Oh, no question. But this isn’t the “can we turn a nothing issue into the political equivalent of something” thread; it’s about whether Edwards actually did something bad here.
If a Dem did something that indisputably saved the human race from total extinction in the near term, I’d still have great faith in the ability of the right-wing noise machine to find a way to smear him/her over the way s/he did it.
Yeah, you mentioned some stuff @8, which I responded to @11, and you let it drop there.
It’s ‘clear’ to you. All I can say is that ‘clearly’ is one of those great handwaving terms which is used a lot when someone thinks they’ve got a case, but it’s harder to state than they were expecting. Sometimes this is because the argument really isn’t there.
You’re right that I haven’t “outright stated that this isn’t a legitimate political issue.” In post 11 in this thread, I said that if you could show that if Centex is “some sort of predatory lender, enticing people into loans they really don’t have the resources to pay off” it would be so. Since that’s not “clearly” true, I’m still waiting for the followup.
Just did, before my previous post. What I’ve had to say about that has remained unchanged since post 11 of this thread, as nobody since then has added anything new. Nor have you.
That would, I think, be the voices in your head that you must’ve heard. Say hi to them for me, OK?
And… if a person of Edward’s reputation and professional history wanted to take a course on hedge funds (Hedge Funds 304) as a part of his career development, very few colleges would take the tact of "Oh, no, Senator - you first have to take Finance 101, 102, Accounting 101, 102, and 103… ").
I just finished Lowensteins account of what happened at LTCM and don’t recall any such thing, other than the head of the Federal Reserve Bank in NY wrestled with 11 major investment banks to bail out LTCM themselves.
But I don’t recall any tax dollars going into LTCM. Cite?
I really don’t see any hypocrisy in John Edwards working for a hedge fund. On the other hand, I am kind of upset that his wife would call Ann Coulter on a tv show and deliberate misquote her to help raise funds for Edwards’ campaign.
Cite
What’s wrong with hedge funds in general? In concept, not much. The idea is to seek non-correlated returns for diversification and hedging purposes. The concept is simple: A small amount of speculative non-correlated assets can add alpha and decrease beta of a large portfolio overrall.
In practice there are several problems with some hedge funds. In reality they can become market movers that precipate the very issues they are supposed to protect against. Long Term Capital Management would be a fine example of a market correction precipitated by a hedge fund.
They can eat up a lot of IPO business, preventing the stock from getting into the hands of regular investors, increasin volatility. Sometimes they provide greater market efficiency sometimes they detract from it.
Most often though I think they provide a useful purpose as a vehicle to seperate money from rich but unwise investors.
My pleasure. On further thought, Edwards’ working a a hedge fund gives him credibility in terms of reformation of same. He likely won’t be one of these guys that’s gonna fly off the handle saying they are all bad or all good. He will likely understand the positives and the negatives.
Personally, I think that somebody who has actually bothered to work in the industry has a lot more credibility than someone who hasn’t.
My point exactly. She has links to a third party for the direct quote which was misquoted (by partial misquote.) It’s pretty incontrovertible.
Sorry, and fair enough. I shalt not hijack further. If further discussion is needed I’ll start another thread.
RTF just curious. I have answered why I think this hedge fund was willing to pay this particular past personal injury lawyer/presidential candidate with no particular hedge fund expertise half a million dollars for a one year of part-time work (in addition the amount that they explicitly donated to his campaign), D_Odds gave his thoughts on why too. Why do you think they did it? What service do you think they were buying?
Meanwhile, I understand your point about not having a subject talked about … but whether economic populism is being talked about or not, with or without the rhetorical polarizing of America ala economic popularism, regulation of the hedge fund industry is already being discussed. Not because of Edwards. And I doubt that anyone really sees Edwards’ rhetorical posturing as likely to lift blinders from anyone’s eyes or to provoke any meaningful action at any point. Playing the part of the champion of the poor has been a gambit for running for elected offices for a long time at all levels of politics, in many societies. Sure, I don’t have too many recent examples from Presidential American politics, but hey “don’t cry for me”.
Obviously, they’re hoping to influence Edwards to be less of a proponent of stricter regulation of their sector than would have otherwise been the case. It’s an investment for them, in the same way the corporate world regards political contributions, issue advertising, and investments in pro-corporate ‘think’ tanks (some of them really need a new name, like “shill tanks” or some such) are an investment.
I apologize if I haven’t said this clearly before this point in the discussion; it’s part of a complex of ideas that I’ve been going on about for so long I even bore myself with it. One must assume that if a corporate interest spends money, it’s an investment of some sort, with an expectation of future return.
I’m sure the hedge fund sector’s first hopes are that the GOP remains strong enough to block any regulation of their sector. Their fallback after that is probably the appearance of regulation that really doesn’t affect them much at all; failing that, their next fallback would be intelligent regulation that reduces the risk of their being a problem for a wider group than their investors, but doesn’t destroy or unduly hamper them in doing so. My complete and total WAG is that they have Edwards in mind for the second fallback, with hopes for the first.
True. I’ve never contested this.
We’re a long way yet from meaningful action regardless of the prompt, but I think Edwards’ 2003-04 campaign for the Dem nomination changed the tenor of the discussion about inequality in America. I’d love to see a Lexis-Nexis search of the phrase “class war” over the past 20 years; I’m sure it would turn up literally thousands of instances of Republican politicians and pro-industry or pro-rich shills using the phrase to ridicule the idea that there was a problem at all. And for the most part, it was a successful gambit in precluding the punditocracy from taking inequality issues seriously.
I think Edwards’ “Two Americas” theme four years ago did have the effect of making such issues less inherently dismissable amongst our “serious” pundits. It’s a step forward; it expands the number of people (especially amongst the key within-the-Beltway audience) who, at this point in our history, regard these issues as valid, rather than a joke.
Oh, absolutely. But that doesn’t mean that the need for addressing issues of inequality is constant over time, nor does it mean that the receptiveness of the voting public or the decision-makers themselves to such ideas is constant over time. After a time when inequality has been increasing for over a generation, but the idea that it’s a problem has been in disfavor for most of that time, someone still needs to get out there and move the damned ball forward.
Finally, while there are and will always be an abundance of opportunistic pols who cynically exploit issues to win votes, a lot of pols genuinely believe in a goodly number of the positions they espouse. I see no reason to believe Edwards isn’t one of that latter group with respect to economic inequality issues, and even if he’s in the former group, in the end it doesn’t matter so long as he doesn’t suddenly change his tune, Lieberman-style, once he wins the White House (if that unlikely outcome comes to pass).
