[I'm stickying this post because, as Glenn points out below, opposition to clause 8 of Emperor Paulson's $700 billion* bailout bill is common ground between left and right. The clause has all the issues that retroactive immunity for the telcos did, but without the admixture of national security claims. That clause 8 amounts to a financial dictatorship needs to be part of our message. (And if you want to call your representatives and convey that message, please share at this link.) -- lambert]
For those who came in late, here again -- and I freely admit I've been waiting for the change to rehabilitate Marx and use that headline -- is the infamous Clause 8 of Emperor Paulson's insane three-page bailout enabling act:
Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
So, when you read phrases like "unfettered discretion" in our famously free press, it's no exaggeration; Paulson's plan is yet another example of the Bush administration's extremely Constitutional Theory Of We Get To Do Whatever The Fuck
We Want. It amounts to a financial dictatorship (and if you can think of another phrase that covers a situation when one guy gets $700 billion and counting, or not, to spend with no checks and balances, I'd be very glad to hear it).
When it comes to a bailout, it's "Now! Now! Now!" But when it comes to accountability, it's "No! No! No!"
Why, I wonder, would that be?
UPDATE Glenn Greenwald:
More interesting are the reasons why these right-wing polemicists have decided they have real doubts about the wisdom of the Paulson plan. In opposing the plan, each of them cited -- with alarm -- the provision which vests full, unfettered and unreviewable discretion in the Treasury Secretary to determine how the $700,000,000,000 is allocated: Levin (plan gives "essentially unlimited power to use $700 billion to make purchases the scope of which is defined very loosely and vaguely"); Gingrich ("We are being reassured that we can trust Secretary Paulson 'because he knows what he is doing'. Congress had better ask a lot of questions before it shifts this much burden to the taxpayer and shifts this much power to a Washington bureaucracy"); Kristol ("There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency"); Malkin (Washington is demanding we "fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses -- without public input or recourse").
Apparently, the same political faction that has cheered on every instance of unchecked, absolute executive power over the last eight years -- which demanded that the President, and he alone, decide which citizens, including Americans, can be spied on, detained, even tortured, and that no oversight or disclosure was needed for any of that -- has suddenly re-discovered their desire for checks on federal government power. The reason? They say it themselves: with the looming prospect of an Obama presidency, they may no longer be in charge of that Government and these "small government conservatives" have thus suddenly re-awoken to the virtues of checks and balances, oversight and other restraints.
Heh. Predictable and predicted. But ideas are good or bad, regardless of who conveys them....
NOTE * But who's counting?
- lambert's blog
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tsk, tsk, lb.
it's not "700B" it's "as much money as can be funneled thru his hands to his needy banker buddies until the credit runs out." you were just posting on the 1.8trillion figure downstairs. let's try to keep our facts/rape statistics right, m'kay. ;-)
Revised 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
Not Just This Administration
As with FISA, here's another power that won't be limited to this Administration.
"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
McCain is not asking for this power
He's actually talking sanity...
Barack Obama, who has been missing in action, was finally located in an airport restroom, where he was wacking off to a first edition unexpurgated version of My Pet Goat. When finally reached for comment he said,
Maybe somebody put impeachment on the table
Otherwise, why would Bush agree to anything?
The devil is in the details,
and there is still no assurance that any of what is proposed will stop the bleeding...next up to get whacked are hedge funds according Roubini and Paulson wants them to be included.
I am "tepidly" hopeful that the congress critters, especially the capitulation prone Dems, are actually going to try to get substantive changes in this.
Not a good sign, though, that when calling Senator's offices this am I had no trouble getting through. At least the guy at Wyden's office seemed to listen to all 5 of my brief points, including HOLC. I suspect that the thumbs down from the leading financial blogs had more impact than we peons did.
Friends seem stuck in an "angry but what can I do?" mode. I suggested their vote today was at least as important as their vote on Nov 4th...banging head on my desk in disbelief....
Got links on the thumbs down?
