialism. Ronald Reagan argued in 1961 that if Medicare wasn’t stopped “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free”. Oh, what pathos! 44 years have passed since then and now they are spending their sunset years reaping the benefits of “socialist” programs while telling the public the same old stories scary stories about “soshulism”. I think they kinda like it, but since it’s de mauvais ton in the Right circles to be recipients of government help they have to at least pay lip-service to “everybody for himself” mentality.
Now there’s no straightforward public option but a “menu of national insurance plans” that will be modeled after current federal workers’ plans. I’m just not sure whether it will be run by government or private contractors sponsored by the government, a la Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These plans will be overseen by federal agency that will be negotiating prices and fees with private insurance companies. There’s still a “fall-back” public option that is triggered if none of the above plans work. I think it will make the health care more byzantine in nature. Unless the Dems will structure the trigger in such a way that it’s always on. This reminds me of the way the delinquency trigger in structured products works. If this really is what Democrats have in mind then I have to applaud them. This way they will have the public option without scaring the public. And this will also leave Republicans without quick and handy slogans, because they would have to explain why this is bad, which would involve a lot of if/then scenarios. Which would put them into linguistic stupor.
I just hope Harry Reid knows what he’s doing. And also that no more crusaders with some stupid pet cause will come up with some stupid amendment.
Money quote: “The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff. I won’t be going over the cliff with them.”
That’s no fun. It makes me wanna take my toys and go home. My popcorn was just ready!
But seriously, if there are more guys like this and if the Republicans will get their minds back they will have a chance electorally. That’s the kind of opposition I want to see.
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine is quickly becoming my favorite journalist. It was him who described Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” this past summer.
Here’s a new one about Sarah Palin. I love his insight into this phenomenon. She is more popular than even Rush Limbaugh precisely because she doesn’t do any research or doesn’t care about facts, even fake ones. She found her place as a vessel where a lot of incoherent anger on the Right has found it’s release. You don’t even have to know exactly what you’re pissed off about, just being pissed about things in general – she is your gal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about politics and Harry Reid, she is talking about assholes who are out to ruin her. Thus making her narrative much more appealing to her targeted audience.
My favorite part is about assholes. Marvel at this:
“Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes. Me personally, I waste an enormous amount of time seething over people who get onto crowded subway cars with big backpacks on and/or talk in the Amtrak quiet car and/or drive 57 mph in the fast lane or, my personal favorite, walking with glacial slowness in a horizontal row four overweight tourists across on a New York City sidewalk. We all get into furious arguments at work that make us want to explode in self-righteous fury (in my office dramas I always realize I was actually the asshole a day or so later) and when we get home from work, this is usually what our loved ones hear about for at least the first hour or so.
Not health care, not financial regulatory reform, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but — assholes.”
As the financial crisis spread in October of last year we had many discussions on the desk about the unfolding events. The consensus, probably genuine among the bosses and manufactured among the court cocksuckers, seemed to be that it’s the people who supposed to be renters who bought houses they could not afford caused all of this. The lenders were merely vehicles that helped those irresponsible schmucks to buy into their American dream. Frankly, I couldn’t believe that people who were saying it really believed it. After all, they all know how those loans are originated and what happens to them afterwards. And yet, there they were, screaming at Barney Frank on CNBC screens. I, of course, played the role of the desk’s token Commie.
These guys, who supposedly should know value when they see it, stubbornly refuse to see the most obvious fact: when one is given free money he’d be a fool not to take it. It’s as simple as that. A good trader understands it. And those who provide him with this free money carry more blame than he who actually takes it. It’s like leaving food outside your tent in the camping ground and then be surprised in the morning that the bear ate it. And blame the bear for eating it, not themselves for leaving it outside. Usually, at this point in the argument my opponents start bringing up conservative values and personal responsibility. You know, everyone should only bite what he can chew and not take out $500,000 credit while earning $20,000 a year. Why not, I ask? Isn’t that what Wall Street is all about? Besides, they were begging him to take it. Or, wait! Personal responsibility is only applicable to the little guy. True, the little guy is most likely to be a high-school drop-out and unable to understand not only the fine print, but even the fact that he has to pay the loan back. But it’s not his problem. If he came to me asking for a loan, he’d be sent marching. But lenders embraced this guy, courted him, knowing full well that he’s never going to pay that loan back. Because, who cares? Those loans will be packaged and sold to an Icelandic bank.
