It All Depends on Your Definition of Failure
Politico is now aiding the fear-mongerers in declaring the Obama’s Administration’s response to a failed terrorist attack a failure (one, two, three, four, balanced by this).
And yet, little mention of the successes the Obama Administration has had: preventing Najibullah Zazi’s alleged attack attempt, rooting out efforts to recruit Somali youth from Minnesota, catching several self-radicalizing Americans. Indeed, the frenzy surrounding the Obama Administration’s failure to prevent a failed attack seems to exceed that surrounding questions about the handling of Nidal Hasan.
Meanwhile, there’s also little mention of the recent reports showing how badly the Bush Administration screwed up the Afghan war–a massive strategic failure that has allowed al Qaeda to sustain its threat. And real hypocrisy about the Bush Administration response to equivalent events, like the Shoe Bomber.
Right Wing Breaking News!! Failure failure failure (if you don’t look closely at all)!!!
But note the silence, thus far, about a real Obama Administration failure. (h/t Calculated Risk)
The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.
As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.
Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.
The Obama Administration’s unwillingness to force the banks sucking at the federal teat to take a haircut on mortgages whose value had been blown out of proportion by a captive mortgage industry is a damning failure, one that may lead us into a double dip recession, one which forces more and more families into dire circumstances. Even if you only care about national security, narrowly defined (as Republicans and Lieberman appear to), if the failure to solve the foreclosure crisis extends the recession, it’ll make it a lot harder to pay for all the cool war toys that seem to give fear-mongers big woodies.
Politico judges that “Democrats’ worst nightmare” is terrorism on their watch. But at some point, captive press and the fear-mongerers need to take a holistic view of America’s overall health. And while the Obama Administration had better make a serious effort to identify where the system failed to identify the underwear bomber and Hasan, we all ought to be a lot more concerned about Obama’s documented, colossal failures to fix the country financially.
I suspect that nobody at Politico is about to lose a house, or even knows someone who is, but they can imagine evil terr’ists coming to invade their houses or bomb the plane they’re on, very easily, even though that’s much less likely.
Obama gets whatever he deserves and so do the Democratic officials who are standing by watching all this unfold.
1) Obama freely chose Rahmbo.
2) Obama freely chose to avoid holding any Republican accountable for any Bush incompetence, failure, and criminal act.
3) Obama freely chose to fuck his base, which would be inspired to come to his defense.
4) Obama freely chose to keep Bush appointees all through the government.
5) Obama freely chose to continue Bush policies.
6) Obama chose to help the banksters continue their criminal behavior which is not just the mortgage assistance failure but everything they have done in the name of helping the economy.
Obama is a free man who has to own his mistakes. Geithner and company hang around Obama like a yoke. At every turn this clown has made tragic mistakes of reason and intellect. It is however not just him. The entire Democratic party is unable to respond to the on coming
accidentwreck which is still yet avoidable. Tremendously sad. No one is willing to take charge or even call the ambulance in advance. The GOP will grab control of the house. The Senate and the Oval office will likely wait until 2012.For those of you who hold hope the Democratic party will unite to support you over the Republican agenda….Ha-ha. Can you remember Democrats in congress doing anything strong-willed in the face of a Republican majority? I tried using a search engine but, “Democrats with a spine” received no hits leading to successful outcomes.
We are a divided nation at gridlock in a recession.
Nobody is happy.
HAMP was meant to help lenders. CDS would have become worthless if Obama had bailed out the working poor. CDS maintains value through foreclosures and cash goes to China.
Slightly OT but related to America’s health; the following may be of some help in these issues:
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig.html
It is from the Economic Policy Institute.
POLITICO is a joke. There is no news there. There is no investigative reporting there. POLITICO is just a slick bunch of hacks rolling out propaganda for administration melodramas.
With the noteworthy exception of Laura Rozen. I doubt that she’ll be able to teach the tenured hacks how to commit acts of real journalism, but at least those drawn to Politico have a chance of accidentally stumbling on something that might wake them up to how bad the hacks really are. Good to see you active, ezdidit! LTNS
This is a great point, EW. And, it carries a much bigger political downside for the Obama administration, specifically, and Democrats in general, than a lone “underpants bomber.” I don’t know who managed to convince Obama that keeping the housing market (and the financial markets) inflated was a sufficient response to, what certainly will be come to known as, The Second Great Depression, but they couldn’t have offered him worse advice. It would be one thing if this were some kind of generic error, and the administration were poised to correct it, but they don’t seem willing to even approach it that way. I fear when they finally come to their collective senses, it will be far too late to accomplish anything of substance. I suspect the damage has been done, even if not yet fully apparent, and the scars from it will persist well into the foreseeable future for even the youngest of US citizens.
Side Note: Thanks for the link, jerryy.
O/T, but related. Guess who will be making money off those full-body scanners at airports?
“SIEGEL: You’re calling for the installation of full-body scanners at airport checkpoints. Why aren’t there already full-body scanners at airports?
“Mr. CHERTOFF: Well, a couple of years ago we began the process of testing them to see, first of all, if they worked and second, if they could be deployed without unduely restricting the flow of traffic. And the good news is that we were able to demonstrate that they were successful. We could use them without slowing up traffic and we could also protect privacy.
[Click on “Next Page”]
“The difficulty is the ACLU and other similar organizations began a very aggressive campaign to limit or prevent the use of these machines and it culminated frankly last year in a vote by the House of Representatives to be very sharply restricted of the use of these machines. So, although we have acquired these machines, they are not as widely deployed as they should be.”
“SIEGEL: In your current role as a consultant, do you have an interest in body scanners?
. . .
“Mr. CHERTOFF: Correct. That’s correct.”
http://m.npr.org/news/U.S./122018593?page=0
I fail to understand not only Politico’s corrupt goal but also the repeated attacks by many bloggers and commenters on Rahm Emmanuel. Obama ran a deception primaries, had a deceptive message, he enriched the banks, big Pharma and soon the health insurance companies and Rahm is responsible. He wasn’t around when the deception started and stabilized.
It’s about time we forget Obama as anything but a massive disappointment.
Yes he was, via his best friend.
I have been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out why Obama is doing so much to destroy the Democratic Party. At every turn, he is betraying everything he led us to believe about him and, in the process, has robbed us of the hope and enthusiasm we were feeling after the horrible 8 years of Bush/Cheney. However, I came across the FDL article by PACH, Political Physics, 2006: A Tale of Three Parties
By: Pachacutec Saturday November 4, 2006 6:00 pm and have a re-discovered a great deal that explains Obama, Rahm, Geithner, Summers, et alia. We truly need to work to get these mammon grabbers out of our lives and replace them with true progressives who will, in fact, work with us and for us. Jane Hamsher, I will do all I can to help you and FDL help us. Let’s go get ’em!
