Maybe we as outraged Americans should be sending tea bags to Wall Street? It might make us feel better, yes?

Goldfarb v. Silver — who do ya think wins?

Whoa – thought you were talkin’ about Ron Silver…..

more coffee, stat.

barney frank is seriously beginning to piss me off. This fake outrage on the part of the house and the senate, when they’re the ones who enabled [the current] AIG abuses through a no-strings attached bailout, is pathetic.

For the record, I called barney frank’s office 2 weeks ago when they sent out a sternly owrded letter to Northern Rock and asked them “isn’t it true that the bailout frank signed off on had no mandates, no reporting, no benchmarks, no requirements on how the monhey was to bne spent, no nothing? isn’t it true it was just free money?”

that was confirmed entirely by a young woman who had the grace to sound ashamed.

@kayinmaine: maybe as outraged americans we should be showing up at our representatives’ and senators’ offices and public events EN MASSE, demanding answers, resignations, and our money back.

this is NOT representation: this is the transfer of the public wealth to private interests.

I agree. My outrage shifts from AIG to the White House and congress in about 2 seconds flat.

Buncha bad apples and frat pranks.

It’s a whole damn orchard of bad apples.

In a New York Times Op-Ed Contribution this morning, a former managing director at Moody’s and a law professor at the University of San Diego remind us of the complicity of the rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s) in the current economic fiasco: Rated F for Failure.

Why, more than a year into the crisis, do regulators and investors continue to rely on ratings? No one has been more wrong than Moody’s and S.&P. Less than a year ago both gave high ratings to 11 of the largest distressed financial institutions. They put the insurance giant A.I.G. in the AA category. They rated Lehman Brothers an A just a month before it collapsed. Until recently, the agencies maintained AAA ratings on thousands of nearly worthless subprime-related securities.

They go on to detail the politics and corruption involved in financial instrument ratings. One interesting point is that the artificially high ratings make it possible for supposedly very safe money market funds to buy up all the crap.

Overall, a fascinating perspective, well worth the read.

My outrage shifts from AIG to the White House and congress in about 2 seconds flat.

Me too, but I just consider it to be part of my cardio workout for the day.

DIGG IS OPEN

lol….now, off to work.

This outrage started under George Bush. It’s such a complicated mess that I can’t at this point put the blame solely on President Obama and his team. Bernanke just said on MSNBC via clip that he was pissed about bailing out AIG last year. Well, he could have done something now couldn’t he? Yes, but yet, it seems to me all the bastards wanted the next Administration to figure it out so George Bush could enjoy his retirement. Spit.

The Leftists are coming! The Leftists are coming!

Mornin’, pups.

“Bernanke just said on MSNBC via clip that he was pissed about bailing out AIG last year.”

bernanke is full of shit, and in on the scheme.
the fact is the US owns 80% of AIG, and as such we’re the majoirty stakeholder. for th US to continue with “business as usual” at AIG is a disgrace, and during today’s phone call to boob casey, that will be made known.

The whole 60 Minutes segment was a PR ploy.

“Bracing for the AIG/bailout backlash”

Hoo boy, bet there’s gonna be a whole bunch of sternly worded letters and even sternly worded statements flying all over the place for a day or two.

And then the AIG bastards who basically caused the economy of the ENTIRE WORLD to tank will take their millions in bonuses and, with a flash of their middle fingers, go take the waters at some spa. Instead, Interpol ought to arrest them for fraud and extortion, and send their sorry asses back here for prosecution.

But they’re rich, and probably Republican, so that means it’s okay, because there’s never any responsibility required for anything, from torture and murder to economic malfeasance when you’re a Republican–it’s always OKIYAR.

obama inherited a disaster, really a world wide catastrophe, from bush.

but it didn’t start with bush (although i think his administration did more than any other to push us over the cliff), it started at least as far back as the clinton administration – especially with rubin & summmers. which is what makes obama’s choices for his economic team so very galling. he’s chosen the people who were the architects of the finanical deregulation (not just here but in most of the world) that made the current crisis possible. and they appear to be completely unrepentant and in fact are making things worse.

summers has helped kill millions of people with his economic policies (while at treasury in the clinton administration). there is just no way he should be put in any position to do it again. and that i do blame on obama.

You are right Brendanscalling, but I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of wrath along with the neocons of America to take down President Obama, because this is where it will mostly likely lead.

Why don’t we go directly to the Head of the Pig:

AIG
70 Pine Street
New York, NY 10270
United States – Map
+1-212-7707000 (Phone)
+1-212-9431125 (Fax)

Whoever answers the phone gets an earful.

Capitalism aggregates wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands which means that corporations become “too big to fail” or so we are told. Like a tumor which over comes its host, you kill the tumor, the hosts goes with it.

This may or not be true with these financial institutions in question here. But the concept has to be destroyed. We can’t permit such aggregation of wealth and power as it is inherently anti democratic and separates the people from control of their lives.

Capitalism is anti democratic. The alternative is to control the capitalists through regulations. But that may spoil the game for them if they lose control and power. They smear it with words like socialism which is what we have for police, fire the military which are all “socialist” endeavors by a democratic society.

The same needs to be applied to:

banking
education
housing
health care
energy
insurance
media
telecommunications
transportation

If capitalists want to “innovate” and be creative let them focus on consumer gadgets.

Clinton’s admin was definitely involved, but he had a right wing Congress to have to deal with and it didn’t help that Phil Gramm slipped in a 262 page amendment before Clinton’s time was up concerning CDS before Clinton signed the bill.