I frankly find it disingenuous, these attempts to pin the blame on a homeowner whose only fault is being stupid. Which brings me to financial regulation. I remember watching at awe Greenspan testimony to Congress last year when he, the maestro of deregulation and free markets, reluctantly admitted that maybe markets don’t always self regulate.
I’m afraid the freaking Democrats are about to blow this one if they haven’t already. The new financial legislation that is supposed to install new tough regulations is anything but.
It is full of all kinds of exemptions and exceptions that would defeat the purpose of the bill. Not surprisingly the bill was written with the help of special interests (read: bankers).
There’s a great article in The Nation magazine on the topic.
One great quote: “As recent election returns suggest, if the president continues to soft-sell reform, he is at risk of being identified with the old order in Wall Street. The longer Congress tries to placate the bankers with meek reforms, the sooner Democrats will discover this is really dumb politics.”
I think the way Democrats should deal with Wall Street should look somewhat like this:
I love this monologue so much I’m gonna put it out in print:
“I think I want my money back. I think you got the wrong impression about me. I think in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I do. For instance tomorrow morning I’ll get up nice and early, take a walk down over to the bank and… walk in and see and, uh… if you don’t have my money for me, I’ll… crack your fuckin’ head wide-open in front of everybody in the bank. And just about the time that I’m comin’ out of jail, hopefully, you’ll be coming out of your coma. And guess what? I’ll split your fuckin’ head open again. ‘Cause I’m fuckin’ stupid. I don’t give a fuck about jail. That’s my business. That’s what I do. And we know what you do – you fuck people out of money and get away with it.”
“You put my fucking money to sleep – go and get it or I put your fucking brain to sleep!”
And then later to Ace: “Where’s my head? Where’s your fucking balls?”
I’ll take a break from politics and write about business practices this time. I couldn’t help it.
I don’t think I know anybody who, during the course of his/her life, didn’t spend at least an hour on the phone with some credit card company disputing some unknown charges. It’s almost a hazing ritual into the adulthood. I’ve done that a few times but shit just keeps coming up, this time from Blockbuster.
Recently I have cancelled my membership in Blockbuster store across the street from where I live, because they were closing and moving to a different location. I cancelled and forgot about it until I found not one, but two monthly Blockbuster charges on my Amex card. Puzzled, I called the listed phone # for one charge and turns out they indeed cancelled my membership in the store across the street but, and I love this, “for my convenience” transferred the membership to the other two nearest stores. Now, I don’t even know where to begin to dissect this bullshit. Notwithstanding the fact that each one of those new stores is about 20 minutes walk from where I live, and it would never occur to me to become a member in any of those, especially in the age of Netflix, I would have probably forgiven this ineptitude if they just transferred my membership to ONE store. I’d be annoyed, but it is pretty much expected that any business, if they make a mistake, it’s never in your favor. But, come on, guys! TWO stores? Each one charging me separately? For something I have cancelled? If you’re trying to swindle someone out of their freaking $30 at least do it with some subtlety. Don’t be so blatant in your greed. Perhaps, I would just let it slide if I was too lazy, isn’t that what they were counting on? That people will either ignore it or will be too busy to dispute that? But what if there were not 2 but 5 other stores in my area, does that mean you would charge me $30 5 times in 5 different locations?
