“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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Paul Krugman: Slavery’s Long Shadow
America is a much less racist nation than it used to be, and I’m not just talking about the still remarkable fact that an African-American occupies the White House. The raw institutional racism that prevailed before the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow is gone, although subtler discrimination persists. Individual attitudes have changed, too, dramatically in some cases. For example, as recently as the 1980s half of Americans opposed interracial marriage, a position now held by only a tiny minority.
Yet racial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.
Of course, saying this brings angry denials from many conservatives, so let me try to be cool and careful here, and cite some of the overwhelming evidence for the continuing centrality of race in our national politics.Of course, saying this brings angry denials from many conservatives, so let me try to be cool and careful here, and cite some of the overwhelming evidence for the continuing centrality of race in our national politics.
David Cay Johnson: Goldman Sachs enters retail lending. What could go wrong?
Investment bank takes page from Michael Milken playbook, seeks to profit from high-risk loans
Goldman Sachs, the investment manager of choice for the super rich, is about to pursue new profits by lending to the merely prosperous.
This is an epochal change on Wall Street worthy of the Tuesday morning placement at the top of the New York Times front page, even though the news actually broke a year ago.
Potentially Goldman will make it easier, faster and cheaper for people and businesses to take out loans from a few thousands of dollars to a few tens of thousands of dollars. But in doing so, it just may weaken retail banking, resulting in less competition and more power for Goldman. It also is not without risk to taxpayers and Goldman customers, not least because the law has yet to define the relative rights and duties of such borrowers, lenders and investors in the new banking trend that Goldman said it will join next year.
So while this new venture may be an economic and social good, we should be wary, given Goldman’s long and troubled history of taking advantage of customers and taxpayers alike. Keep in mind that Goldman tarnished its reputation for decades because it took care of itself first in 1929, ruining the fortunes of many famous clients.
Thanks to a last-minute deal last Thursday between President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress, the fast-track bill is still alive. Its passage depends on whether a handful of Senate Democrats can be persuaded to go along. [..]
Republicans have tried to frame the legislative situation as a fair trade-off: if they can get their reluctant caucus to vote for adjustment assistance, Democrats are somehow honor-bound to support the whole package. (Republicans don’t like TAA both because of its budget impact and their ideological belief that the free market will take care of displaced workers.)
But if Democrats fall for this ploy, they are dupes. For starters, the money in TAA is a pittance, compare to the direct damage that this deal will do to American workers. And it does nothing to protect consumers and citizens from the other elements of the deal that weaken regulatory standards.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is not really about doing much for workers. Mainly, it’s about giving Democrats who are in bed with corporate elites some political cover. The cover is pretty threadbare.
Robert Reich: How to Punish Bank Felons
What exactly does it mean for a big Wall Street bank to plead guilty to a serious crime? Right now, practically nothing.
But it will if California’s Santa Cruz County has any say. [..]
The county’s board of supervisors just voted not to do business for five years with any of the five banks felons.
The county won’t use the banks’ investment services or buy their commercial paper, and will pull its money out of the banks to the extent it can.
“We have a sacred obligation to protect the public’s tax dollars and these banks can’t be trusted. Santa Cruz County should not be involved with those who rigged the world’s biggest financial markets,” says supervisor Ryan Coonerty.
The banks will hardly notice. Santa Cruz County’s portfolio is valued at about $650 million.
But what if every county, city, and state in America followed Santa Cruz County’s example, and held the big banks accountable for their felonies?
What if all of us taxpayers said, in effect, we’re not going to hire these convicted felons to handle our public finances? We don’t trust them.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney: If we don’t change our permissive gun laws, we’ll never end gun violence
Over the past few months, I’ve introduced three gun safety bills and fought for a proposal by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to keep cop-killing bullets off the street.
The ATF’s proposal was shelved before its comment period even ended because of the uproar from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, and my own proposals have triggered a wave of invectives and false attacks in an attempt to get me to back down and scare off others from supporting responsible gun safety reforms. [..]
I’m doing this because more children die in the United States from bullets than from cancer, and it’s a scandal that the federal government hasn’t done more.
But instead of a reasoned and measured debate about how to reduce gun violence, the response has been an onslaught of gun-obsessed fanatics who strongly – and wrongly – believe that the second amendment guarantees unregulated access to anything that anyone might wish to add to their own personal arsenal. The armchair-constitutionalists among them can make the case against pretty much any regulation of guns, and the courts be dammed.
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