Heh. Looks like the GE overlords yanked Mark’s chain hard, huh?

That’s for sure. Now if GE would put a gimp ball in his mouth.

intellectually consistent??? that’s a rare commodity on TV today.

Keep on rockin’ Jane. There’s also a post on Huffpo about the early days of capitalism and how overpaying top execs is a really really bad idea and not really a hallmark of capitalism. I’ll try to dig it out.

Hey Mark, I got some Bear Stearns stock for ya!

I wonder if Mark is still invested in the banks that would explain his anger.
Anyone still invested in banks had better hope that their bank survives.

Pegaloon

I’m sorry; I didn’t get much beyond the above apt description.

Well done as usual, Jane.

Well done.

Bringing this comment of mine up from downstairs;

Why is Peggy Noonan still on my TV?

I thought they lost.

I thought their gross mismanagement and stealing was why they lost.

So why is anyone paying any attention to what she says?

Ok, now going back to read the rest…

I invested in the banks. I stand to lose a lot. I knew what I was risking. So did everyone else who invested.

Having money on the line doesn’t change the difference between right and wrong. Being willing to lie to keep your money makes you a whore, and a willingness to unfairly take it from someone else makes you a thief.

Tsk. Where’s the “personal responsibility” here? I guess only the people cheated out of their homes have to have it these days.

sometimes I wish we could make “people” like this live in a cardboard box and try to get foodstamps. In my dreams :::::sigh:::::

Thanks, Jane and Arriana. Capitalism 101 for the business commentariate.

LOL

Well said.

True but Mark’s outburst sounds like its personal I’m just speculating as to motive. I am not excusing his actions.

in the words of the great Jon Stewart (during GOP convention)

“a thousand points of B*llsh*T!”

Ethics are so refreshing. I wish we heard more of ‘em in our public discourse.

The point is that the business commentariate don’t really believe in capitalism. Rather, they are plutocrats. Their pseudo capitalism is the modern equivalent of the devine-right doctrine and/or social darwinism, namely a bogus justification for the privileged status of the privileged. But they quickly abandon it when adherence would threaten the privileged’s privileges.

I’ve been defending Mark because he’s not been hardcore ‘winger — unlike that unrepentant, freakish bastard Larry Kudlow.

But if he’s going off on Arianna this way, jeebus, he’s waaa-aay out of line. It’s not like Arianna doesn’t understand a thing or two about the investment world (and that’s a gross understatement, she’s got a masters in econ).

Tyranny of the majority has always been their fear.

It seems like these hard times are bringing out the chauvinist in some guest pundits…

How can we honor stockholders as “risk takers” if we protect them from their risk? But, if we don’t protect investors from their risk, how can anyone argue that we should privatize our social safety nets — safety nets and risk go in opposite direction. Oh what a dilemma!

Tyranny of Security for the majority has always been their fear.

Fixed.

I had to swallow really hard when my dittohead said that conservatives contributed more to charity than liberals. It’s still bugging me. A book came out a few years ago about this. The political tagline was a total red herring because the deciding factor about writing the check was whether or not one belongs to a religious organization. Also, there was data that liberals contribute time as volunteers in addition to writing the check.

I have a gut feeling also that a lot of the “charity” is in forms of political contributions, buying the new gym at Poopsie’s school, ie giving to one’s own neighborhood vs. assisting those in true need. But that is definitely a prejudice of mine, not backed up by any study.

My point here is that the uber wealthy do what they want with any money at hand. They consider it all theirs. And everybody is privileged to work with them whether they pay the help or not. My husband has had a number of very wealthy clients who get very bent out of shape when he makes it clear he expects to get paid for his work!

Tyranny of the minority is their mantra

Or GE management, which has big exposure to financial markets, gave Mark a little poke in the ass with a cattle prod to ensure performance, especially if they’re worried their token foil to Erin Burnett was beginning to slip a little too much to the left.