I didn't see, but I don't know that portion of the blogosphere that well.
[ ] 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
@TreeHugger: "Friends seem stuck...."
Shock Doctrine?
let's repeat: there is no "crisis"
and i'm getting really pissed with the way people (not folks here) have bought into the idea that we "need to do something RIGHT NOW!!!1!" or the banking system will collapse.
there are many ways to shore up the banking industry. the right way would be to allow these banks to fail, and to use the money to help other, sanely-investing smaller banks to pick up the slack. there's absolutely no reason the very banks who mismanaged their way into the current situation need to be rewarded by a multi-trillion dollar bailout. same deal with foreign banks- the US taxpayer has *no* moral or economic reason to help them out.
it is not. my. fault. these idiots let irrational cronyism take the place of sensible investment. there is *no* reason why i should be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of worthless paper. it is long past time for a correction in the markets. and i'm sorry, but as a non-investor in the markets, i really don't want to hear about "all the people it will hurt" if the market tanks back down to 8,000 or whatever. ahem, "past performance in no guarantee of future earnings." it's called "risk" and that's the very reason why some smart people don't play in it, or get out with 'just' a few thousands or millions in profit taking, instead of overreaching and going whole hog.
every single thing about this manufactured crisis pisses me off. let them all burn. it's what they deserve.
Just Because It's Manufactured, Doesn't Mean It's Not a Crisis
I agree that from what I can tell there's no reason why this had to all come to a head right this instant, except of course that these kinds of bubbles can't go on forever and so there must be some instant.
I further agree that whatever gets done must not let those individuals who managed their way from success to failure off the hook. I'm all for prosecutions, restitution, forfeiture, and higher taxes on those who got rich to pay for this mess. I'm not for a pure bail out, not at all. I'm certainly against handing taxpayer money over to the same idiots that caused the problem. There are lots of other ways of dealing with the mess besides writing a check to the selfish greedy bastards who got us into it in the first place.
But I do think we can't just ignore or deny the larger consequences of a market meltdown. It's not most people's fault that companies don't pay pensions, they have 401ks. A lot of people didn't become investors by choice so much as because it was the best option given them to keep from being put on an ice floe when they hit 65. And it's those people who I worry about. The Masters of the Universe are going to get theirs. But it's always the workers who get screwed in any fix. It wasn't Ken Lay, it was the employees who continued to buy Enron stock (in part because the company made it easy and cheap). So I don't think we can all say, to hell with the stock market and forget about it. It wasn't just the rich who got hurt in October 1929. And whether it's good policy or not, an awful lot of what little savings regular Americans have is tied up in the stock market.
Which, again, is not to say that this is a "crisis" that has to be acted on in the way the Bush Administration claims and only that way RIGHT NOW. It's just to say that hurting investors doesn't just mean hurting the rich. In fact, in most cases the rich manage to get out in time, it's everyone else who takes a bath. As a friend reminded me the other day, Ken Lay died in his bed in Aspen.
The tricky part in all of this is how to protect the millions of Americans who didn't cause this while punishing/holding accountable the hundreds or thousands who did. Now, of course, the Village
would be happy to have a protection plan that simply protects everyone, whatever their culpability. I think that's wrong. But I also think it's wrong to deny help to the 95% of Americans who had nothing to do with this mess just to make sure those at the top get punished.
Personally I like the idea of a tax tied to wealth - so those who benefitted most pay the most, those who benefitted not at all pay nothing. I doubt we'll get that since while the GOP and Dems love to use "tax policy" to fix every economic problem in the book their understanding of tax policy seems limited to tax cut.
I will also add that the main reason this is a "crisis" is because nobody did anything to prepare for it even as a lot of people saw it coming. It's part of what made Katrina a "crisis" - poor prevention, preparation and contingency planning.
