Stimulation

For all you ill-informed citizens who think that the New Deal didn't save us from the last time Republican policies had been carried out for too long, listen up.

I know, you like to say that World War II brought us back from the brink of disaster. And y'know what? You're actually right about that. It was that great war that pulled us up out of the depths of Republican depravity.

But those nay-sayers who like to trash Roosevelt while making the case that President Obama's plans won't get us out of the mess they got us into are missing one teeny-tiny little point. Just what was it about World War II that allowed us to recover economically?

World War II was one gigantic stimulus plan. If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, if Hitler hadn't tried to take over Europe, Roosevelt's New Deal would have continued -- and succeeded as well as the war did -- because we pumped money into the economy and put people to work.

And while we're at it, it was all a little bit of socialism, that word that so terrifies the unwashed masses and their well-heeled masters in Washington and on the airwaves. Columnist Don Williams:

Face it. Nothing is more socialistic than the military culture, where you have men and women living in government housing, driving government jeeps, tanks, planes and boats, shooting government guns, eating government food, wearing government clothing and partaking of government healthcare. Everyone’s pay falls within well-defined boundaries, so the staggering inequities in pay — the kind dragged into the light by so many Wall Street scandals -- scarcely exist in the military.

Privates and generals make a guaranteed annual income and salaries are capped by the government. Everyone who signs up for service is treated to goodies at taxpayer expense for the rest of their lives. Government counseling, medical care, pensions, disability payments, education and so on are provided for by a grateful public all too willing to be taxed in order to support the troops.

...

I bring this up not to advocate turning America into a military welfare state, but just for clarity’s sake. The chief point is that anyone who says Roosevelt’s big-spending policies didn’t end the Great Depression has no leg to stand on, not even one of those expensive titanium legs our government hires doctors to provide wounded troopers. Roosevelt spent more, not less, after the war started.

So whether it was the New Deal or World War II that ended the Great Depression, the chief engine of change was a massive infusion of federal dollars into the American and global economy for more than a decade. It’s a transfer on the order of what Obama intends as he retools the grid, healthcare, education and transportation infrastructure.

To those who say it can’t work, I have two words.

Prove it.

I have two other words. Make that four: Shut the fuck up. You so clearly don't know what you're talking about. Stop saying we can't spend our way out of this recession/depression/whatever it is, because it's only way we're going to get out of it.

And hopefully, we can do it without the "benefit" of spreading our ridiculous and illegal wars any further than they've already spread, because that was one damned bloody and deadly way to jump-start the economy.

So far, though, Bush's wars haven't done much with the economy except drain it, and that may have been his point all along.

But we do know this for sure: The "loyal" opposition is decidedly disloyal, now trying to hedge their treason by saying they don't want the president's policies to succeed instead of saying they don't want him to succeed. It's the same damn thing. Treason.

They only want to keep doing what they've been doing for the past 30 years, no matter how much Mitch McConnell says the GOP can get better now without that GW albatross around their necks.

Well, Mitch, old buddy, why didn't you act like he was a fucking albatross during those eight years you marched in lockstep with him on every damn thing he wanted done?

Oh, that's right. Because he's only an albatross now that you've finally figured out the American people hate him and what he stands for, and you need to do something to try to persuade us that you're really different.

But that's a big, fat lie, Mitch. Just like the one about how the New Deal didn't get us out of the Great Depression.



News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Empty promises

So the Republicans hauled out their 18-page budget Thursday. Only they didn't actually have a budget.

House Minority Leader John Boehner had a little blue booklet that said "The Republican Road to Recovery" on the front.

He was mighty proud of himself, although a little birdie told me that the Republicans actually working on the budget would have preferred that he wait until they had one. Boehner's office said that wasn't true, and of course I believe them. I mean, he couldn't possibly have been wanting to hurry up and counter "the party of no" stuff, especially after Paul Begala said that GOP stood for "Got 0 Plans."

Two nights ago the president said, 'We haven't seen a budget yet out of Republicans.' Well, it's just not true because -- Here it is, Mr. President,

Boehner said, waving the little blue booklet around. But he wouldn't answer any real questions, like, how much is the GOP budget gonna cost, or how do you propose to reduce the deficit. He said we'd find out the details next week.

The guy who pretty much wrote the 18 pages of nothing, Rep. Paul Ryan, was there long enough to say "We're going to show a leaner budget, a budget with lower taxes, lower spending and lower borrowing" before scooting off without answering a single question.

And Rep. Mike "I'm so backwards you can call me ecneP ekiM" Pence said that he sure wished the Congress would adopt this booklet of emptiness but doubted that would happen, although he added that totally believes "that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals the majority."

Um, yeah, ekiM. But the American people voted for Obama. Oh, by the way, that's ecneP over there with his family and GW celebrating something about the Indianapolis Colts.

Anyway, inside the little blue booklet, the only numbers to be found are selected ones from the Obama budget, usually out of context and lacking some piece of information that would make things make more sense. Then there's some little piece of the the GOP plans to do.

Instead of recklessly borrowing and spending money on wasteful programs under the guise of 'stimulus' and 'investments,' Republicans seek to ensure that the federal budget cannot grow faster than families’ ability to pay the bill.

Whatever that means. I don't recall them saying anything like that when GW kept setting up "stimulus" bills that didn't do shit. This one at least does create some jobs, you know, as in work. All GW did was give us a few hundred bucks to pay toward our credit card bills.

Then there's stuff about "universal access to health care," which means that everybody has access to health care, but most of us can't actually afford it, and "entitlement reform," which means "We're going to gut Medicare and Social Security."

Next the Republicans will create jobs and lower taxes, by which they mean they'll allow corporations to export even more jobs overseas and cut taxes for rich people. "Instead of raising taxes on all Americans," the Republican "budget" lies, "Republicans seek to reduce the tax burden on working families and small businesses in order to create jobs and unlock private capital."

Oh, and "Republicans also want energy independence with increased development of all our natural resources, including renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar."

