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Is Obama's Populist Rage Against Big Banks Valid?
From The Daily Capitalist
President Obama used his bully pulpit on Thursday to chastise banks and bankers while announcing a punitive tax on them to assuage an angry populace.
To me it seemed rather "yesterday" when we're all taking in the magnitude of the earthquake in Haiti. That's another subject. But I hope you all will donate money to institutions that are helping the rescue efforts. We like Direct Relief International which sends free medical and emergency supplies to aid poor countries and have an excellent disaster response team. They have a long history in aiding Haiti. Please join me in supporting them.
Back to Barack. Is his rage valid? Should we be angry at banks for making lots of money and then paying out big bonuses?
This is not as easy as it sounds. In a perfect world, who cares? They should be able to pay whatever they want to their employees as long as the Board of Directors and the shareholders agree. If the shareholders don't like it, they can sell their stock. This would be the classic free market approach.
The other side of the argument is that this isn't a free market, it's a highly regulated market, these institutions are creatures of the federal government, and the banks which took TARP money open themselves up to criticism and penalty.
This gets down to some basic economic laws: the laws of unintended consequences, moral hazard, creative destruction, market competition, and the fatal flaw of fractional reserve banking. And a few others.
All these economic laws were ignored during the Panic of 2008. I'm not talking about the market crash, I'm talking about when Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke panicked and bailed out their Wall Street buddies. They believed that they saved the world because their friends were too big to fail.
They were wrong. Yes, it is true that AIG, Citigroup, maybe BofA, Merrill, and others would have failed without government bailouts. That would have been good for the country. These institutions took big risks knowing that they would be bailed out because of who they were. I'm not saying they planned it that way, but it had to be in the back of their minds.
No one is too big to fail.
Bailouts rewards bad behavior and unfairly burden taxpayers. Which means that these institutions will do it again. That is, they will continue to take improper risks without full appreciation of the consequences. If they had failed, their business methods would go the way of the pterodactyl. Risk evaluation methods would change the entire banking system. Risk evaluation would change in the insurance industry if AIG had been allowed to fail because their actuaries would realize that they were gambling with credit default swaps, not insuring insurable risks. I'm sure AIG had grasped the concept of potential bank bailouts of the banks they guaranteed.
What would have happened if these large institutions had been allowed to fail? Credit would have dried up, many companies seeking credit would have failed, investment funds would have taken huge losses, housing would have collapsed, and these too big to fail institutions would have been put in receivership or Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
But as we all know, these things did happen after the bailout, so what was the point? You say that we avoided another Great Depression? Not at all. Depressions are caused by government interference in the economy by disrupting the healing process that occurs after every crash. The Great Depression was caused by Hoover and FDR.
What would have happened without bailouts is that we would have recovered by now, or at least be well on our way to recovery. I will concede that things would have been temporarily, cosmetically worse without the bailout. But so what: the point is that things are worse with the bailout because essentially failed or bankrupt banks and businesses are kept alive on life support thus substantially delaying any recovery. We won't recover until the balance sheets of businesses and financial institutions in this country are cleared up and repaired.
Let me say that I am mad at these financial institutions. I am mad at them for being dopes by failing to properly evaluate risk. I am mad at them for taking TARP money. I am mad at them for their false public hubris. I am mad at them for being part of the Washington-Wall Street Economic Complex. I am mad at them for their "stop me before I kill again" political stance. I am mad at them for failing to change their business models.
I am mad at the federal government for setting the stage which created the economic crisis. I am mad at them for bailing out their buddies. I am mad at them for their Keynesian stimulus. I am mad at them for failing to bring true reform. I am mad at them for their hypocrisy and fake outrage. I am mad at them for ... well, for most things.
Yes, I am mad at the big banks and the investment banks for the big payday. Without taxpayer support, their profit structure would be much lower. We would see a different Wall Street.
What we need is to stop doing what we keep doing cycle after cycle. No bailouts.