NOTE - I fully admit that I'm currently taking a financial bath, but I don't worry so much about me what with the Government income, health insurance, and pension plan. The people I worry about is Joe Sixpack who is about to turn 65 and is on the verge of losing a large percentage of his retirement savings. Similar to the guy a friend of mine heard about on NPR who had just retired and put his entire retirement savings in six 100,000 CDs at IndyMac, which are now worth $100,000. That's 5/6ths of the money that was supposed to last him the rest of his life - gone. So when he needs a nursing home, who is going to pay now?
"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
most mutual funds/401ks have been down for ages
already, and this really won't help them at all--nor would not passing this bailout help or hurt them--they are in tons of stocks and indexed funds--not only financials.
They also have fund choices--from agressive and risky to conservative and bond-heavy--they can change those at any time.
I Agree This Bailout Won't Help Mutual Funds/401ks
In fact, I don't think any bailout in the form of a check (blank or otherwise) is the right answer. I'm more interested in the government taking over institutions, ala the FDIC with IndyMac, and the creation of an HOLC to deal with mortgages. It solves the public problem, not the private one. Fuck
the private institutions who caused this.
I was mostly disagreeing with the idea that we could just forget about the investor class because those folks deserved what they got for all of their greed when most weren't being greedy, they were only trying to save for retirement. And I think this "crisis" also provides a terrific time to raise the issue of whether we want to rely on a retirement system that is almost exclusively market based beyond Social Security.
As for being down, there's being down and being decimated. Down is inevitable, the market's been overprices. Decimated might be too, but if we can soften the landing, we should. Nobody benefits if the market and economy crash hard. The people who get hurt the most are often those with the smallest cushion.
"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
mutual funds are drowning in money, and get more every paycheck-
they're not the ones that are gonna be bailed out--if they don't do a good job managing the money then people need to either opt out, change funds, or make their companies provide better choices.
this whole "everyone's an investor now" thing is not always relevant to everything concerning Wall St.--especially in this bailout case.
we bear none of the responsibility for any of this, but are being told we MUST MUST MUST bail them out NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!
it's not true.
again, there's this part about "assuming risk"
look, i'm sorry for the Joe Sixpack you mention, and i know people are going to be hurt by all this. it's not their fault either. but if we're thinking about ways to help them, gosh, i have an idea! instead of handing out several trillions to a handful of already superrich corrupt insider cronies, how about we set up a "pension protection fund" and an FDIC type deal to protect small investments, with a value of under, say, 100K. i'm sure smarter people can come up with better ideas than i can, ideas that don't involve huge transfers of money to the superwealthy and foreign banks.
there is no crisis. except for those groups. and again, there *is* a crisis that i wish people would talk more about, and it's a Constitutional crisis. i assume you've at least skimmed some of the links in the posts on this subject, Newberry and Welsh in particular need to be reviewed if you want to understand where i'm coming from. the markets won't totally tank if we don't bailout a handful of cronies. and goddamit, does anyone who makes more than i do ever have to accept responsibility?
i'm sorry, BDB, but i'm just sofa king angry right now, i think i have to get offline and watch a DVD or something and cool off. but you've got to look at it from my point of view: NO ONE helped me when my ex left me with mountains of debt and a bankrupted credit rating. NO ONE is helping me with student loans i can't even pay most of the time. NO ONE is bringing me health insurance or medical bill relief. i have to take care of two generations of family members who are barely hanging on to what they have, and these bills and proposals do NOTHING to help them either. all they do is saddle those of us who work with more debt, and take away any chance that under the much-desired Dem administration of the future the aforementioned will change.
if you don't like risk, stay out of the market. learn to do with less. learn that retirement doesn automatically equal regular trips to Boca and a second home and an RV for long summer roadtrips. i already have. i will have none of those things. i have yet to hear a single argument for why bailing out the banks and cronies today helps me in any way. there are millions of people like me in this country, and billions more around the world who will also see the meager amount of aid money we still hand out taken away as well. all to save what? a couple of thousand bankers and a part of the middle class and upper middle class who think that they have some right to believe the stock market can only and always go up.