Also wonder if this was also about meta-level friction between media outlets…

Exactly.
Of course there are a large number of people who invested in banks via their 401k plans and did not understand the systematic risk inherent in a bull market.
But, last time I looked, Social Security is the only official national government maintained retirement plan. And we are having enough problems trying to fund it.
I seem to remember the Republicans saying that we should scuttle Social Security because the markets performed so much better and we would all benefit from a greater infusion of cash there.
Long sighted visionaries in good times, practical thinkers in bad times.
A pox on thir houses.

Chauvinism is a fall back when there are no substantial rebuttals.

Jane,

Thank you for this post. By the way, I imagine you listened to Obama’s Brian William’s interview…Did you catch some of what Obama said in his counter arguments? He happened to address scarcrow’s points about the GOP and the stimulus bill in terms of what the opposition amounts to % wise…

Obama and aids must read FDL!

I got a pitchfork. I’m ready to use it.

I wish I could find this diary I read in huffpo yesterday.

The point the writer made was that the Superheroes of Wall Street are so made in the shade, they really have no risk. They will not suffer if their risks go south because they are compensated whether they succeed or fail. So they take outsized risks knowing they will not suffer any consequences and take them without really considering the downside for investors. Plus investors are hounding them to increase payoffs more and more quickly, if not prudently.

Jane, I know you didn’t start this blog to talk about economics all the time, but it’s going to take serious pushback by the great unwashed masses to overcome the BS that is being unleashed by the corporate titans right now through their media overlords.

It will have to be through the grass roots and blogs, because very few media outlets are letting the message come out unfiltered.

If we want to bail out stock holders, it should be limited to pension funds.

CNBC has boomed since the financial meltdown – prior to September we had to look for personalities like Dylan Ratigan, Erin Burnett & Larry Kudlow -now they are all over the tube coddling their masters of the universe & making excuses for their excesses.

Indeed, they have shackled the unseen hand.

why?
i fail to see the rationale

got my torch. I’m with ya!

Larry Kudlow is the worst Republic apologist I have ever heard.

It does seem that Mika, “Killer” Joe, General Electric, AIG, Investment Bankers and Limbaugh have a common cause. That is besides getting taxpayer money for parties and whores. They want to maintain the neo-conservative economics-more money for the rich, including war profiteering. Also they need to destroy labor unions. It is the Clash of Civilizations.

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.”

The same Bushies who gave us an economic depression, want to continue destroying America. Heck of a job Mika. Their class war and their false terrorism is the true narrative.

OT Kit Bond being interviewed by Ms Mitchell “Obama through his exec orders has shut down the CIA”

totally agree. It’s confusing when a news anchor has sporadic moments of sanity mixed in with full reserves of wingnut talking points. Very disorienting.

I sometimes listen to my wingnuts just to see if they can hear themselves speak and know what they are saying! Honestly, I went toe to toe recently with someone over the war and the lack of regard for human life was staggering and extremely upsetting to me.

same going on now. Toxic spill of debt crippling the lives of millions of people and they keep piling on. creeps.

Stock investment is a mechanism for people to indulge in risk/profit tradeoff. For private investors there is no reason to protect them for both aspects of that opportunity.

Pensions are a way of providing a safety net for those who outlive their productive years. They are what our society offers by way of a safety net, and it would be good to back them up.

wtf? you mean because he took away their waterboards?

Kudlos’s creed “free market capitalism” can’t exist without regulation and they are ignoring the truth.

Kudlow would never admit that.

That is what Kit Bond means – it was re the Leon Panetta confirmation

One of my few Republican/Libertarian friends even thinks Kudlow is over the top. Says that Kudlow is so far to the right that he’d still support slavery if he could.

Ya know, if Kit Bond is upset, it’s probably a good day for America.