Next, the Republicans are going to "end the bailouts, protect taxpayers, and provide a transparent recovery process. Republicans support maintaining the cost of living after witnessing the booms
and busts triggered by loose monetary policy."

I have no idea what that means, other than the exact opposite of anything any Republican has ever done for 30 years.

And that's it. Not a single number, not a single concrete idea. I'm wondering how much it cost the Republicans to print up a full color booklet with nothing in it.

But there it is, Mr. President. The GOP budget.

Smoke and mirrors, just like Republican budgets have always been.


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Budgeting a progressive future

Terence Heath, who blogs at his own Republic of T and at the Campaign for America's Future, announced Tuesday that he and Sara Robinson, who blogs at the Campaign for America's Future and sometimes at Orcinus, are launching a series at CAF "about the progressive values at the core of the president's budget, how to talk about it importance, and what progressives can do to pass the first truly progressive budget we've seen in decades."

That's exciting as hell. But that was at the end of the column. What Terence said before he got to that part was what really got to me.

Terence reminded me that we Americans -- most of us anyway -- don't really know what something truly progressive and new can look like. "The real transformation hasn't happened yet," he wrote.

People don’t yet have a tangible vision of something better than the past eight years or the current crisis. They have hope, but hope wears thin if people have nothing that they can see with their own eyes, hold in their hands, or experience in their own lives as evidence of the possibility of something better.

Quoting from "Ending Slavery" by Kevin Bales (about modern slavery), Terence wrote that

It was only when people began to have a vision of something better that they would rush toward change. He noted how it was only after reforms occurred or economic prosperity arrived that popular revolt began.

And in that passage, Bales was paraphrasing the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville -- author of "Democracy in America -- from a letter he wrote in 1853.

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

That is just about where we are now, as Terence put it, "the anteroom of that transformational moment."

People are waking up, seeing what's been done to us for the last 30 years -- and particularly the last 8 -- and starting to grumble. Some of us are much more clear about what we're grumbling about, and some of us are just plain misguided about what we're grumbling about. But discontent is fast becoming the order of the day.

Now we need a direction, and the impetus to move in that direction. The president's budget may be just the ticket -- and you know the Republicans and the Blue Dawgs are gonna be fighting tooth and nail to limit what this budget can do. They've already started.

As Terence points out, this budget sings a new tune about America and its people. It's about an America whose people rely on one another, who work together, who cooperate -- who aren't out to see "what's in it for me." It is, he wrote, "a progressive budget that has at its core the understanding that government can and should have an important role in finding ways out of the current crisis and in reviving the economy."

More than that, it's a budget that recognizes that — rather than the 'You're on your own,' everyone-for-themselves conservative policy of the past 30 years — recovering from this crisis, reviving the economy, and thriving as families, communities, and as a nation means recognizing that we have some degree of responsibility to and for one another, because our faces are undeniably tied together.

That, itself, would be transformational. But first we have to offer more than more than a vision of something better. We have to make the beginnings of that vision, and the progressive values it embodies, felt in the lives of more Americans.

Now is our time to deliver. If we can turn progressive values into policies that make a real impact in the lives of every day people — whether it's jobs, health care, etc. — the transformation the country needs, and that the world needs us to make, will almost take care of itself.

This budget has its shortcomings. It can't possibly be all things to all people. But it is a world away from the policies of the past. We could do far worse than to pass it -- and frankly, letting it fail isn't an option. Not if we really, truly want to see the change many of us have been seeking.

It will happen, of course -- the transformation. As I've said before, it's just a question of whether we want to do it now, the hard way, or later -- maybe another generation later -- the excruciating painful way. As usual, the Republicans are looking at it through their own myopic lenses. What we're bequeathing to our children and grandchildren is not mountains of debt but a society that takes its strength from its people rather than the size of a handful of people's portfolios.

Either way, the time is right. It won't be easy. And it will likely be terrifying -- great change, real transformation always is. But the old ways have finally failed. They're on life support. They can continue that way for a while yet. But the end will come.

I'd rather pull the plug now and start the heavy lifting of change.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Why Geithner's Plan Won't Work

Short version: It's too late.

Economist Brad DeLong doesn't think so. It's a big mess of a plan that makes little sense to non-economists, but in a nutshell, this is it:

First the number -- $1 trillion. Don't even stop to let it sink it. It'll upset your stomach. $150 billion of that is coming from TARP fund already allocated. The FDIC is gonna create another $820 billion "in the form of debt," whatever that means. And then the government is going to require $30 billion from the guys that got us into this mess that they're going to hire to run the program, which will buy worthless pieces of paper from the banks in order to take "toxic assets" off their balance sheets and put them on the government's balance sheets.

Does this sound like a sound plan so far? But go ahead, read DeLong's Q&A about how it's going to work. Like, the hedge fund managers the government will hire to run this baby have to kick in $30B "so they'll have skin in the game," and they'll do it because, DeLong says, "they stand to make a fortune when markets recover or when the acquired toxic assets are held to maturity."

The operative word there being the two times DeLong says "when" in that sentence. In fact, "What happens if that doesn't happen" the one question DeLong didn't really answer when asked, although he did tell the sobering truth.

Then we have worse things to worry about than government losses on TARP-program money--for we are then in a world in which the only things that have value are bottled water, sewing needles, and ammunition

Yeah. Add to that that DeLong says the actual fix is gonna take $3 more trillion.

Further, DeLong didn't really get into the $820 billion FDIC is supposed to manufacture with something called "non-recourse loans." What that means is that the government is going to try to convince investors to partner up with the government to buy the toxic assets by waving these loans in front of their faces.

The problem is that the banks are much further gone than this. Take AIG, for example -- an insurer, of course, but all financial sector companies are more or less banks in some form these days. AIG has taken $170 billion from the government. Without it, it would be bankrupt. It's functioning still only because we gave it a bunch of our money. Lehman Brothers, for example, is no more because we didn't give it any money.

