Strike Three

Someone needs to get Dylan Ratigan a DVD of SchoolHouse Rocks as a refresher course on how a bill becomes a law. Recall that the financial reform bill passed with zero votes to spare; all Republicans outside of the New England triumvirate of Snowe, Collins, and Scott Brown voted against the bill... not because it didn't go far enough a la the NAY vote from Democratic Senator Russ Feingold but for reasons such as, to quote Richard Shelby (R-AL), it being a "legislative monster" or, as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) more famously said, it was like "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon".

Well, late last week, Ratigan had Michael Crowley from Time Magazine on his show to discuss the passing of the bill and Crowley reported:

I think (the Obama administration) feel like the financial reform bill was the best they could do. Again, in a perfect world, they might have done some things a little differently, but the numbers in the congress are very hard for the Democrats.

That makes sense does it not? Dealing with the "Party of No" means you end up selling out key principles to get those last couple votes. It happened in the health care bill with the special deals for Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida. Now it happened in this bill with the deal for Scott Brown and the watering down of other parts of the bill (such as the stripping out of new regulations on the rating agencies). As ugly and as unfortunate as this is, such is Washington D.C. with a Republican Party trying to score political points on every single issue by opposing what a Democratic Party majority is trying to accomplish.

Ratigan, unwilling to see it for what it is, instead says:

Teddy Roosevelt had the audacity to break those institutions up and resurrect a truly creative, dynamic, adaptable country. This president doesn't seem to have that where-with-all.

Well, yes, props to Teddy Roosevelt. He is not on Mount Rushmore for no reason. However, Roosevelt had the authority to do his trust busting because of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It's not like he was the one who got that passed (and it had passed almost unanimously... one vote against in the entire congress... perhaps the 1890 version of Ron Paul?) So the heck with "where-with-all", what is the authority he wants Obama to use to impose new rules on Wall Street? No matter how much of a Big Government, socialist, communist, etc. the right wing thinks Obama is, he is still bound by the Constitution and the laws and statutes enacted in the past 220+ years and, as such, we are left a legislative process which produces the Dodd-Frank Act and all the problems it doesn't address because the members of Congress do not want them addressed.

Strike Two

I am tired of Mr. Ratigan sort of ranting in multiple directions with regards to the availability of capital in this country. He has spent weeks, if not months, just ranting and raving about how all the banks (or, at least, the big Wall Street banks) "steal" all the money and that is why there is no capital in the system, no investment going on and, hence, no jobs being created.

He is still arguing that point (actually, it is somewhat reminiscent of Ross Perot and the "giant sucking sound" from the NAFTA debate of 1992 as he talks of the banks sucking all the money out of the backdoor of the financial system); however, he is now concurrently latched onto the idea that many corporations are hoarding cash*.

So, I guess the situation if you follow his narrative is the Treasury/Fed is just printing money out of thin air and flooding the system with money but that there is no money available for businesses to invest in their innovative ideas while other corporations will not spend any money because there are worries about new regulations or something.

It's quite a portrait he paints! However...

...this brief interaction between Peter Morici and Richard Quest from Your Money on CNN on Sunday (7/18) will probably give a better understanding of what is going on in 30 seconds than watching a week worth of Ratigan:

PM: To create jobs, businesses need customers and capital. The customer side? There's just not enough demand for what Americans make.

RQ: Peter may be right that there's an imbalance in the US-China relationship but there's not a lot the U.S. can do about it as long as it keeps sucking in those imports.

* Seriously, this is a link worth clicking. It's funny because I found this link after referencing the comment from Peter Morici. I was just adding some references to the post as I typically do and I thought the hoarding cash argument could be linked because when Ratigan shows his chart of corporations hoarding cash, he lists his source as Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation (a tremendous book by the way), so I google "Barry Ritholtz hoarding cash" and expect to find a post about the problems of corporations hoarding cash and how the Obama administration is impeding the recovery - but that is not what it is at all!

Strike One

Last week, I watched with interest the coverage of the passing of the financial reform bill on The Dylan Ratigan Show. I have several thoughts/observations about his coverage that I am going to spread across a few separate posts.

First off, the show uses this caption:

SENATE PASSES WALL ST. "REFORM" 60-39.

I point this out only to make sure everyone knows (although if you're bothering to read this... you probably already do know) that the bill passed with zero votes to spare (that will be more relevant in a subsequent post). Oh, and I was mildly annoyed by the quotations around the word "reform" because of it's implication - but that annoyance was really moot considering he spent days flat out saying it was not true reform.

Anyway, Mr. Ratigan decided to make a big deal of a poll that said that 80% of the population doesn't think it fixes the problems or will prevent the next crisis or whatever (Ratigan didn't seem to really think the exact phrasing of the question was important I guess). And he says this:

The American voter has a pretty clear view of this. Four out of five people in that Bloomberg poll say they don't think this does anything to fix the problem. The problem they see is that the banks are too big to fail, the banks give 40% of the funding to all politicians. Politicians then do what the banks want them to do ultimately when to comes to protecting their core businesses.

With all due respect to my fellow citizens, I say with great confidence that there is NO WAY Americans have "a pretty clear view of this." This is an extremely complicated issue and I suspect >50% of the members of congress couldn't discuss this topic with any depth of understanding and clarity.

And for TeaBag Nation who throw hissyfits about members of congress not reading bills... I suspect, in this case, they are completely correct but I do not think it matters because most would not understand it anyway.

