Liberals are still telling themselves a lie in order to pretend turning hope and change into more of the same wasn't responsible for the predictable backlash that fueled Trump's ascent.
Yes. Thank you. Of course. Obama had the entire country on his side. The fury from his staggering cowardice became the Tea Party then MAGA. AIG's Joseph Cassano skipped town to Mayfair with a $200M bonus paid out of TARP funds. America continues to await its first black President. He won't be a Harvard lawyer.
It wasn't cowardice. It was collusion and intention all along. People wouldn't be able to stomach the monstrous plutocratic Republicans bailing out the atrocities of their monstrous corporate parasites buddies. But if an avuncular, smiling "Democrat" did it, well it must be for our own good and for the good of the country. Because the "Democrats" really "care" about people....
Recall, folksy, saxophone-wielding bubba Clinton managed to achieve every utterly despicable thing on the Reagan bucket list, (destruction of "welfare as we know it", the birth and staggering growth of the for-profit prison industrial complex, the roll back of virtually all regulations on Wall Street and the banks, shredding Glass-Steagall, leading precisely to the catastrophe of 2007, 3-strikes laws and ramped up "drug" crackdowns, and a further demonization of the poor, coupled with massive cutbacks in education funding, and union-busting/off-shoring of production for profit maximization, to beat the band) even thought Reagan wasn't able to do so.
Because Clinton was perceived as a "Liberal". And when a cement mixer worth of virulently toxic sludge is poured on you by a "Liberal", it can't really be bad for you. Even if it's the same old virulent Reaganite toxic sludge.
And it's been that same old, supremely malicious, Reaganite toxic sludge, poured, year in and year out, by every US regime since 1980.
You read my mind. I turned 18 the year Reagan came along.
James Watt, Anne M. Gorsuch, Rbt Bork, etc. were the RFKJrs and Linda McMahons of the 1980s. .. And Barack Obama isn't a black man. He just plays one on TV.
And Obama is just a happy war-mongering, plutocrat-loving, empire-grasping (and as a consequence, now extremely rich) melanistic vessel for the same loathsome evil that’s been poured from jar to jar, from one despicable regime to the next…
Traitors are always far more dangerous than the obvious enemy. In addition to unscrambling the Enigma code, the Allies put almost an equal sum of effort into not letting anyone find out that they had unscrambled Enigma.
"the roll back of virtually all regulations on Wall Street and the banks,"
Bullshit. Banks were more regulated not less. Name a year, look at the amount of regulations on the banking sector, compare it to ten years earlier. When did the deregulation happen? In fact the GFC was almost soley due to regulations including the regulations that made banks rely on the credit ratings agencies. They would not have done this by themselves. The banks and everyone else knew that the ratings agencies weren't reliable but if they put their AAA rating on an asset the banks could lend more money. That's what caused the massive increase in questionable assets, the fact that profits could be made by getting what is effectively a government branch to say those assets are safe.
Without regulation the banks would have to satisfy their depositors and investors that their assets were safe, a far harder thing to do with people who had money in the game.
"shredding Glass-Steagall,"
Stop with the Glass-Steagall. No G-S was not the lynchpin that stopped the fuckery and it's removal did not cause the GFC. Here's the proof, the problems started in banks that weren't combined commercial and investing banks. The institutions that repealing G-S allowed weren't the ones that collapsed. If G-S had been the protection people claim it was then it would have been solely or at least mainly combined commercial and investment banks that had the problems. In fact they were the most secure.
$16 trillion in lending most certainly does not equal $16 trillion in bailouts for bankers - that's a basic category error. The implied subsidy is only a fraction of that, representing $16 trillion times the difference in the rate at which the Fed lent and the counterfactual market rate. Second, any implied subsidy would have benefited employees, future borrowers, working class folks with bank stocks in 401Ks - in other words, not just fat cat bankers. You, sir, are a unscrupulous charlatan no better than the worst of the MAGA clowns.
If the system were genuinely under threat than the value of that loan as a subsidy is a considerable fraction of $16T. If not then why bother making it?
And no, giving money away to one area does not create the kind of multiplication of benefits you want to imply. That's because taking the money away from others multiplies the loss through the exact same process, so in the end the benefit and cost is SOLELY the direct transfer.
There is a government website that you could see who got what and how much was paid back. I can’t remember what the website was but when we did the Silicon Valley bank bailout (which I opposed) I was debating with a friend of mine about this exact thing. We were able to pull it up and show who had paid back and who still owes money. The big banks all still had balances. I’ll have to find that website again and post it here.