Marcy, Repugs started the revisionist history in the last six months of Bush-Cheney with all the “we keep you safe” propaganda. It was as though this was a “game plan” by the GOP. Add the language of Palin recently and other revisionists and this reads like a game plan. Or rather, an internal threat against our nation through external manipulation.
A revisions history timeline would be interesting with an overlay of the financial crisis/mortgage crisis timeline.
Boehner has been way too quiet lately. He must be sitting like a Cheshire cat with an intentional grin.
OT: Marcy have you been following the Kurt Haskell articles?
A revisions history timeline would be interesting with an overlay of the financial crisis/mortgage crisis timeline.
Yes, she screamed.
OT, sort of: An important financial crisis reading list from Prof. Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser.
Word! Some of the actions of the MOTU have been so ham-handed, they may have been counting too much on the myths of a victor’s history to cover their tracks.
You can see the myth-making of the War Party plain as day in the Daily Show archives. And Rachel Maddow’s TRMS Investigates, On a Mission is exactly what I’m on about (I hope her corporate overlords allow her to go after public-opinion jacking myths, no matter who crafts and deploys the weapons of mass deception). Can’t wait for their next myth-busting.
On that topic, I’m working on a diary entry about TRNN’s four-part series of interviews between Paul Jay and Robert Johnson, Crony Capitalism Unchanged. RJ has the best appreciation for the psychology and philosophy of the MOTU–I dare say, even their mythology. He speaks as one not overmastered by a mechanistic reduction of our selves and our livelihoods (aka our political economy) into just slot machines in god’s own casino.
Better still, he can see a way out of this god-forsaken Waste Land, and, to the extent I understand him clearly, I like the looks of what he’s saying.
I’m referring to an interchange near the end of part 4, The Crash Can Happen Againwhere RJ goes into his greatest personal criticism of President Obama. Noting that people can stand pain as long as they believe it’ll be transient, he clearly states the necessity of the POTUS putting forth a vision of why the pain is transient. That is, he needs to use the bully pulpit to make a national myth that we can believe in, to get us from this Waste Land to a more promising future.
That’s not to say he needs to run a covert psy-op on us. The Pentagon’s already doing that. A national myth of who we are, where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going, is vital to the health of the body politic.
RJ calls for Obama to show us what Papa Bush famously called “the vision thing,” literally to show us the way. Can Obama do that? Or does he share a vision of our future with the robber barons with whom he surrounds himself?
Wow, this strikes me as a brilliant suggestion.
Just yesterday on an FDL thread of Cythia K’s, I was commenting on a timeline she had up of the AIG meltdown.
I’d not actually lined up three dates before, but around:
12 March 2008 Eliot Spitzer, who had been going after AIG by using state regulations (and pissed off the Bushie-SEC-fed so-called regulators) for its corrosion of state pension plans was ‘outed’ and resigned.
13 March 2008, or thereabouts, the mega-hedge fund Carlyle Group (as in GHWB, James Baker) had assets seized and was in threat of bankruptcy. (Oh, and Carlyle Capital is based in Guerneys; I’m sure you are shocked…)
16 March 2008, or thereabouts, Bear Stearns was being sold to another firm for $2 a share (the share price having declined 90% in about two weeks, down from over $180 the previous year).
I think a financial meltdown timeline is important; IIRC, the NYT has one…
Yeah, I’d noticed the same details not included on Cynthia’s timeline.
More importantly, this one was missing:
14 February 2008 Eliot Spitzer’s op-ed published in the Washington Post calls the White House a “predatory lenders’ partner in crime” for thwarting all 50 states’ attorneys general in their attempts to investigate subprime lending.
The timing is incredibly coincidental, yes?
Coinkydink?
Doubtful.
And knowbuddhau’s comments on the Robert Johnson videos are terrific! I’ve just gone over to YouTube to catch them up; looks like Part 4 was uploaded today.
Five stars, definitely!
Thx, knowbuddhau ;-))
Enjoy this from March 8th, 2008.
There are many gems like this which seem to hit the same timing as the financial meltdown.
The revisionist campaign timeline overlayed against the financial crisis/mortgage crisis timeline would make an interesting study.
Yes, read about the Detroit lawyer who was on flight 253. It might change some of your opinion about who let the would-be terrorist get on that plane with bomb materiel.
It’s very strange. Nobody here seems to want to even acknowledge the story. Disgusting really.
What in the world are you talking about; what exactly is so disgusting that we have offended your sensibilities?
Someone who was on the plane with the underwear bomber thought there was an accomplice and that the FBI (and everyone else in government) is hiding it.
As best as anyone can tell from their somewhat incoherent story (it was posted in a diary over at the Great Orange Satan), they saw someone who appeared to be from South Asia or the Middle East being taken aside, and jumped to the conclusion that he was involved, even though the guy who actually tackled the underwear bomber said there was only one, and in spite of the fact that the person they saw was, as far as anyone can tell, not arrested.
That is a pretty poor summary of what happened. A lawyer from Taylor, Michigan by the name of Kurt Haskell was on the plane. He told the authorities that the bomber was helped onto the plane in Amsterdam by a well dressed Indian man. The well dressed man told the person at the gate to let the bomber on even though he didn’t have a passport. Haskell wants the video from Amsterdam released. So far it hasn’t been released. There were also events after the plane landed that involve other individuals. The story has been covered by the Detroit Free Press and by other Detroit news outlets. Haskell appeared on CNN and on Fox soon after the incident, but since then there has been a total news blackout by the major news organizations. Here are some links:
mlive
CNN
Fox
Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
Haskell family blog with statements from both Kurt and wife Lori
So, this is what in the world I am talking about. Now answer a question for me: don’t you want to see the video from Amsterdam?
Personally I find this guy to be one of the poorest “eyewitnesses” I have ever seen on a first off basis. I stick firmly by my reaction that he and his wife come off much like the Salahis the way they have tried to exploit their 7.5 seconds of public exposure into a cottage industry. This Haskell dude just strikes me as bizarre.
So follow the money…
Mr. Salahi had at least one rather interesting client. Wonder who the Haskells count among their clients?
Couldn’t you get sources who were less likely to believe everything they’re told by the interviewee?
Oh I heard the guy, the cluck has been everywhere flapping his gums. He and his wife are two of the less articulate lawyers I have seen and the way they have bizarrely flitted about trying to peddle their story kind of paints them as the Fruit of the Loom Bomber version of the gadabout Salahi White House Party Crashers. Frankly they didn’t have all that much to say and there are better and more stable sources of the same evidence. And why anybody thinks it “disgusting” that we have not wasted electrons covering the New Salahis is beyond me.
The ACLU, the organization politicians love to hit more than DFH’s. Pity it does so much to make the Constitution a living document in average Americans’ lives and not just Dick Cheney’s toilet paper.
