Les Enragés.org: Corporate Feudalism

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Another Edition of: Where Are They Now?

I was watching this on Rachel Maddow:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And while I thought I was just going to do a primer on the the genesis of Graham-Leach-Bliley Act that I've been bitching about for a while in comment sections everywhere, doing the homework reminded me of several things. The whole ass-end of the '90s flashed in my head. Bill-Gotta-Blow-Job was the dominant theme, and everything revolved around "What You Could To To Make Clinton Pay You For Getting An Unauthorized Hummer While Prez!"

Such leverage was entirely unfortunate, because years of lobbying efforts became true (patience please, as I do snag some long swaths from the wayback machine):

The NYT, Oct. 23rd, 1999, reporting that an agreement was nigh:

Agreement Reached on Overhaul of U.S. Financial System

The Clinton Administration and top Republican lawmakers reached an agreement early Friday to overhaul the financial system, repealing Depression-era laws that have restricted the banking, securities and insurance industries from expanding into one another's businesses.
The deal was announced about 2 A.M. after a compromise was reached over the measure's effect on lending rules for the disadvantaged, the source of months of partisan bickering between the White House and Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who heads the banking committee.
[...]
For instance, the nation's largest financial services company, Citigroup, would have been forced to sell some of its insurance operations as part of the $72 billion merger last year between Citibank and Travelers Group without either the legislation or a waiver from regulators. [emphasis mine (these above and all emphases below too) - the merger was "technically" illegal - read ILLEGAL - at the time, and this was a retro-patch to make it legal. Sound familiar?]
[...]

Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview, "At the end of the 20th century, we will at last be replacing an archaic set of restrictions with a legislative foundation for a 21st-century financial system." The measure, he added, "would provide significant benefits to the national economy."

[...]
The idea behind Glass-Steagall, named for the two lawmakers who wrote it, was that confidence in America's financial house could best be restored if bankers and brokers stayed in separate rooms. Such a separation, it was thought, achieved two purposes.
First, it would reduce the potential conflicts of interest between investment banking and commercial banking that were thought to have contributed to the speculative frenzy in the stock markets. Under the 1933 Banking Act, commercial banks could receive no more than 10 percent of their income from the securities markets, a limit so restrictive that most simply abandoned business on Wall Street.
Second, it would provide a safe harbor for the money of ordinary Americans by enabling them to put their money in accounts that were protected by deposit insurance and insulated from more speculative investments like stocks. (The 1933 act also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which now insures bank deposits up to $100,000.)
Over time, Federal judges and regulators chipped away at the Glass-Steagall Act and other restrictions on cross-ownership of banks, insurance companies and securities firms, enabling, for instance, Citibank to merge with Travelers last year to form Citigroup, the world's largest financial services company. But large hurdles remained that have discouraged the expansion by banks into new businesses.
[...]
The breakthrough in Friday's legislation came in a backroom meeting at the Capitol soon after midnight, when a group of moderate Senate Democrats -- led by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- forced a compromise between Gramm and the White House over the legislation's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 anti-discrimination law intended to encourage lending to minorities and others historically denied access to credit.
Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Both men said in interviews Friday that they moved to strike a compromise after it became apparent that the legislation might be killed, as it was last year by Gramm, over the debate about the Community Reinvestment Act.
Gramm had maintained that he did not want anything in the bill that would expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because it was, he said, unnecessarily burdensome to banks. He had sought a provision that would exempt thousands of smaller banks from the law. He also wanted a provision that would expose what he has described as the "extortion" committed by community groups against banks by requiring the groups to disclose any special financial deals the groups extract from the banks.
But the White House found that provision unacceptable and had its own ideas about community lending. It wanted the legislation to prevent any bank with an unsatisfactory record of making loans to the disadvantaged from expanding into new areas, like insurance or securities.
The White House had insisted that the President would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements. Four days of intense negotiations between Summers, Gene Sperling, the President's top economic policy adviser, and Gramm, while moving the two sides closer, failed to resolve the differences.
Such was the state of play Thursday evening when Gramm decided to force the issue by having the House-Senate conference committee vote on his proposed compromise, which the White House had already rejected for failing to block banks with bad lending records from expanding to new businesses.
When Gramm's measure was defeated by one vote, it quickly became clear that there would be no law unless Gramm could get some Democrats to break from the White House.
But Administration officials had spent all day making sure that the Democrats remained solidly against the measure until their concerns about the Community Reinvestment Act could be worked out.