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From Big Surprises for the Next Decade:
A Third Party Emerges In The United States- When Obama's first and last term ended the American public was fed up with anything that had to do with the elite- Wall Street, the big banks, Congress, the Senate, the Federal Reserve and both of the big parties. As a result a third party emerged which managed to get a large amount of seats in both houses. The party's candidate for president got 25% of the votes in 2012 and won the election in 2016. The third party fundamentally changed the way politics is done in Washington and resulted in a large change in United States foreign policy. A lot of countries where left to deal with their problems alone. At the beginning, this policy caused havoc and even chaos in different countries around the world which suddenly where shocked by the shortage of American financial and military aid.
http://israelfinancialexpert.blogspot.com/2010/01/11-big-surprises-for-next-decade.html
I would have no problem with the bonuses if they had paid back the billions of tax payer dollars that was funneled to them throught AIG. Dollar for dollar of course, but that would mean that they would actually pay for their toxic clean up.
This is why anti trust is important.
If they're too big, they'll have to be bailed out or they'll take down viable, profitable businesses with them.
In Libertopia land, they would just be allowed to fail. In Reality, that wouldn't happen because the fallout would be unpalatable - to put it mildly.
The difference between should and could, a constant problem with Randroids and all committed theorists who prefer their slender, simple and elegant theory over robust, complex and muddled reality.
If Banks had been subject to anti-Trust like they were before the 1980s, this situation would have been muted. I don't doubt there would have been some messed up lending, but not to this degree. The more conservative banks would have prospered and brought up what good assets the foolish banks still had, all unwound according to normal bankruptcy procedure.
The cure sucks. Prevention is and was the answer. The proof is in the pudding: Regulation Rules!
Or at least End the Fed. Either solution works for me, but I prefer the former.
I hated the continuation of the bailouts and all the rest but there was no other political alternative. Even if Obama had wanted to take a different path there was nobody to follow. Nobody at the Treasury, nobody at the Fed, nobody among the our elites who would have gone along. The financial world is a complex mechanism that existes at the very heart of the culture of the political economy.
Does anyone recall the talk about 'nationalizing' the banks around the time of the inauguration. Guns were coming out of closets all over the country. No mind that ever bank closure is a 'nationalization'. There had to be a mechanism for the failures but there was no there there and nobody to carry it out or nobody who valued their lives.
Somebody please lay out an outline of the steps that would have been used when allowing Citi to fail. Keep in mind the Saudis, and every other major bank in the world. How could it be done without an outline and nobody had an outline. Certainly Obama had no outline. He was given an outline. The same one congress was given the previous fall. Give us everything we want or we blow the place up.
There was no other choice because none had been outlined except maybe in the far reaches of the internet. That isn't where political leadership comes from.
I despise what the administration is done but none would have done any different. Well McCain would have dropped a lot more bombs. The system will in the end be saved or destroyed by using bombs.
Even if Obama had wanted to take a different path there was nobody to follow. Nobody at the Treasury, nobody at the Fed, nobody among the our elites who would have gone along.
Didn't he appoint Geithner? Here it is only one year in and Bernanke is up for reappointment. Seems to me that Obama could have cleaned house if that was his real intention.
If we saw Black or Warren in real positions in the administration then things would get cleaned up:
Bill Black: We Must Solve the Wall St. Bonus Problem
http://tinyurl.com/yaja7of
In order to free the U.S. economy from the clutches of the thieving bankers, multiple American currencies must be allowed. Base them on gold and silver coinage.
We could have gold and silver coins of different weights. For example, each U.S. State could have precious metals coins ranging from one gram to 1 ounce. That way, the Federal Reserve wouldn't be able to destroy the value of our money with the printing press.
Ron Paul recently introduced the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009:
www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul619.html
The power of the bankers lay in their control over the currency. They cannot, for example, finance wars without deficit spending. Without the reckless printing of money, war is an impossibility.
