sophistwatch's Comments (101)

“If Obama fails the Right will tell us all "we told you so". If Obama walks on water, the Right will say "see I told you he can't swim".

Elections have consequences and we are going to have to wait to see how this unfolds. The wise among us have already placed our bets. Let's see which side is correct.”

“The problem is that we have stopped enforcing the laws of the land.

This is not just a Wall Street problem. The same lack of will to enforce the laws of the land broken by the Bush admin is crippling this country's credibility and it is sending the wrong message to the law abiding citizens who are being forced to clean up behind a never ending parade of corrupt politicians and bankers.

I would beg to differ with AH. This is both a Left and a Right problem. If we do not hold accountable those who do harm to others in our society, when there is clear intent to cause harm, we are abandoning the very underpinning of our great democracy - justice for all.”

“The true cost of war is being hidden not just by the refusal of the MSM to show graphic photos of the casualties, but also in the refusal of the MSM to adequately cover the destruction within the lives of those who manage to make it home with some or all of their body parts.

Even those who sustained not so much as a scratch often come home so scarred on the inside that whole families are destroyed as a result of the soldier's inability to get back to a "normal" life.

When war is used as a tool to achieve political and business objectives is is usually preventive. When a preventive war is waged, the costs of that war are by definition unnecessary. That is precisely why the war crimes related to Iraq and Afghanistan should be prosecuted.”

“The term "opportunity cost" implies you get to make a choice between alternative investment opportunities. The tax payer was forced into the TARP and bail out on terms and conditions over which they have absolutely no say.

The cutting of important social programs while banks post profits and sit on extremely large volumes of cash is bad, but the deliberate manipulation of the DOW that is currently taking place with the money which should have been pumped into the credit markets should be of equal, if not greater, alarm. The banks are now pumping up the DOW because, with money that they have been sitting on, they bought huge volumes of undervalued stocks over the last several months and now they are going to cash in at the average investor's expense.

They are making a killing off of the bizarre upturn in the DOW despite the dismal earning and unemployment figures that would suggest that the DOW should be going in the opposite direction.

The bottom line is that there is that there are several opportunity costs we, the tax payer, should be paying attention to. The most significant among them are the failure to regulate the financial industry and to prosecute those who are engaged in defrauding the US tax payer and our government on a scale that is difficult for most to comprehend.”

“He could get away with these kinds of things if he was white.”

“Why doesn't someone call Liz out on this subject? She can't know what she claims to know because it is classified information. Either her dad told her something he should not have, or she is taking her father at his word.

Liz Cheney does not have proper clearance to access the documents that prove or disprove the success of the torture program. Therefore, she cannot know if it was a success. Someone should ask her what specific information she is basing her opinion on.

The MSM should be absolutely hammered for allowing her to speak as an authority on this subject.”

“Typical Republican - don't bother me with the facts.”

“When Jews can pay for their own settlements and security in the region your lecture might have some credibility. For now, I think that you should stick to the facts.

While you may have a point about Palestinian corruption, it is no more prevalent that Jewish corruption.”

“Try reading the Senate Phase II report which clearly outlines the manipulation and falsification of the intel used to get us into the war in Iraq. Cheney and Bush are technically war criminals by every legal definition currently in use in the US and abroad. They deliberately engaged in a preemptive war.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298775”

“What history will tell future generations is that prewar intel was manipulated to get the US into an illegal war by a President who was appointed by the the Supreme Court who liked to call himself the Decider.

Add to this the abuse of the constitution vis-a-vis the Patriot act, torture and renditioning and the costs outweigh the benefits before you even factor in loss of life and treasure.

The Bush admin ignored Powell, Shinseki, Scrowcroft and other well known military advisers on the level of troops needed to get the job done right. There was unnecessary loss of life because of those decisions. The Bush admin then ignored the advice of legal professionals of torture.

If oil revenues would have been used to offset the costs of this war, as was originally promised, we might have been able to say that this protracted mess was not contributing to massive deficits in a time of recession. However, during a time of 2 wars the Decider decided to lower taxes.

History will judge GW as an impostor installed by a cabal who used him to get exactly what they wanted. History will judge that GW never should have seen the inside of the oval office regardless of whether or not his policies prove beneficial 100 years from now or not.”

“What Condi said is that if the president asked me to do something he promised me it would be legal. This is an admission by an eye witness/ accomplice that the President provided Condi with an assurance, which she was entitled to rely upon, that water boarding was legal.

The problem is the administration was also informed early on by military and intel lawyers that what Condi was going to authorize was illegal. The Bush admin knew it was illegal before they used John Yoo and his associates to attempt to legalize it.

I think this pretty much cans plausible deniability for the whole lot of them.”

“Since Pat did bring up Dresden and Nagasaki, we should take the opportunity to remind all of the Buchanan's of the world that, based on the evidence we now know did not exist, it was a crime to invade Iraq in the first place.

What Pat suggests is that if we win a war, the crimes we commit in the process are not really something to worry about because, we have done this type of thing before, and nobody was prosecuted.

Doesn't that make calling other people terrorists a tricky business. If so, it must surely make the business of torturing them trickier by far.