After receiving calls from executives of some of the nation's leading financial companies, Dodd and Schumer began trying to work out a compromise. An agreement was quickly reached on the issue of banks and expanded powers -- no institution would be allowed to move into any new lines of business without a satisfactory lending record.
The lawmakers bogged down on Gramm's insistence that all community organizations disclose to the regulators what benefits they get from banks. Some Democrats expressed the fear that Gramm's proposal would require the Boy Scouts to file reports with the regulators.
Ultimately, the following provisions were drawn up and both the White House and Gramm said they could accept them:
-Banks will not be able to move into new lines of business unless they have satisfactory lending records.
-Community groups will have to make disclosures to regulators about certain kinds of financial deals with banks that they have pressed to make loans under the Community Reinvestment Act.
-Wholesale financial institutions, a new kind of business that takes large, uninsured bank deposits, cannot be affiliated with commercial banks.
-Small banks with satisfactory or excellent track records of lending to the underserved would be reviewed less frequently under the Community Reinvestment Act. As a practical matter smaller banks are reviewed about every three years. The deal struck today allows all rural banks and banks with less than $250 million in assets to undergo examination once every five years if their last exam resulted in an "outstanding" grade and every four years if they last scored "satisfactory."

Familiar? The playahs are really the same from yesterday to today. Not really a surprise. But the nugget I get out of that is revenge of the Banksters today regarding sticking them with CRA provisions: "Hey, if We, The Banksters Of The United States (TBOTUS) are going down, so are those godamned brown and poor people that you made us have in our godamn cake. Otherwise our plan WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT!"

The NYT, Oct. 23rd, 1999 on background:

Behind the Banking Bill, Years of Intense Lobbying

[...] banking deregulation has been vigorously lobbied and debated for 20 years by three of the nation's wealthiest industries: banking, insurance and securities.
In 1997 and 1998 alone, these three industries gave $58 million to Federal political candidates, according to compilations by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. They donated $87 million in so-called soft money to the political parties, and they reported spending $163 million in additional lobbying expenses.
Some other issues generate larger donations and expenses over limited periods of time. Health care lobbyists on both sides of the managed-care debate, for example, reported $230 million in lobbying expenses in 1997 and 1998. But that issue has been lobbied for a relatively short time. Over two decades of lobbying, the insurance and financial services industries have certainly spent more.
"A tremendous amount of money has been spent just because it has gone on for such a long, long time," said Wright Andrews, a longtime Washington lobbyist who over the years has represented companies on both sides of the debate.
Of course, not every dollar donated by every bank and insurance office was dedicated to this subject. But Gary Hughes, a senior vice president with the American Council of Life Insurance, noted: "The lion's share of our resources have been devoted to this. We viewed this is as critical to the long-term viability of our industry."
Yingling of the bankers association said: "The way we saw it, if we didn't get this legislation we were going to disappear. This was our top issue for a long, long time. The resources devoted to it were huge, and we fought it tooth and nail."
[...]
Schumer was on the House Banking Committee and is now on the Senate Banking Committee. He has long been regarded as the securities industry's strongest ally in Congress. Of course, most brokerage and financial services companies are based in New York City, parts of which Schumer represented in the House. He received more money from the securities industry in 1997 and 1998 than anyone else now in the Senate, almost certainly because he was running for the Senate.
Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, is regarded as one of the strongest allies of the insurance industry. Hartford is the nation's insurance capital. Between 1993 and 1998, Dodd received $325,124 from insurance companies -- not a great deal less than the Republican chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, the man who determined whether banking bills came up for a vote.
The insurance industry gave Gramm $496,610. He also received $760,404 from the securities industry and $407,956 from the banking industry.
[...]
Oddly, though, the lists show that Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the House Banking Committee and has the power to bring bills up for votes or bury them, received meager amounts from the three industries in 1997 and 1998: $8,570 from the bankers, $10,483 from the securities industry and just $3,000 from the insurance companies.
A member of his staff explained: " Leach doesn't take money from PAC's; he never has." Much of the industry money has been donated to members of Congress through political action committees.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Corporate Welfare

...Worse Than You Could Have Imagined

Was anybody wondering how the DJIA miraculously rose by nearly 900 points yesterday on the news of the lowest consumer confidence results since that benchmark has been measured? It just doesn't make any sense unless there's some serious market manipulation going on. I asked myself what was happening and ran into something called the PPT, an entity whose very existence confirms some of my worst fears about how the world works.

