This particular fairy tale:
“Preapproval” implies he had veto power, or at the very least, the power to insist on changes. That is what we have been asking for cites on, cites that do not rely on your dubious and biased recollections. Briefing the president-elect does not constitute "preapproval’.
Because it fails to support your common assertion, except that Blumer, unlike canny Scylla, attempts to prove his specific claim (Obama is a socialist and shares blame with his fellow traveller George W. Bush for the creation of TARP). It’s unfortunate for his argument (including the part you agree with) that he does so by portraying third party spin from John Kerry as an official communique from the Obama campaign. This is ludicrous, as elucidator pointed out, and damages your claim, should you endorse Blumer’s argument.
However, your specific point, Scylla, was that G. W. Bush “involved [Obama] in the process” of creating TARP “and got his [preapproval].” You’ve lately clarified this claim as follows:
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was signed into law by Bush in early October 2008. The Obama transition team, being limp-wristed wussies (this was before they turned into socialist muslim Demoncrats), waited until after the November elections before they began working directly with Bush and Paulsen.
It’s true that Senator Obama took at least as active a role in discussions within Congress and with the Executive branch as any legislator at the time. It’s also fair to say that the Obama team began exerting influence over the execution of the program even prior to his inauguration. But it is not accurate to say that Obama was given more of a hearing by the White House or allowed any special approval authority over any of the law’s provisions during the legislative phase.
Not quite the way you do, apparently.
While symptomatic of the free market deregulatory attitudes that facilitated this fustercluck, I am not sure where permitting various types of financial instititutions to be owned by the same entity was the cause of most of this crisis. A better culprit would be the Commodities Exchange Act that prohibits government bureaucrats from regulating derivatives like credit default swaps.
there are general anti-abuse rules that are supposed to close abusive tax shelters but the problem is that the biggest tax loopholes are based around things like preferential capital gains and dividend treatment.
[quote]
Again, I don’t know how I can explain this to you: the system has failed. In the USA, Wall Street has fucked Main Street up the ass, and now these people, who have worked their asses off and, for some bizarre reason, still failed, are pissed. QUOTE]
Its an underlying sense of persistent inequity in the system.
See the ultimatum game.
Oh, the starched piety! C’est les hors puckque! You answer people that you clearly hold in contempt, you’re not looking for a fair fight, you’re looking to win. You don’t pass up an opportunity to piss on somebody if you’re sure you’re smarter than they are, and can easily prove it. When someone can punch in your weight class, well…
Its not the size of the ego so much as how it eats. Yours is predatory. Be warned: if it can’t feed on others, it will feed on you. Or worse, those you love.
Oh. So you really don’t want a cite. What you have is a semantic complaint. You believe the word preapproval does not accurately describe what occured because of a lack of veto power.
It seems to me that you really don’t want a cite. What you wish to do is make an argument that may necessitate a clarification, restatement, retraction, or what have you.
Why on earth would you ask for a cite on this? Why not simply take issue with the word preapproval.
I admit the argument you’ve made against the word is a good one. Preapproval is likely to strong a description.
I can’t fucking figure out why on earth you would ask for a cite on this. We substantially agree on what occured we just differ on what it means or constitutes.
Oh well.
The majority of subprime mortgages were originated by folks who were not subject to CRA.
Eat me?
I have a lot of family and friends in the industry and they are almost without exception smart, rational, hard working group of people. But they tend to be greedy, short sighted and self entitled. I don’t blame them for the mess but these are the sort of people that gravitate towards and thrive in that industry. Their natural inclinations make this sort of crisis inevitable unless they are regulated and they don’t like to be regulated.
I didn’t think he was saying that eery single transaction works out super. But that these transactions in the aggregate are supposed work out well.
This wasn’t addressed to me, but I’ll offer the observation that your assertion regarding the level of Obama’s involvement in TARP was a rejoinder to gonzomax’s rebuttal of a previous criticim you offered regarding Obama’s job performance as Chief Executive:
(emphasis added)
So the question of Obama being an architect and special preapprover of TARP rather than being the executive inheritor of the program is not an overly fine distinction; this is central to your rebuttal of gonzo’s point, and in my opinion its counterfactuality destroys that rebuttal.
In fact, gonzo was correct; Obama had no unilateral option other than to execute TARP within the guidelines of the first division of Public Law 110-343 (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008).
Yeahhhhhh. Not quite the same.
I notice in that narrative you provided you completely ommitted the part that I talked about which was where Bush offered to take direction from Obama and ask Congress for more funds if Obama wanted him to. Obama did and Bush did.
That would seem to imply a bit higher of a level of participation than what your narrative describes, don’t you think?
I have another question.
If Bush asked Obama whether he should try and get more money before he did it, what would you call that?
There’s a word I’m looking for. What is it?