I see no reason why each of the 50 states cannot have its own gold and silver coinage. Montana is trying to do that. Here's an article on it: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=14081
Admittedly, all the details about the gold backed currency are not fleshed out in the article, but "electronic gold currency" give me the willies. That's too close to what we have now. Too easy to manipulate. Surely, a good system can be developed, but that ain't it.
These comments have gone off on a tangent. The point I was making is that without bailouts, none of these issues we all complain about would have happened. Those that rage against the banks have a point but usually for the wrong reasons. Those that rage against the bailouts think we need more regulation--the wrong conclusion. On this issue the mainstream politicians and economists have it all wrong and they all suggest the same solutions. It's not just about Obama and his "agenda." I condemn the Republicans and the Democrats, and the Keynesians and Conservatives.
What most of you complain about as being the fault of capitalism or the failure of regulation misses the point. This is not capitalism or the free market in operation. What you see is Crony Capitalism or Fascism. No system is perfect but free market capitalism is less imperfect than all the others because it corrects its mistakes. Every other system institutionalizes its mistakes.
If these institutions were allowed to fail, Schumpeter's "creative destruction" would have worked: capital would flow away from failed ideas to those players in the market that demonstrate ability, not luck. But that's not what happened and now we have the same players operating without the benefit of having to correct their mistakes. And we are all paying for it through our taxes.
I like the spirit of those who advocate some kind of "revolution" but unless we understand economics and why we're in the mess we're in, we'll just make the same mistakes again.
Your 'mistake' is someone else's loss.
These sycophantic shysters didn't make any mistakes, which are generally considered to be unintentional. An intentional 'mistake' is an oxymoron. They did what they intended to do: Move massive amounts of money from millions of people to their own checking accounts. A zero sum game but with benefits to a very few, like geithner, orszag,bernanke,summers,paulson,greenspan,rubin,friedman,fuld,frankthain,dodd, mozillo, cassano, o'neal.
Econo, I think that we'll just make the same mistakes again regardless.
There is PLENTY of blame to go around for what has happened. The difference now is that from about here on, Obama will not be able to plausibly blame Bush for all our troubles. HIS economy now. HIS wars.
Sucks to be us.
"Free market capitalism" might be great, but we wouldn't know because it never exists on the ground. I've never seen "Rand Land".
Free market capitalism is just a system. It is neither "bad" nor "good." It is a fallacy to imbue it with some sort of metaphysical virtue.
Frankly, I think "free market capitalism" achieved would rapidly have the following effects: redistribution of wealth up the chain to fewer and fewer people.
These people would quickly segregate themselves in clubs, schools, medical systems, etc. which are theoretically "open to everyone," but nonetheless designed so that only the elite can afford them.
There would be some sort of public sector system to maintain order and keep the masses mollified. The elite would find it to their advantage to exercise control over this system.
Starting to sound familiar?
In fact, there are places which acheive unfettered capitalism to a much greater extent than we do. They tend to be banana republics, with huge extremes of wealth/power vs. poverty/misery.
They can persist a very long time, but they tend to have two possible paths: the broken masses toil in misery forever (not a very attractive society), or they have enough pluck to chafe at the imbalances and eventually heads roll (guess which heads).
The rich control the flow of information to their advantage. Our Press doesn't even practice journalism anymore. It's just a distraction so we don't feel the dull throbbing is getting worse.
The Press failed to cover the recent and epic Executive Order that just came out:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/2010executive_order.pdf
If the Ballot box and Jury box actually worked then we would have a free market system. But the American public is now ready to reach for the Cartridge box because that order is almost a checkmate. BROAD language and off the radar. This will be an interesting show when it kicks in.
Where are fucking subpoenas, huh?
TheBamster is the fuckdick in this scene.
"Folks are wondering, where do we go from here?'' Obama said to a larger question about economic hardships today.
"Yes, we're passing through a hard winter - it's the hardest in some time,'' Obama said. "But let's always remember that, as a people, the American people, we've weathered some hard winters before.''