We still have a functioning currency, paper & coin & digital. Yesterday and today it worked, and we have only faith to credit that it will work tomorrow – even if there really isn’t any. In the meantime, as long as huge amounts of currency keep getting talked about, we’ll keep the faith that it’s still a means of exchange. Also, I bet we’d be better informed and better prepared if we’d been barraged with chess problems on teevee instead of Texas Hold-em poker during the bubble’s expansion.

paying employees IS a threat to the bottom line. oh the good old days of indentured servitude. /s

Arriana is absolutely right on this.
In capitalism, risk equals reward, something most supposed free market advocates forget when it’s there money that disappears.
When it comes to paying for their own projects, most free-market advocates are at the front of the line with their hands out for government money, and they want to keep all the profits with no risk.
Right or wrong, the government allegedly injected capital into the banks to make sure banks had money to lend for future economic growth, not to insure shareholders against loss. And to add insult to injury a lot of these banks that received bailouts also are raising credit card and other interest rates so people get it coming and going.
Lovely.

And my 401k?

I think this is a slippery slope.
There is no way to correct the systemic laxity where fund managers are allowed to reap big benefits for assuming unhealthy risk.

Society should find another way to look after the smaller victims.

Thios of us who

It does seem that Mika, “Killer” Joe, General Electric, AIG, Investment Bankers and Limbaugh have a common cause.

… namely, protecting the privilege of the privileged, and they call that cause “capitalism” until the unseen hand take a swing at the privileged, and then they start crying “We, the people!” My father used to call that “crybaby capitalism,” but perhaps “WATB capitalism” would be more contemporary.

Yes, exactly! The bailout should back up the social safety nets if it backs up anyone at all.

oops, clicked submit too soon
My point is that we all set our sites too high as the bubble inflated.
We made purchases we couldn’t afford, based on trust that future money was coming in.
It is not.
My 401k has taken about a 50% hit.
Fortunately I am not of retirement age.
But I don’t think it is healthy for the government to make good on the money managers pipe dreams.
We do owe our current class of retirees a hand so that they don’t lose their homes , etc.
But we can not as a whole make good on every dollar.
THe money is just not there.

Hey,
One last question. Don’t you think the header on this post would have made more sense without the name Armey?

You know there’s one angle to this entire debacle — top to bottom, from the financial pundits on television to the mortgage brokers pushing subprime loans — that has never been fully pursued.

Maybe they’re hoping we’re too stupid to notice.

“Reliance on expert advice” is a defense for nearly all of us who’ve been told we should invest or buy based on the recommendations these jokers have offered over the years. At what point and in what kind of case might this particular tack in tort law not only become a defense but an offense against the industry?

To be blunt, at what point are we that are damaged going to sue these motherf*ckers into poverty and/or charge them with securities fraud? It’s not like there isn’t legal precedent to do so. Gods know THEY are worried about it when they lost on their own turf.

You know, if I had any hope of actual recovery,,,
But the way class action settlements are structured, the attorneys get a ton of cash and I end up with a time-limited coupon for ‘free financial services’ or something.

I think the Feds need to recover the money.
I have a better feeling about seeing benefit from the recovery.

Hey, a lot of folks lost their down payments and the roofs over their heads because they relied on mortgage experts who told them, “You can afford a bigger house, we cannot loan you money for a smaller one.”

I know of a math teacher and a financial services broker who both got pressured to take a mortgage more than twice what they wanted; had they not been well-educated, they might have bit and been on the hook.

I wonder if the point here isn’t to collect damages, but to get justice for these folks who were railroaded by the so-called experts — a class action suit would provide broad powers of discovery that Elliot Spitzer didn’t have at the time he wrote his fateful op-ed. He knew there was something nasty going on here underneath all this.

And the entire financial industry failed to do its job; they did not take reasonable measures to vet the value of the collateral underneath all those CDO’s.

Notice the tie – the “I’m here to sell a story I don’t believe myself tie”

How Haines can figure that bankrupt entities pay out dividends to equity holders, other than via use of the taxpayer bailout, would be an interesting story to hear told.