Have you ever heard of the Plunge Protection Team? That's OK, until today neither had I. Officially it's called the Working Group on Financial Markets, and is a mechanism for manipulating the markets that is shockingly apposite to anything resembling free market principles - all the more so because it was set up under the Reagan administration. Wikipedia tells you what it is:

The Working Group on Financial Markets (also, President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the Working Group, and colloquially the Plunge Protection Team) was created by Executive Order 12631, signed on March 18, 1988 by United States President Ronald Reagan.

The Group was established explicitly in response to events in the financial markets surrounding October 19, 1987 ("Black Monday") to give recommendations for legislative and private sector solutions for "enhancing the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of [United States] financial markets and maintaining investor confidence".[1]

As established by Executive Order 12631, the Working Group consists of:
The Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee (as Chairman of the Working Group)
The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or his designee
The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or his designee; and
The Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or his designee.

The current holders of the listed offices are respectively Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Chris Cox and Walter Lukken. I'm sure you've heard about the first three. I have a theory about why you haven't heard of Lukken, the CFTC's acting chairman, which I'll tell you later.

Wiki's explanation of what the Working Group is is straightforward and uncontroversial. What it does is another thing entirely. Indeed the reasoning behind the PPT epithet brings out conspiracy theory accusations:

"Plunge Protection Team" was originally the headline for an article in The Washington Post on February 23, 1997, and has since become a colloquial term used by some mainstream publications to refer to the Working Group. Initially, the term was used to express the opinion that the Working Group was being used to prop up the markets during downturns. Financial writers for British newspapers The Observer and The Daily Telegraph, along with U.S. Congressman Ron Paul and writers Kevin Phillips (who claims “no personal firsthand knowledge” and is “not interested in becoming a conspiracy investigator”) and John Crudele, have charged the Working Group with going beyond their legal mandate. Claims about the Working Group generally include that it is an orchestrated mechanism that attempts to manipulate U.S. stock markets in the event of a market crash by using government funds to buy stocks, or other instruments such as stock index futures—acts which are forbidden by law. However, these articles usually refer to the Working Group using moral suasion to attempt to convince banks to buy stock index futures.

Let's first address this idea that the characterization of the PPT as market manipulators using tax dollars is a conspiracy theory. The pertinent question to ask is "if the group cannot buy or sell stocks, how can it intervene to prop up the market?" And unless you can come up with a believable answer to that, the whole conspiracy theory idea evaporates. Which, by the way, puts you by the fire in the conspiracy camp. And me, I'm not buying the moral suasion argument, so pass the coffee please.

Anyway, the recent $700 BILLION government intervention in the banks renders the question moot. Having a direct interest in the banks through the TARP program, the government can directly intervene in the markets through something rather less moral than mere suasion. And all apparently with nothing approaching meaningful oversight.

Unlike Wikipedia, this extremely persuasive article from WebofDebt.com makes no bones about what is really going on in the markets. Note that it was published last Saturday, before the inexplicable Dow Jones Miracle occurred. The author, Ellen Brown, was responding to the fact that Wall Street somehow managed to weather the storm relatively speaking on Friday after "Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell nearly 10% during the [previous] night, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 8%, and Germany’s and Britain’s fell 5%".

THE NOT-SO-INVISIBLE HAND:
HOW THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM
KILLED THE FREE MARKET

Traders prepared for the worst, but remarkably, disaster was averted. The U.S. market fell only 3.5%, just another “ordinary” bearish day.

Why the more modest drop in the U.S., where the financial debacle originated and should have hit hardest? Suspicious observers saw the covert hand of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), the group set up under President Reagan to maintain market “stability” by manipulating markets behind the scenes. Bill Murphy commented in LeMetropoleCafe.com:
“Today the Muppets on CNBC were remarking how well our market acted, not falling apart as expected. All day long they spoke of how our market was acting differently today than every other stock market in the world. Well hello, the other countries don’t have a PPT, which is WHY our market is so different.