See here's the problem...whose we? For the common average working guy its been an Ice Age...for the bankers they had to reset the thermostat to 68 degrees....thats where the outrage is coming from....there's a disproportionate share going on like an abbott and costello skit..
also notice how we are getting the religion aspect back into our coping with decisions ala bush...
http://tinyurl.com/y9cqh94
Without reading anyhing but the headline, the answer is no.
At a party last night, a dozen supposedly educated adults including a Chem E, Eye Surgeon, CPA, and several businessmen, the understanding among them of the banking debacle was enough to send one screaming from the house
like chicken little that the sky is most assuredly descending at warp speed.
Populist rage is a pale version of what is justified for these thieves, but it appears that rage is going to be easily turned against the popple.
Two felt the bonuses were justified and when I asked them why, they said that they would take them if they worked for Goldman Sucks. I repeated the question that they didn't answer. Why would you think that you should get a bonus
if you were assured you would be made whole should your bets have gone wrong? Or if the result of your so-called 'bet' was not a bet at all, but a down payment on a manipulated market,as in a fixed horse race on the long shot at 200 to 1?
They would still want the bonus. There was no reasoning with them. Just give them the money.
I can see why that would be frustrating. But I would argue that "a Chem E, Eye Surgeon, CPA" probably don't best represent the populist masses.
The rest of them didn't even want to participate in the conversation. Didn't want to know about any of it.
Obama was financed by the banks and has his administration STACKED with the cronies therefrom.
WTF do you think he's gonna do? He's a clown in a suit who is more in love with the fact that he's President than anything else. He likes to wear the jacket and ride on Air Force One.
His campaign message was a marketing blitz. Why did people expect him to be different?!?! Oh yeah, because he was black and that implies that he's real and deep and has all that "other" authenticity that we see on TV and in movies financed and produced by the people who meet every Sunday with the wall streeters at the same religious establishments
Fuck the banks.
If you can convince me that banks had no idea that a homes were being sold in huge numbers to unqualified buyers, with preposterous values backed by fake appraisals, and being cut up and stamped with fraudulant ratings so that the bank could foist them on unsophisticated large investors - all of this activity mving through banks. If you can convince me that banks were unaware of this, then I will stop saying "fuck the banks."
The banks were THE factories which took shit as its raw material and turned it into an asset bubble. Lots of individuals and the like share blame, but NONE of it happens without the collusion of the banks and the corrupt rating agencies which suck their teet.
it wasn't just that.
The banks were running a credit ponzi atop the real economic activity of homebuilding.
There were mountains of leverage, synthetic debt, CDOs, CDSs, and trillions upon quadrillions of all kinds of other shit. The signature by the actual real person on a mortgage was just the piece of the iceberg above the waterline. They only needed a mirror fogged to close the transaction loop that allowed them to slice, dice, leverage, repackage, and transform that minor mortgage into a gigantic money engine for themselves.
So, yes, fuck the banks. To call this a housing crisis is infantile in the extreme. It was a debt ponzi made out of clever instruments that most people can't even comprehend.
Can you blame the banks. If you knew something was going to collapse wouldn't you grab what you can and run. those in government are just doing the same thing. They know they will get their fair share later when they have given all the oligarchy it wants.
How much money you think Obama is going to get paid when he leaves office for handing the banks all they could ask for. Millions and millions. If he didn't give the oligarchy the dough we wouldn't get rich for being the president for four years. This is how it works. Anyone think Dodd isn't going to end up in the lap of luxury.
The system is the same as the soviet union. This in the oligarcy always win regardless. The structure of the two systems (communist Vs. capitalist) is different but the outcome the same
Here it is....
The bank tax is a joke...
It will just stack more costs against business
as banks will just pass them through to the business sector....
When one fights while one is mad....one does stupid things....
...............................
Solution....
Separate banks from the securities business....
Make the US a tax friendly business environment worldwide such that all reasonable businesses will find it necessary to locate in the US....not want to leave....