Funny, our mortgage banker tried to tell us we qualified for more than our math told us we qualified for. We set a lower mortgage and told our realtor, in the form of a written letter from an attorney, that we did not want to consider properties over our price range. There was a great form to fill out in Home Buying For Dummies that helps buyers determine their realistic mortgage size and a written warning with the form that banks will over qualify the buyer and to resist the temptation.

Equity in this case could be referring to required reserves, not market capitalization. Equity that was destroyed by marking non performing “toxic” assets to market clearing prices in a frozen (and unregulated) market.

So you’re right that he’s clueless for ranting about wiping out equity holders stake – equity holders have had their stakes wiped out already, and we aren’t going to see banks like Citi or Bank of America stock prices recover for a long time. they likely have farther to fall.

cnbc is hilarious. Imagine hiring pundits to recommend your stock, and to recommend someone buy stock as the economy implodes? Bribery lives on, and NBC (nepotism before competence) is pushing their brand of shit as the best brand of shit you can eat.
why aren’t they listed as a comedy station? No real info comes from it, and it has no value. Much like the stocks they promote!

How can we honor stockholders as “risk takers” if we protect them from their risk? But, if we don’t protect investors from their risk, how can anyone argue that we should privatize our social safety nets — safety nets and risk go in opposite direction. Oh what a dilemma!

What a great statement about the schizophrenia of our business and political elites.

See? I think this was a rampant fraud perpetuated on the public.

What bugs the sh*t out of me is the response I get from some legislators about foreclosures, including Democratic legislators. I had a half-hour long conversation with a Dem who sits on a banking committee who told me, “Come on, there were a lot of people buying homes who had no business buying them.”

Totally and completely clueless about the fraud.

He was an ass. He was insulting. He was wrong on many fronts. But I saw no sexism.

You diminish those who suffer real sexism (like Walsh) when you infer this in every case of a male bashing a female.

tsk tsk

The aggressive mortgage broker stories are commonplace.
Many brokers out and out LIED about the nature of loans.
My sister’s neighbors thought they signed a 15 year fixed refinance, but when she reviewed it it was a balloon.
Fortunately they were within the 3 day Illinois grace period.
Nonetheless, many of the front line crooks are already broke themselves.
Heading up the chain you hsit the root cause – fictional bond ratings.
When everything looks rosy on the CDOs, the downward pressure to sell more mortgages had a forseeable result.
High pressure and fraudulent tactics.

Ah. Now you can give Erin Burnett a cookie for good behavior. She just pointed out the big hole in the pay cap plan.

She notes that the top executives are capped, but many of the highest paid people in the industry aren’t executives but traders — and they are not mentioned in the plan.

I had a half-hour long conversation with a Dem who sits on a banking committee who told me, “Come on, there were a lot of people buying homes who had no business buying them.”

Agreed! They can’t even spell “Predatory Lending Practices”! Disgusting and unnerving!

Want to know the really scary part? The Dem in question is a former prosecutor.

Sad.

I’d say more, but if I did it would get too easy for some people to figure out with whom I’d been talking.

Nope, we didn’t all set our sights too high. Some of us have been living frugaly as a way of life. We have no debt. We saved for our retirement. We paid for our kid’s college without loans.

We aren’t rich. We are careful. Now we are supporting those that lost their moorings. Some days, there is anger at that. Other days, just a resigned shrug at the rigged game. So it was always, so it always be. We chose to live in a way with which we could be comfortable. And we aren’t about to lose our house or cars.

Yep. ding ding ding!

Who was saying “yes” when they should have been saying “no”??? Isn’t that what credit is? Credo, belief, trust that one will be able to pay the money back?

This is was also driven by sales commissions not tied to profitability. If I get paid for selling crap, I care not if anyone gets burned. I still get paid.