Politico is certainly doing its GOP owners’ bidding on a more regular basis now that we have a Democratic President. It’s amazing how baldly they attack, while acting as if it is received common wisdom, their singularly partisan point of view. Vile, excrementory toads, all of them.
A smarter administration would spend time marginalizing politico, not FOX. Everyone knows FOX are fools and paid-for tools; DeeCee still seems quite enamored with politico, though. As long as they are in place, Democratic politicians — and progressive ideas — won’t have a chance.
Oh, I don’t know, Teddy. Inviting Mike Allen to all the WH parties seems to have gotten them a pretty good pushback against the terror briefing story that Mark Hosenball put out. (That’s basically my last Politico link, in which he says there was no briefing like the one Hosenball reported.)
Disinformation campaigns usually mean spooks-r-us.
Obscuring provenance is a “real” sign of a disinformation operation.
There will be another recession, there always is, and it will probably come either at the end of Obama’s term or at the beginning of the president that follows him. I do not think we will see any “double dip” and in fact I think 2010-2012 will exceed expectations on both jobs and housing. That said, if I had my way, I would have tried to accelerate the “wrenching yet cleansing” process by making a better effort to identify those borrowers and lenders that clearly exceeded their responsibilities.
I think ezdidit (3) is awfully damned close to the mark.
We’ve never picked apart a CDS or even a CDO to see what would happen if the underlying collateralized “objects” were refinanced, both at a lower value and at a lower rate of interest.
I’m thinking of that hedge fund dude in Michael Moore’s movie “Capitalism,” who couldn’t explain what he did even on multiple attempts. Are they simply unwilling to unwind these devices to permit real aid?
“Are they simply unwilling to unwind these devices to permit real aid?”
Well, I think it is our job to unwind them for them. We need to critique both Congress and Obama’s approach as wanting in conceptualization.
I suggest by beginning with a reality, the real asset is the house or the housing. Houses and Housing (multi housing units) are “Machines for Living” designed and built for nuclear families or individuals. The paper in the vault is just a symbol of something that is very real, material, designed for a purpose, and part of a network system called a neighborhood or a community that has very core social purposess. It is where humans find shelter, feed themselves, socialize their children, and in many cases, care for the elderly. We need to first recognize — and then hotly argue that the responsibility of Government here is to protect these social functions basic to society — and that the financial arrangements, the industry of banking and mortgages and all — should serve those social functions. The health of the basic units of society is far more important than is the rest of the system.
Neighborhoods and communities are important because they are also the source of tax revenue that supports the most basic governmental services, local police and fire, K-12 Education, local public health, (clean water and sewage removal) libraries, community centers and parks, — you have a circular system here — healthy home ownership or healthy rental markets provide the revenue for the services that keep a community desirable and healthy — and sick ownership and rental environments lead to the underfunding and failure of basic services. One of the most basic reasons to limit foreclosures that lead to high vacancy rates is to prevent the deterioration of neighborhoods and communities as sources of revenue supporting these services. Yes, minimizing losses in value is also important, but maintaining the revenue base/service base is perhaps more important.
We need to comprehend that part of the problem has been caused by overbuilding upscale housing, and allowing individual communities to compete on the grounds they are “mostly upscale.” There is not a metro area in the country that has not experienced this nasty competition where developers of both housing and commercial property (Malls) have lined up with the politicians who execute tax and zoning policy to build the kind of unsustainable communities that now face basic service cutting, because the loss of financially able owners and renters (and Mall Rats) essentially destroyed their business plan.
I think it a big mistake to just see this as a Wall Street or inventors of CDS’s or CDO’s big error — local politicians, zoning boards, developers, and those who supported the “build upscale and they will come” business plans are just as guilty. But once you see this locus of responsibility, you can begin to invent your way around to a solution. The key is to get these local community institutions to act in concert to demand policy that protects the material assets and service assets in existing communities as the first priority of Congress and the Executive Branch. But local communities cannot decide on action in concert unless they — and concerned owners and residents — understand the conceptual flaws embedded in past business plans. It comes down to a fundamental exercise with any large systemic problem — the first thing to do is comprehensively do an analysis of “what went wrong.” Agree on the problems, and then you can plan a reasonable solution.
Did creation of complex financial instruments cause the problem? Partially, but not all on their own. The instruments are simply a tool that has the effect of distancing Neighborhood and Community economic realities from finance. In the period between the rise of the New Deal housing finance programs in the 30’s, and the late 70’s was one in which essentially local developers depended on local Savings and Loan Banks for finance capital for development — and this kept developer’s products in line with the capacity of the savings in the local community to carry the product. It was something of a self actualizing market regulation system that was lightly governed by Federal Regulation of S&L’s which were largely locally owned and managed, but subject to capital requirements and served local and limited regional housing needs. S&L’s were permitted to pay slightly higher interest rates on CD’s and passbook savings on small and mid level accounts, so as to attract savings, but they could only invest in housing and very limited commercial facilities. But deregulation killed this carefully balanced institution that was partially market regulated, partly regulated by Federal Agencies.
Let’s connect this up with another phenomenon, corporatization and sameness in the material culture, coast to coast. We all know the reality, every shopping mall in the country has exactly the same stores with nearly precisely the same stock. Local Banks do not provide finance for these stores — There are no local buyers selecting the stock, for all practical purposes, every GAP or Target or Home Depot is just like the one in the next mall down the highway. With few exceptions, the restaurants are the same chains, same menu, same featured specials. In most cases the food is pre-prepared in the same national kitchens, shipped out ready to re-heat. Management is not composed of local businesspersons, they are interchangable corporate employees frequently with little tie to the community where they work. They make few decisions that factor in local or regional realities, for the intent is national sameness — what is on offer in Savannah Georgia is probably exactly what one would find in Seattle, same price, and same display. Money is saved by advertising through big ad buys through one agency on a national basis. Managers of such outlets rarely belong to local business groups, Rotary, Lions, local Chambers of Commerce — and virtually none of the profits from a successful outlet stay in the community or are reinvested there.
As someone who had the chance to wander through large marts in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between the late 50’s and the end of the Cold War, what hits me is how similar the theory of distribution of consumer goods is between what one encountered in the bad old East Germany for instance, and the vast majority of American Malls. Yes, the quality is better, and there is more selection — but the nationalization of commercial outlets produces a relative similarity or sameness with the Old Soviet distribution model — I frequently leave Malls wondering what in the hell the Cold War was really all about!!! Did anyone ever seriously ask Americans if they wanted to dispense with local and regional culture, and acquire a slightly more flashy version of the Soviet Consumer Distribution model? Well, it is failing now too — along with the weaknesses in the housing industry and market, and I contend they are connected at the hip. The same flaws in the business model impact both. I expect 2010 to be the year when many commercial malls go belly up, and local interests will have little to say about the meaning of the closing of such businesses.