Having said all of the above to the unfortunate clerk on the phone, I asked him to cancel my membership immediately in the two stores and get me a refund. But it’s not that simple. You see, to get a refund you have go to each one of those stores personally and get your credit card credited. They can’t do it over the phone. As you can imagine, at this point I got so agitated that I WANTED to personally go to each one of those stores and speak to somebody face to face. So I did, but again, you can’t just show up there at your own convenience. You have to come in when the manager who does refunds is there. So I had to go to one store 2 times, but at that point I was so immersed in the chase I almost started to enjoy it. It’s too bad that I only ended up giving shit to poor customer service people, but not to the executives who think that shit up! They probably sit there in their boardroom and think – times are tough, Netflix is knocking at the door, movies suck, how do we make money? Let’s try this trick and hope no one will notice. But think about an average customer who doesn’t have all the time in world and would just say, Fuck it! See, that’s the kind of shit that pisses me off about businesses – they really just count on you to give up and it’s only $30 and who cares anyway?
I’m increasingly under the impression that businesses, especially large businesses forgot how to compete for customers with good service. They always try to trick you out of your money with fine print or small charges that are easier to ignore for you than to dispute, or they charge you $25 fee for $5 overdraft, or they continue charging you after you cancelled, hoping you wouldn’t notice. And if you complain, on a large scale, you’re anti-business or, worse, a Commie. Well, if that’s what capitalism is all about – swindlers protected by the government, then call me a Commie. That’s not capitalism – it’s a rip-off.
P.S. BTW, isn’t Blockbuster near bankruptcy? No wonder.
I hope you all read my earlier post about political correctness. As you may know I’m in favor of calling things what they are rather than use euphemisms and try not to offend anybody. As such, it is one of those one in a million cases when I agree with, gasp!, Bill O’Reilly.
Here’s what he had to say about the Fort Hood shooter.
Note Obama’s remarks at the beginning of the clip. He has the full grasp of the issue, that it is the guy’s faith that drove him to this insane act. He doesn’t really say it in those words, but he seems to understand what’s going on and is not trying to appease certain sensitivities.
I saw Bill Maher over the weekend in Atlantic City. He became funnier because Bush is no longer President so he actually has to come up with some other material and it is funny. He started to remind me more of George Carlin. Of course, he left no stone unturned. Obama, blacks, whites, men, women, fat, thin, conservatives, liberals, religious especially – no one escaped his sharp tongue. And about health care debate he had this to say ( I don’t have a direct quote, but I’ll try to be as close as possible): Getting people to agree on public option is like taking a dog to the vet. They don’t understand that it is for their own good, so we have to resort to tactics like luring them with treats to get into the car to be taken to the hospital. And 5 years from now they’ll be screaming “Hands off my public option!” the same way they are protesting it today.
Last Thursday there was an anti health care rally sponsored by all the familiar faces. Among the usual slogans they had pictures of Dachau victims – black and white pictures of dead human bodies piled up on top of each other. I wonder what message are they trying to send with this? Please, please take me down that slippery slope and explain to me how the government health care option will result in what these pictures are implying.
It’s a freaking option, you dumbasses. If you don’t like it – don’t take it.
Another twist in the health care bill passage – the Stupak-Pitts amendment. Basically it would ban federal funding for abortions. At this stage I would just pass the damn thing – with or without abortion funding. If you try to gather all the necessary votes for whatever your pet cause it – it will never pass. As much as I’d like public funding for abortions, fighting for it will sabotage the bill passage in a way that we’re going to end up with no health care coverage at all. Trying to get enough votes on abortion coverage may win the battle but will lose the war.
However, this amendment has a twist: “Those individuals who would receive a government subsidy for health care under the plan — any four-person family making $88,000 a year or less — would also be prohibited from buying an insurance plan that covers abortions.” Prohibited from buying? WTF? Those you are trying to prohibit from buying the abortion option plan are the ones who will need it most. They would be buying it with their own money from private insurers. Jesus fucking Christ, what a clusterfuck!
Left with Balls 