Tag: TMC Politics

Dec 26 2011

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: Springtime for Toxics

Here’s what I wanted for Christmas: something that would make us both healthier and richer. And since I was just making a wish, why not ask that Americans get smarter, too?

Surprise: I got my wish, in the form of new Environmental Protection Agency standards on mercury and air toxics for power plants. These rules are long overdue: we were supposed to start regulating mercury more than 20 years ago. But the rules are finally here, and will deliver huge benefits at only modest cost.

So, naturally, Republicans are furious. But before I get to the politics, let’s talk about what a good thing the E.P.A. just did.

Matt Taibbi: A Christmas Message From America’s Rich

It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.

True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.

But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.

Reed Richardqon: Fact-checking, in the New, Old-Fashioned Way

Just in time for Christmas, PolitiFact delivered a big, fat gift to the Republican Party and its efforts to end Medicare. Sure, this gift was wrapped in a tissue-thin veneer of objectivity and held together by a transparently weak ribbon of a qualifier-it was missing the phrase “as we know it”-but when PolitiFact slapped a brazen “Lie of the Year” bow on top, all pretense pretty much disappeared.

The reaction to such a gross distortion, one that no doubt will be featured in GOP campaign ads throughout the general election next fall, was swift and full-throated:

Here’s the inestimable Pierce on its general “pissantery.”

Here’s Jonathan Cohn with an healthcare policy rebuttal.

Here’s Dave Wiegel talking about how the “lie” actually has its origins in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.

John Nichols: A Conservative Christmas Carol of Scrooge, Marley, Gingrich and Romney

There is something painfully fitting about the fact that the race for the GOP presidential nomination is hitting its peak during the Christmastide. The open disdain for the least among us, for the toilers in the vineyards, for strangers that has been expressed by Newt “End Child Labor Laws” Gingrich, Mitt “Corporations Are People Too” Romney and their immigrant-bashing, union-hating compatriots has given the 2012 race a distinct 1843 character.

In her exceptional new biography of Charles Dickens, Claire Tomalin explains that the novelist’s tale of that latter year, A Christmas Carol, was “Dickens’ response to the condition of the working class.” And she is right, up to a point. But A Christmas Carol is, as well, Dickens’s response to those who would blame the conditions imposed by economic inequality on children who have not taught themselves how to “rise.”

In seeking to awaken a spirit of charity in his countrymen, Dickens called attention to those who callously dismissed the poor as a burden and the unemployed as a lazy lot best forced to grab at bootstraps and pull themselves upward.

New York Times Editorial: Fairness for Home Care Aides

Evelyn Coke spent 20 years as a home care aide helping the elderly and the sick, but she did not live to see fair labor laws applied to her work.

In a case that went to the Supreme Court in 2007, Ms. Coke, who died in 2009, sued her employer for years of unpaid overtime and lost, 9 to 0. This month, President Obama invoked Ms. Coke’s memory when he announced that the Labor Department had finally proposed changes to the provisions on which the court had based its decision.

At issue in Ms. Coke’s case was a 1975 labor rule that defined home care aides as “companions,” a class of workers that does not qualify for federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Ms. Coke’s lawyer, Craig Becker, argued that the rule was supposed to apply only to occasional domestic workers, like baby sitters, not home care aides – one of the nation’s fastest-growing occupations and one whose duties often include feeding, bathing and dressing clients. But the justices said that only Congress or the Labor Department could change the rule, not the court.

Ilyse Hogur: When GOP Walks, Dems Must Move From Blame to Fight

Congress officially adjourned for the year yesterday when Representative Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) brought down the gavel and declared class dismissed until January 2012. When Democrats protested that the majority had not allowed a vote on the bipartisan Senate deal to avoid raising the payroll tax on 160 million American workers, the GOP cut the microphones and cameras so Americans could not hear their protestations. This remarkable move prompted C-SPAN-responsible for filming the sessions so Americans can keep tabs on their lawmakers-to publicly exonerate themselves, tweeting, “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras-the Speaker of the House does.”