Part of the ‘upscaling’ problem is that people who live in those ‘upscale communities’ (a lot of which are gated and guarded and damned expensive for what you get) seem to think that it’s their duty to protect everyone else from affordable housing, which apparently means tenements or slums filled with undocumented or very poor brown people.
That a hell of a lot of people who are white and working would be happy to be able to afford someplace nicer than a tenement or a slum never seems to enter their minds. Nor does the thought that most people can’t afford to buy houses in a lot of places, unless they’re making a lot more money than ‘average income’.
(I had to listen to one *sshole complaining about a co-worker who was living in an apartment, instead of buying a house or a condo, without even stopping to acknowledge that not everyone has the same desires or financial circumstances. Said *sshole is also against Brown People, Poor People, and sex-offenders of all kinds living in his neighborhood, defined apparently as anywhere within five miles of his residence.)
Thanks for the analysis. Most of our problems are complex in nature, as you well define. It seems to me that we want “silver bullets” to cure our
fall from grace…
It took us many years to arrive at our demise and will take many years to dig ourselves out…
Somedays it appears to me that we are attacking imaginary enemies (tilting at wind mills).
When the economy tanks, people suffer…
I believe Obama is still trying to alleviate the suffering and he is not the monster some folks say.
I really do believe we need to pull together, but I’m afraid we are burning down the house…
P.S. I might be all wrong and may have completely lost my mind but shit, is the world coming to an end?
Oh yeah: damned few mall stores of any size are locally-owned. Some, yes, but I’d bet that most of them are chains with everyone hired and paid by the hour. There is so little difference between one mall and another that most aren’t worth visiting, unless you actually need something. (Some no longer have bookstores, or anything else much but clothes and accessories/jewelry aimed at teens and twenty-somethings or the upscale woman.) A smart management company might try bring in more local businesses, or some that aren’t cookie-cutter tenants, even if it requires lower rents. They’d have a better chance of surviving.
Well done. As one who has seen the metastasis of upscale housing threaten watersheds and even sources of drinking water, your analysis of what is driving it is spot on. Fear, greed, and pride–all wrapped together by an industry that cares only about subverting local government, building, taking their profits, and moving on to the next available vacant land. While places built a decade or so are devalued and center centers become trendy and subject to public-assisted “redevelopment”.
Entire comment suitable for framing. But this:
Pure genius.
My local zoning board: realtors, developers, and the occasional ‘citizen’ tossed in to make give it the stylish patina of a public process.
My local council: for years (decades!) it was an ad hoc arm of local housing developers, auto dealers, and mortgage banks. And councilmembers (and execs) appoint a lot of key employees, who chat over breakfasts, lunch, and dinners with the people who need zoning changes and building permits.
— school finance gets hosed.
— parks are almost non-existent (except in gated upscale communities).
— traffic is congested since the ‘studies’ are scoped according to Council requests and if they don’t care about PM drive times, everyone is hosed but the public can’t connect the dots to blame the Council.
— fire department budgets can’t keep up.
— local law enforcement, justice (courts, jails) budgets can’t keep up.
My local water district board: mostly developers, because you can’t develop a subdivision without water and sewer.
My local public (electric) utility: after getting hosed by Enron, we tossed out the old board and at least one of our board members actually has phenomenal knowledge of the power industry. [If Enron had been able to buy us up, we would not have been able to elect our board members; it was a very close call.]
All of these levels of governance are worth millions and millions of dollars (okay, where I live in Microsoftlandia, billions).
And in this region, a lot of people were employed in real estate (title agents, home repairs, gardening services, cleaning services, lawn services, interior design related, realtors, builders and their subcontractors — it was a huge percentage of the employment sector). Basically, jobs designed to build, service, and exchange McMansions have dwindled significantly.
A lot of those people would rather blame Wall Street than take any responsibility for their own screwups and their inability to be realistic and prudent.
In mine, real estate used to be where people went when their jobs disappeared.
And my city never bothered (until very recently) keeping the data collected from traffic studies, so they had no idea where, when, and how traffic patterns changed: they only looked at flow through a neighborhood, without seeing bigger 9or longer) pictures.
We have parks, but not enough in most areas, and only a few bigger than pocket-sized.
They’ve been rebuilding libraries, and putting in recreation centers, mostly because they were getting hit over the head with reality: too many teenagers with no place to go.
‘Crisis management’ should not mean ‘wait until it’s a crisis, then try to manage it (or, more likely, the news about it)’.
Oh, gawd…!
Truly, I think that we live in an era when it is so easy to say ‘yes’ to the private interests who woo you, who buddy up to you, who share information with you, who treat you like you Are Somebody that a lot of well intentioned, rather feckless people who are basically Boosters but made the mistake of running for office (and who couldn’t say no to a donut if it offered them a Happy Meal), figured:
(a) even if it blows up, it won’t be on my watch
(b) this is so complicated that I can blame plenty of other people
(c) it’s easier to fire someone than face the truth
(d) it’s easier to call for a new, expensive study that will allow me to stall on a decision than face the truth
(f) it’s easier to avoid making any decision than face the truth
(g) it’s easier to do anything OTHER THAN decisive action that would confront the truth and prevent future problems.
We have had so little ability to track, monitor, and hold electeds accountable for huge decisions (like how much your approval of a 220 house subdivision is going to cost the school district for the next ten years) that we’ve ended up with people who are very, very good at P.R.
And shitty at actual governing.
And GWBush was iconic in that regard; he was a master of off-books spending, opaque decision-making, and using any artiface at hand to try and inflict “Mission Accomplished” messaging on an afflicted, confused, anxious public.
So why would any local Mayor or Council think that governing was anything more than elaborate PR manipulations?
Keep statistics?
Who needs em if you can invent ‘prettier’ ones, right?
Yikies….
We have streets with six-inch-tall weeds in the center divider.
We have streets that have to get to the point where a dirt road would be less bumpy, before they’re repaved.
We have area with no street lights, because the people in the neighborhood can’t afford the charges for installing them, and the city won’t put them up without the residents fronting the money.
The stuff downtown is maintained, though: anywhere a politician lives or works gets taken care of first.
(We have some I’ve been voting against for years, but they manage to convince people they can do the job. Right up until they fall over dead,, like one of the sheriffs we had.)
O.M.G….
whoa.
That sounds more like a Russian city or a Banana Republic than what we want to believe about the U.S.
I’ve observed in my region that in many instances, these local business geniuses with their free-marketeering go-go Boosterism prefer a dumbass elected they can control to a smart, competent elected.
We’ve had some good people recently, but only mostly post-Katrina, as people begin to kind of wonder if maybe ‘markets’ aren’t the solution to every problem.
