Frank related a conversation held Tuesday with the Fed chairman in which Bernanke allegedly said "I have $800 billion" when Frank asked him if he had $85 billion available to help AIG.
"No one in a democracy, unelected, should have $800 billion to spend as he sees fit," Frank said.
And your point, Barney, would be?
Seriously...
NOTE Via BTD, this FT article by Frank:
As we prepare for this autumn’s election, the results are in on America’s 30-year experiment with radical economic deregulation. Income inequality has risen to levels not seen since the 1920s and the collapse of the unregulated portion of the mortgage and secondary markets threatens the health of the overall economy. ...
These two economic failures will be major issues in the forthcoming presidential election, and, importantly, there is an emerging Democratic consensus standing in sharp contrast to the laisser faire Republican approach. ...
I believe the American people will decide that we should enact policies that seek to curb growing inequality and provide some check on market excesses.
Back in January, too. Too bad Obama's Unity
Pony shat all over that message, and now they have to scramble to catch up. It's not like they weren't warned.
It's the economy, stupid. Always has been.
- lambert's blog
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& Reid says today "No one knows what to do" --
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=w... -- Democratic Congress May Adjourn, Leave Crisis to Fed, Treasury
Barney's right, but unless he actually does something about it, it's all just bs. (and hearings and investigations don't count unless they result in actual action that makes a difference)
also, that money should go to back up FDIC, not to
reward Wall St. criminals.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_o... -- Federal bank insurance fund dwindling
Aberglow, the Wall Street Criminals
are mostly taking smashing financial losses, not being rewarded. For instance, the dismissed executives at Fannie and Freddie are specifically barred from getting their "golden parachute" money. And a substantial chunk of the net worth of all these executives at Lehman and AIG, etc., is tied up in their companies' now nearly worthless stock, I'm pretty certain.
I guess there are always specific cases
But I disagree in general gyrfalcon.
From Bill Cara's website (he doesn't provide any linky goodness to back this statement up in this submission as it's a recap, but in most of his daily reports he provides links if one wanted to read more from Mr. Cara):
Bill Cara
actually, most are rewarded handsomely whether
they fail or not.
most upper management and executives at Wall St. Companies don't only own their own stock you know--and have been paid very very very well for years and years--regardless of the profits they generated or money they lost.
Yo, Barney!
Your link to his CNN comments gave me one of those 404 Page Not Found thingies, but that seems an incredibly dumb thing to say all by itself.
He can't possibly be suggesting, can he, that the various bail-outs and loans, etc., of the last week are things that should have been voted on by Congress? He knows that's insane. Either he had something else in mind somehow, or he was spouting off frustration, though he doesn't usually spout off really dumb things like that.
The link works for me n/t
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Terrible Optics
for Congress just to adjourn. At least Waxman has hearings planned for in October. But, really, even if they don't know what to do (an embarassing admission, really, given that this has been coming on for years*), simply going home makes it look like they not only don't know, they don't care. And, hey, here's an idea, why not use the next couple of months to 1) find out what happened and why, 2) start pulling options together to fix it, 3) start talking about what can be done to prevent similar meltdowns in the future, and 4) try to find out whether other parts of the markets or economy are going to be affected and whether there is anything that needs to be done immediately by Congress to prevent/lessen that. It's also kind of tough to criticize Paulson as Frank just did and then say there's nothing for Congress to do, gotta go. At the very least they could, I don't know, exercise more oversight.
They don't have to rush to put together some half-assed legislative package, but I think working - and making sure the American people see that they're working - is something they should be doing. Optics matter in this kind of thing and simply going home in the middle of a crisis looks bad. Remember how everyone screamed a couple of years ago when the Iraqi parliament took the summer off?