The big banks are all essentially bankrupt. Other banks might be doing OK, but under this plan, they're going to become the big banks that are now failing. Economist Paul Krugman:

But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

It's all based on whether or not the billions of dollars in bad loans are truly bad loans, or if it's a possibility that they're not really, and will eventually pull up. But nobody's actually checking to find out. They're guessing. Jamey Galbraith:

The way to find out who is right is to EXAMINE THE LOAN TAPES. An independent examination of the underlying loan tapes -- and comparison to the IndyMac portfolio -- would help determine whether these loans or derivatives based on them have any right to be marketed in an open securities market, and any serious prospect of being paid over time at rates approaching 60 cents on the dollar, rather than 30 cents or less.

Note that even a small loss of capital, relative to the purchase price, completely wipes out the interest earnings on the Treasury's loans, putting the government in a loss position and giving the banks a windfall. If I'm right and the mortgages are largely trash, then the Geithner plan is a Rube Goldberg device for shifting inevitable losses from the banks to the Treasury, preserving the big banks and their incumbent management in all their dysfunctional glory. The cost will be continued vast over-capacity in banking, and a consequent weakening of the remaining, smaller, better- managed banks who didn't participate in the garbage-loan frenzy.

Galbraith and Krugman are far from the only economists currently in utter disbelief at the stupidity of this plan. Well, actually, if the goal is to give bankers another shot at millions, then it's a very good plan. But there's a huge difference between rescuing banks and rescuing the bankers and the shareholders. One is a good idea, and the other is just a continuation of what's been going on for 30 years. Another Nobel Prize winning economist, Joe Stiglitz, had this to say in The Nation:

The politicians responsible for the bailout keep saying, 'We had no choice. We had a gun pointed at our heads. Without the bailout, things would have been even worse.' This may or may not be true, but in any case the argument misses a critical distinction between saving the banks and saving the bankers and shareholders. We could have saved the banks but let the bankers and shareholders go. The more we leave in the pockets of the shareholders and the bankers, the more that has to come out of the taxpayers' pockets.

There are a few basic principles that should guide our bank bailout. The plan needs to be transparent, cost the taxpayer as little as possible and focus on getting the banks to start lending again to sectors that create jobs. It goes without saying that any solution should make it less likely, not more likely, that we will have problems in the future.

By these standards, the TARP bailout has so far been a dismal failure. Unbelievably expensive, it has failed to rekindle lending. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave the banks a big handout; what taxpayers got in return was worth less than two-thirds of what we gave the big banks--and the value of what we got has dropped precipitously since.

Since TARP facilitated the consolidation of banks, the problem of 'too big to fail' has become worse, and therefore the excessive risk-taking that it engenders has grown worse. The banks carried on paying out dividends and bonuses and didn't even pretend to resume lending. "Make more loans?" John Hope III, chair of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, said to a room full of Wall Street analysts in November. The taxpayers put out $350 billion and didn't even get the right to find out what the money was being spent on, let alone have a say in what the banks did with it.

In my view, if it's too big to fail, it shouldn't be in private hands.

Henry Blodget, top dog at The Business Insider, gets even more specific:

What would be a better plan? Seize the insolvent banks, write down the assets to market levels, and make the banks' bondholders pay for most of the losses by converting a percentage of the bonds to equity. Then sell off and/or re-privatize the banks, which will now be well-capitalized.

This latter plan would wipe out shareholders and hurt bondholders--which is what the Treasury is trying desperately to avoid. It would also hurt the same taxpayers who are getting hosed in the Geithner plan -- because bank bondholders are generally insurance companies, pension funds, and other companies that taxpapers have a stake in.

It's still a better solution, though. It will fix the problem once and for all, it will likely cost taxpayers less, and it's the morally fair thing to do. And the bank equity and credit markets should recover quickly, once they see that the newly recapitalized banks are actually worth owning and lending money to.

But Geithner, no different than his predecessor Hank Paulson, doesn't want to do the right thing. He wants to keep the rich rich. Not much different from the Republicans, I'd say.

But it's almost like Geithner is the nerd kid in school trying to get some props from the cool kids. Remember what Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne said about him just a couple of weeks ago, talking how he felt about Geithner's decision to sell Bear?

The audacity of that prick in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan. Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a hard-on, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’ This guy thinks he’s got a big dick. He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I’m not a good enemy. I’m a very bad enemy. But certain things really — that bothered me plenty. It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit? Who the fuck asked you? You’re not an elected officer. You’re a clerk. Believe me, you’re a clerk. I want to open up on this fucker, that’s all I can tell you.

Charming, isn't it? Geithner's just a clerk to the big boys, who clearly don't have a clue what they actually look like to the American people.

The good news, if any news can be said to be good in this mess, is that there's still a chance we won't quite fall to the level that bottled water and ammunition are the only things with value. It'll just mean that we'll have to actually do the right thing when this crashes. It'll just be a lot harder then.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

The fix Is In?

Does it seem obvious to anybody else that the mainstream media, most notably CNN, is going out of its way to hang this entire economic situation (framed in easy-to-understand "villain/scapegoat" shorthand with the AIG story) around the neck of the Obama administration?

Even supposedly liberally-biased MSNBC last night was painting this whole thing as the supposed tipping point for Obama's popularity, and a threat to getting his agenda done.

The worst of it, though, was Friday's reporting. Check out this CNN story, headlined "Geithner Treasury Pushed For Bonus Loophole", where the story opens with:

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses."

Except that there's a slight problem. According to CNN's own transcript of the interview, he didn't say that, and in fact, when specifically asked, he said "No." The relevant passage (emphasis added):

Velshi: But inadvertently, might somebody at Treasury have told Sen. Dodd to do something that has now resulted in these payments not being able to ...

Geithner: No, again, what we did is just express concern about the vulnerability of a specific part of this provision, the legal challenge, as you would expect us to do, that's part of the legislative process, but again, his bill also has this very important provision that allows us to go back and see if we can recoup these payments, and we're going to explore that, but in any case, we're going to make sure that the American people are compensated for any payments we can recoup."