..............................
Every NONSUSTAINABLE project that the Obam admin. gets through will only stack higher costs against business.....rendering them less competitive....
AT THE MOMENT THE OBAM ADMIN. THINKS THAT THE US CAN ATTRACT MORE MONEY THAN THERE IS WORLD WIDE SAVINGS LEVELS.....
Chavez Ice Cream ....anyone ????
How STUPID CAM IT GET ....
IE THE US IS NOT HELPING HAITI....THIS IS BORROWED CHINESE MONEY....
The Big Lies Just Keep Coming
Obama's Latest Ruse: the Bank Tax
None of Obama’s faux outrage has been as disingenuous as his Wednesday announcement that he will finally respond sympathetically to the public’s deep resentment of the administration’s tolerance -and therefore encouragement- of the bad guys’ looting of the public treasury.
Obama assured his constituents that he would “recoup every last penny for American taxpayers” by taking back, in the form of taxes on the banks, the wealth that households have been forced to transfer to the coffers of the instigators of the financial crisis.
The announcement was timed to offset what will surely be another surge of public anger at the expected announcement this week of the banks’ year-end bonus payments.
A key premise of the tax proposal is that TARP is the government’s sole gift to the financial elite. This is of course false: TARP is in fact a relatively small fraction of the State’s total rescue effort. Financial institutions have also been treated to no-cost and virtually unlimited access to credit, broad guarantees against losses and lax regulation, to mention only the most conspicuous gifts. Even if TARP did represent the administration’s total commitment to financial institutions, Obama’s claim would still be nonsense. TARP handed $700 billion to the banks. How does $90 billion “recoup every last penny” of $700 billion? The president thinks, with good reason so far, that he can get away with anything. Anything. Hence the screamingly counterfactual premise and the slapstick math.
http://tinyurl.com/yj82879
It appears to me that most of you commenting here in this thread, (including the author of this piece), are arguing over "spinning" opinions away from the point.
This is clearly just another parasitic attack on the people of this country via a "punitive tax" on selected banks. Tell me, how many of you believe that a "tax" or "penalty" fee against various corporate entities will not directly come out of your pocket(s)?
Isn't this simply another "penalty" on us disguised as a tax? Another parasitic loss? What is a reasonable parasitic loss/load that we as a people can endure on our backs? Are we not "punished" enough yet?
"...will not directly come out of your pocket".
Let me ask another question:
How many think that these asswipes didn't already inflate the bonus to take care of any possible taxes?
Thinking these thieves don't plan ahead is a serious error.
No, the rage isn't justified. The Gov't, as Wall Street's enablers, should've expected no less...
The larger question is - is the 'punitive' tax justified?
Well, strictly as a 'tax' issue, no it ain't justified.
But lets take a look st it in a different light, and call it what it really is - the price that must be paid (kickback) for the privilege of reporting whatever earnings they want courtesy of numerous accomodative policies enacted over the past 18 months.
Heres a partial list:
1) suspension of M2M in favor of Mark to Fantasy.
2) pushing out the FASB rules (2 years now) that would require banks to bring L3 garbage assets onto the balance sheet
3) ZIRP
4) AIG PAR pass through
5) Fed's numerous cash-for-trash vehicles
6) the Fed enabled scam whereby banks sell garbage MBS to Fannie/Freddie which is then promptly purchased and monetized by the Fed.
7) Lack of any prosecutorial inititives by the DoJ of the Banksters responsible for the collapse (remember there were over 1000 convictions during the SNL crisis)
8) PPIP shenanigans
Shoot, just threaten to revoke #1 and enact #2 and ALL the Banksters would be more than willing to pay double what Obama wants...
"Is Obama's Populist Rage Against Big Banks Valid?"
He wasn't elected to get mad; he was elected to get even. He's a non-performer and he'll be out in four.
As long as you guys keep on running up $600B annual trade deficits, you will not get out of your mess since every economist knows that trade deficits lead eventually to asset bubbles.
