We need a new ragdoll to gnaw on now that health care reform legislation finally passed, although it sure is far less than it could have been. As far as I can tell it contains no real means to keep health insurance rates down. Then there was tactical surrender on the Hyde amendment so that health insurance offered on the exchanges cannot include abortion coverage. And of course meds bought through Medicare will continue to be the full non-negotiated retail price. Also it turns out the insurances companies’ punishment for dropping people when they get really sick apparently is a mere wrist slapping. But at least many more people will have some level of care so they won’t suddenly show up at the ERs around the country desperately sick and uninsured. Everyone will be able to get see a doctor early on before it’s too late. And importantly the mad dogs in the Republican Party cannot claim victory thus beginning a bloody feeding frenzy on the remains of Obama’s reform agenda.
The new ragdoll for the media’s talking heads to growl over and chew on and pull apart is now ‘financial reform.’ The big boyz on Wall Street and their hotshot lobbyists and their $1000 dollar an hour lawyers must be gobbling down piles of Adderall hoping to conjure up some fine new ideological justification for keeping their no-holds -barred Greed Arena (AKA Wall Street) up and running. (One argument might be if you are smart enough to understand some of the more esoteric financial derivatives, then you deserve to be rich.) No one regardless of their politics likes the idea of these guys emerging from the partially reconstructed ruins of a crashed world economy even richer, an economy that they brought down, especially since the taxpayers (some now unemployed and/or ex- homeowners) and their children and their children’s unborn children had to ‘front’ the banks an astronomical sum to bail them out (and to presumably 'unfreeze credit' worldwide.)
Otherwise what? Full scale global Economic Armageddon or merely a winnowing out of the losers. We will never know – until the next time. Naturally the Repubs, even as most of them voted for the bail out, are now conveniently taking a full-on lassez faire libertarian view that the banks should have been allowed to fail even if all hell broke loose as it did in the 1930s – ‘creative destruction’ and all that.
The Wall Streeters emerging from all of this richer than Crocus is like the captain of the Titanic being awarded a shiny gold medal for hitting an iceberg (or GW Bush’s handing out Freedom metals to the architects of the Iraq debacle.) It turns out the ‘masters of the universe’ combined income for 2008 is twice the size of the debt of the a now bankrupt entire country, Greece, which apparently gorged itself with now worthless bonds at the urging of its investment bankers Goldman and Sachs (see Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.) Since teabaggers and lefties alike are pissed, for once the Demos and GOP are forced to come together on something – but what? That remains to be seen.
The pols are arguing over issues that manner greatly - such as whether to reinstate Glass Stegall, an effective Great Depression era law that imposes a firewall between old fashioned commercial and freewheeling investment banks, controlling derivatives by making them more transparent and subject to monitoring, breaking up the monster banks that can bring down the entire global world capitalist order if they fail and giving financial consumers some kind of regulatory protection. Other ideas include, taxing speculation to reign in the hot money that fuels volatility in critical commodities (like oil) as well as currencies (that can bankrupt whole countries.) Another problem is the inherent corruption of paid-for bond rating services such as Standard & Poors and Moodys. Triple AAA rated bonds turned out to be actually to be triple AAA rated dogshit because the bonds’ ratings were paid for by the very outfits floating the bonds. Nice huh?
To further muddy things up the financial big boys gave lots of money to Obama’s campaign. And Obama has seen fit to staff his economic team with Goldman Sach friendly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s whose key aide is from Goldman Sachs. And of course Obama signed on to the big bank bail-out called TARP devised by ex-Goldman Sach CEO and GW Bush’s Sec of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. But now with Demos are on the move in a regulatory mood with the wind at their back, Wall Streeters have slid their bets over to the GOP side.
So with the GOP setting themselves up to carry the water for the Wall Streeters it should be interesting to see how they manage things. The populace politically right, left and center really do want the bankers reigned in (and maybe punished a little to boot, like hung from the nearest lamp post.) So far it looks like we are going to see a rerun of their health care bill strategy, that is the GOP by dicking around and stalling and undermining things in general will make sure what does emerge is a big fat toothless dogturd.
Will it work again? Will the home of the endless filibuster threat continue live on in perpetuity, the land where a democratic majority equals 41%? The American people are so seriously bifurcated that whatever intellectually dishonest, disingenuously brilliant points the Repubs make combined with whatever valid concerns they raise will be lost in windstorm of left and right oriented cable ‘news’ - hype, rabid overstatement, pundit grandstanding and spinmiester bullshit.