...bah. you're a friend and i don't mean to yell at you. i grok your point, it's valid. but this is all so fucking manufactured, and hello? universal health insurance, anyone? structured properly, i'm sure there's a way to do that, *and* prop up the markets for people like you and Joe. we're not talking about ideas like that, why again?
No Worries, CD
I'm angry, too. I have a friend who has nothing, nothing. She works two jobs full time, her husband works another and she's always right on the financial edge. Where does she keep what little money she has...Washington Mutual. She cannot afford to have it held up even a day. I told her to open a new account at a more solid bank and start transitioning over.
And I do not support the bailout. Not at all. Not even one thin dime. I used to represent securities dealers and let me tell you that even the better ones are mostly scum.
The way the Village
is talking about "solving" this is bullshit. There are other ways the money could be spent that would provide protection for those who need it. And I'd much rather have it spent on pension protection and healthcare. I don't support the bailout plan. It's bullshit. And I'm glad you mentioned consumer debt because it isn't a coincidence that the banks got the bankrutpcy bill through (thanks, Joe, can't wait until you're Vice President!) in time for all of this shit to hit the fan. Ensuring people like you stay fucked over forever while they'll take the $700 million and move on, fuck you very much.
Nothing would make me happier than to see the Democrats put forward a bill that really fixes things. That pegs a tax on wealth to pay for all of this mess. That deals with the mortgage crisis by setting up an HOLC. That simply takes over the troubled financial institutions and sells them off piece by piece. That reconsidered the 401k dependence and the fact that healthcare costs are one of the things that drove companies out of pensions in the first place. And strengthen unions. Not to mention regulators.
And have I said yet today that many of these mother fuckers need to go to jail with the government auctioning off their houses and other property?
I'm fortunate enough that right now I don't have to worry about me. I have my govt. salary, health insurance and pension plan. Although, of course, like everyone who works for a living, if something should happen to keep me from working, things could go bad pretty damned quick. But right now I worry about those I know, including family members, who don't have much, if any, safety net. Because as I told my friend with the WaMu account (who thought only rich people had to worry because they had over $100,000 and she didn't), when the bus goes over the cliff, it's always the rich who have a parachute. Will Congress bail her out if she can't write the check to cover her rent because those fucks at WaMu paid millions for shit? No way.
So don't apologize for your anger. You'd have to be crazy not to be angry. And I keep waiting for Obama and the Democrats to get angry. Get angry like your life depends upon it, people! Because it may.
"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
om. om. anger management om.
i also forgot to post the thing i came to this thread to post:
the real details of the dodd proposal. i'm not going to look at it now, as i've no doubt it will utterly piss me off. go for it, good people.
You're cute when you're mad, CD!
[lambert ducks large flying iron girder]
Seriously, the NO ONE WILL HELP thing is how I feel, too, a lot of the time. Not always (thank you, subscribers, but a lot). And my situation isn't nearly as bad as many.
[ ] 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
The Safety Net Is Just About Gone
for everyone but the rich. That's how fucked up this all is. The more you need the net, the more it's frayed.
This country has had its priorities ass-backward for 30 years. This crisis provides an opportunity to start the process to get it back in balance. Where's our Shock Doctrine, huh? Isn't that what the Democrats should be proposing? Fuck
taking Bush's idea and tweaking it.
Which Congressman (Feingold? Stark?) told the story about how liberals had gotten into the habit of taking awful bills proposed by Republicans and simply making them less awful and then declaring victory? Well now's the time to turn the tables.
"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
this bill will have more R "no" votes than D "no"--
it's guaranteed---it's gonna be Democrats in Congress who pass this.
McCain Is Hinting He Might Lead A Fight Against It
Via Marc Ambinder:
For purely cynical reasons, I'm sure. But the Dems never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The American people hate this plan (Greenwald's piece noted a poll that said only 28% support it). If the Dems won't seize the political day and oppose it, the GOP will.