So CNN is reporting something that's directly contrary to what Geithner said, and it's being picked up by everybody else.

I figured that the entrenched interests would be threatened by Obama's plans, but I never figured they'd be so blatant in their attempts to drag him down.

Mark Bruno
AWOP Political Contributor
Author of Left Of Center Blog

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Obama Gives It Back To Cheney

While I do not agree with some of the ways that Obama has dealt with the Republicans in particular, I have to admit his answer to "The Dick" Cheney's remarks regarding his (Obama's) interest in trying to keep our American ideals in tact instead of continuing down the path of becoming that which we profess to hate was smooth.

It's true that sometimes I wish Obama wasn't so nice to these pukes when he puts them in their place. I know. Not very highly evolved of me, but I have just about had enough of these fools. People like Dick Cheney are every bit as dangerous as any other crazy, delusional terrorist that thinks he is right and everyone else is wrong and finds the boundaries of human decency merely a suggestion and one that need not necessarily be heeded if it does not serve the God he created in his own image.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Kim G.
Publisher
A World Of Progress TeamZine

**************************

Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Don't go there

Chalk up Grovel No. 4 for GOP Supreme Leader the Ayatollah Limbaugh. Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, who is running for the congressional seat left vacant when New York Gov. David Paterson appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to fill Hillary Clinton's senate seat, made a boo-boo during an interview with the Oneonta Daily Star.

Rush Limbaugh is meaningless to me. The only constituency I'm worried about are the residents of the 20th Congressional District,

he said. And now he knows how Michael Steele, Phil Gingrey and Mark Sanford all feel. Within hours, Tedisco's spokesman had issued a statement.

Jim's comments were in response to a question about what voters are asking him about on the campaign trail. So far, the concerns he has been hearing from voters on the campaign trail have been local in nature, such as his support for lower property taxes, fiscal responsibility, and his opponents appalling support for the AIG bonus loophole. That was his point and any effort to characterize it otherwise is a distortion of the facts.

Right. That certainly explains why he said the ayatollah is meaningless.

Speaking of meaningless, Congress still is, and the Democrats have not grown a backbone since Obama's election, nor have they done much to develop their brains. Rather than paraphrase, here's Robert Reich's entire take:

It's nice to see that when the public gets sufficiently angry about something, Congress responds. In a rare show of bipartisanship, members are eagerly registering shock and outrage at AIG's bonus payments by coming up with an assortment of ways to reclaim the bonanza, including taxing them away retroactively. Who says democracy is dead?

But much of this is for show. When the public isn't looking, Congress reverts to its old ways. The Obama-supported plan to allow distressed homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages under the protection of bankruptcy has run into a Wall Street wall. Although Citigroup temporarily broke ranks a few months ago when it was receiving one of the most generous bailouts, the rest of Wall Street has remained adamantly opposed, and apparently Democratic leaders have decided not to push back.

Meanwhile, Obama's plan to limit itemized deductions for the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers (including the top 1.9 percent of small business owners) to 28 percent, starting in 2011, is also in trouble on the Hill. Wealthy contributors and friends of congressional leaders involved in setting tax policy have balked. So Congress is telling the White House to look elsewhere for the $320 billion it needs over ten years to finance half of the tab for health care reform. Congressional leaders have also informed the White House that they don't have the votes to pass Obama's proposal for treating the earnings of hedge-fund and private-equity managers as income rather than capital gains.

Angry populism thrives on stories about the rich and privileged who use their influence to get cushy deals for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. AIG's bonuses provide a perfect example. It's too bad the same populist outrage doesn't extend to issues involving far more money, affecting many more people, and entailing far more insidious abuses of power. Congress's potemkin populism over AIG's bonuses disguises business as usual when it comes to the really big stuff.

Exactly. Congress can puff out its collective chests and act all high and mighty on something like AIG's bonuses (although, we must not forget that the Republicans have consistently opposed any limitation whatsoever on executive compensation, so their feigned outrage is especially egregiously hypocritical). But god forbid they do actually do something that will help Americans at the expense of these same rich bastards who are soaking up every ounce of decency America has left, abetted by Congress.

And that must secretly delight the Republicans and their Supreme Leader, because this kind of non-action will lead to failure, which, they've made perfectly clear, is what they want.

It's when I think about things like this that I wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right -- that a "global elite" controlled on Wall Street is slowly siphoning all the wealth of the world to itself and will soon emerge openly as the Rulers of the Universe.

For now, I can only conclude that the whole of Congress is no more capable of stopping the greed and grand theft of the Wall Streeters than Republicans are capable of standing up to their Supreme Leader.

And neither, apparently is the Obama administration. Paul Krugman:

I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but it’s part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.

This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.

So the masses have their pitchforks out and, with my colleagues leading the way, they are heading for AIG, now a symbol of all that's wrong on Wall Street.

That's a dangerous way to affect public policy, particularly since hot heads are quite often wrong-headed, and my colleagues have Beltway amnesia, which affects their ability to remember anything that happened more than a week ago. And that means there's no context for what's happening right now -- there's no recollection that it was the Bush administration that negotiated this bailout, that Tim Geithner, as chairman of the New York Fed, was part of that original process, that Chris Dodd actually tried to put in some real limitations on "retention payments, " only to be blocked by Geithner's Treasury Department.

But, as symbols go, AIG's a pretty good one -- Arrogance, Irresponsibility, Greed.

Meanwhile, it's business as usual in Congress -- the party of no, the party that won't fight back and the outside party that waves all the money in front of campaign committees.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Stumblers:
Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.
Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Democrats Are Stupid Too

Gawd, what a moron. And to think Chris Dodd was my original choice in the Democratic primary.

The Connecticut senator, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, admitted Wednesday that, yes, he did, in fact, have something to do with language inserted in last month's stimulus bill that effectively exempted AIG's bonuses from limitations. This after he flatly denied it on Tuesday.