I associate the kind of situation you describe with a disrespect of government, and a view that business is always smarter and more ‘competent’ than government. The more ‘government’ is viewed with disdain, the less likely it is to be able to create the infrastructure and ‘social capital’ that IMVHO forms the basis of legitimate, sustainable prosperity.
What a grim story.
“The same flaws in the business model impact both. I expect 2010 to be the year when many commercial malls go belly up, and local interests will have little to say about the meaning of the closing of such businesses.”
I moved to a college town from Chicago over 25 years ago. Upon arrival, this locale had 4 malls. We are down to one. There were 5 colleges and universities. Down to three. We had several international company head quarters. Zero. Things change and in some respects the stay the same. The ghetto was more of a problem than today. There are more people, more jobs (not better)and continual sprawl. There is a tremendous increase in self-employment. We used to have one plasma donation center. Soon we will have three. One drug study company. This new year brings number four.
Nice commpendium of micro effects of macro policies. I do macro. I appreciate those who can attach it to micro. Thanks.
Just sent your comment to everyone I know who would understand it. Thanks. One of the best comments on FDL ever.
I think that you’d find Rick Bookstaber’s questioning of whether derivatives actually cause economic growth to be of great interest.
Also, this week Robert Johnson was on some videos at HuffPo explaining how the banksters claims of ‘complexity’ defeated efforts to clean up the banks in a crisis.
That’s the very series I’ve been watching all day. It’s from The Real News Network. You can even download all four parts, and there are transcripts, too, except for part 4.
What Bookstaber describes is the process by which a bubble begins, success feeding on itself until expectations exceed the ability of a vehicle to deliver.
It’s a smallish view of what happened or at least only a partial explanation since there was a much larger super-bubble — or at least I agree with George Soros that we had a super-bubble which blew out in 2008. (See his book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means (available for free online), Part II, Chapter 5 for an explanation.)
Our financial system continued to bet on small bubbles, believing the market was inherently self-correcting, pointing to each small bubble’s rise and fall as proof that the system worked. But there was a much larger bubble they were building based upon these misconceptions, and it fundamentally blew out all of that crap about self-correction.
Yeah, it self-corrects, all right: it does so in spectacularly nasty fashion. It smacked us up along side the head with a clue-by-four to remind us that regulation is absolutely essential to a sound banking system, that financial tools must be easily understood to be effectively regulated and in turn, safe for use, and when distributed widely, greed without checks and balances will destroy it all.
Bookstaber makes it all sound rather quaint and neat, by saying that banks inherently demand increased economic rents and did so through informational asymmetries and non-standard innovative products. How tidy, how benign it sounds, instead of calling it greed without checks.
Bubbles are simply the false concept that wealth can be created by demand. There is no basis for this in reality. It’s completely an illusion which uses the biggest bubble of all
fiat money and a credit based economy.
Thanks for the lecture, SanderO.
My point was about the super-bubble if you’d care to actually read what I said.
Interesting reaction; your reaction reminds me that sometimes reading only one blogpost is not actually fair to an author; Bookstaber’s body of work, particularly his ‘Demons of Our Own Design’ in which he leads the reader right inside those derivative formulas, their history, and a host of other topics, is a terrific resource. He knows full well it’s a dangerous demon, and he explains why in a fashion that helps the reader grasp the inherent recklessness off too many derivatives and the way in which they were designed, marketed, and sold.
(Nomi Prins, in her “It Takes A Pillage” writes about giving a presentation on derivatives while she was on Wall Street; the managers who should have been there had ‘better things’ to do with their time and sent their subordinates. Which suggests that people who should have been more curious didn’t really want to know what was inside those black boxes.)
As for Soros… where to begin?
I’ve read three of his books, including the one that you cite.
(‘Devoured’ would be more accurate than ‘read,’ actually.)
He is a philosopher, methinks.
He thinks about thinking.
And how thinking affects market behavior.
And how thinking about thinking can be socially influenced.
And how all those influences can inflate – and deflate – bubbles.
And how often we conflate ‘religions’, with ‘politics’, with ‘economics’, which only makes all of them more confusing and garbled in our minds.
I found that book particularly interesting in the sense that he wrote about coming back to the market and how radically changed it was, that ‘financial instruments’ that had not existed when he’d retired were all of a sudden sprouting like mushrooms. (Okay, I take liberties in relating what he said; he didn’t say it that way, but that’s the meaning that I took.)
And his 2006 book predicted the collapse of the housing market at a time when that was not at all a ‘fashionable’ nor acceptable view. His track record is so outstanding that there must be a lot of Iagos turning green as they’ve watched him over time.
It made me chuckle when the neocons slammed Scott McClellan’s book as being published by ‘Soros’s vanity press’; having read Mr. Soros’s work, ‘vain’ is the last word that I’d use to describe his analyses.
Rigorous, yes.
‘Vain’…? Not one bit ;-)
I’ve worked in the bowels of Fortune 100 companies, been there when early derivative instruments were implemented inside a captive insurance firm — hell, I’ve actually read them, held them in my hands, filed the documents, received the checks.
I’m very familiar with the language one might use to discuss these topics among others with similar education in business and finance. Bookstaber writes in a language which is the same as that in business texts, used in board rooms. It’s the language of Shock Doctrinaires. You might think I’m being unkind to him, but frankly, it’s a problem when we continue to talk in euphemisms, like “slipped the surly bonds” instead of “dead.” Until we pointedly begin having regular, systematic conversations as we do business about the ethics involved — whether the choices being made are ethical at all, not merely legal — while using candid and blunt terms, we are going to continue to see a corporate elite abusing citizens, treating them as mere fungibles.
Yeah, they taught me to use the word “fungibles” in business school (specifically, in Human Resources 201). You’re all just fungibles, another business euphemism or an un-pretty label for something which can be quantified by hours of labor and units of consumption, substituted with simple algebra. Our business schools teach us how to remove humanity from our language for the purposes of conducting business, and that’s a fundamental problem.
Perhaps Bookstaber is merely another victim of the existing system, but I have a difficult time with language which refers to “increasing demand for economic rents” rather than “greed.”
Language used to obscure rather than clarify: Oh yeah. Like calling people ‘resources’: it makes people sound like something that you can go out and find new supplies, without having to deal with education and training and all those other expensive-but-necessary items. (It also makes it sound like you can go out on the street and find people who can do complex or technical jobs, at a dime a dozen.)
Okay, I follow you now; thanks for the followup.
I heard ‘fungibles’ from a Cmu instructor (probably a guy who never completed his PhD, I suspect) who was a crap instructor and in retrospect I have a hunch he was headed toward some pretty heavy substance abuse problems. He tried to tell us all that we were ‘fungible’, and by then I had already dropped out of several colleges, worked, tried going back to university — and then ran into this pathetic creature. It’s a wonder I ever got a degree at all; these people bore the sh*t out of me. Ye, gads!