I Need Football Season To Start

Another post from the weekend news coverage. (When football season starts, I assure you I will not be watching CNN Newsroom on a Sunday afternoon!)

This time, the host was Fredricka Whitfield and she reached some "financial expert" named Daria Dolan on the phone to discuss the passing of the financial reform bill. Mrs. Dolan immediately betrayed where she was coming from with this comment:

Maybe if they had more time instead of trying to rush this through like everything else, they might have done some good for us.

WTF!?!?! You know, I am very willing to listen to the criticisms from people "in the know" about the bill. In fact, I want to hear what people are saying about it as it is a topic I really care about. However, to say that they rushed it through!?!?! That is fucking ridiculous. The financial system essentially collapsed in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed. For better or for worse, TARP was passed in October 2008. And yet, Mrs. Dolan claims this was "rushed through"!?! That is bollocks!

Then, she proceeded to name some of her concerns with the bill. They included "Bank Stocks Could Under-Perform" (meaning people who have invested in bank stocks could see less return on their investment). Okay? Got that? I will say that is not really a concern of mine but fair enough... that is her concern.

Then Ms. Whitfield asks her the question: "who is the big winner (in this bill)?"

Mrs. Dolan's response, I shit you not, is "hmmmmm... the banks will be the big winners." What the hell?!!?!? I thought we were supposed to be concerned that the banks weren't going to be very profitable anymore?

I am looking forward to about six weeks from now when the majority of the bullshit I hear on Sunday afternoon is being flung by the likes of Brian Baldinger, Dan Dierdorf, and Rich Gannon.

I Could Not Agree Less

It is one of my pet peeves of Dylan Ratigan that he ends so many of his interviews with the phrase "I couldn't agree more"; he could be talking to a far left liberal like Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) or a far right conservative like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and he ends up buying the shit they're selling (no offense, Alan!).

This comes to mind because I was watching the Thursday (6/10/10) DR show and Mr. Ratigan posed this question to Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) (often referred to as the #3 Republican in the House (behind John Boehner and Eric Cantor)):

DR: "Is there a political opportunity for conservatives or Republicans... to call out the Democrats as you just did (my note: he actually had done no such thing) and push to actually address Too Big To Fail, to actually force capital requirements as Susan Collins, a Republican, has done?"

I mean, does Ratigan have any idea what he says on his own show? It was Ratigan who was strongly advocating for the Brown-Kaufman Amendment in the senate bill because it truly addressed TBTF. He should be very well aware that three of 41 Republicans voted for that amendment! How are they going to credibly "call out" Democrats when they have no interest in legitimately addressing the issue?

Moreover, it was also Ratigan himself who has long called out Republicans for a talking a good game (such as Mike Pence's oft-repeated talking point "Freedom to succeed must include the freedom to fail") while not actually being willing to follow through when a crisis hits. Keep in mind, it was the Reagan administration that bailed out Continental Illinois in 1984, it was George H.W. Bush administration who bailed out the savings and loans in 1989, and the George W. Bush administration bailed out the airline industry in 2001 and, obviously, passed TARP in 2008.

So without passing judgment on the wisdom of any those financial rescues, it is clear that bailouts, rescues, emergency loans, by whatever name you wish to call them, are a bipartisan tactic.

A former president once (in)famously said:

"Fool me once shame on... shame on you... fool me can't get fooled again." -- George W. Bush

I guess what I am saying is that if you believe Mike Pence and the other Republicans and their Frank Luntz approved rhetoric, you're a fool. Sorry, Dylan... it had to be said.

Eliot Spitzer Buries Summers and Geithner

"Some of us have been saying for a long time that (Larry) Summers and (Timothy) Geithner come straight out of Wall Street, straight out of the trading side. They were very comfortable with taxpayer subsidized investment banks that got the upside, not the downside. I've never believed these guys were genuine capitalists. Somebody used the metaphor...they're like teenagers... the moment they're in trouble they come running to mommy and daddy. They scream when you impose limits on them. And they want you to believe that the rules don't apply to them. It simply isn't capitalism. They're socialists, not capitalists. Capitalists take real risk with their own money... they know how to win and lose and that's why me and many others have utter scorn for these guys." -- Eliot Spitzer on The Dylan Ratigan Show (5/24/10)

"Utter scorn"?!? Wow... that is harsh! It's no secret that the Furriners offices are fans of Mr. Spitzer and we pay special attention to what he has to say.

Between this rant, a rather unsympathetic portrayal of Mr. Summers (in particular) in Simon Johnson's "13 Bankers" (regarding Mr. Summers lead role along with Robert Rubin in convincing President Clinton of the benefits of deregulation), and reports that Summers and Geithner are leading the executive branch opposition to tougher financial regulatory reform including the Brown-Kaufman Amendment, the derivatives language offered by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, and the Merkley-Levin Amendment (essentially the Volcker Rule) which didn't even get a vote! Well, let's just say I am frustrated by more than the mere presence of Joseph Lieberman in the Senate. I have about had it with these two guys.

The details of the vote for/against the Brown-Kaufman Amendment can be found here. This is the vote that I will not forget... you know how a lot of people are angry about TARP (particularly Tea Partiers and other conservative factions)? Well, this should be the mirrored image on the left... those who voted 'Nay' on Brown-Kaufman have, in my opinion, betrayed the values of the Democratic Party.

And another thing while I am worked up about this... where the fuck was Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in getting the word out about Brown-Kaufman? That was the real chance to end "Too Big To Fail" and neither show was covering it? It is just a big, big letdown.