But CNN caught him in the lie, getting a Treasury Department official to say they'd wanted the change made to an amendment being added to the bill in conference, and Dodd's committee made it happen.

But before we condemn Dodd for that -- and before we condemn the Treasury for throwing Dodd under the bus -- let's look at what actually happened.

First, let's be fair -- Dodd didn't say that he personally put the language in. He said -- and it's obviously true when you follow the bill's movements through Congress -- that the language was inserted during the reconciliation process after discussions between his staff and Treasury staff.

See, back in February, Dodd wanted to put tight restrictions on bonuses paid out by companies that got TARP money. That's what the amendment in question actually did, adding those restrictions to the stimulus bill. It was Dodd's amendment. But then Treasury came in and said, y'know, we don't think this is a good idea because these bonuses are contractual, and we might get hit with some nasty lawsuits.

Dodd decided to go ahead and make the change that Treasury wanted, because, he said, he feared if he didn't, there'd be no restrictions at all on bonuses. Both Dodd and the Treasury official who spoke with CNN say precisely the same thing: Treasury thought Dodd's amendment was too strict because of the lawsuits and pressured him to change it. He did. End of story.

And the date specific in the bill that some folks are pointing to, saying it proves it was aimed at OKing AIG's bonuses? That just happened to be the date the conference committee met to hammer out a final version of the bill.

Dodd's original amendment, by the way, had no such date in it.

Keep in mind, of course, that the original TARP bill -- the one that GW and his boys created -- contained absolutely no restrictions on compensation of any kind. Also keep in mind that the very people who are now setting fire to Dodd and the Democrats for creating a loophole in the amendment are the same people who argued against any limitation on compensation at all.

That would be the Republicans.

Pretty hypocritical, dontcha think? Fight tooth and nail to prevent any compensation limits and then come back and slam the guy who put some in for not putting enough in. They're hoping we forget that earlier part. My colleagues, if tonight is any indication, will. That means we're the ones who have to tell the truth.

And the truth is that Chris Dodd fucking lied. He lied on Tuesday when he told CNN flatly that he had nothing to do with the change in his own amendment.

That's pretty fucking stupid. Honestly, trying to avoid lawsuits isn't a bad thing for an economy that's as screwed up as this one is right now. The Republicans keep whining that anything the president does that isn't directly connected to fixing their mess of the last 30 years is a distraction. I'd think that multi-million lawsuits would be a bigger distraction than, oh, say, making your Final Four predictions for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

But Dodd, damn him. He couldn't just tell the truth. He had to lie. And then when he gets caught in the lie, we find out that the truth actually makes sense, only now it sounds suspicious because the moron lied to begin with.

Not to mention that it gives the nutzoid Republicans ammunition to use against the administration, even if it is wet powder. The veracity of their claims never seems to matter to them, or their even crazier followers.

What is it with politicians? Are they all perpetually stuck at 7 years old? "Little Chris, did you break that glass?" "No, mommy, I didn't." "But Chris, you were the only one here." "I didn't do it."

Stupid, stupid, stupid. And because of Dodd's stupidity, my dear, dear colleagues will never tell the story right. They'll focus on Dodd's lie. They'll say that Dodd inserted the language that gave AIG an out. They might say that the administration wanted it that way, but they'll downplay it. They won't say that Dodd had pushed to stop all such bonuses.

And they won't say that the compromise language that Dodd secured included a clause that is the very thing Treasury is now using to try to get back at least some of the bonus money: The contracts can be violated if it's in the "national interest."

I'd have to say that, yes, this would be "in the national interest".

But we're not going to be talking about that. We're going to be talking about Chris Dodd's lie. Idiot.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Stumblers:
Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.
Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Cramer's LIttle Big Horn

Wall Street had its first good rally in months this week, and the only thing that's really and truly different about this week and all the others is that Jon Stewart had Wall Street guru Jim Cramer on the ropes.

The S&P 500 jumped nearly 11 percent. How else can we explain it than somebody finally spoke truth to the jackasses who helped fuck this economy up?

And they did help. This economy's been in trouble for 30 years. GW's policies accelerated the crash. Plenty of people saw it, watched it for three decades. But these morons on television never said a word -- but they knew. Hell, most of 'em probably participated in it.

But thing that boosted the marked started, of course, last week, when Rick "Homeowners are lazy slackers who should lose their homes if they can't pay the mortgage no matter what the reason" Santelli for his insane rant on the floor of Wall Street with a Greek chorus of traders behind him backing his position that it's the poor folks on Wall Street who are really suffering, not the regular people who watched their 401(K)s sink to oblivion.

Stewart had intended, of course, to take on Santelli face to face, but the weasel canceled, naturally. So Stewart aired his pre-prepared video -- the one he was going to show before the Santelli interview -- all by itself. It was devastating to CNBC in general and Jim "Mad Money" Cramer in particular.

Cramer, arrogant bastard that he is, took it personally and fired back on Monday, saying Stewart's treatment "rankles me" and whining he'd been taken out of context and that he hadn't said three days before the company folded that people should buy Bear Stearns. The market hit a 12-year low that afternoon, but Stewart responded that night, noting that no, Cramer hadn't in fact recommended buying Bear Stearns three days before it folded. It was five days before, and he played the tape.

The next day, the Dow gained 379 points, its biggest gain in 2009. But Cramer hit The Today Show and Morning Joe that morning trying to defend himself. That was when the Stewart as a "variety show" host came up.

Now cautiously optimistic that Stewart might go after Cramer again, investors tweaked out a small gain that afternoon. Stewart did not disappoint. He responded with tape of Cramer's show with all its silly sound effects. And tape of himself appearing on Dora the Explorer and The Hills.

By the end of the next day, Cramer was scheduled for Stewart's last show of the week. All I can about that is, what were they thinking? Did they expect a proper English tea party?

