[Welcome, Naked Capitalism readers! Praise from Lady Hubert is praise indeed! --lambert]
A lot of banks and investors held assets based on mortgages they thought were safe. They weren’t. That meant that no one knew how much money they really had, or how much money anyone else really had. So the market did what woodland creatures do when they get confused and scared: It froze. And so, too, did the economy. As the unemployment rate shows, we’re still not completely thawed out.
Really? Some investors -- especially the little guys -- may have believed the ratings agencies and "thought" mortgage-backed securities were "safe." Sophisticated investors probably did not. And the bankster criminals who looted billions using accounting control fraud certainly did not.
That single paragraph should disqualify Klein from ever writing on financial topics again. In fact, it should cause Klein such blushing shame and toe-curling embarassment that he resigns his position, shaves his head, and becomes a Buddhist monk in hopes of avoiding the fate that karma surely has in store for him. In fact, that single paragraph should give rise to a new verb, "to klein," signifying not merely bullshit, but bullshit where the bullshitter is so primally and narcissistically unaware that their bullshit is bullshit, so pure in the untrodden innocence of their own self-snow job .... That they're still collecting a paycheck from chinless wonder Fred Hiatt. That one paragraph should disqualify Klein from ever writing again for any news gathering organization. Then again, Klein types for Pravda. So there's that.
NOTE Typo over in the sidebar: "Wankbook." No thanks necessary, glad to help.
UPDATE Minor copy edits.
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Comments
It is all about Buffett and Berkhire Hathaway
because Buffett bet heavily on AIG and would have been ruined without the bail out. Also Buffett bought Moody's and destroyed its integrity, so every nerve is strained to divert attention from that. Ezra is just doing his part.
When Bots weigh in on economic matters
The truth is that Obama's role as shill of the oligarchs in the impoverishment of America has left a generation of young Americans with no viable economic options other than becoming cannon fodder. Those of us who try to fight recruiting on high school campuses are pissing into the wind. Let's remember the Michael Moores of this world who claimed an Obama vote in the primaries would be the only course for us antiwar Democrats. We are history.
Ezra Klein is an Upton
Ezra Klein is an Upton Sinclair man. He is paid to sell lies. Intellectual dishonesty is his stock and trade. Like so many soldiers of kleptocracy, he is not a man acting in good faith but wrong. He's a propagandist. In a fact-based world, he is a hack and a shill. In a kleptocracy, he is an up and comer and a respected commentator.
And he is hardly alone. Remember Yglesias just a couple of days ago defending Obama's failure to prosecute the banksters, or consider a few days before that Kevin Drum who would trust Obama's judgment over his own. There's a Presidential election in 2012 and there is already a lot of pre-emptive historical revisionism going on.
Hugh
Aw, come on, Hugh
These boys are proof that trickle-down economics works. All they have to do is spew some authority-approved lies and, voila, they get a few pennies.
I don't know how I am going to withstand another election cycle observing their utterly irrational little-boy crush on Obama. They're still in love, I swear. It's not just that they get paid for this BS, which is sickening enough; it's that they are true believers in the wonder of Obama. They would kiss the hem of his garment, and they do - figuratively. (Otherwise, they'd have to admit they have been and continue to be complete fools and idiots.)
The term of art
Obama Fan Boi...
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Klein's paragraph may be execrable but
your "single paragraph" paragraph is a work of art. Perfect.
Because the problem is not that we have too little condescension from our tribe. -- okanogen
Thanks, Valhalla
It was fun to write, and even more fun to have Yves pick up on it. Got some twitter traffic, too. Not that Klein would notice. But still...
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
My favorite comment on Yves piece on you
was from commenter Hogeye Grex
In crayon.
At least then the breathless references to cartoonish, imaginary “woodland creatures” wouldn’t seem out of place.
Hey, one must play to one’s strengths.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx