Paulson Kneels Like A Catholic Before Pelosi
SLUGGER:
In the middle of the bailout deadlock I searched for lines on: “What would FDR do?” And sure enough up they popped. But first, where are we now? Politically in chaos, the Republicans are split over the amazing phenomenon of an “unAmerican” state takeover of a large chunk of the US financial industry by a Republican administration. Bush sucks, Paulson kneels down before Speaker Pelosi and Pelosi replies: “I didn’t know you were a Catholic”. McCain seems to have flunked it, sitting silent at the big round table and then siding with the Republican no-dealers.
Posted: 26th, September 2008 | In: Money, Twitterings Comments (29) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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September 27th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I commend to you Glyn Davies ‘History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day’ available in good bookstores, and some bad ones.
There are extracts here:
http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/llyfr.html
September 27th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
A society that relied on Chinese walls is you would imagine something from a fairy tale, unfortunately in this case the truth is stranger than fiction.
http://www.monetaryreform.org/money/pg3.htm
September 27th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I still believe that we are not helpless; that we have the ability to change things, if enough of us really do want that change to happen. Provided, that is, we realise that buying a wristband doesn’t actually constitute any meaningful action.
And it may be that the principal loser in all of this is the US, since the rest of the world seems to be saying thanks, but no thanks, to anything remotely resembling the Mother of All Bailouts.
Unfortunately the UK is probably tied tightest to the US financial markets, but there is a plus point. Gordie has his faults, but he refused to sign up to the Hank ‘Buddy Can You Spare a Trillion’ Paulson deal.
Tone would have been shoulder to shoulder with Bush on the White House lawn…
September 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
And there we agree, it is of our own making , we continually elect those who regulate and shaft us regally, prisoners of our own governments and the laws that they use to silence and cow the populace.
September 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Well, I have a great deal more time for ‘Free Will’ than I have for the Invisible Hand, though that’s not saying much, but I don’t think that there is any difficulty in kenning now.
We know why it happens; we just don’t do anything very much about stopping it happening, indeed, if you look at the IMF’s actions down the years we have been instrumental in making it happen.
The lunatic belief in the infallibility of the Invisible Hand has destroyed communities and countries; it has killed a lot of people and will undoubtedly kill an awful lot more. The free market fundamentalists are just as dangerous as all the other fundamentalists…
September 27th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
It is called the milk of human kindness Chenier or even guilt at having what others cannot have through the selfishness of our “civilised” society. I do what I can for those in far off countries, but it will never be enough, I have many heated arguments with my Reverend brother as to why an Omnipresent God allows such injustice, as of now “it is beyond our ken” is the best he can muster, me I would like to “ken” now.
September 27th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Careful Rasputin, you are coming perilously close to sympathising with real victims.
But people have died since our species came into existence, for good, and bad, and downright horrible reasons; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse* weren’t invented in the 19th century, and we can’t blame it all on capitalism, however inviting that is.
*Plus Chaos, of course, who’s rejoined the band for the current gig…
September 27th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Isn’t that what Rabbie said all those years ago, no the people who suffer so we can “enjoy” our credit crunch are those who have no say in it, every seventeen seconds.
September 27th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Rasputin
You seem to share the common delusion that retribution falls only upon those who deserve it; the vast majority of the people who suffer aren’t the high rollers. They have their mattresses stuffed with gold bars and high grade diamonds in places with really nice climates, like the Cayman Islands.
It’s the same the whole world over,
It’s the poor that get the blame,
It’s the rich that get the pleasure,
Ain’t it all a bloody shame. …
September 27th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
But as well as greed there are other human failings; incompetence springs to mind looking at the ISG’s report on SEC’s actions on the Bear Stearn collapse:
‘This audit was not intended to be a complete assessment of the multitude of events that led to Bear Stearns’ collapse, and accordingly, does not purport to demonstrate any specific or direct connection between the failure of the CSE Program’s oversight of Bear Steams and Bear Steams’ collapse. However, we have identified serious deficiencies in the CSE program that warrant improvements.
Overall, we found that there are significant questions about the adequacy of a number of CSE program requirements, as Bear Steams was compliant with several of these requirements, but nonetheless collapsed.
In addition, the audit found that TM became aware of numerous potential red flags prior to Bear Stearns’ collapse, regarding its concentration of mortgage securities, high leverage, shortcomings of risk management in mortgage-backed securities and lack of compliance with the spirit of certain Basel II standards, but did not take actions to limit these risk factors.’
In other words, by any objective measure the regulators had enough information to be aware that Bear was in deep trouble but did nothing about it.
Greed, incompetence…
September 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Exactly there are no morals in society, the myth is that there are, so not lets get righteous at a few greedy people taking the rest of the greedy people to the cleaners, sort of biblical style justice.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Rasputin,
They will not have to re-regulate the investment banks since the investment banks have all gone to the Parrot Perch in the Sky; if they don’t manage to get some sort of a working handle on the $60 trillion credit default swaps then we may shortly be saying the same thing about the rest of the financial markets.
Dead is dead, and beyond our knowledge; the living can still suffer. Is there any difference between the barracuda on Wall St and the pirates who operate on the Somalian coast?
I see no moral distinction between the two groups…
September 27th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Is there anything more ironic than the proletariat subsidising Capitalism, again.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
You can’t be any poorer than “dead” poor, to change the deregulation they will have to re-regulate it, the fact that it didn’t work is neither here nor there, the fact is that greed and damn the consequences won the day, like I said the child who dies every 17 seconds through being “dead” poor, should make self respecting people wonder what sort of society we live in, a priest once told me that in his view, Jesus was the first Communist, I see what he means now.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Rasputin,
I am baffled as to where you derive your apparent belief that I was calling for retrospective legislation; I wasn’t.