“There are those who might think what the PPT is doing is right. What they don’t realize is their making ‘Everything is fine’ for so long, and not allowing the market to trade freely . . . like allowing the stock market to fall the way it should, has kept the individual in the market . . . when they might have been SCARED out some time ago.”
In response to Bill Saporito’s comment in Time it might be countered that Henry Paulson’s Plunge Protection Team is quite adept at rigging an economy. The difference between an acknowledged socialist state and the stealth socialism we have in the U.S. today is that in a socialist state, everyone expects the market to be rigged and operates accordingly. In a rigged pseudo-capitalist economy, investors are easily separated from their money because they expect the market to follow “free market principles” based on “supply and demand.” They are seduced into “pump and dump” schemes – artificial manipulations that allow insiders to unload stock at a high price or buy it at a low price – because they trust in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” which is supposed to automatically set things right in a market left to its own devices. The market today is indeed controlled by an invisible hand, but it is not necessarily serving the interests of small investors.

To quote more of this article might go beyond fair use, and I would anyway be tempted to quote the entire thing, so instead I will urge everyone to read the whole thing, maybe twice or more, because it does get pretty technical. Most important is that you understand what a 'pump and dump' scheme is, and that it always favors the big player and milks everyone else. The idea that the government is using your tax dollars to help transfer wealth out of small player's (such as retirement investment accounts) hands into the pockets of the already obscenely rich should eventually sink in.

As Ms. Brown lays it out, it's a case of "Plunge Protection for Some, Plunge Creation for Others." Her home-page (promoting her book Web of Debt) contains some excerpts from the book, which must have been published about a year ago - there are reviews from November of 2007. There is little doubt that she saw then what is happening now. And it don't look good.

To keep up appearances, the "Plunge Protection Team" has been authorized by presidential order to use U.S. taxpayer money to manipulate markets to make them appear healthier than they are, and lately it has been working overtime. But official assurances of a "soft landing" are mere window dressing, aimed at preventing another worldwide depression as home buyers and stock market investors stampede for the exits.

It's particularly galling that this brand of corporate welfare is going on while the McCain campaign rails on about Barack Obama's socialism. Apparently it's not the idea of the government redistributing wealth that bothers them, just the fact that it's going to someone who actually needs it. Anyway, it's all business as usual under the crony capitalist operating principles of the Republican Corporate Feudal State. Socializing the losses while privatizing the profits.

This whole story should give you the right to call BULL-SHIT!! to any Republican who ever opens their pie-hole and lets the words 'free market' emit from it, in perpetuity. It's worth a read if for no other reason than that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and I said I'd tell you why you've never heard of Walter Lukken, didn't I? It's simple. He's the head of the CFTC, whose mandate under the Commodity Exchange Act is to prohibit fraudulent conduct in the trading of futures contracts. A regulatory agency. If you had heard of Walter Lukken it would have meant that he was doing his job. Which might have meant that this economic meltdown would never have occurred. Like the OSM that purportedly regulates the mining industry, or the EPA that supposedly protects the environment, the CFTC has been reduced to an office with one guy doing crossword puzzles and playing paddle-ball all day - regulators are the Maytag repairmen of the Bush administration. Business. As. Frickin'. Usual.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum: There's a great related story from Wonkette about how Cindy Jacobs, a Christian dingbat associated with Pat Robertson's 700 club, declared a "Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies on Wednesday, October 29, 2008" “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion’s Market,' or God’s control over the

economic systems,” she said.

“While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”

Because the stock market crash was caused by the sinfulness of allowing gays to marry, doncha' know?

“This is so severe in the economic area because we are facing judgment from the actions, not only for our stance towards Israel, but our blatant sin against Him in passing laws such as the one allowing homosexual marriages,” Cindy said.

Gawd, it'll be good to see the likes of those relegated to their backwaters again when the neocon/greedhead/Christofascist coalition is finally scattered to the four winds.

UPDATE: There's video of Cindy and her followers serenading the bull to the tune of God Bless America. hat-tips go to Slog the Stranger and TC.