I figured that I was less ‘fungible’ than he was because I knew how to suck it up and he’d probably never been in a city where he didn’t understand a word of the local language. ‘fungible’ is a view that I’ve really only ever heard around academics or the most driven, short-sighted biz types.
Clearly, Bookstaber’s been socialized; he’s also quite clearly a fairly abstract thinker.
Anyway, here’s hoping that he can still call bullshit in language that will enlighten.
That would make him ‘unfungible’, which is always a good thing.
The nexis between clear thinking, clear language, and ethics does seem to be a repetitive theme at EW’s ;-))
how the banksters claims of ‘complexity’ defeated efforts to clean up the banks in a crisis
IIRC this claim, which is primarily a tactic, not a fact, was found to be efficacious during the 1980s S&L/banking crisis; I think WKBlack, or else Pizzo et al, or else Calavita et al were all over how it kept the public from thinking there was anything to follow in those stories until much too late.
Many such tactics that have worked recently to the heisters advantange seem to have been tried out then.
Tangentially, a concept to keep in mind: the game theory version of focal point. Also, if it was someone here who sent me to Parry’s article (I’m lost), thanks.
Thanks for the links; Robert Johnson also mentions this tactic in his Real News Network interviews, which knowbuddhau has kindly linked on this thread.
O/T, but you gotta love this. It seems every cloud has a silver lining.
Cities, counties take back corporate tax breaks
O/T. Apparently, there is new info about UK torture.
Claims: UK interrogators ‘routinely’ used sexual abuse against Iraqi prisoners
This may be slightly OT but unless I missed it, no one has commented on John Brennan receiving an ethics waiver to lead the investigation of who dropped the ball in the “underpants bomber” debacle.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/12/white_house_grants_ethics_waiver_to_john_brennan.php
Three days ago right here at Emptywheel.
Missed it. Thanks for the link.
Do I sense disillusion and abandonment here?
I felt the same bottom after I voted for McGovern. Since he never entered office I was spared the “What the hell did I vote for?” hand-wringing evident here.
The conservatives and the right are greatly energized, motivated, and have the numbers to extinguish any hope during the 2010 elections that liberals and progressives had in advancing Obama’s mantra of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”.
Are you buying into this “transformation?” Are you beginning to understand what Obama’s “transformation” entails?
I vividly remember being in 5th grade and hearing our principal tell us over the school p.a. that President Kennedy was assassinated. 12 year-old boys do cry.
Kids, stop crying. This is America, the home of the free, the land of the brave. America is still the best country on the planet.
The right way to transform and improve America is to not buy into the Utopian idealism, Unicorns, flying monkeys, and oratorical bombast that propelled a jr. Senator Obama to the heights of the Presidency.
My hometown is Chicago, where ‘Hizzoner Mayor Daley got votes from dead people, as did Obama.
You want more of this? I think not.
And look at the latest…
…Mission accomplished…
Paging twolf1!!
Urgently needed for Photoshopping task!
Curiously, there is not a button labelled “Fuck Bush and the Cheney He Rode In On” to click. I guess I cannot participate…
“not a button labelled “Fuck Bush and the Cheney He Rode In On” to click.”
This wins the smile of the day award.
That was cruel!
Calling all lefties. The report on prior failures in Afghanistan is a military self-serving report and nothing more. They want more resources. End of message.
In fact the response to 9/11 should have been spook and police action, not military. There now, that didn’t take 422 pages.
WE are Al Qaeda.
The CIA and its sister intel services, MI6, Mossad, ISI are Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda is the mother of all false flags.
It keeps giving and giving… to the MIC that is.
Obama is a failure (to we the people), but not for the reasons Politico states.
Obama is having success in keeping the top one percent obscenely wealthy – Rupert Murdoch and Geithner types are still obscenely wealthy (at our expense, of course).
Railroad tycoon John Snow is another one. He stands to make a killing with rail expansion.
It All Depends on Your Definition of Failure
I feel that it all rather depends on the definition of Terrorism.
State Sponsored Terrorism, theirs, ours, – we’re letting ourselves be framed.
If anyone knows what failure is, it’s the republicans. They invented it. They perpetuated it for 8 years. They almost brought down the entire finanical system in this country.
edit: Of course they had help from the dimwits.
Don’t think this financial disaster is over. CNBC and its idiot counterparts at FOX Business may want everyone to believe that the worst is over, but the worst is yet to come.
I’m not happy about it and I’m not looking forward to it, but there have been no, I repeat, no changes to how the financial sector operates including bonus payouts and privileged tax treatment.
Watch. Personally I’m waiting to see Larry Kudlow explode on camera, I mean literally, head explode.
Trust me I am under no illusions about the financial system. I agree with you about the worst coming.
Kudlow’s head exploding would be a nice treat.
Oh dear. I’m not normally one for revenge. But I was once on Charlie Rose (1992 before the election) with Kudlow and American Stock Exchange head. I was the Clinton defender. Amex guy couldn’t care less about what anyone said, so it was me v. Kudlow and he dominated. So finally having his head explode would be sweet.
You are some schmart cookie.
!!!
Hey, Lurk, are you on duty? My edit time is elapsed, and maybe you could delete my comment @65! You could leave “I’m SO DENSE! ” in though.
Sounds like it be especially sweet for you.
You know, that might actually be helpful; if an adequate number of far-right investors saw Larry Kudlow’s mental bubble pop on cable, it might crack open their little pea brains.
There were an estimated 3000 insolvent banks here in the U.S. last year. When is that shoe going to drop? More than 50% of all home mortgage holders are under water. When will that shoe drop?
Until we deal with these truths, it’s all bullshit — a new bubble made of hot air and excrement.
Our war tactics are the personification of state sponsored terrorism – witness Shock and Awe, drone attacks Falujah. It’s how we fight – we terrorize and destroy wantonly.
The we figured out we can create our own global nuisance enemy. We learned from the Israelis that you can use false flag operations to justify a HUGE counter strike. and of course gain the public and or the world’s support.
911 was the coup de grace of false flags and all the little one thereafter are only the evidence that this enemy (bhahhhha) are still planning to attack us and must be met with every means including humiliating and stripping our rights.
WAKE UP AMERICA – the MIC and intel IS THE ENEMY of the American people AND the world.
They have not done a single good thing for the people ANYWHERE EVER.
Now that obama stuck his fingers into the wall street dyke, the ‘markets are self correcting’ meme has been granted another life.
Unless we insist in some american bolshevik fashion to claw back all the ill gotten loot, and perp walk the fuckers.
edit: and it all starts with the ‘permissive’, crony government.
we’ll be paying for this shit for generations
Yep, the left-wing seems to be beating the right-wing in saying failure, failure, failure, regarding Obama. Point in case.