It’s as if Speaker Boehner thinks that by shutting down the cameras, turning off the lights and going home, the movie is over. Only-to state what’s obvious to anyone who is not in the DC fog-this “movie” is a real-life nightmare for too many Americans. If this were a screenplay, this move would be a perfect way to wrap up the year defined by hyper-partisan gridlock. Cutting the C-SPAN feed that offers at least some transparency to Congress’s machinations puts an exclamation point on the ruthless serial political brinkmanship that now stands in for the business of governing the country.

Dec 26 2011

The Sham Of Foreclosure Relief

The Obama administration under the guise of trying to look like they are helping the 99% with the massive problem of the housing collapse, the banks are still let off the hook for fraud. It is crystal clear that the financial good old boys are being protected by this administration.

Foreclosure Relief? Don’t Hold Your Breath

by Gretchen Morgenson

So many were skeptical when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced yet another program in April. This one was intended to provide reparations to homeowners who’d been hurt financially by foreclosure abuses at banks.

As the details trickle out, the program looks like more of the disappointing same. “This is just the next program that’s getting people’s hopes up,” said Alys Cohen, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Washington. “Not only will it not help people, it could easily harm them.”

The program arose out of a regulatory review in late 2010 of loan servicing practices at the nation’s largest banks. The review followed the robo-signing scandal that erupted after consumer lawyers – not regulators, mind you – identified numerous apparent forgeries and other improper foreclosure documents filed with courts by banks and their representatives. [..]

Some of the problems were aired at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Dec. 13. Three Democrats – Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Jack Reed of Rhode Island – expressed doubts about the program to Julie L. Williams, chief counsel at the comptroller’s office. The senators were especially vocal about the potential for conflicts of interest among the consultants hired to conduct the reviews. [..]

Michael Olenick, a specialist in mortgage research, said he spotted a conflicted consultant after one hour of digging. Allonhill, a smallish firm appointed by Aurora Bank, a mortgage servicer, is headed by Sue Allon, whose previous small firm acted as credit risk manager in a 2003 mortgage pool for which Aurora oversaw the loans’ servicing. The prospectus on that deal noted that Murrayhill, Ms. Allon’s former firm, would “monitor and advise the servicers with respect to default management of the mortgage loans.” It also said that Murrayhill would make recommendations to the servicers regarding delinquent loans.

Now, under the comptroller office’s program, Ms. Allon’s firm may be analyzing the treatment of borrowers on whose loans it acted as credit risk manager. “This conflict is so deep and so obvious, how could anybody have missed it?” Mr. Olenick asked.

What is even more troublesome is that, as Yves Smith at naked capitalism emphasizes, homeowners are required to give up rights that may be needed to protect themselves in the future:

This is yet another Obama Administration “pretend we are helping ordinary citizens when we are in fact helping the banks” scheme. The most damning tidbit comes late in the article, that borrowers may (I’d assume will) be asked to sign releases that are far broader than the matters under examination. In other words, to get whatever relief the OCC provides, borrowers may unwittingly give up rights worth far more:

   For example, participants in line to get remuneration may be asked to give up their rights to defend themselves if they get into financial trouble again.

   “This process is not meant to fix the original lending practices, so people need to hang on to their right to challenge the original loan later,” she [Cohen] said.

And after all that, the homeowner could still lose their home. This didn’t surprise Alys Cohen who said, “This is the O.C.C . that we’re talking about, [,,] It has a long record of favoring banks over homeowners.”  

Dec 25 2011

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes:A Tweet from Chris: “Hey #uppers: we’ve got a new show tomorrow, Saturday at regular time, 7am. It’s a special year-in-review episode. No show on Sun.“

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:This week will look back at 2011. The political roundtable with ABC’s George Will, Cokie Roberts, Jonathan Karl, and former Republican National Committee Chairman and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie dissect the political events of 2011 and look forward to the 2012 election year. Also a foreign policy roundtable discusses the ripple effects of the year’s tumultuous international events, with Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass and U.S. Institute of Peace fellow Robin Wright, the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer:CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, Nancy Cordes, David Martin, Bob Orr, Anthony Mason, Elizabeth Palmer and John Dickerson join Bob Schieffer for a look back at 2011 and to make predictions on 2012.