To prepare for the meeting, Cramer hit Martha Stewart's show that morning. And we all know how that went over.

In fact, the Dow was up another 240 points at closing, all in anticipation of Cramer vs. Stewart.

It wasn't even close. Stewart held Cramer's feet to the fire and never let up. "It's not a fucking game," he told the awfully contrite Cramer.

It was a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

And the Dow closed up another 54 points at the end of the week. Cramer has disappeared from sight, and the NBC networks have been ordered not to talk about the rumble they hyped all week long. Supposedly, he told friends he felt blindsided by Stewart's hostile approach.

A brief pause while you let that sink in.

So, you see, Stewart taking down one of the chief cozy-up-to-the CEOs guys gave investors a boost of confidence that will probably disappear next week when we get the report that industrial production and factory output declined in February (Monday) along with reports on housing and wholesale inflation (Tuesday), the Consumer Price Index (Wednesday), the weekly jobless report (Thursday) and a Ben Bernanke speech on Friday.

Unless Cramer's meltdown creates some serious changes in financial reporting to give investors some trust that they might actually hear the truth from their mouths, next week we go back to the deep recession.

Or maybe Stewart can take on some of my colleagues next week. If he'd like a list of potential targets ...

Cross-posted at News Writer's Guide to the Market

The News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop The Press Blog

*************************

Stumblers:
Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.
Tweeters:
Click the "Tweet This" button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y'all

Let's Talk About Conservative Pretense

As right-wing mouth-breathers continue to scream against Obama's so-called "socialist agenda" and his "pork-laden stimulus package," let's remind the Chicken Littles what 8 years of conservative leadership in Washington D.C. have wrought us:

* Misled the American people into an endless war in Iraq that has made the United States less safe, has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of American troops and Iraqis, has cost American taxpayers as much as one trillion dollars, has strained our military to the breaking point, and has prevented us from finishing the job in Afghanistan.
* Stood idly by while thousands of Americans lost everything during Hurricane Katrina – and still haven’t taken leadership to rebuild the Gulf Coast and help people return home.
* Allowed trickle-down, laissez-faire economics to help the rich get richer, while regular Americans struggle with soaring gas and food prices, a meltdown in the housing market, and exploding debt during today’s economic recession.
* Turned control of our country’s health care system over to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, leaving millions of Americans incapable of paying for the rising costs of health benefits and turning emergency rooms into primary care physicians.
* Broke their promise to America’s children, failing to fund early education programs and No Child Left Behind.
* Ignored the scientific reality of climate change, obstructing efforts to make our air and water cleaner so oil and gas companies and big business could achieve record profits.
* Turned their backs on America’s workers, assaulting workers’ rights and impeding regular Americans’ efforts to form unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions.

The reason why I bring this all up is because we still have conservative Republicans whining over earmarks in Obama's stimulus package, which contain solutions to the very same problems I listed above! The conservative grousing would be laughable if it weren't so damn hypocritical. Lady Rose of Sanity Rant gives a perfect example. She writes:

The Republicans whining over earmarks is just as silly and totally hypocritical because they load up a ton of earmarks into every spending bill. A prime example was Sen. Lindsey Graham's interview this weekend where he contradicts himself exceprt:

"We do need earmark reform," said Graham. "I wish [the president] would veto the bill, we'd get back together and come up with the earmark reform process." Seconds later, however, Graham was reminded that he himself had inserted 37 earmarks in the legislation, including $950,000 for "a convention center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina." After defending the transparency and necessity of such an expenditure, Graham finally finished the 180, saying of the Myrtle Beach funding: "I voted to take all earmarks out, but I will come back in the new process and put that back in."

So he is basically saying, lets pretend to have stand for NO earmarks and stop this budget so the Republicans can claim victory, but later when no one is looking he will put back in his own earmarks.

But don't listen to us ramble on about the GOP sanctimoniousness...take a listen straight from the horses' mouths'!

Mark Bruno
AWOP Politics Contributor
Author of Left Of Center Blog

**************************

Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine with a quick review when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.

Peace Y'all

A Cautionary Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in one of the far, isolated corners of a very great land, there lived a baron and baroness. Now, the baron was only a baron because he was married to the baroness, who was the one with all the power. And beside, the baron was only really interested in looking good and playing winter sports, both of which he did quite well.

Anyway, the baroness and the baron had several children, and they all had very interesting names like Follow and Fall and Liverpool and Geo and Cessna and Hemlock. And they were pretty good kids, really. They went to school, they served their land and generally stayed out of trouble.

Until one day Liverpool learned that she was with child. That sort of thing was once widely frowned upon in the great land, and still does draw considerable consternation from some quarters.

Once such quarter was the baroness' household, for the baron and the baroness subscribed to ancient and widely misunderstood codes of conduct issued by they earthly representatives of Someone Up There. Someone Up There was seriously opposed to young girls becoming with child, particularly if they had not joined the father in holy matrimony, which Someone Up There considered to be such a sacred thing to do that it had been decreed that only some very special people could participate in it.

The baroness was, of course, horrified, because she was in the middle of campaigning for a promotion to Second in Command to the King of the great land. It was particularly horrifying because her supporters all believed as she did -- that young girls and boys who had been raised in the proper way would never find themselves in this situation and that such things only happened to those from families that openly talked about how one finds oneself with child and how one might prevent that from happening.

Well, actually, the baroness was really OK with talking about how to prevent it from happening, provided that the only way mentioned was not doing the thing that would result in a girl ending up with child. Anything else -- you know, other means of keeping that from happening, should you happen to do it, only encouraged girls to do it.

Obviously, something went wrong.

But the baroness, not one to berate herself for any perceived failures, hit upon the silver lining. Liverpool would marry the father of her child, a young man named Dan. That way Liverpool could acknowledge her mistake, but immediately take steps to correct it. She and Dan pledged to stay in school too, because that was important as well.