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TAGS: Economy, Government Bailout, Bush Epic Failure
You Can't Make This Shit Up

Monday, October 13, 2008

Conservative Fiscal Policy as Grand Larceny

Alan Greenspan, The Alpha Dog of Crony Capitalism

The economy is undeniably THE story these days, with everybody on the edge of their seats wondering if it's really going to 'crater' or will the global intervention that's going on save the day.

When Jon Stewart had Greenspan on The Daily Show (Sept. 18, 2007) he brought up a very interesting point, and I think he nailed Greenspan on his low-interest policies. What Stewart points out is that the existence of the Fed means that there isn't really a free market at all. And after letting Greenspan pontificate on the supposed fundamentals of monetary policy Stewart smoothly demonstrated who was the smartest person in the room.

And it wasn't Greenspan. Not by a long shot.

Alan Greenspan Bums Out Jon Stewart

(Those of you outside the United States can watch this on Canada's Comedy Network.)

Stewart: "So the Fed - or whoever's leading it - could in fact, if they wanted to, goof on all of us."
Greenspan: "They wouldn't want to"
[...]
(Greenspan pontificates at length on fiscal policy - why there is a need for a central bank. Stewart goes along playing dumb to a point. Then he pounces.)
[...]
Stewart: So we're not a free market then. There's an invisible 'benevolent' hand that touches us.
Greenspan: Absolutely, you're quite correct. To the extent that there is a central bank governing the amount of money in the system that is not a free market and most people call it regulation.
Stewart: And so we're really just deciding , , because when you lower the interest rate and drive money to the stocks that lowers the return people get on savings in effect.
Greenspan: Yes indeed.
Stewart: So they've made a choice 'we would like to favor those who invest in the stock market and not those who invest in a bank, that helps us.'
Greenspan: God, no. That's the way it comes out, but that's not the way they think about it.
Stewart: (laughs) Explain that to me, because it seems to me that we favor investment but we don't favor work. The vast majority of people work. They pay payroll taxes and they use banks. Then there's this whole other world of hedge funds and short betting - it seems like craps - and they keep saying, "no no no, don't worry about it, it's the free market, that's why we live in much bigger houses." But it really isn't, it's the Fed. Or some other thing, no?
Greenspan: I think you'd better re-read my book.
Stewart: Alright. But am I wrong in saying that we penalize work by making a choice?

That last question never really got answered, Greenspan going into a rant about psychology versus economic models, admitting that the latter were pretty much useless in the face of the former. To which Stewart replies, "You've just bummed the shit out of me." Which I guess is why they call economics the Dismal Science.

The important point here is that Jon Stewart went up against the presumed alpha dog of conservative economics and utterly defeated him, tearing down a central pillar of laissez faire theories. The markets are not free and fair; no way, no how. The 'invisible hand' is in fact under the control of certain interests, who make choices that enrich some segments of society at the expense of others. The Fed functions as an economic weapon of mass destruction in the Great War on The Middle Class. And frankly it undermines the real fundamentals of the economy in doing so.

This was all predicted a long time ago. I remember reading an article in The Economist back in Reagan's reign warning of the very mechanism Stewart points to. I remember it so well because they called Reaganomics by a term that was new to me - the Rentier Economy. Essentially it's the same thing - a system that rewards ownership above work. The Economist recognized that such a situation was a recipe for disaster, and undermined the strengths of a free market. Indeed they likened the system to a type of feudalism - whereby the wealthy landowners forced the peasants to work, then reaped the benefits of their toil come harvest time. Under such a system their was little incentive for the peasant to work very hard, because he knew the fruits of his labors would just be stolen from him. Nor was there much incentive for the Lords of the Manor to compete or introduce new efficiencies. They already lived on opulent estates in houses with more rooms than they could occupy, and had lots of money to spend on gambling and hookers. It's no wonder that free market economics replaced this system of corruption and greed. The problem is that the free market has devolved into a system of crony capitalism, which I and others have recognized as little better than a system of corporate feudalism.

Crony capitalism ignores a fundamental of economics that's been with us forever, perhaps best expressed by a president known for his honesty.