I was pointing out that the man who was supposed to be responsible for regulating the securities market kept telling people in general and politicians in particular that regulation was a bad thing.
It is only since what looks more and more like the greatest Ponzi fraud in history started coming apart at the seams that Cox has undergone his Damascene conversion, and is now announcing that ‘The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.”
Try reading the SEC Inspector General’s report on how the SEC managed to screw up on the Bear Sterne collapse; it’s a nightmare.
http://www.sec.gov/about/oig/audit/2008/446-a.pdf
But if you think that the really poor are not going to be made even poorer by all of this then I think you are mistaken.
It is, I suppose, possible that the IMF, having shown itself yet again to be philosophically and morally bankrupt, may be a little embarrassed at being seen to harass small countries subsidising their own small businesses, but I wouldn’t count on it…
September 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Retrospective legislation is exactly that, it does not repair or salve that which has already gone before, there is only a credit crunch because it affects the world where money is king, the rest of the world has no credit to crunch, that is why a child dies somewhere in these credit less countries about every seventeen seconds because they don’t even have the rudiments of life, clean water, sanitary conditions staple food and all of that which the credit crunched take for granted.
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
Rabbie was a philosopher as well as an exiseman and poet, sentiments of his written word lost in a sea of greed.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Rasputin
Cox was the arch-proponent of deregulation; he’s put out a press statement trying to look as if he was a poor victim in all of this but he was the person who told Congress that there was no need to legislate because his voluntary program would work just great.
It worked so great that there are no investment banks left to self-regulate.
Oh, and there’s a global credit crisis as well…
September 27th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Now that’s a truly innovative though land based way to approach the problem; I’d been thinking of sending them all on a boat loaded with small arms and no ammunition for a long cruise off the coast of Somalia.
I hesitate to inflict still further bad news, but the $60 trillion credit default swap (CDS) market is completely unregulated by anyone anywhere…
September 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Lock him up for what, confirming human nature, for applying the regulations of the day, why not dig up Peirrepoint and hang him.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Then lock him up.
Does Wall Street still have the death penalty?
What about a 2008-style ticker-tape parade?
Instead of ticker-tape, get the now redundant finance workers to lob equally redundant consoles and monitors at the the assembled great and the good of the hedge funds and wizard roll-out packages.
Whatever else, these people should be charged and asset stripped. Trouble is, they may enjoy it.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:00 am
agw
No; you are certainly not alone, the FBI is apparently investigating the prominent failures, and Price Waterhouse Coopers is on the case here of Lehman Brothers, and the $8 billion that went walkies to New York just hours before LB tanked.
And I would even accede to Rasputin’s reminder that there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun, and that the love of money, then and now, sure as hell can produce some pretty evil results.
But whilst greed may be a permanent feature we don’t have to like it, we don’t have to say that greed is good, and we can put regulations in place which reflect the fact that there are a lot of lying greedy bastards in the world.
Yesterday, Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission which should have been regulating the investment banks, but didn’t because Christopher Cox thinks regulation is bad, finally admitted that his ‘voluntary supervision program’ for Wall Street’s largest investment banks’ was a prime cause of the financial markets meltdown, and shut the program down.
This is a worthy candidate in the ‘Shutting the Stable Door after the Horse has Bolted’ galactic championship currently being held on a planet near you, because there were no investment banks left by that point.
It didn’t have to be like that…
September 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am
“”For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows”"
Has it ever been any different, it shall never be any different, greed is inherent in humans no matter the expense to others, or the consequences.
September 27th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Am I alone in this? Why are arrests not being made? Why are collars not being tweaked and shoe laces being removed? These money movers and shakers have had decades of fat bonus payments; the reward culture is a pandemic disease in financial markets.
Time to pay the piper…lock the crooks away.
Enron, once thought to be the worst double-dealing corporate, accountancy failure and banking disaster ever, was only a glimpse of the corrupt and essentially artificial illusion of financial stability.
Once again, taxpayers pay and the crooks are jetting off to their Scottish rocky, Thai jungle-encrusted or Dubai’s sandy Palm islands.
September 27th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Private Eye this week
$ 6.6 bn. Amount of losses in 2008 which cased Lehmans to file for bankruptcy
$ 8.6 bn Amount paid by Lehmans in bonuses to staff in 2006
.
They are robbing B*******rds. They have sto***en the money.
Solution:- Make every one repay their bonuses from the time it started to go wrong. Sack those who ‘did not understand’. Sack those who did understand but did nothing about it. And that includes the Politicians and the members of the Regulatory Authorities, who also did nothing about it.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Well, as President Bush is reported to have said at yesterday’s meeting:
‘“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,”’
I’m not entirely sure which sucker he had in mind, though I assume he meant the USA, but McCain’s intervention is all about his Presidential campaign…
September 26th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I feel they are flogging a dead horse anyway - if the US tax payers are picking up the bill for huge amounts now that could well be insufficient, and the US taxpayer is drained to the hilt already, isn’t that a financial meltdown in itself.
It all seems to be a huge rolling disaster threatening all, and the same people who allowed it to happen shall still be directing mayhem.
As brakes are needed surely some thought should be given as to what those brakes are.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Oh, I don’t understand it; I find it hard to comprehend the extremes to which people will go to wield power.
But I’m fairly good at noticing when somebody is whacking me over the head with a blunt financial instrument…
September 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
i’m glad somebody understands it.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
McCain hasn’t flunked it; the Republican no-dealers went from a very small number of people who genuinely believed in the free market, to a much larger number of people who believe in the free market if it helps to get them elected.
And it was the ‘Off the record’ McCain plan which caused the talks to implode, and WaMu to make history as the largest bank failure ever in the Solar System…