And besides, the added bonus for the baroness was that Liverpool was going to keep the baby. She would not give in to the evil that permeated much of the land, where in young girls who found themselves with child took steps to rid themselves of the burden. This would look very good to the baroness' supporters.

So, time passed, and the baroness was unfortunately not chosen to be Second in Command to the King because a different guy was chosen to be King, and he already had a Second in Command. He also had a really cool Queen who did shocking things like bare her arms in public, but that's another tale.

Anyway, the baroness and her family went back to the remote and isolated corner of the very great land, and, other than not being second in command, everything was pretty good. Liverpool eventually delivered her child, a boy whom she named Stummble.

But Liverpool and Dan did not marry. Oh, they said they were going to in the summer, but then Dan quit his job, apparently because he wasn't qualified for it. The baroness was a little perturbed and claimed that talking about Dan quitting his job was a slap at her. Nobody much paid any attention to that, though, and Dan quitting his job pretty much fell out of favor as a water cooler subject.

And besides, the baroness was really upset that people were talking about her children, which she said was off-limits and shouldn't be happening.

But then Liverpool went on the television and said that it just wasn't realistic to expect young girls not to do the thing that made them end up with child. But, she said, there were things to do to keep that from happening, and that seriously, young girls should wait at least 10 years and get married and have a career first before you let that happen.

Liverpool also said that Dan was a real hands on dad and that they still planned on getting married. And the baroness even showed up for part of the interview, so it appeared that maybe she'd gotten over the "off limits" thing, especially if the one doing the talking about it was somebody who'd fawned all over her during the recently unsuccessful campaign for Second in Command.

But then came word that even before Liverpool went on television with her mom and Stummble, she and Dan had already broken up. And Dan's sister Porsch was pretty darn upset about it. Porsch said that Liverpool was not going to school and that she wouldn't let Dan or any of his family see Stummble because of the whole "white trash" thing, which apparently had to do with Dan not being quite on the level of the baroness and her family. And there were rumors of cheating and nasty text messages and everything you'd expect from a high-school level break-up.

The baroness, however, said that Liverpool was really devastated by her break-up with Dan and that some people would just say anything to hurt her or to make a buck off the family name.

It was a very sad tale, but mostly sad for Liverpool and Stummble. Stummble now has a mom who's not really ready to be a mom, and who'll find it difficult to do anything that she might want to do now because Stummble must be her No. 1 priority, as he should be.

Liverpool, because of family's adherence to archaic attitudes and rituals, never got the support or the information she needed to make good decisions about her life. Maybe with a better education, she could have made better decisions -- the kind she's now advising other young girls in similar situations to make.

But the moral of the story is clear, boys and girls. Life lessons that don't include talking about real life are dangerous and can lead to situations that can't be recalled. No doubt that Liverpool loves little Stummble very much, and will do her best to provide him with the kind of upbringing he deserves.

Hopefully, however, it won't resemble the kind she got.


Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************
Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine with a quick review when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.

Peace Y'all

Stupid People

Stupid people annoy me. All the "stupid people" quotes you can think of -- they all apply.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Note to self: It is illegal to stab people for being stupid.

When you're surrounded by idiots, just remember that murder is illegal and sarcasm is much more satisfying.

It's not that I'm not a people person. I'm just not a stupid people person.

People are idiots and I hate them.

Sarcasm. It's easier than actually having to deal with stupid people.

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Everyone has a right to be stupid; some people just abuse the privilege.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Oh, I sure have my moments of being stupid. We all do. But some people, as some anonymous soul pointed out, abuse the privilege. Those are the ones who annoy the crap out of me. I mean, I just don't have the time in my life to drum up the kind of energy it takes to deal with stupid people.

Like Bobby Jindal, Mark Sanford, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Haley Barbour -- stupid governors who get their noses all up in the air because they don't want to let unemployed people have more unemployment benefits. There was a another stupid people quote -- something about when people do stupid things they declare it their duty. Just like these stupid governors. It's their little protest against the recovery bill. They, of course, want to continue the failed policies of the last 30 years, believing they'll get us out of the mess that those very policies put us in.

Stupid. People.

Like Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives. He thinks Obama's decision to overturn GW's ban on federal funding for embryionic stem cell research is a "distraction" from the economy. Well, Eric, sweetie, it's only a distraction if you make it one. So shut up about it and keep your nose on the economy.

News flash: The president is a Democrat. A Democrat -- a liberal. And yes, he damn sure is a liberal.

He is not a socialist, and that brings me to the entire Republican party and all of its followers, each and every one of whom apparently do not know what socialism is. They seem to think that Obama the socialist, which he is not, is planning to strip billions of dollars from rich people and give it to the poor. Kind of an elected Robin Hood, which personally I don't think is such a bad idea, given the atrocious behavior of most rich people of late.

But that's not going to happen, and I'm not stupid enough to push for it.

But that's not socialism anyway. Socialism does call for a more equitable compensation plan, wherein John Thain does not make billions of dollars while Lily Ledbetter loses her job and can't file suit for the gender discrimination she suffered. But that's all highly theoretical. And, like capitalism, there are varying degrees of socialism.

And the argument for or against socialism and for or against capitalism isn't what I'd like to carry on here. I don't consider myself much of a socialist, but then, I don't consider myself much of a capitalist either since I let go of my business several years ago and dove wholeheartedly into journalism. Personally, I think some new type of economy is what we're going to end up with -- the best of both worlds, and probably a few others too. Provided we survive.

Oh, and socialism and communism aren't the same thing either.

Just so you know, socialism calls for state or worker ownership of the means of production and distribution. Since the rich jackasses have exported all the production the United States once had, there's not much around here to create a true socialist system with. So, you stupid people, shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about.

You have all your panties in a wad because Obama's tax plan calls for people who make more than $250,000 a year to pay a little more tax than they've been paying. Here's what you don't know -- the rest of that sentence, since you start screaming the moment you year "more tax." The plan calls for people who make more than $250,000 a year to pay a little more tax than they've been paying on the part of their income that exceeds $250,000. So all your stupid friends who are trying to figure out how not to make more than $250,000, they're not doing themselves any favors at all. They're just stupid.

