“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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New York Times Editorial: A Step Toward a Dream
The Obama administration’s decision to allow as many as 800,000 young immigrants avoid deportation and apply for work permits makes perfect sense. It wisely rescues blameless young people from legal limbo in an immigration system marked by dysfunction and toxic politics.
Before the fog sets in – with the predictable Republican outrage and the distortions of an election year – it is important to be clear that this move does not offer amnesty and has nothing to do with green cards or a path to citizenship. [..]
If this reminds you of the Dream Act, it should. The Dream Act is a bill in Congress to give legal status to young immigrants who go to college or serve in the military. It has long been stalled by Republicans who oppose relief of any sort for people without papers. Those who were complaining about Mr. Obama’s action on Friday should acknowledge that Congress could have taken on this job, but immigration extremists have not allowed it.
William K. Black: The JOBS Act and Green Slime
We learned recently about the secret adulteration of our hamburgers with “pink slime.” Agribusiness companies created pink slime from ultra-fatty beef tissue that was more likely to harbor salmonella and e coli. They processed it with ammonia (Mr. Clean) in a partially successful effort to reduce the risk of infecting the consumer. Pink slime, unbeknownst to the public, comprised up to 15% of our hamburgers.
The financial sector is far worse. Pink slime represented a relatively small portion of each burger and generally did not make the consumer sick. In the financial sector, “green slime”-slime with the color of money-came to dominate entire sectors, and it always caused severe damage. “Liar’s loans,” made without the lender verifying the borrower’s actual income, were 90% fraudulent. Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), securities giving their owners claim to a part of debtors’ interest payments, were typically composed overwhelmingly of fraudulent liar’s loans. It was lenders who overwhelmingly put the lies in liar’s loans, issuing loans that were nothing more than “green slime” and then turning around and selling them as Grade A Prime cuts.
Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.
The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.
The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.
George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling: Economics and Morality: Paul Krugman’s Framing
In his June 11, 2012, op-ed in The New York Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is supposed to serve” – “the unemployed,” and “workers” – and “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”
Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed – by laws, rules and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is, whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.
Alexander Cockburn: Cuomo’s Marijuana Proposal
Last week there was much rejoicing when Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, flanked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, came out in support of ending the practice of arresting individuals for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view.
The details here are very important. These arrests come in consequence of stop-and-frisk police powers — used across the country — otherwise known as a Terry stop (OK’d by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968) under which a cop may briefly detain a person upon reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime but short of probable cause to arrest. When a search for weapons is also authorized, the procedure is known as a stop-and-frisk. [..]
Obviously, anything that crimps the cops’ lawless actions is good. Maybe there are future Obamas who will be able to keep a misdemeanor off their record. But let’s retain our sense of reality. “Together, we are making New York fairer and safer, and ensuring that every New Yorker has access to a justice system that doesn’t discriminate based on age or color,” said Cuomo last week. Doesn’t discriminate? In the first three months of 2012, the police stopped 203,500 New Yorkers. Commissioner Kelly obviously didn’t feel he faced a mutiny by his men, an inventive lot when it comes to construing the law. Don’t forget. Drug policy in the U.S. is about social control. That’s the name of the game.
Gail Collins: Running on Empty
Our biggest political division is the war between the empty places and the crowded places.
It’s natural. People who live in crowded places tend to appreciate government. It’s the thing that sets boundaries on public behavior, protects them from burglars and cleans the streets. If anything, they’d like it to do more. (That pothole’s been there for a year!) The people who live in empty places don’t see the point. If a burglar decides to break in, that’s what they’ve got guns for. Other folks don’t get in their way because their way is really, really remote. Who needs government? It just makes trouble and costs money. [..]
This fall, the Republican Party is going to be running on the Empty Places war cry, and it’s ironic that Mitt Romney’s supposed to be the one to lead the charge. Maybe he’ll one-up Perry and find four federal agencies to promise to close. Maybe he’ll bag a deer. Or a moose. They’re serious this time around.
Joe Nocera: The Safest Bank
We’re counterprogramming today.
This is not another column about the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the one and only Jamie Dimon. I mean, what’s left to say after his appearance this week before the Senate Banking Committee? With the senators unwilling to ask even mildly probing questions about the trades that cost the bank billions – hoping, no doubt, to be rewarded with JPMorgan campaign contributions – you could practically see Dimon regaining his old swagger with every passing minute.
Instead, let’s focus on a bank chief executive devoid of swagger. An executive who doesn’t denigrate the importance of regulation. Who has actually come out in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And who doesn’t view banks as institutions that should be taking supercharged risks hoping to make supercharged returns for shareholders. I’m talking about Vikram Pandit of Citigroup. The Times’s Ben Protess once labeled him the anti-Dimon. Bingo.
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