Remember “Hope” and “Change”? The cost is what matters.
In 2008, the state proved it could move trillions overnight to stabilise finance. Fast. Creative. Borderless. When it came to homeowners, wage earners and structural reform, suddenly we discovered process, prudence and limits.
That asymmetry is the memory. You can defend the bailout as crisis management. Fine. What you can’t defend is rescuing balance sheets while leaving power relations intact. Save Wall Street, lecture Main Street, then act stunned at the backlash.
A decade later, we learn more about Epstein’s dinner parties and the billionaire class treating law as a networking inconvenience. That’s not a detour. It’s the same ecosystem. Not conspiracy.
Cost. Legitimacy. Paid by everyone outside the room.
The Obama "Democrats" put the noose around the necks of Americans, kicked away the chair, and then told us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
And then they were shocked, shocked when millions of people decided not to vote for them again. Many of those people were probably the non-voters who might have, at one point, been persuaded to vote for the Democrats", if the "Democrats" had actually offered them anything meaningful, like actual healthcare, but instead were motivated by the great big "fuck you" the "Democrats " offered, and then went and returned it, in spades.
Blue maga make me ill. They cannot stomach the smallest criticism of Biden or Obama based on facts, And they turn around and say that I am the one supporting Trump!
Yes, they were outwardly more civil and more decent human beings - but Policy is decency !
David, I like most of your articles and I even wrote a Letter to the Editor defending you against Edward Isaac Dovere's nasty smear job against you a few years ago (it went unpublished of course).
Anyhow, I'm trying to find evidence to support your assertion that the bulk of $12T wasn't paid back by the banks. I'm using multiple search engines and I can't find any. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but rather that I'd like some help finding it.
My understanding is that the $16T figure comes mostly from short-term loans (24 hours) and is a cumulative number. It does make sense, but search engines report that these loans were covered with interest in almost all instances.
Thank you for the work you do as I typically find it accurate and incredibly important.
I see the story and the outcome. I notice that Trump didn't make the banks pay everything back, either. That makes me think that the Democrats are controlled opposition.
I want to believe that we have an alternative, but at the moment, it doesn't look like it.
Yes. Thank you. Of course. Obama had the entire country on his side. The fury from his staggering cowardice became the Tea Party then MAGA. AIG's Joseph Cassano skipped town to Mayfair with a $200M bonus paid out of TARP funds. America continues to await its first black President. He won't be a Harvard lawyer.
It wasn't cowardice. It was collusion and intention all along. People wouldn't be able to stomach the monstrous plutocratic Republicans bailing out the atrocities of their monstrous corporate parasites buddies. But if an avuncular, smiling "Democrat" did it, well it must be for our own good and for the good of the country. Because the "Democrats" really "care" about people....
Recall, folksy, saxophone-wielding bubba Clinton managed to achieve every utterly despicable thing on the Reagan bucket list, (destruction of "welfare as we know it", the birth and staggering growth of the for-profit prison industrial complex, the roll back of virtually all regulations on Wall Street and the banks, shredding Glass-Steagall, leading precisely to the catastrophe of 2007, 3-strikes laws and ramped up "drug" crackdowns, and a further demonization of the poor, coupled with massive cutbacks in education funding, and union-busting/off-shoring of production for profit maximization, to beat the band) even thought Reagan wasn't able to do so.
Because Clinton was perceived as a "Liberal". And when a cement mixer worth of virulently toxic sludge is poured on you by a "Liberal", it can't really be bad for you. Even if it's the same old virulent Reaganite toxic sludge.
And it's been that same old, supremely malicious, Reaganite toxic sludge, poured, year in and year out, by every US regime since 1980.
You read my mind. I turned 18 the year Reagan came along.
James Watt, Anne M. Gorsuch, Rbt Bork, etc. were the RFKJrs and Linda McMahons of the 1980s. .. And Barack Obama isn't a black man. He just plays one on TV.
yup!
And Obama is just a happy war-mongering, plutocrat-loving, empire-grasping (and as a consequence, now extremely rich) melanistic vessel for the same loathsome evil that’s been poured from jar to jar, from one despicable regime to the next…
Hahahahaha… foolish human.
Traitors are always far more dangerous than the obvious enemy. In addition to unscrambling the Enigma code, the Allies put almost an equal sum of effort into not letting anyone find out that they had unscrambled Enigma.