* That this seems to have taken so many of our "leaders" by surprise is yet more proof that almost all of our leaders are, in fact, unqualified to lead. Hell, Barney Frank himself was proposing legislation to try to fix Fanny and Freddie years ago. Via Anglachel, Hillary talked about the building mortgage crisis and proposed fixes earlier this year as part of the campaign. But let's all sit around and pretend this is one big fucking surprise.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
B. Frank hinted on Bloomberg: "maybe after the election"
On Bloomberg Television yesterday, Frank said that the fevered weeks leading up to an election was not a good time to try and fix this. He said that they in fact might not wait until January, but do something after the next POTUS is selected.
I Agree and Disagree
I agree that this might not be the best time to pass legislation aimed at fixing everything. So I have no problem with that. At the same time, it seems like there are some things that could be done, like upping the amount of funding the FDIC has to reassure people that the Government is standing behind the FDIC and to prevent unnecessary delays should more banks (read: WaMU) fail.
But mostly what I'm talking about is optics. It simply looks back to say there's nothing you can do and go home. Yes, it's a bit of form over substance, but sometimes form matters and I'd argue that this is one of those times. Fiddling while Rome burns is not a good image if you want to instill confidence and confidence is one of the things people need right now so that human reaction - bank runs - don't take a bad situation and make it worse.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Apportioning blame
Congress won't look into this just before an election because the last thing any of them want is for the finger of blame to start wandering around and point in their direction. Barney Frank's hands aren't clean here either, he had opportunities to try and bring the issue to light and/or force some changes and he did not. Everything he says from here on out will be dominated by CYA and only partially about actual reform. Barney is a big disappointment on this.
Right now for the Democrats it is better politically for the blame to settle on BushCo and by extension McCain and as many other Republicans as they can paint with it; they don't want to risk a shifting focus to fall on them and their complicity/malign neglect. For Republicans, the less said about it before the election the better period. Neither caucus wants hearings or investigations or even to have their names in the same headline with this disaster.
The really bad news is that this is a mess create by letting the market take a free course, and the market will in fact be the force that ends up sorting things out. All the bailout money in the world can't do more than just keep the ship from sinking. Whatever damage happens short of that cannot be stopped, and it will be brutal. Better politically for individual congresspersons if they scatter to the winds and leave the DC crew of the BushCo criminals holding up the stinking bag.
[Not a defense of anybody; a pox on all their houses, say I.]
they do the same thing w/Iraq--
they'd rather run on all these issues/problems than solve them.
A Pox On All of Their Houses, Indeed
I'm sure you're right BIO, they can't lead because if they did, somebody might try to hold them accountable for something and better to let everything crash and burn and people be thrown out of their homes and lose their life savings than to risk people holding our "leaders" to some sort of standard. And by doing this, of course, they hope to get the American people to give them even more power. After all, they'll have earned it.
I don't know, on second thought a pox might be too good for 'em.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Bernanke--"we have lost control" --
"Several months ago, economist David Hale had a private meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was trying to ward off a recession by lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply in the economy.
...
"We have lost control," said Hale, quoting Bernanke. "We cannot stabilize the dollar. We cannot control commodity prices." ...
-- http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/c...
this is how i feel-"So f*ck the Street, Ben Bernanke"
Jezebel -- http://jezebel.com/369447/dear-ben-reall... -- Dear Ben: Seriously, Next Time, F*** Wall Street.
"... So fuck the Street, Ben Bernanke; just this once, just for, like, a quarter or something. You don't have to play rough; I'm not asking you to nationalize any industries or institute land reform or anything, just give them a little scare. They chose this path, you know. They chose to worship Ayn Rand and wear those Paul Smith shirts and pay zero money down on their Hamptons summer homes and obnoxiously, whenever confronted by someone like myself at a bar, claim that the Market Solves Everything. Let the market solve this one for them. People are eating dirt for dinner in Haiti, Ben Bernanke; you can let Bear Stearns go to bankruptcy court.
..."
Not words you like to hear from you Fed chairman. We're fkd.