The housing market started tanking under George Bush big time. The response from Congress? Crickets chirping. The response from George Bush? “Go shopping! Buy your house any way you can!”.

To Summers and that ilk the deaths of millions is of no consequence. The only people who matter are the ones at the apex of the control pyramid. That the base of the pyramid is crumbling will go unnoticed by the elites.

It’s about time!

the clinton admin pushed the issue of financial deregulation, it wasn’t the R congress. it was also most (but not all) of the Ds in congress too.

re the lack of regulation of CDSs, i guess you are referring to the CFMA. i really don’t see how gramm “snuck” in anything. i went back and read old hearing transcripts and watched hours of the house and senate floor debate and wrote a couple of diaries on that and glass-steagall (and there is also an incomplete timeline with more details):

Which Idiot Decided Not to Regulate Credit Default Swaps?
Which Idiot Decided to Repeal Glass-Steagall?

Robert Reich chimed in on the AIG bonuses over the weekend too: The Real Scandal of AIG.

But if our very own Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t even learn of the bonuses until months after AIG has decided to pay them, and cannot make stick his decision that they should not be paid, AIG is not even accountable to the government. That means AIG’s executives — using $170 billion of our money, so far — are accountable to no one.

But, we’ll most likely witness just kabuki and posturing from our gutless Congress critters and that will be that.

Is President Obama to blame for hedge fund “values” being $600 trillion? How the hell does anyone handle something that big? The Financial Orgy of the last 8 years is to blame. Even John McCain said he brought legislation to the floor in 2005/2006 to put some amendments/regulations on the banking industry and he was laughed off the Senate floor and his idea flopped.

sadly, i think you are right.

Time to invert that pyramid and let the weight of the masses crush the elites.

it was our congress (with a push from obama) that approved the TARP legislation as a blank check last fall. horse, barn door and all that. much harder now, and i have serious doubts any of the outrage we’re seeing now is more than a little kabuki meant to distract us.

transparency, accountability and re-regulation

It was a move that was no different than what Denny Hastert pulled with George Bush by giving George Bush the bill he wanted to sign and not the bill the House & Senate had passed for Bush to sign. Phil Gramm’s 262 page amendment concerning CDSs was put in from the House to Bill Clinton’s office. This happened near the end of Clinton’s term was up.

Many would comment that Marx foresaw the concentration of power and wealth but Jefferson, in his later years, said much the same thing in the early years of capitalism here. In many of his later writings he spoke of the ills of banking and industry.

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday, Sen. Richard Shelby said Congress must do everything it can to make sure the government money going to AIG is handled appropriately.

Even a stopped clock …

Heckuva job, Timmie.

Why are Shellface and Corkhead all of a sudden the talking heads of fiscal responsibility? Oh, that’s right, it’s all the unions’ fault. Never mind.

transparency, accountability and re-regulation

This is what is required to restore any semblance of confidence to our financial systems. Not seeing any, even on the horizon, however.

I haven’t vcalled aig yet, but i will make sure.

for fun, here’s my conversation with goldman sachs and their return call.

Good Morning Firedogs,

recall Jane asking again and again wither the Obama Campaign’s e-mail list ??
(now est. at 13M strong)

Making it’s post-election Debut this week

“That push begins today with an e-mail asking volunteers to go door to door Saturday to urge their neighbors to sign a pledge in support of Obama’s budget plan.”

am certain this was in the pipeline all along, but the AIG Bonus debacle could do real damage now and permanently weaken it – let’s see how messrs Plouffe and Axelrod proceed here, shall we ?

Could anyone make it through the entire Cheney interview last night? I had to stop when John King held up a copy of Terry Jeffries “Human Events” and pretended it was a legitimate newspaper just so Cheney could use the headline in the paper to take a whack at Obama. It was such a barf inducing moment I just couldn’t continue to watch. I don’t know who was worse last night – Cheney or King. Man it was a real toss-up.

have you read my diary on the subject? i seriously spent days reading the primary source material (much of it in the links and more in the timeline), and i don’t see how gramm “snuck” in anything. and don’t forget that the clinton administration had been asking congress for years to prevent regulation of otc derivatives (which includes cdss).

furthermore, the addition of the cfma to the omnibus conference report was explained from the house floor before the vote. it’s wasn’t a secret.

if you’ve got references to back up your description of how that went down, i’d love to know what they are because i think the historical record tells a very different story.

guess i could have saved myself some hassles by just reading jefferson and marx?

BREAKING

Larry Summers spotted in F.A.O. Schwarz shopping for a new hand puppet.

Finally watched the fine documentary “The Corporation” a few weeks ago. Shows how the things are basically sociopaths. We victims are “externalities.”

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

After being out all week, except to go feed the stray tiger, I went in Sat afternoon and the a/c was goin’ full bore. My 300+ lb supervisor has obviously been enjoying it while I was gone. We’re strugglin’ and she’s burnin’ money on the a/c.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

transparency, accountability and re-regulation

that’s what i was calling for last fall (going forward). now i’ve added another component (this one is for looking back):

fair trials!

peace to you and all living things, SD.

Chomsky was the one who turned me on to the later writings of Jefferson.

Christy’s Up

This morning, my outrage begins with AIG execs and then moves towards the Bush administration (once again). The International Committee for the Red Cross describes American methods as “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” at Guantanamo Bay, and used the word “torture” in its’ report. http://www.governmentalityblog…..tured.html

Jefferson then Marx coming to the same conclusion. Now that’s revolutionary but don’t let the corporate media know.