Andrew Sullivan, squawking the name "Milton Friedman" as if it magically disappeared the ridiculous, sat on Bill Maher's show blaming the financial crisis on American consumers who bought houses they couldn't afford. He was arguing against Naomi Klein's thesis that the crisis belonged squarely at the doorstep of an ideology-obsessed political class and its Wall Street allies.
Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson made the same argument to George Stephanopulous when pooh-poohing the inclusion of struggling homeowners in his bailout scheme. He said struggling homeowners needed to take responsibility for their obligations.... unlike financial institutions, their executives and CEOs, or the shareholders who gorged on their malfeasance.
Let's take a trip in the way-back machine: On February 23, 2004, a Wall Street Journal article stated of then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan:
The Fed chairman didn't advise households to choose adjustable-rate over fixed-rate mortgages. It is almost unheard of for an official of the U.S. central bank to offer advice on interest rates, over which it has enormous influence. But his remarks did represent a rare discussion of interest-rate options for American households, and he implicitly questioned whether homeowners' preference for fixed-rate mortgages makes financial sense
Meanwhile, a Jim Jubak article posted on MSN Money bore the headline "Why there is no housing bubble." The subhead? "The sky is not falling. Yes, home prices are sky-high, but we really don't have a housing bubble that is anywhere near bursting."
On October 27, 2005, The New York Times quoted Ben Bernanke as stating that a "cooling" of the housing market was the worst we should expect.
In fact, the blog "Economics of Contempt" compiled a list of pundits/experts who were catastrophically wrong on the housing bubble. They include: Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute; Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute; Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money"; Nocolas P. Restinas, director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and 20 more.
So the American home-buying public was told again and again by this administration, its economic minions, TV pundits and very popular right-wing talking heads that they should go out and buy all the house they could because Happy Days Were Here Again and there was no bubble and everything would be just fine.
When the bottom falls out, these same conservatives blame the homebuyers for failing to earn their advanced degrees in economics and understand what a great many with such degrees failed to--that this was not just a bubble, but a shit-filled bubble, a la Dennis the Menace as filmed by John Waters, and it was going to burst in our faces.
Sullivan said that he believed in "personal responsibility." But like most conservatives, he only believes in it for proles. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Northeast has the highest percentage of college graduates-- just shy of 31%. An overwhelming majority of Americans have high school educations. Yet, per Sullivan, Bernanke and their conservative class, they're supposed to know that the current administration and its two Fed Chairmen were full of economic crap. They were supposed to know to ignore that Ivy League professor on their TV.
It reminds me of the old depression-era cartoon that showed a gigantic celebratory elephant cavorting in a chicken coop. The caption paraphrased Dickens: "'Every man for himself,' said the elephant as he danced among the chickens."
Another example is the sudden conservative contempt for the idea of "moral hazard," or setting poor examples. According to most sane economists like Paul Krugman, financial institutions are in this mess partly because they refuse to acknowledge the relative valuelessness of their mortgage assets. In short, they're asking too much money for what they've got. What the Bush administration proposes to do is to pay them the exorbitant prices they're asking. It's a gift, pure and simple; but Bush-era conservatives see nothing morally wrong with it. Major financial institutions run financially amok and make billions. Taxpayers bail them out. No moral hazard of poor example here.
They do see something morally wrong with providing every American with health care. They do see something wrong with providing non-violent addicts with treatment instead of jail. They do see something wrong with providing rape victims with a morning after pill. They do see something wrong with providing addicts with clean needles so they don't spread HIV. They do see the moral wrong in giving teens condoms so they don't contract STDs or die of AIDS. All of these, they insist, would set bad moral examples. All would encourage bad behavior. But providing expensively tailored con artists with get-out-of-debt-and-jail free cards after costing the American taxpayers tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars? No problem.
Every man for himself said the elephant as he danced among the chickens. I guess money buys morality in today's America--just like it buys administrations.
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palin is being investigat
she and her husband have violated court ordered subpoena's
mccain is obstructin
isn't this illegal? i am 100% certain if barak obama's vp had done the same, he would not be the nominee, would he?
they are not allowing reporters to ask unscripted questions.
they are denying reporters access to her foreign policy improv's.
is the mccain palin ticket above the law?
have they rewritten the rules as we watch?
are they setting in motion the new standard for the press in the mccain /palin regime?
how far will they go?
what is next ?
We loved having Arrianna in Santa Fe!!!!
Why the banks bought these mortgages? Her opinion, after working for years at banks before going solo as a broker, is that many of times banks were too trusting as well. They tended to assume that everyone looked at the big picture the same way they did. They trusted the brokers and didn't look at the deals as closely as they should've. My friend is convinced through her contacts on both ends that this was a significan
Attesting to the high pressure to buy more house than one could comfortabl
"John McCain signed onto veto-proof legislatio
The bill had Phil Gramm's name on it, and he advises John McCain on financial matters for his campaign to be America's next President.
The vote was strictly along party lines, with Republican
They want these risky investment
Billions and billions of dollars in bailouts, and that's just this week alone.
The Republican
Sara Palin and John McCain are more of the same Republican game.
America:
Don't be Fooled Again."
-WRITTEN BY ME TO PURSUADE VOTERS TO VOTE OBAMA.... OR STAY HOME.
An industry investigat
It also begs the other question; Are all Americans so brazen that they would automatica
But the fraud doesn't end with the Mortgage Industry, from there the fraud went right up the line to our most "staid" and "prestigio
But: give me title to shares in the companies I help. I could use the yearly dividend check, since I'm to be on the hook for the bailout.
Alaskans get a yearly PFD check, thanks to wise investment by our government on behalf of the citizen. The money comes from interest on investment
Suddenly, most of us would get a refund, accompanie
Think about it: This is the ownership society in spades. Not what the boosters of that sound-bit planned, true. They want us all floating around the finance-sp
But we NEED to get something for our money, or I say LET 'EM FAIL!
In addition, many of my peers have not one clue how this crisis occurred and it's easier and more expedient to point the finger at the over-exten
How many times did we hear Georgie in an almost patronizin
The only practical solution is a surtax on ultra high incomes. I.e. redistribu
A friend of mine used to always say, "It is expensive to be poor."
Example: If you have over $1,000 in savings, you get free checking and bounced check coverage. If you are rich, chances are you wont' bounce a check, so your credit rating is higher, and therefore you get the lowest interest rates, etc..
Speak up for yourself. Write letters to the editors. Living simply is a wonderful example for others. Unfortunat
My own family is a list of reasons why I support national healthcare