When we look back on our home buying experience, we were appaulled at the effort to push a “jumbo” home loan on us as well as loans beyond our means.

We sat in front of the lender, holding hands (to give the body language of a unified front as a home buying couple) stating, “Thirty year fixed mortgage for nothing over ‘X’ amount. That’s it.”

The lender pushed three times. We stated, “We’ve done our math. Don’t push us. There are other lenders out there who will respect our budget.”

When we left the bank, we realized that homebuyers could benefit from a ‘homebuyer coach’ or attorney, who joins them in their trip to the bank and stands with them on “what” they know they can afford, not what the bank tries to pitch them. A non-profit who serves the home buyer, in order to get “safe” loans, would clean the industry up in a jiffy. Third party accountability would be wonderful. We were lucky we had the knowledge and the means to purchase back-up in the form of an attorney and that we were strong enough to not be pressured or pitched a different financial direction from what was best for us.

Tyranny of the majority should always be feared. Tyranny is still tyranny whether administered by a majority or a minority. If a mob robs a rich man it is the same as if a gunman held up a middle class household. Mobocracy should NOT be allowed to socialize the United States of America.

watching KILLER JOE,and MEEK MIKKA,is teh bad for your health

Sorry Jane. This reminds me of when everyone cried sexism when we made fun of Palin. The only similarity between this and the Army debacle was that you had a conservative man criticizing a liberal woman. In this case, that is as far as the sexism factor can be taken.

Mark Haines is a moron and his comments can and have been easily debunked. Going at it from this angle is distracting and uncalled for.

Actually Mark is one of the few people on CNBC who has been calling BS on most of the Wall St crowd, to their faces, on air.

In one sense he was correct that equity holders in financial institutions have already been descimated by the collapse of the share prices. However, in the larger context, and it was AH’s point, why should we guarantee the equity and bond holders any return on their investments in these financial institutions with taxpayers dollars?

I read both AH & MH and they are closer in the issues than you think. I believe it was a semantics problem and the fact that Mark is a serial curmugin.

Actually look at what has happened to equity holders of Bear Sterns or more tellingly Lehman brothers. Wiping out Lehman equity holders was the beginning of the precipitous drop in financial companies’ market capitalization.

There have been several attempts at raising equity by Citi, et al in the marketplace UAE and Singapore sovereign wealth funds, Berkshire Hathaway have put in billions in exchanged for new preferred shares.

…

Home refinancing – I didn’t have predatory practices used on me when I refinanced in 2004. I saw that I could reduce my fixed rate, told the broker what I wanted to do and that was that.

Sorry Jane?

No CharlesHarris, it’ sorry Charlesharris. It’s clear merely from your condescening “sorry” that you have not a clue.

Reread a few of your collection of books on sexism. Oh wait you haven’t read any?

All the better not to confuse your pronouncements.

Try again. I addressed what I think was wrong with what Jane said. Please address something that was wrong with what I said.

I watch a lot of CNBC, and Mark Haines in particular. As one of the commenters said, he’s a curmudgeon.

But he didn’t take the same tack with Arianna that he does with others, and it does smack a bit of gender bias. I cannot remember him calling males with whom he takes issue as “clueless.”

Maybe you need to walk a mile in these shoes first.

Fantastic writing Jane! I especially like the “group tsk-tsk” – perfectly describes their reactions.

Arianna knew exactly what she was saying to be true and stated it correctly – but the CNBC crowd refuse to admit that the banks are done – and the shareholders need to be done too. As of right now the US Taxpayer is the only shareholder of many of these banks, especially Citigroup.

Can we just be honest enough to say that fact on TV and see that in the Headlines.

Can’t say I have walked a mile in those shoes, this is true. However, I don’t think we should start having to prove a negative when it comes to sexism.

Dick Army said “I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife, ’cause I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.”

That is insane. That is such a ridiculously low thing to say, and to compare it with what Haines is doing — calling Huffington clueless — is insulting to the seriousness of Armey’s delusion.