And then I will have to smash something. I don't think my system can take hypocritical speeches from GOP hacks about how so much power shouldn't be given to the executive and the importance of accountability. They'll be right, but that will only make it worse.
Of course, this might just be bluffing to cover up McCain's planned absence from any vote.
"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
FISA, Part II
Everybody hates it, the Ds pass it. Well done, all. What's that two-party thing again? I keep forgetting.
[ ] 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
Are you sure BDBlue?
"For purely cynical reasons, I’m sure."
Are you really sure BDB? Are you absolutely sure BDB? Like, McCain cannot be principled can he? It's beyond the ken of his potential to be sincere? To actually believe in something and pursue it because it's right and he believes in it.
Let's get something clear. McCain has something Obama doesn't have. It's called a track record. And regardless of what McCain has been saying these last 4 years as he was again running for the Republican nomination, he does have a 27 year track record. And he is known for exactly what he is doing now. Taking a principled stand, in direct opposition to his party.
And they're both going to miss the vote. So that is not the reason why.
Yes, It's Beyond Almost Anything To Think McCain Sincere
See pretty much all of Bob Somerby's recent work. McCain lies constantly about everything for political purposes. That's McCain's track record. That he's "known" for exactly what he is doing now doesn't mean much given that thanks to the media Al Gore is "known" as a liar and Hillary Clinton a "bitch." Or for that matter that Barack Obama is "known" as the Democratic nominee. John McCain's track record is bullshit, created by a lying media. See here, here, and here for just some background on how the press invented Maverick McCain.
Name one issue where McCain has taken a "principled stand" and stuck to his guns? He flip-flopped on torture of all things, something he claimed was personally important to him. He violated his own campaign finance reform law. He failed to back his own immigration reform plan when push came to shove. The man will do and say anything. It's that simple.
Which doesn't make Obama good. Obama sucks. But so does McCain and, given his "track record" he's sucked longer. And to be post-partisan, I'll note that Biden has been getting the big things wrong (Iraq, bankruptcy, war on drugs, Clarence Thomas hearings) a lot longer than Sarah Palin, although in Biden's defense I'll say he's probably been right 10% of the time which is more than Palin or McCain have been.
Don't you feel better about where this country is headed now?
"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
"known for"
Glad somebody caught that little bit of equivocation. Heh.
[ ] 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
This is probably a minor point in this tidal wave of
fucking-over-the-rest-of-us, but isn't Congress passing a bill that doesn't Separation of powers and all that?
If it were constitutional, wouldn't Congress include a no-review clause in every piece of legislation?
Not that it matters, if Congress passes the bill the damage will have been done by the time anyone could bring a case anyway. But it's crap for precedent.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
wow, a genuine crack user and unicorn fellator
oh, sorry, is that too strong? sorry, but this is Crap oof the First Order:
seriously, that's such utter shit i'm not even going to bother to rebut it. and i speak as someone who crossed over in an open primary and voted for mcstain in 2000, b/c i knew what a disaster bush would be.
dood, get a clue. obama may suck, from a progressive standpoint. but mccain? go ahead and vote for him "on principle" or whatever naderite bullshit is motivating you to write such tripe. he's a whore, he'll say anything, he's doddering and picked a 1000% wackjob nutcase likely to outlive him while in office republican. if you feel the need to lodge a voting protest against obama (and i support your right) do so with mckinney or barr. at least they understand the 'integrity' you foolishly seem to want to assign to McCambrian-Age.
fuck, it annoys me to no end that we have mccain supporters here. or perhaps you're all just rethug plants trying to make this blog look bad. either way, the word is "wack."
Friends close...
... enemies closer, CD.
Personally, I'm glad to see that this is the best they can do. Eh?
[ ] 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
Just saying
$800 Billion equals 8 million $100,000 mortgages, fully backed by current government cash.
Just saying.
$1.8 Trillion equals 18 million $100,000 mortgages, fully backed by current government cash.
Just saying.
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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.