Here are a few of the parts of Crony Capitalism Unchanged that express a fundamental shift, away from society as mechanism toward an organic way of being in the world. You can hear it in the metaphors RJ uses for the economy.
In the following clip, note how Dr. J describes our political economy: as a being, or a machine?
It’s clear to me that Dr. Johnson conceives of the body politic as an organism. He never reduces us to a mechanical model. He’s even more explicit in part 4. Hallefreakinlujah, doc!
Changing the incentive structure is necessary, but won’t be sufficient to prevent another collapse, because our intentions, not our incentives, materialize our realities. People who intend to jack the public for all we’re worth simply can’t imagine, let alone intend, let alone create the kind of world we intend. It’s modern day cannibalism, what the banksters are doing, they’re “devourers of widows and children,” a certain Nazarene once said.
Maybe they can imagine promoting the general welfare, but they fundamentally believe in their god-given right to screw us royally and call it the best of all possible ways of governing in all of human history.
The next myth I’d like to see TRMS Investigates go after is the big one, for Americans at least: the myth of our own exceptionalism.
hey guys. interesdting read. gotta go watch Magic-Bulls game. Catch some of you (Ted, eCahn, Fuck) later.
“gotta go watch Magic-Bulls game.”
Oh shit. Time to change the channel.
TBogg is upstairs!
A hero ain’t nothing but a burnt weiner
This is a very good post on Huff Po, up right now page 1 over there and a great idea. This could be a very “movement” thing to do, and very pro active way to fight back:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html
It’s a very good idea. I am going to do in on Tuesday.
Very off topic
Just spent an hour reading through the Danish Press regarding the attack the other night on Kurt Westergaard, the Danish Cartoonist, by the Somali refugee who is now charged with attempted murder of Westergaard and a local Aarhus policeman, with an ax and a knife. Denmark will not release the attacker’s name, but he is in prison custody for at least a month till they finish the investigation.
Anyhow, it looks like this guy also tried to assassinate Hillary Clinton when she attended a development conference in Kenya last fall. He along with four others was arrested by the Kenya Cops, and held during her visit, but because he was not Kenyan, and because he had a residence visa in Denmark, after she left, he was sent back to Denmark. The other four are being held for trial in Kenya. Since he was sent to DK last fall, he has apparently been under surveillance by PET (Danish mix of FBI and CIA). According to DK sources, the guy is al-Shabass as well as al-Quada — and a target is painted on Hillary. One source was saying to the press that the Somali guy had contact with the guy from Chicago who had planned to blow up Jyllands Tidende (same guy they are claiming had to do with the Taj Hotel Mumbai attacks last year,) who is under arrest in Chicago.
Our House of Representatives has nothing on members of Folketinget — but since there are about nine parties in the Danish Parliment, many more words of anger had to be read over to get the full sense of how the parties phrased it. One difference does stand out, Danish Politicians are much more likely to call such an attacker a religious fanatic.
Actually, it all depends on the definition of definition. And the definition of definition prefered by the denizons of BeckWorld is the definition of definition I prefer when I define their definition of everything else.
But by their definition of that this makes me a terrorist.
And if you are reading this and do not turn me in, you’re a terrorist too.
On March 25, 2009, I wrote this post on another blog because I saw right through Obama, not only during the campaign, but on the very night he won the election in 2008. From – 03/25/2009
Obama has many gatekeepers from the Huffington Post to John Amato’s blog at Crooks and Liars to the Democratic Underground, (DU) to MSNBC’s (Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow), which limits any chance of real critical analysis……Remember when Arianna Huffington was an anti-Bill Clinton basher ad nauseum to becoming anti-GW Bush in the last eight years? Now, Ms. Huffington is all of a sudden pro-Obama, even when he has many of these same Clintonites with him? Ms. Huffington now likes these people because Obama picked them? If people criticized Bill Clinton, yet, now praise Obama even as Obama has many of these same Clinton people around him, and in some cases more extreme people like some of the religious leaders Obama surrounds himself, (T.D. Jakes), then I’d say Obama is worse than Bill Clinton. Yet, you’d never know that from reading the crap on the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post is subsidized by big money donors and some of which are connected to the Democratic party coffers. It appears that Ms, Huffington is a money grabber and a woman seduced by being around power brokers at every turn. The liberal blogs are a joke when it comes to honest criticism.
As much as I like Mike Malloy and Mark Thompson–(Homophobe) at Sirius Left, 146–are both Obama Gatekeepers. Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, and Bill Press are other Obama Gatekeepers. Bill Maher is somewhat of an Obama Gatekeeper too….Mark Thompson needs to stop drinking the Obama Kool-Aid over at Sirius Left and every time he has writers on from BAR, http://www.blackagendareport.com telling them and the audience how some out there “do not like the way you talk down Obama on this program.” Geez, Mr. Thompson, too bad about you and others who listen to your show that they cannot handle listening to Bruce Dixon or Glen Ford give honest commentary about your precious Obama.
Mr. Malloy gives Obama free pass after free pass and cannot see that Obama is in the pay of the banksters and the military industrual complex. I have yet to hear Malloy say anything about Obama keeping more forces behind in Iraq than he said during the campaign, Malloy has a typical liberal wait and see view about Obama. One night Malloy went so far to ay “how Obama does everything right so far,” as to why he justified Obama’s keeping Joe Lieberman around to the other liberal b.s. crap of “keeping your enemies closer.” Thus, Obama has every gatekeeper out there rationalizing away obvious bad decisions…..One other thing as I often remind myself over and over—There are what is known as “Imperialist Feminists” as well as “Imperialist “Peace Activists.”” Often times, these progressives or liberals are nothing but “Imperial activists.” They want peace and justice for others based on how much they are willing to give as long as the beneficiaries go along with Western habits of the heart. These “Imperialist Activists” always think they know best and better, as in Western arrogance in the heart. So, yes, there is such a thing as “Imperialist Activists” whom only want to make things better to maintain the imperial system and wars may jeopardize the ongoing Empire as we still know it…..Roland Martin, Al Sharpton, Joe Madison, and Mark Thompson are all avowed anti-gay haters who use the Bible in justifying gays and lesbians their full rights as human beings. They are all Obama Kool-Aid drinkers and big homophobes. It is no mistake Obama chose Rick Warren to give the invocation yet the Black Overclass and White Liberals gave Obama a free pass on this criticism, too. They have not been called on the carpet for their direct hate!!! These men have company too. The late Rev King’s daughter Bernice King is another anti-gay hater as well from the pulpit she preaches from. Check out the following article on how Obama surrounds himself with the biggest clerical homophobes in the USA:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5028975/Barack-Obama-facing-criticism-for-h…
In the words of anti-gay Hater, Roland S. Martin, who delivers the Obama Kool-Aid nightly on CNN, gays and lesbians can be “converted” back to heterosexuality by him and his wife. You know the same way, Ann Coulter wants to convert Muslims to Christianity. Where are all those civil rights minded black folks out there condemning Mr. Martin’s hate and obvious discrimination during the campaign as a conduit for Obama? Martin is a vulgar Obama supporter. Perhaps, Martin needs to go on a diet and treat his body like the temple of God said in the Bible he claims to uphold. Fat people need not preach the Bible until they lose weight. Now, I do not really mean to offend “fat people,” but I do mean to call out hypocrites like Mr. Martin who spews his b.s, nightly, on CNN!
