Via the terrific Interfluidity, this very important post. First, let's look at "vanilla products," in this case for financial services:

Vanilla products would be very popular, which is why they are so threatening. Financial services are an area where markets not only fail due to informational problems, but where participants are very aware of that failure. Consumers know they are at a disadvantage when transacting with banks, and do not believe that reputational constraints or internal controls offer sufficient guarantee of fair-dealing. Status quo financial services should be a classic "lemons" problem*, a no-trade equilibrium. Unfortunately, those models of no-trade equilibria don't take into account that people sometimes really need the products they cannot intelligently buy, and so tolerate large rent extractions if they must in order to transact.

Lambert here. The 30 cents of every health care dollar that goes to health insurance companies is one such rent. "Progressives" believe that such "large rent extractions" are painless, and that we should not only tolerate them, but subsidize them for people who cannot pay. Single payer advocates believe that the extraction is not painless, but pernicious, and that we should abolish it entirely. Since health care insurance reform is the administration's signature domestic initiative, most of us have had our attention focused there. If the focus had been financial reform, a similar conflict would no doubt have played out, with the Neo-Broders seeking to ameliorate and preserve rent extraction by banksters, while the left would have sought to abolish it, through proposals like making banks into regulated public utilities, and so forth.

Last Tuesday night I emailed Barney Frank(my rep.) after becoming incensed with his recent comments claiming advocating for Medicare for All, which he’s “always supported” was “suicide”. I told Mr.

Useless:

Frank Says Congress to Release $350 Billion in Deal For Homeowner Relief
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- [House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said in a telephone interview yesterday that] said legislation is being drafted that will set the conditions on spending the cash after Paulson used almost half the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to boost bank capital. Paulson resisted calls to support foreclosure relief.

Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in the interview he’s drafting legislation with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd that would release the remaining $350 billion in exchange for foreclosure help, aid for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC and provisions to hold banks accountable for stepped up lending to consumers.

The measure would adopt a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. foreclosure plan, revamp the Hope for Homeowners loan-relief program that has attracted few lenders and support a Treasury program to cut rates on some fixed-rate home-loans.

There's a proposal on the table that nobody will talk about except those who actually want to help homeowners. It's called HOLC (explanation). It was an FDR program that saved homeowners, cleaned up the balance sheets for the banks, and actually made a small profit for the country at the end of its life. Why do I have the feeling that the Village would rather not see the banks' balance sheets at all, and would do anything to stiff homeowners to avoid it?

Frank and his fellow Villagers are just tinkering around the edges as far as any solution that does anything more than help Big Money. Why a "deal"? Where's the need for a fucking quid pro quo? Why treat the lamest of lame duck Bush administration as if they had any kind of leverage? As of today, they've got thirty days in office? And the Dems are negotiating with them?*

image from Progressive Majority Wisconsin

ScienceBlogger Mike the Mad Biologist is all over the story of how Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, has been dissed and mistreated by the folks in charge:

Sheila Bair, Geithner, and the acceptance of male hysteria.

  Read more…

Sentiment tested on single-payer health care

Is health care a human right that should be provided through a Medicare-type program for people of all ages?

Many local voters will have the opportunity to weigh in Tuesday on a non-binding referendum that will be on the ballot in a number of Massachusetts communities, including nearly all towns on the Cape and Martha's Vineyard.

Known as Question 4 in most towns — or questions 5 and 6 in some Vineyard towns and Orleans — the ballot item is backed by the groups Mass Care and Cape Care, which have called for a single-payer health insurance program in Massachusetts and Barnstable County.

[Welcome, Sideshow readers.]

C'mon, Andy. Don't you think Barney Frank deserves a little more from you than a snarky putdown?

Here's the context. Sullivan is responding to Frank's article in HuffPo. I quote the text [DCOW] of Sullivan's riposte in its entirety:

My friend Congressman Frank doesn't want to say "goodbye to all that." Presumably, that's why he's backing Clinton.

[Rimshot. Laughter. Try the veal!]

Andy, I'd say this post isn't up to your usual fine standard.

One, it's not on point. Your post misrepresents the serious point Frank is making. Here's what Frank, well-known hater of ponies, wrote in HuffPo:

[FRANK] I agree that it would have been better not to have had to fight over some of the issues that occupied us in the nineties. But there would have been only one way to avoid them — and that would have been to give up. More importantly, the only way I can think of to avoid “refighting the same fights we had in the 1990’s”, to quote Senator Obama, is to let our opponents win these fights without a struggle.

How can we say "goodbye" to the 90s when they won't go away? That's the point at issue, Andy, and "presumably" obfuscates it. No, not "presumably." Nothing "presumably" about it.

Two, it's insulting to Frank. Andy, it's not like Frank's fighting our (and your) battles out of whimsy, or because he's been eating radishes, or out of personal pique. It's because the battles still need to be fought.

Andy, I'm sure if you'd taken a moment to think before pressing Submit, you would have remembered this speech from Frank on the House floor. Here's the video:  Read more…

Barney Frank is a divisive hater of ponies and all their works:

I think it is important to express my discomfort with a major theme of Senator Obama's campaign. I am referring to his denigration of "the Washington battles of the 1990's" and, usually implicitly but sometimes explicitly, of those who fought them.

I agree that it would have been better not to have had to fight over some of the issues that occupied us in the nineties. But there would have been only one way to avoid them -- and that would have been to give up. More importantly, the only way I can think of to avoid "refighting the same fights we had in the 1990's", to quote Senator Obama, is to let our opponents win these fights without a struggle.

Bingo. More:

Just when I despair of the Democrats...

Massive parliamentary geekery, with a standing ovation at the end. And in the middle?  Read more…

Gah. Forgive the ubersnarky title, but I'm a little annoyed at the following:

H.R.1227

Title: To assist in the provision of affordable housing to low-income families affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Sponsor: Rep Waters, Maxine [CA-35] (introduced 2/28/2007)
Cosponsors (1)
Related Bills: H.RES.254