The US has the most fucked up political system I have ever witnessed. You need a good dictatorship like we have up here in Canada. Make lobbying a capital offense with death by hanging. Quit these televised circuses where you tear everyone a new arsehole while a few congress types grandstand their lack of IQ.
As for the Wall Street types and their annual entitlements, their gain is obviously someone elses loss since the net gain to the economy is zero. Cut them off at the knees before they destroy you. Get back to boring banking. When are you guys going to stop this self immolation and actually produce something the rest of the world actually wants?
I love you, man!
Beautiful!
BTW - was Blankfein in the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
Yes. He spoke the famous words 'give me the ring, Frodo'.
Obama should legalize marijuana so the on-going lies at least become more real. Now I have the munchies.
The Federal Reserve IS corruption. All the various institutions and entities attached (Freddie, Fannie, IRS, etc etc) are out-of-control economic cancer.
It doesn't matter what you call it - "Socialism", "Fascism", "New-Conservativism", "Communism" ... You end up with the referees PLAYING IN THE GAME, scoring points, and making things impossible and hopeless for the forces of justice, fairness, meritocracy, and integrity.
If Obama was serious about "change" - he'd be cleaning house and getting rid of all the financial crime and corruption ushered into Washington during the Clinton and Bush II administrations. But he his not.
At this point, the lies and deceit are so vast and comprehensive that "truth" would destroy the entire apparatus. Pay attention to what Obama does - not what he says.
I know a lot of bewildered "lefties" here in Austin Tx. They're having a hard time understanding why a DEMOCRAT is turning the United States Government into a giant hedge fund that trades against the account of the American People with insider information and unlimited power and control to manipulate and distort truth.
+1000
Now THAT is funny.
Funny because it's true.
Foreclosures and allowing these big companies to fail, IS THE CLEANSING PROCESS we so desperately need. Propping them up is not and will never be the solution.
But instead, all to appease his banking masters, Obama is keeping the dead patient on unlimited tax payer life support, choosing instead to gut the finances of the middle class of this nation. This is beyond wrong, it is so illegal and unconstitutional at this point.
There are too many bad banks and institutions to save. THEY MUST BE ALLOWED TO FAIL or WE, as a nation will fail.
The bankers are already finding ways around this proposed tax, which even THEY agree is a slap on the wrist.
WHAT IS OBVIOUS, as Dick Durbin and so many others have commented, is--"THE BANKS OWN THIS PLACE"
The government has shown us nothing, but that they are completely powerless to stop the continued corruption. The only CHANGE we will see will be from us, when we move our money out of the big banks, and into solid community banks and credit unions, and better yet, start to seriously diversify into holdings of physical silver and gold.
One way or another, I fear cash will soon be TRASH.
God Bless this MESS---
Reading some of the comments, its almost like I am still on the Huffington Post! I was not born here, and the answer to where I am from gets long winded, brown gal born in China with an EU passport, lots of stamped pages. I came to the the United States because of the dream enshrined in the founding father's documents and on the Statue of Liberty. We are now witnessing the slow collapse of the greatest nation on earth because of these parasites, and we spend our time debating who's worse. Bush or Obama, republican/democrat, Here's a newsflash..They all suck! Unless we bridge the engineered divide created by words and ideology to describe ideal states that can never really exist, because the words are false to begin with, we are not getting out of this.
They are all on the take. Nothing is ever going to get done. All these hearings and committes is just theater. We will never know what really took Lehman and Bear Stearns down. Where has all the money gone, and what the heck the FED is doing. In a couple of months or so, we will settle down to once again contemplate on our reduced circumstances. How long can we do this till the spirit itself is spent?
I'm for some full fledged civil disobedience right about now. Gandhi bought down the British by refusing to feed the beast. No cloth from British mills, said no to the salt tax, organized general strikes. He was not a simple man, he was a London educated lawyer. He was fighting a foreign power, our darn enemies are our own!