In any case, no one has any real answer as to how to deal with a US economy that now runs on essentially fictitious capital, where profits are made from instruments that generate monetary value but no actual utility. Increasingly the economy has become dependent on casino-like speculation driven by so called ‘markets’ (often manipulated as we see with Goldman Sachs shorting its own product.) Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63 percent of GDP. And that’s just the largest ones, what about adding in the rest? Now it’s all about finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE.) We don’t actually manufacture that much anymore. No wonder we have nearly 10% unemployment. There are few factories left. They all went east young man, Far East. From these figures, 63% of the GDP, it seems to mean the banks are ‘producing’ 2/3’s of everything. But what comprises this 63%? Aren’t these assets valued at what the banks says they are valued at and include all kinds of toxic CDOs and whatever, assets that contain ‘tranched’ that is embedded mortgages that are now ‘underwater’ but haven’t been defaulted on yet? Remember the banks weaseled out of ‘mark to market’ valuation of their assets awhile back. As far as I can see it will take a revolution to reign in these bastards, but I hope it’s not the kind the teabaggers have in mind…
The new ragdoll for the media’s talking heads to growl over and chew on and pull apart is now ‘financial reform.’ The big boyz on Wall Street and their hotshot lobbyists and their $1000 dollar an hour lawyers must be gobbling down piles of Adderall hoping to conjure up some fine new ideological justification for keeping their no-holds -barred Greed Arena (AKA Wall Street) up and running. (One argument might be if you are smart enough to understand some of the more esoteric financial derivatives, then you deserve to be rich.) No one regardless of their politics likes the idea of these guys emerging from the partially reconstructed ruins of a crashed world economy even richer, an economy that they brought down, especially since the taxpayers (some now unemployed and/or ex- homeowners) and their children and their children’s unborn children had to ‘front’ the banks an astronomical sum to bail them out (and to presumably 'unfreeze credit' worldwide.)
Otherwise what? Full scale global Economic Armageddon or merely a winnowing out of the losers. We will never know – until the next time. Naturally the Repubs, even as most of them voted for the bail out, are now conveniently taking a full-on lassez faire libertarian view that the banks should have been allowed to fail even if all hell broke loose as it did in the 1930s – ‘creative destruction’ and all that.
The Wall Streeters emerging from all of this richer than Crocus is like the captain of the Titanic being awarded a shiny gold medal for hitting an iceberg (or GW Bush’s handing out Freedom metals to the architects of the Iraq debacle.) It turns out the ‘masters of the universe’ combined income for 2008 is twice the size of the debt of the a now bankrupt entire country, Greece, which apparently gorged itself with now worthless bonds at the urging of its investment bankers Goldman and Sachs (see Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone.) Since teabaggers and lefties alike are pissed, for once the Demos and GOP are forced to come together on something – but what? That remains to be seen.
The pols are arguing over issues that manner greatly - such as whether to reinstate Glass Stegall, an effective Great Depression era law that imposes a firewall between old fashioned commercial and freewheeling investment banks, controlling derivatives by making them more transparent and subject to monitoring, breaking up the monster banks that can bring down the entire global world capitalist order if they fail and giving financial consumers some kind of regulatory protection. Other ideas include, taxing speculation to reign in the hot money that fuels volatility in critical commodities (like oil) as well as currencies (that can bankrupt whole countries.) Another problem is the inherent corruption of paid-for bond rating services such as Standard & Poors and Moodys. Triple AAA rated bonds turned out to be actually to be triple AAA rated dogshit because the bonds’ ratings were paid for by the very outfits floating the bonds. Nice huh?
To further muddy things up the financial big boys gave lots of money to Obama’s campaign. And Obama has seen fit to staff his economic team with Goldman Sach friendly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s whose key aide is from Goldman Sachs. And of course Obama signed on to the big bank bail-out called TARP devised by ex-Goldman Sach CEO and GW Bush’s Sec of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. But now with Demos are on the move in a regulatory mood with the wind at their back, Wall Streeters have slid their bets over to the GOP side.
So with the GOP setting themselves up to carry the water for the Wall Streeters it should be interesting to see how they manage things. The populace politically right, left and center really do want the bankers reigned in (and maybe punished a little to boot, like hung from the nearest lamp post.) So far it looks like we are going to see a rerun of their health care bill strategy, that is the GOP by dicking around and stalling and undermining things in general will make sure what does emerge is a big fat toothless dogturd.
Will it work again? Will the home of the endless filibuster threat continue live on in perpetuity, the land where a democratic majority equals 41%? The American people are so seriously bifurcated that whatever intellectually dishonest, disingenuously brilliant points the Repubs make combined with whatever valid concerns they raise will be lost in windstorm of left and right oriented cable ‘news’ - hype, rabid overstatement, pundit grandstanding and spinmiester bullshit.
In any case, no one has any real answer as to how to deal with a US economy that now runs on essentially fictitious capital, where profits are made from instruments that generate monetary value but no actual utility. Increasingly the economy has become dependent on casino-like speculation driven by so called ‘markets’ (often manipulated as we see with Goldman Sachs shorting its own product.) Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63 percent of GDP. And that’s just the largest ones, what about adding in the rest? Now it’s all about finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE.) We don’t actually manufacture that much anymore. No wonder we have nearly 10% unemployment. There are few factories left. They all went east young man, Far East. From these figures, 63% of the GDP, it seems to mean the banks are ‘producing’ 2/3’s of everything. But what comprises this 63%? Aren’t these assets valued at what the banks says they are valued at and include all kinds of toxic CDOs and whatever, assets that contain ‘tranched’ that is embedded mortgages that are now ‘underwater’ but haven’t been defaulted on yet? Remember the banks weaseled out of ‘mark to market’ valuation of their assets awhile back. As far as I can see it will take a revolution to reign in these bastards, but I hope it’s not the kind the teabaggers have in mind…
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