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed.
Labor is superior to capital,
and deserves much the higher consideration."
-- Abraham Lincoln --

A healthy economy must MUST MUST be based on production somewhere along the line. Flipping real estate and trading paper 'instruments' just don't feed the bulldog. Ignoring that is what has led America into a spiral of debt, with the balance of trade increasing every year, and both the government and the general public living beyond their means in the blithe expectation that the bills will never come due. Worse than that is the fact that the base of paying jobs, particularly in manufacturing, has been eroded by outsourcing during the same time, undermining the ability of the economy to pay back the debt. This is an issue to which Mr. Greenspan seems to have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, actually going on record as denying that this is harmful.

Bernie Sanders confronts him on the issue in this video. Watch this, Bernie rips him a couple of new ones. You want to start setting America on the right path? Hand Nancy Pelosi's gavel over to Bernie. (Not sure on the date of this exchange, sorry.)

The country clubs and the cocktail parties are not real America. The millionaires and the billionaires are the exception to the rule. You talk about an improving economy while we have lost 3 million private sector jobs in the last two years, long term unemployment has more than tripled, unemployment is higher than it has been since 1994, we have a $4 TRILLION national debt, 1.4 million Americans have lost their health insurance, millions of seniors can't afford prescription drugs, middle class families can't send their kids to college because they don't have the money to do that...CEOs make more than 500 times what their workers make, the middle class is shrinking, we have the greatest gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialized nation - and this is an economy that is improving? I'd hate to see what would happen if our economy was sinking.

...Today you reached a new low, I think, by suggesting that manufacturing in America doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where the product is produced. We lost 2 million manufacturing jobs in the last two years alone, 10% of our workforce. Walmart has replaced General Motors as the major employer in America, paying people starvation wages rather than living wages, and all of that doesn't matter to you?

This is by no means the only time that Greenspan has been confronted by people willing and able to shred his theories. Naomi Klein confronted him on the phone over his definition of corruption and crony capitalism on this segment of Democracy Now dated Sept 24, 2007. In this case she had no argument with his definition, just his refusal to admit that it applied in spades to the Bush administration. And NOBEL PRIZE WINNER Paul Krugman (Congratulations!) pinned a lot of blame for the current crisis on Greenspan and McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm in this interview with NBC's David Gregory. Do a search on Alan Greenspan at YouTube, I'm sure you'll find lots of similar material proving that Greenspan is more ideologue than theorist, and his ideology has driven the country off of a cliff.

CNN's Anderson Cooper has gotten a start on a new feature: 10 Most Wanted: Culprits of the Collapse, where he introduces America to the usually anonymous 'Captains of Industry' who have most contributed to the current economic crisis. So far positions 8, 9 and 10 are occupied by SEC Chairman Chris Cox, Lehman Brothers' Richard Fuld and AIG's Joe Cassano respectively. It will be interesting to see if Alan Greenspan ends up occupying one of the top spots, if not THE top spot. You could

also expect to see Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, along with John McCain's chief economic advisor (and likely Treasury Secretary should McCain defy the odds and get elected) Phil Gramm in top spots. If not, there is no justice. And these are the fools, damned fools and deluded popinjays that the Republican Party would put in charge of finding a solution.

Sad, but true.

~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE: More insight into this story is to be had at Ice Station Tango.
Roll to the pole!
~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR'S ENDNOTE: The picture at the head of this post is of George W. Bush presenting Alan Greenspan with the Medal of Freedom. Which, if I was just trying to point out that Greenspan was a useless asswipe, would have sufficed by itself. A picture really is worth a thousand words. I could have saved myself a lot of research and composition. Alas, I didn't even go looking for the picture until I'd put in the hours of work, not least of which was creating the transcript segments from the Daily Show video and the one with Bernie Sanders. Oh well, c'est la vie.

TAGS: Economic Crisis, Alan+Greenspan, Fiscal Irresponsibility
Car, cliff...OH MY GOD!!!

NAYs ---8
Boxer (D-CA) Bryan (D-NV) Dorgan (D-ND)	Feingold (D-WI) Harkin (D-IA) Mikulski (D-MD)	Shelby (R-AL) Wellstone (D-MN)

Present - 1
Fitzgerald (R-IL)

Not Voting - 1
McCain (R-AZ)