Listen to what distributorcap NY says about it:

Finally, you also have to laugh when people like Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham talk about 'redistributing the wealth' and that 'people who have higher salaries are more productive and more valuable.' (Tell that to a nurse, teacher or fire fighter). Not that people shouldn’t reap the benefits (if that means having lots of money) of their hard work and great ideas, but tell me how different would Richard Fuld’s or Stan O’Neal’s or some other robber-banker’s life be if they paid a 39% marginal tax rate on the $500 million they stole earned, rather than 35%. Would it mean one less $12,000 garbage can? And if that extra 4% in marginal tax went to attaining cleaner water (which they have to drink) or retiring debt to fight the useless Iraq War or to helping kids get an decent education (who I would think they want buying products to keep corporate America busy) or by making the bridge they drive over safer – wouldn’t that be better for the Fuld family?

But that's too much thinking for stupid people. They just hear "taxes" and go all nutzoid. because for them, thinking is just regurgitating what you've been told by others, who probably heard it from some other stupid person too. Reminds me of another stupid people quote.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Whatever, though. What's pretty darn clear is that the stupid people and their Eville lords (not sure who they are, but stupid people can't make up all this shit by themselves) are scared. There's new ideas out there. They've been out there for a while, but they're moving now, percolating up from the dismal depths of the mess the conservatives have made of things. And Mahatma Gandhi knows what happens when new ideas get started.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.

I think we're at the fighting part now.

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine with a quick review when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.

Peace Y'all

News Writer's Guide To The Stock Market

Those That Know said today that the stock market dropped because of AIG's huge 4th quarter losses and, of course, the general worry about the state we're in.

The last time the market "bounced" was just a week ago, when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said something that downplayed bank takeover fears.

A week before that, the market fell because investors were afraid the stimulus bill the President signed that day wouldn't be enough.

A few days earlier, it was up because the president was working on a mortgage rescue plan.

The day after the president's inauguration, IBM's earnings and news that Tim Geithner was going to be nominated to be Treasury Secretary brought the market up, after dropping on the day of the inauguration because they were looking beyond it to what the new president faced.

The week before the inauguration ended up because investors were looking forward to the big event.

Notice a pattern? Yeah, me neither.

Wanna know what I think? I think that

1) the so-called experts have no fucking idea what they're talking about and

2) the investors are a buncha kids who are playing high-stakes games of chicken with money.

That's a pretty ugly thing to do, really. It messes with people's livelihoods. You and I, and the managers of most of our retirement funds, generally take pretty good care of our money. But when greedy sons of bitches are playing chicken with the money, it screws it up for everybody. You can't be conservative enough in the stock market to stay ahead of the assholes who are out to make millions at the expense of everybody else.

And they do the same things on the commodities markets, where it hurts people like farmers who depend on the Chicago exchange to set the prices for some of their goods. If these guys get scared that they might lose some money, well, there go the farmers.

These folks aren't "investors." They're gamblers, trying to stay in the game long enough to make a killing and get out before the whole thing crashes.

And y'know, if it only affected the gamblers, there'd be no problem. But it doesn't. It affects everybody who invests in the stock market.And, as we've clearly seen, everybody else too.

And what drives gamblers, aside from that weird addiction thing? Mostly greed.

That's the problem with unfettered capitalism. I have no problem with capitalism. Kinda like it, really. I have what I need, and a fair amount of what I want, even a few things I only think I want. Contrary to the depiction of liberals put out by the Supreme Leader of the GOP lately, I am not in favor of socialism, nor am I an unhappy liberal. I'm quite content.

I just lack the greed gene, I guess.

The Ayatollah Limbaugh, for example, has god knows how many cars, because "I like nice cars," along with five houses. He's not married, he has no children. Just a cat. And a $35 million contract.

Far be it for me to say that he's a greedy son of a bitch, but come on. Who needs all that?

Usually, it's greedy people. And they fuck it all up for the rest of us. They're why capitalism needs some regulation here and there to keep their stupid asses from doing what they've done to us for the last 30 years.

And rather than admit they're selfish assholes, they dole out more money to their congresscritters to keep them from doing anything that might make it harder for them to play the game.

Anyway, all of this is just a round-about way to tell you that I've decided I can explain the stock market as well as anybody else. I've set up a new category -- things that make the stock market go up and down -- and I'll use it to tell you what's going on in the high stakes world of finance. Here's today's good news:

Today, the market fell to 12 year lows after an unusual winter storm blanketed the south in snow over the weekend and headed for New England, dampening investors' hopes for riding around with top down on the convertible.

They were also made uneasy by the brewing conflict between Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele and the Supreme Leader.

On CNN's "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," Steele called the ayatollah's schtick "incendiary" and "ugly" entertainment, and the ayatollah fired back that Steele should go back behind the scenes and work harder to destroy the liberals.


"Why do you claim to lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it President Obama succeeds?" he said on his radio program.

Investors will probably feel better about it all tomorrow though, since Steele saw the error of his ways, just too late to save the market today.

"My intent was not to go after Rush -- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh," Steele told Politico in a telephone interview. "I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."

"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele told Politico.

It wasn't yet clear whether rising Republican star Rep. Eric Cantor's mealy-mouthed repudiation of the ayatollah's oft-stated desire for the Obama presidency to fail will have any effect on the market, or draw fire from his Supreme Leadership.

"I don't think anyone wants anything to fail right now," the House Republican Whip said on ABC's "This Week on Sunday." "We have such challenges. What we need to do is we need to put forth solutions to the problems that real families are facing today."

Which, of course, is precisely why Cantor and his fellow GOP obstructionists want nothing more than to continue the same failed policies of the last 30 years and block any attempt to change our direction.

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

**************************

Thanks for supporting AWOP TeamZine with a quick review when you click on our "Thumb This Up" button below.

Peace Y'all