I have a hard time seeing how we can start a preemptive war based on bogus intel and then turn to the American people and argue that we have to torture these people because the are such a threat to us. Al qaeda was not in Iraq before 9/ 11. We failed to get them in Afghanistan because we left them completely alone and went after Saddam, not because we didn't torture them enough.

In my mind Pat's arguments do more to damage us than would occur if we were to allow, or even call for, a proper investigation. Perhaps Pat should tone down the, we do this all the time, what's the big deal, speech. His rhetoric makes it very difficult to draw a clear distinction between us and them.”

“After reading that article the famous lines by Lloyd brides in Air Plane comes to mind.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines"”

“Unfortunately for many, it actually makes good business sense for the top 4 or 5 banks to sit on the piles of cash they have while deliberately choking our economy to the breaking point by denying credit to the masses. Once asset prices completely collapse the banks and our government can snap up labor and assets dirt cheap.

The government would be a huge beneficiary of a depression when there is such a large domestic spending agenda on the table. Think of the money that could be saved in labor costs, purchasing of easements and right of ways for road and fiber optic cable expansion nation wide.

There is very little downside for the big banks if a full blown depression occurs. In fact, it looks like they are poised waiting for some major event. They have tax payer money in their pockets that they are not lending, future guarantees of more money and recent changes in accounting rules that favor holding onto the toxic assets.

Anyone for shooting some fish in a barrel?”

“That would not surprise me as a global number. If you find some sources please post them for the rest of us who are interested in peering into the blackness.”

“The Geithner plan does have loopholes and the tax payer could in fact loose a great deal more money than is being publicly discussed.

However, the amount that the tax payer is potentially on the hook for is so far in excess of a trillion dollars, it is truly difficult to comprehend. Technically this country is insolvent. The tax payer is not only on the hook for bad mortgages. There are other losses the tax payer is on the hook for that are related to derivative losses. These derivative losses are not limited to the to 5 banks who hold the bulk of such bad investments.

The top 5 US banks alone have exposure to over 200 trillion in derivative exposure. At one point AIG had up to 62 trillion in exposure. Since these numbers are so far in excess of our total GDP, it is hard to tell what the end result of this financial crisis will be.

Derivative losses are protected from being written down. Therefore, even if we nationalize the top 5 banks and AIG, the total losses are going to be paid by someone. The problem is that the total of all the bad debt is more than this country is worth.

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/alarming-news-bank-losses-spreading-32910”

“savings has nothing whatsoever to do with income. At the moment it has to do with fear.”

“The problem with this measure is that consumption is way down, unemployment is way up, Inflation is up.

Real wages are down. Median income is down.

http://washingtonpolicywatch.org/2009/03/12/looking-past-the-banking-crisis-stagnating-real-wages-part-1-of-3/

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm”

“So you think the the cost of living is the same thing as inflation? Do you also think that the CPI is a real measure of inflation even though it does not take into consideration some important considerations like energy costs?”

“Maybe he is a hired gun that gets saps like me to take the bait.”

“Perfectly clear to you as we all can see.”

“Try reading the article I attached before demonstrating your intellectual prowess next time.

AIG and many others were selling thin air, aka derivatives, without any assets to back them up. We happen to own 80% of the assets AND liabilities of AIG. There were up to 62 trillion in uncovered derivative losses alone in AIG and they are not even a part of the to 5 banks listed in the article I posted that have a combined exposure of over 200 trillion.

What you don't seem to understand is that the net result of all of the unregulated speculation is equivalent to leaving a guy at the betting table until he owes more money to the casino than the casino is worth.

The volume of our economy has nothing to do with the size and scope of the bets made that have failed.”

“Are your serious??? Median household income has to be adjusted for cost of living. Gas, real estate, labor and materials went up disproportionately to income.

Median income properly adjusted went down. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS15591+29-Jan-2008+PRN20080129”

“The Dems should unceremoniously ram her nomination down the throats of the Republicans. They should be publicly humiliated for letting Yoo and co get away with what they did. There should be no compromise on this one.”

“Well done Max. As you point out there are hundreds of trillions in future liabilities that have yet to be addressed. I am attaching an article by Dr. Weiss that addresses the issue of interest rate swaps. They are another form of derivatives which could eclipse the credit default swap losses.

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/alarming-news-bank-losses-spreading-32910

I am wondering what the next step in this game is? It seems to me that the banks sitting on the sidelines, with our cash in their pockets, are poised to take advantage of a specific event. If this were a real emergency for banks they would have already started lending again competing for what business there is left in the market. They don't need to do that because they are sitting on tax payer money.

If there is a larger and sharper contraction in our economy when we learn that the problem is much bigger than originally disclosed, when do we hit the threshold of a depression? What happens at that point and who benefits?

As much as I want to believe that we are getting close to the bottom, and that things are turning around, how can that be possible when hundreds of trillions in liabilities have not yet been recognized are still hanging in mid-air?

If the tax payer is on the hook for these losses as well, we, and our offspring for the next 5 generations, are little more than indentured servants.”