Faith – not social pressures – must govern church on issue of homosexuality
by Roland S. Martin
February 3, 2006
re: Goldman Sachs & off-shore tactics
It might be time to require any managed funds company to report all major losses publicly, so their investors can gripe about how this or that individual screwed-up ( personal responsibility! ) and so they’ll perhaps be less likely to do it again and so there will be less chance a large firm can buy off one or two individuals in a smaller firm to rape that smaller firm.
We need less Destruction Capitalism and more Growth Capitalism.
Politico, responded to seriously? Seriously? Why not respectfully analyze Malkin or Limbaugh or Beck?
The VRWC Radical Reactionary propaganda machine tells another whopper of a lie about Obama and this is for you little more than a segue platform to rag on Obama about the impossibility of using administratively constrained maneuvers to mitigate fifteen years of deliberately constructed malign housing financial flimflam?
Seriously?
Trees, Forest, Wolves.
Roger Ailes secretly owns Politico.com. Listening to DICK Cheney on the subject of foreign policy is like taking parental advice from a child molester.
Thanks E.W. This is important not just because of the millions of folks who lost their homes to illegal and fraudulent loans, but also because it means that Obama is ignoring and feeding this phenomenon.
Here’s another real life story. A friend of mine was going through a divorce. He screwed her over with his “hidden” income as a self employed person and went from making enough to support his family to getting by without having to pay more than a couple hundred in child support. She was a professional but on a set income. He stole all the money out of their savings and didn’t file until after the money had been spent (or well hidden). Found a girl friend and presented her with the divorce papers the day before new years). At any rate…she refinanced under Obama’s new foreclosure prevention plan.
She hadn’t missed a payment yet, but feared she would. She contacted the number and they told her she couldn’t qualify unless she was missing two payments. (I heard this was not true, but there is little correlation between the laws and my experience so I believe HER rendition). So she let two payments go by and called to get help. (she had really good credit and was “anal” about her bills prior to divorce) They complied. But by this time the fees generated were upwards of $20,000.00. They decreased her interest rate, moved a 15 year to a 30 year and rolled all those fees into the new loan. (bad deal, but she was a true O fan and trusted HIS program. I have avoided this by the way and still seek a legal solution for the law breaking of which I have diligently collected proof). This saved her 75.00 whopping dollars a month. WhooofreakinWHOOO!! She still had to sell her house. Lost money on the deal in the end and moved in with her boyfriend. Good news is she got married and is happy about that…bad news is that many others with less education got scammed AGAIN.
We are still not talking about the fees, lawyers fees, electronic check cashing fees, property inspection fees (once are 30 days late), escrow account shortages and penalties and that fact that there is only occasional legal help.
Thanks E.W the article you cite does make it clear 3/4 of the way into the article that these lenders are rolling fees into the loans, not saving any one much money, and that no regulation has occurred. But it should be the headline. Instead Obama and others still focus on the people who should never have been given loans instead of the illegal behaviors of these banks. (Kind of like when everyone wants to focus on what the woman did to get hit, and why she stayed-instead of the fact that a grown man felt the need to lay out of punch on his wife).
Still fighting GMAC (formerly homecomings) and they are still screwing with my escrow…this has been the latest…anyway.
The entire War of Terror is nonsense. A distraction to divert us from what really will kill many Americans in 2010: joblessness, homelessness. Those are the biggest enemies speading fear and causing deaths across our nation.
America has fought and defeated such enemies before. Last time around the war on terror was called “The New Deal”.
I asked a simple question to both bmaz and PJEvans: don’t you want to see the video from Amsterdam? Yes or No?
It is irrelevant whether I see it or not. It should be forensically copied from the original, certified as so by an appropriate custodian of records and securely preserved as evidence to be considered by investigators and then prosecutors and, if there is an indictment, proffered and admitted, if a proper foundation is laid, into evidence on the record in the resultant cases. The rest is prurient bullshit.
Beware of ‘failure’
Look at Labour’s dismal reputation in the British media. Obama and the Dems, you have to challenge this stuff head on or they will crucify you. And, as important, you have to be resolute in pursuit of the social agenda – in your case Health and Housing.
To be frank, Labour has been weak in power; Blair’s project was never to challenge the fundamentals. In fact he followed an essentially Thatcherite agenda and all the evidence is that his legacy, orchestrated by the media, will lead the electorate to a Tory victory in the spring election. Obama’s platform is much stronger. But the early signs are that his administration sees ‘compromise before the event’ as the strategy. Blair’s strategy was to deceive us (inluding into war).
Stand up and be strong you Americans. Obama’s popular organising committees at grass routes are a strong base to work from. Go for self- organisation and unity. We need you to be strong. There is too much bad stuff around, what with wars and banks and climate. We didn’t cause any of this so the fights over Health and Housing and Jobs are where the fightback should start. And that is also where we look to the Obama Project to show resolve. Or, like our rather gutless Labour, you will contribute to more years of the sort of slash and burn social policies that the Conservatives are already promising – even before the election.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the rest”. Also, why do you call Mr. Haskell a “cluck” which I take it means crack addict?
Anything extraneous to what I specifically described.
He comes off as goofy and opportunistic in an interloper Salahi kind of way.
Where in the world do you get that? I said nothing of the kind.
I’d never heard it before. I got it from an urban dictionary. My bad.
I’m not sure how you can compare someone who is on a flight where a bomb almost went off to someone who sneaks into the White House.
Don’t you find it curious that we haven’t seen the video from Amsterdam? Or is it irrelevant also what you find curious?
Yes, it is irrelevant whether I want to see it or not. It only matters that it, or a forensic copy, is in the possession of the investigators and prosecution. Quite frankly, in many regards, it is better if it is not bandied about in the media and public as that maintains a cleaner jury pool, better due process, and ultimately a sounder verdict.
Seems to be a tension in what you have said. On the one hand, it is OK to disparage Mr. Haskell-an eyewitness-as a “cluck” in the media and public but it is not OK to ask about the video in the media and the public to ensure due process. Care to explain why the one is OK, but the other is not OK?