Sixty odd years ago, there was no internet, or TV's. Yet the people rose as one almost instinctively moving towards a goal, like a school of fish or a flock of birds, they moved with one mind. We need consciousness to be raised to that level against the injustice being perpetuated against people. America is the land of the free, not the land of the enslaved. Do not the let by/of/for the people perish from this earth.
I could not have said it better myself
The "dream" enshrined on the statue of liberty has nothing to do with the actual intentions of the country or even the statue itself. The silly Lazarus poem was added about 30 years after the fact. The statue was a gift from France in 1876 and was meant to be about Liberty, that's why it's called the statue of Liberty. If anything, what you think of as a "dream" is nothing more than a nightmare with the immigration act of 1965.
The above law allowed mass third world immigration, destroying any cultural cohesiveness of the country. There will be no cooperation when this shell of a country comes crashing down like in the Depression. Ridiculous immigration laws are nothing more than handouts to corporatists who demand infinite growth on a finite planet. This country has never been free, that's propaganda, you ever try to buy a post-1986 machinegun? Maybe you should go back to China, we don't need economic immigrants, you could probably make more money and be freer in Hong Kong.
I thought I would let your remark hang there is all its xenophobic glory all day before I responded. True, my Cantonese is fluent, 2 different Indian dialects as well. When the shit crumbles here, I would probably survive just fine..family all over subcontinent, you know, the same places people say to invest in. The call to arms however, is what has been home for decades. I care what happens here, maybe if you got your head out of your ass long enough to get some more stamps on the pages of your passport, you will realize how we are losing ground to countries you once deemed emerging nations. Hong Kong was a great place to grow up. We had universal health care, and I sincerely doubt the government would have looked at all kindly at the shenanigans from the banking communtity. Very proper, being British and all. Do I startle you by not being stereotypically obsequious? Good...and for the future, get that bag off your head. Braves like you who have been here before Columbus should be extraordinarily proud of their status.
That's assuming you are able to get out of this mess, air travel may or may not be available in the relatively near future. You see, in a finite world, oil extraction will not grow forever, eventually it will start it's terminal decline and export land model will eat up net exports. This is not an infinite world, countries must look after their own. Real wealth is not in the form of paper money, but resources, and the world is getting too many people for it's own good.
I love foreign cultures (speak a few romance languages and have lived out of the country before, but born here), and he might not be xenophobic as you think. I offer you this perspective with no requirement that you agree:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri1b8j8gG5A
Thank HD Thoreau for Gandhi's stance on civil disobedience (Gandhi did).
The American creature wasn't bred on "moving like schools of fish or flocks of birds". The American creature wasn't a lemming- but a lone wolf...at least, originally.
You're right; taking up for one of the factions isn't helpful- and no state is ideal. I would argue, no state is legitimate at all. Because it always takes us to this place...
oBOMBa says good things...
Troops out in 60 days from being elected
Government open and transparent
No 'pork' in bills...
Here, how about SEVEN lies in under 2 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UErR7i2onW0
What oBOMBa says versus what actually happens are two totally different things. Wake up sheeple, time to do a bank run and buy gold befoe it is too late and your 401k is trapped.
BANK RUN NOW!!!
And buy gold and silver.
Obama is a politician first and foremost, so everything he says should be viewed, first and foremost, in terms of its potential effect on voters.
Having said that, and assuming Obama is sincere in his umbrage, there are two steps he could take that would do much more to reform Wall Street than his plan to impose a tax that the banks will either avoid or pass on to the public.
1) Instruct AG Holder to pursue all cases of suspected white-collar crime on Wall Street, especially market manipulation (for example, credit default swaps are subject to the law against manipulative trading, even if they are otherwise unregulated);
2) Promote legislation to restrict government-backed banks to purely deposit and lending functions (the bank-as-utility model). No trading, no underwriting, no commercial paper; those firms shall be subject to the same risk of failure that Lehman encountered.
"his plan to impose a tax that the banks will either avoid or pass on to the public."