Oh yeah! “Preapproval.”
Funny how that works out.
I guess if there wasn’t preaprroval as I’ve described, and if there hadn’t been a QE2, and talk of a Qe3 than you would probably be correct. Since all these things actually happened, I think I am correct.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The discussion regarding the request for more money was part of the administration of the already created program by the outgoing Chief Executive in cooperation with his elected successor. That doesn’t show preapproval of anything, it shows proper transitional coordination of executive details during a change of administrations.
Small sample, anecdotal, and corellation does not equal causation, to boot. Maybe all you just come from a selfish family and hang out in a neighborhood of selfish people. Maybe you belong to an unusually selfish ethnic group.
Anyway, your characterization of those in the finance industry differs from my experience.
Your memory is faulty. TARP was proposed late Septmber 2008 and was signed into law less than a week later. Obama was not the President elect yet.
At this point we had already bailed out Bear Staerns, AIG, put pressure on B of A to buy Merril Lynch.
Obama supported TARP (as did McCain) but was not consulted in the drafting of the bill or given a tacit veto, neither was McCain.
He might have differed in the details of how he ahndled TARP (I vastly prefer how Obama handled the GM bailout (make the equity worthless and pay the bondholders pennies on the dollar (but still better than they would do in chapter 11), so I suspect he would not have made AIG creditors whole, paying them 100 cents on the dollar but then again he wasn’t the former chariman of Goldman Sachs either) but he supported the principle of doing something rather than taking a laissez faire approach to the whole mess.
Part of the frustration seen in OWS is the result of large efforts made to rescue walls treet from failure through tarp and then very little done to punish wall street for doing this to us or to regulate or reign in wall street excess.
Oh geez.
Hmmm.
Ok. if Bush says “Hey Obama! You want think I should go and get some more buckaroos for this tarp thingie?” and Obama says “Yes, please.”
Then it seems to me that Obama would have iapproved** that part of Tarp before Bush did it. Yes?
But that’s not a “preapproval?”
Listen, let us abandon semantics and reason together. The amount of control Obama had, and the degree of input that Obama had on Tarp is arguable. When push comes to shove it is strictly notional since Obama had no real control other than what Bush decided to give him, up until the day he was elected.
On the other side of the coin Obama was consulted. He did have an input. His advice was asked for and followed, and he didn’t change things very much, if at all, that I can see after he was elected.
Then, on his own, he went and did a round two on his own.
So, the idea that they were note basically of two minds and that it wasn’t bipartisan is not really supportable by the evidence.
Gonzo’s thesis seems to be that Bush forced the evil Tarp down Obama’s throat and he had no say in it. Apparently it tasted so bad that he did a QE2 on his own. How that would work, I don’t know. Gonzo never really seemed to wrap his head around the concept enough to answer it.
Now, if you think that makes sense and you stand with Gonzo on it, more power to you.
It is a precarious rhetorical position. You are a brave man fro standing there.
I remember correctly. Both candidates were consulted and preapproved TARP before Bush went public with it (I recall McCain being a bit of a bitch about it,) because it was important that this be bipartisan.
Again, how much control Obama had over this is subject for debate.
Bravery has nothing to do with it. I take no stand on gonzo’s larger point regarding BHO’s philosophical alignment with TARP, other than to say I see no fundamental dischord between Obama’s stated positions and the general idea behind TARP. In that sense, you are more correct than gonzo.
My only point is that your narrow assertion regarding Obama’s involvement in the creation of TARP is incorrect, and that it fails to support your broader statements regarding Obama’s discretionary continuance of Bush programs. In that sense, gonzo is more correct than you are.
This is inexact. Since “TARP” is merely the US Treasury program authorized by the Act signed into law by Bush, you’re correct in the sense that both campaigns were consulted to a degree by the outgoing administration prior to implementation/rollout of the program. But this does not mean that any party had control of said implementation beyond the limits prescribed by the legislation, nor does it mean that any prior or subsequent consultations by the Bush administration with acting US Senators (POTUS candidates or not) had any procedural clout over the provisions of the law.
I was under the impression that Glass-Steagal was also what prevented, say, speculating on Oil or Gold or other real, tangible goods and in doing so driving up the price immensely. I may be wrong.
Because there is an underlying, persistent inequity in the system. Upwards mobility in the USA is basically a joke; it has almost reached the point where if you’re born poor, you are as guaranteed to die poor as the farmers in the dark ages. We’re clearly not quite there, and it is possible to be that 1 in a million rags to riches poster child, but it requires more luck than skill or work. The sooner people realize this and start demanding things like, say, I dunno, the fucking Estate Tax back, the sooner we’ll get to the level of income equality that most of the rest of the first world is at.