"the roll back of virtually all regulations on Wall Street and the banks,"
Bullshit. Banks were more regulated not less. Name a year, look at the amount of regulations on the banking sector, compare it to ten years earlier. When did the deregulation happen? In fact the GFC was almost soley due to regulations including the regulations that made banks rely on the credit ratings agencies. They would not have done this by themselves. The banks and everyone else knew that the ratings agencies weren't reliable but if they put their AAA rating on an asset the banks could lend more money. That's what caused the massive increase in questionable assets, the fact that profits could be made by getting what is effectively a government branch to say those assets are safe.
Without regulation the banks would have to satisfy their depositors and investors that their assets were safe, a far harder thing to do with people who had money in the game.
"shredding Glass-Steagall,"
Stop with the Glass-Steagall. No G-S was not the lynchpin that stopped the fuckery and it's removal did not cause the GFC. Here's the proof, the problems started in banks that weren't combined commercial and investing banks. The institutions that repealing G-S allowed weren't the ones that collapsed. If G-S had been the protection people claim it was then it would have been solely or at least mainly combined commercial and investment banks that had the problems. In fact they were the most secure.
$16 trillion in lending most certainly does not equal $16 trillion in bailouts for bankers - that's a basic category error. The implied subsidy is only a fraction of that, representing $16 trillion times the difference in the rate at which the Fed lent and the counterfactual market rate. Second, any implied subsidy would have benefited employees, future borrowers, working class folks with bank stocks in 401Ks - in other words, not just fat cat bankers. You, sir, are a unscrupulous charlatan no better than the worst of the MAGA clowns.
If the system were genuinely under threat than the value of that loan as a subsidy is a considerable fraction of $16T. If not then why bother making it?
And no, giving money away to one area does not create the kind of multiplication of benefits you want to imply. That's because taking the money away from others multiplies the loss through the exact same process, so in the end the benefit and cost is SOLELY the direct transfer.
There is a government website that you could see who got what and how much was paid back. I can’t remember what the website was but when we did the Silicon Valley bank bailout (which I opposed) I was debating with a friend of mine about this exact thing. We were able to pull it up and show who had paid back and who still owes money. The big banks all still had balances. I’ll have to find that website again and post it here.
Remember “Hope” and “Change”? The cost is what matters.
In 2008, the state proved it could move trillions overnight to stabilise finance. Fast. Creative. Borderless. When it came to homeowners, wage earners and structural reform, suddenly we discovered process, prudence and limits.
That asymmetry is the memory. You can defend the bailout as crisis management. Fine. What you can’t defend is rescuing balance sheets while leaving power relations intact. Save Wall Street, lecture Main Street, then act stunned at the backlash.
A decade later, we learn more about Epstein’s dinner parties and the billionaire class treating law as a networking inconvenience. That’s not a detour. It’s the same ecosystem. Not conspiracy.
Cost. Legitimacy. Paid by everyone outside the room.
While certainly Trump fanned the flames of xenophobia and racism, simply blaming it all on that lets the Dems off the hook all too easily.
How did he fan the flames or racism? What did he say that was actually racist?
The Obama "Democrats" put the noose around the necks of Americans, kicked away the chair, and then told us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
And then they were shocked, shocked when millions of people decided not to vote for them again. Many of those people were probably the non-voters who might have, at one point, been persuaded to vote for the Democrats", if the "Democrats" had actually offered them anything meaningful, like actual healthcare, but instead were motivated by the great big "fuck you" the "Democrats " offered, and then went and returned it, in spades.
Blue maga make me ill. They cannot stomach the smallest criticism of Biden or Obama based on facts, And they turn around and say that I am the one supporting Trump!
Yes, they were outwardly more civil and more decent human beings - but Policy is decency !
David, I like most of your articles and I even wrote a Letter to the Editor defending you against Edward Isaac Dovere's nasty smear job against you a few years ago (it went unpublished of course).
Anyhow, I'm trying to find evidence to support your assertion that the bulk of $12T wasn't paid back by the banks. I'm using multiple search engines and I can't find any. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but rather that I'd like some help finding it.
My understanding is that the $16T figure comes mostly from short-term loans (24 hours) and is a cumulative number. It does make sense, but search engines report that these loans were covered with interest in almost all instances.
Thank you for the work you do as I typically find it accurate and incredibly important.
I see the story and the outcome. I notice that Trump didn't make the banks pay everything back, either. That makes me think that the Democrats are controlled opposition.
I want to believe that we have an alternative, but at the moment, it doesn't look like it.