I will effectively be able to use my 401k statements as toilet paper. I wonder when they'll privatize social security to help out Wall Street.
The funny thing is when I talk to my moms (82) she says that back in the day Wall Street was not the cornerstone of the economy.
I love this job!
I love this job!
it's still not, i don't think--
consumer spending is, i'd say--it used to be that and manufacturing but now we don't manufacture stuff for the most part.
the media (who are all rich and all invested in Wall St) always use Wall St. as being synonymous with "the economy"--they're idiots tho.
shopping ... "more than 70 percent of our economy"
"...
During the late, lamented Wall Street boom, America's leading investment institutions were plenty bullish on China's economy, on exotic financial devices built atop millions of bad loans, and, above all -- judging by the unprecedented amount of wealth they showered on the Street -- on themselves. The last thing our financial community was bullish on was America -- that is, the America where the vast majority of Americans live and work.
... And as productive activity within the United States has ceased to be the prime target of investment, household consumption -- more commonly known as shopping -- has come to comprise more than 70 percent of our economy. ..."
-- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con... -- Wall Street's Just Deserts
also related--Libertarian paternalism
http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/05/l...
Yeah, and my 401k is now a 101k.......
If the Dems really wanted to show the citizenry that they are ready to lead, they would already have a plan to reinstall legitimate, reasonable oversight of taxpayer-funded "guarantees", as well as establishing the new ground rules and oversight for the combined commercial and investment banks. They would rapidly get this into a bill and require the Republicans to vote one way or another before the election. This way, those pesky Rs would have to swallow their ideology and vote to protect most of us instead of opening the vault doors for their rich buddies (again), or vote to block common sense protections for us and put their reelection prospects in peril.
And if they do that and still get reelected, then they've proven that we, the electorate, really are are just plain stupid and deserve what we get.
PS: Unfortunately, even after all these years, Will Rogers' line about not being a member of an organized political party because he was a Democrat still holds true.
That money should go to me
A pony in every pot say I. If there's any left over it should go to retiring Hillary's debt. And if there is still something left over ...party time! No seriously, we'd televise it and this time use real Greek columns instead of styrofoam ones. If you ask me, that's where all the problems started. There is no gravitas in styrofoam. I kept worrying that the fireworks would come down on them and they'd start to melt. And I'd be darned sure to paint the American flag on my plane. No wonder the Iraqis didn't know who they were negotiating with. It's small things like that, that make all the difference.
Pelosi is a very, very small mind
I am currently (2am central Sept. 19) watching her Sept. 18 press conference on C-span (trust me I'm trying to get a C-span link to work). One of the most outrageously pitiful performances I have ever seen in a supposed "public leader". She is babbling, spinning, flaming out, it is an embarrassment.
She keeps asking (in her own incomprehensible statements), "what are we going to do about this?" "what are we going to do about that?" She doesn't know. She proposes no actions, just points fingers around about how nobody else is doing anything, "How did we get here?" She doesn't know, she couldn't tell you if she did!
Don't WE get a chance to ask HER that fucking question? She is the fucking SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE!!! What the hell is she doing asking questions like that? How does she expect to perform like that on camera, in front of anybody pissed enough to be interested (not me by the way, I've been out of the markets for a long time, trust your own.... anyway) and think she can have any influence on future events?
Sad. Sad. Sad. Sad.
Watch it, if you can handle the shameful reality of the incredibly poor quality of our political leadership in this country.
Thanks to BDBlue for the "political failure" post of the other day. The whole truth.
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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
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I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
And now Dana Perino
Immediately following Pelosi on C-span, they put on Perino, a trained parrot, which naturally, performs as well as trained parrots do. Predictable, reactive, bird-brained.
But next to Pelosi, Perino looks good.
Which tells you all you need to know about how dim is the bulb which shines within the eyes (and brain) of the Dem party leadership.
Outshone by Perino, a talking parrot.
Sad.
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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
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I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.