I think you miss the point. They are totally dismissable for the actual protests. They only start to be meaningful through the media. It’s the media not the protests that matter.
Yeahhh. I hear what you are saying. I don’t see it like that. Probably the most important thing that ever happened to me in my life is when I got 3rd degree burns over both my hands as a child. I spent about 6 weeks in the worst agony that I think a human being can suffer. I’m not trying to be hyperbolous here. I think that’s a fact. The pain would come in waves and it would seem like after a time the pain would be so bad that it would overwhelm the nervous system until things recovered enough for me to hurt some more.
It was a fundamental, life changing experience. After that, I kind of understood that the world was not my friend. I’m kind of surprised that most people I meet tend to think that the world is their friend and the natural state of things is comfort and ease.
I run marathons and ultramarathons to keep discipline and remind me of what it is like to suffer. I think suffering is fundamental to the human animal, the natural state of affairs and something to get used to.
What I know for a fact from those weeks of agony and from those ultra marathons is that focussing on the pain, thinking about it, feeling sorry for yourself, it all makes it worse. On the other hand, realizing that pain and suffering is natural and just another feeling and really no different from pleasure, or hot, or cold… that gives you strength.
So, I think about the fossils of ancient man who were dug up with these terrible injuries that they carried with them for years, injuries that frankly because of their mind set they probably didn’t notice. I think of people who suffered real hardship without questioning it, the Okies in the dust bowl. I think about our forefathers who fought for freedom, the generation that fought wwII. I think about my father who died suffering from cancer brought on most likely from agent orange, who suffered agonies that I think few people have suffered, and did it without complaint. I think of my grandfather who went insane with alzheimers and my grandmother who went insane because even though her mind was intact, her body failed her, and after two years in bed, she lost her mind. I think of my mother’s cancer. I think of the cancer and the suffering that is waiting for me. I think of what is waiting for us all, because, as Jim Morrisson said “no one hear gets out of life.”
When i think of that, I think that’s what’s really to be feared in life. The suffering that most of us have lived our lives without ever feeling (but the fucking check is in the mail, you better believe that,) but that most every other generation in the world has felt.
Then I think of these occupy sons of bitches. They are upset because their college education isn’t worth what they thought it was, and they can’t get a management job right out of school. Or that their job isn’t good enough. Or, that they didn’t really pay attention and do their due diligence when they took out a mortgage… and, by comparison, I don’t really feel sorry or bad for any of them. I just don’t. I look at the tape and for the most part there is a bunch of really healthy people who have been afforded every opportunity and are sitting at what is basically the apex of human comfort and luxury… and they are ungrateful.
To have been born in the 20th century in a country like this is automatically to live better than the kings of 1000 years ago. With all the advantages, you would think that anybody but the most incompetant person would be immediately grateful. The mexicans that come to this country sure are. As are many asians. They know what suffering and repression is. They are not playing.
The very fact that the Occupy people have the LUXURY to camp out in a park for months on end is testament to their privileged status.
What they really want… is more. They are pissed that others have more.
I am really just filled with fucking contempt for them.
Ok. Now that I got that off my chest, I will admit that I am atypical. Unusual. My experience is unusual. It may have colored me and made me a little insane, a little unsympathetic, and given me some weird views on suffering that an undamaged individidual might not have.
I concede that as a possibility.
But there is a part of my brain, one that I don’t listen to at my own hazard, a part that is cynical and usually correct.
That part tells me that my view is the correct one. That pain and suffering or the norm, and any moment without them is a blessing, and those that complain over little things are damned.
And, let’s face another fact. There are plenty of jobs out there. Mexican immigrants know this. One of our big problems as a country is that we think we are entitled to a good job, that is rewarding, and pays well.
Sometimes though, you need to mow lawns or flip burgers. Sorry but that’s the sad side of the American dream. You have to earn it. The other sad part is that even if you work hard and do everything right, you can still get fucked.
That’s life and it ain’t fair.
All the camping out in a park and eating delivery pizza isn’t going to change that.
I thought you were in Germany. FYI, things haven’t massively improved in ole USA since Obama took office. I don’t blame him. Maybe things will get better down the road. But, so, far, none of the shit that he’s done has really helped anybody.
Yet.
So I reserve judgement on his effectiveness.
Yeah, but all the signs all say something different. Give me a break.
I’m not going to repeat what I said before. I just simply these claims of suffering and injustice to be particularly compelling. History is full of people who have suffered far worse without blaming somebody else and who have done something to improve their situation.
I am not impressed by the “suffering” and these whiny entitled people who have no idea how good they have it.
[/quote]
Actually, “jobs” was in there. Do me a favor and actually watch it, you moron.
[/QUOTE]
FUCK!
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK!!! I missed that.
Fuck!
I did that to myself, didnt’t I?
I deserved that.