I’m not going to comb Mark Haines past transcripts to see if he ever used the exact same wording towards a man. No one can know what goes on in the hearts of men (and women), so let’s friggin’ STICK TO WHAT WE KNOW. If we were going to go with such dubious evidence of sexism every time, we wouldn’t make it through the first 5 minutes of Hardball on any given night.

Here’s what happened:

Haines: “I insult Huffington in a gender-neutral way. I now proceed to state factually backwards views in an arrogant and obnoxious manner.”

Jane takes this story and runs in the wrong direction with it. This is my beef.

“Please address something that was wrong with what I said.”

Not exactly ‘wrong’ Charles, can you go with ‘gratuitous’?

I invested in the banks. I stand to lose a lot. I knew what I was risking. So did everyone else who invested.

I’m not so sure. I never invested in banks. When I showed my portfolio to a ‘professional’, he asked me why I didn’t have any financials. I told me that even though I am an economists, I couldn’t figure out how they made money anymore. To turn it around, next wealth-management firm I went to, which is prudent and successful, had placed a very big bet on Citi when it was trading in the low 40s, which one of my ex-students claimed was a sure bet for doubling in 5 years. This firm follows Warren Buffett’s strategy and has been very successful at it. They got really burned.

I’m not sure anyone knew what the risks were. It’s one thing to take a gamble. We all do. It’s another to be conned. People who bet on banks were being conned.

Charles,

What I meant by gratuitous.

Given the backdrop (and foreground) of sexism women live with every day of their lives, and which you and I can only dimly become aware of, I think it a bit much to expect that women will endure it so carefully that they should never toss a bit of it back in even a humorous way.

Women are not the problem here.

What have you got against socialism? It works pretty well in Europe, or have you visited? Come-on Freedom, show us your deep economic expertise. Some of us have the qualifications to judge it. We know how to read, too.

Women aren’t the problem. Jane is. I don’t know… what if every time we made fun of Palin last fall conservatives who think like you kept saying “YOU DON”T KNOW WHAT IT”S LIKE!!!!”

Jane is making shit up by turning this into a sexism thing. It is not humorous to accuse somebody of sexism.

If I’m making fun of somebody who happens to be female, I don’t think I should be categorized with Dick Armey. Now, I hope my logic would be a bit better than Haines’, but that’s another story.

Charles,

I don’t want to take any more space on FDL. I don’t mind carrying on discussion privately.

joelmael@yahoo.com

If ad hominem attacks are wrong, then you owe Caroline Kennedy an apology for referring to her as a “Princess.”

Guess that confirms for me that C-Span has went republican. They had a guy from the republican CNBC channel earlier this week spouting you can’t have a recovery of third financial mess with out bring wall street along. Guess this week is there week to talk to the Senate about what wall street wants.

C-Span also had a guy on about needing more nuclear energy. This 2 weeks after a new president is sworn in that believes in clean renewable engery.
Last week a hearing on gun laws.
A republican must be making their schedule.

It was male chauvinism, it’s sexism only if it succeeds as insult or injury.

Damn that’s succinct! And lovely.

Thanks for a ‘less is more’ comment style HOW TO tip. *G*

Haines’ tone was totally condescending. I listen to him all the time and he never talks to or about men that way. Like Dick Armey, he’s an angry white man who had his way for decades and it’s all turning to shit and he really doesn’t like the idea of a woman telling him that. If you disagree that’s fine, but with a name like “Charles” I’m going to guess you don’t have a lot of experience on the receiving end of this stuff.

And yes, a lot of what was directed at Sarah Palin was sexism. It makes a lot of men crazy when they find out they don’t get a freebie on her just because she’s really dumb and a Republican asshole, but a lot of what got lobbed at her was nothing more than good old fashioned piggishness from “liberal” men who don’t like to think of themselves that way and were delighted to find an “acceptable” outlet.