Another person who thinks corporations pay taxes. They DO NOT PAY TAXES, THEY COLLECT TAXES from customers (citizens). Of course they are going to pass it on to customers.
It is one of the major missteps of the 1900s. Government loves corporate taxes because they are taxing a non-voting entity. Those who want real transparency would support only taxing citizens -- so they can see how much they are really paying in taxes. When it gets buried through the corporation collection process, citizens don't really know how much of the purchase price is really just a tax on them.
Plus, bonus for all those ZHers who love to rage against the corporate machine. Get rid of corporate taxes, and their influence on government will go down materially. Keep putting taxes on them and the lobbyist will keep growing in power.
If you think its cool, witty, and persuasive to be racist, sexist, and hostile in your comments, I'm wondering what type of people you normally talk with and what you think are going to convince ZH readers of, by ignorant rages.
There is a lot to be angry with about our current economic, financial, and political situation, translating that into racial hatred is wrong and just plain ineffective.
Anybody with a tiny opening in their brain to something other than mainstream blather and ugly racism can see that our political corruption issues go beyond just one party or the other, and beyond the race of the current president. Clinton, Rubin and Summers and Republican congress, allowed risky deregulation of banks that were obviously going to be sold as TBTF when the consequences of such risks were incurred. Dorgan, a Dem senator from ND, easily predicted that these deregulation would cause a crisis in 10 years that would "require" a bailout. Bush and Paulson and Republican Congress from continued further on this course. The Bush admin and a Republican congress created many sweetheart, basically monopolistic, govt protected positions for big banks. For all the Repub complaining about Fan and Fred now, from 2000 to 2006, they controlled Prez and Congress, and they did what about Fan and Fred? They also seriously fought any reasonable attempt to stop enforcement of mortgage fraud, even squashing some valiant state's attempts to protect their average citizens from loan sharks and fraud in their financial transactions and Bush Admin and the Fed (no party) blocked the state's attempts to stop deception in mortgage backed investment vehicles. The OFTHEO lead the charge in stopping states with pre-emption charges among other tactics. Then change Obama appoints 100-cents-on-the-dollar-AIG-bailout Geithner, and Summers.
We can not have free, trusted, efficient, vibrant markets without a smart, dedicated, unbiased, clean referee for those markets. If you let your street cops be corrupted, you will end up with Juarez Mexico, the thugs and gangs rule. If you let your financial cops be corrupted, you end up with our current mess, the mobbed up Wall Street muscling all the money their way by their sure power and with no law enforcement to fear, in fact, the cops will likely be protecting them and taking out their competition.
I'm so tired of partisan commenting on this site, like everything was fine, and there was no govt corruption and no govt favoritism when Bush and Repub congress was in charge and all would be fine if we elected more of the same. Like Clinton admin and Repub congress were serving the interest of regular folks and free markets when they sold out to Wall Street, and like we are now so much better with a Dem in the WH now.
Please, if your solution is to get Repubs back in power or is to get more Dems in power, I say both of these have been done and they are both failed experiments, let's move on.
Econophile is making a legit, non-partisan point about TBTF and the bailout. Given the fact that Obama (and McCain) both supported the bank bailout during their campaigns, and Obama often mentions the bailout as a necessary evil, clearly, Obama has given Econonphile reason to go on about this. However, given the bailout has happened, I think Econophile's is a bit off point...the question is, given the situation we are now in, is Obama's taxing of banks to pay back bailout money a good idea or not. Sure, we shouldn't even be in this position, I get it, but what now?
I agree with some of these comments, more than Econophile, in an answer to his own question. This system is not going to be corrected by a tax to recover bailout money, it needs so much more.
I do take Obama's speech about this tax and his faux populist positions as a slight sign of progress. Five years ago, no politician would have felt a need to take such a position, shoot, 1.3 years ago Paulson got 700 billion blank check by scaring congress for a few weeks, no populist rhetoric needed.