The Chris Matthews Show:This week’s guests are Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post Columnist, Rick Stengel, TIME Managing Editor, Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent who will discuss the best and worst moments of 2011.

Meet the Press with David Gregory:A special Christmas edition  with roundtable guests NBC Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw, New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and former mayor of New Orleans, now president of the National Urban League, Marc Morial. Plus a special Christmas Day reflection from the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, DC, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) will discuss the future of North Korea, congressional gridlock, and his own re-election struggles with the tea party. The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein will break down this contentious year in Washington and gives an outlook for 2012. A previously unseen portion of our interview with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the legacy of Iraq, her regrets, and her relationship with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will be aired.

Have some egg nog and ignore these crazy people.

gif-Merry Christmas Pictures, Images and Photos

Dec 24 2011

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Justina C. Ray: Reindeer Are Fading Into Holiday Myth

Climate change and large-scale development are making it hard for reindeer to survive.

CHRISTMAS is tied to the magical north and to the reindeer – creatures of mythical power that fly through the night across the world, helping to distribute happiness and good will. But reindeer do exist – we call them caribou in North America – and these animals and their home in the boreal woodlands and on the barren-ground tundra are in trouble.

For the past decade, I have been conducting aerial surveys of caribou herds. As I sit strapped in small planes in minus-20-degree temperatures, it amazes me that that they survive against the challenges of their environment – particularly the females. These animals spend most of the year on the move and live in places that seem intolerably harsh. They undertake long journeys of hundreds or thousands of miles and return to give birth in the same traditional areas. Such large-scale migrations are an ecological phenomenon that, sadly, is fast disappearing across the planet.

Justina C. Ray, a wildlife biologist, is executive director and senior scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

Joe Nocera: The Big Lie

This is why the myth lives on that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started the housing crisis

You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.

You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Gail Collins: Remember the Alamo

What’s the last political lesson of 2011 to be learned from Congress passing a two-month extension of a popular tax cut?

Just in time for the holidays, Congress showed us it can work in a spirit of bipartisan cooperation to pass a two-month extension of a popular tax cut. On its own! With perhaps a small amount of prodding.

The payroll tax cut bill zipped through Congress on Friday, approved by a Senate with only two members present and then passed by a near-empty House in a five-minute session. Then everybody went away. Why can’t they do this all the time?

The House Republicans, who had tried to hold up the bill out of principle, only to be pummeled by everyone from John McCain to The Wall Street Journal editorial page, hunkered down for a seriously sulky Christmas.

Eugene Robinson: Obama Benefits From Republican Civil War

Finally. After a year of artful camouflage and concealment, Republicans let us glimpse the rift between establishment pragmatists and tea party ideologues. There may be hope for the republic after all.

Forty Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats in voting for compromise legislation providing a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut. The bill passed by 89-10, the kind of margin usually reserved for ceremonial resolutions in favor of motherhood. Senators clearly were confident that House approval would quickly follow.

But it didn’t, because House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t get his tea party freshmen to go along. The result was a kind of intramural sniping among Republicans that we haven’t seen in years.

E. J.Dionne, Jr.: The GOP’s Iowa Chaos

OTTUMWA, Iowa-Is Rick Santorum the next non-Romney to emerge from the pack? Could he conceivably win Iowa?

That these are plausible questions tells you all you need to know about the unsettled nature of the Republican presidential contest-particularly here, the state whose caucuses on Jan. 3 have become a bookie’s nightmare. At the moment, anyone among the six major candidates has a reasonable chance of coming in first or second, and the contest is becoming less settled as the brief Christmas interlude in campaigning approaches.

Joe Conason: The Bigots and Billionaires in Ron Paul’s Orbit

The latest evidence of simmering racial resentment on the American political fringe showed up Monday in a Facebook post by a California man who urged the assassination of the president and his two daughters in obscene, racist language. Aside from the Secret Service, there was little reason for most of us to pay attention to this sick boob-except that he was identified as a local political leader of the tea party and an avid supporter of Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who now seems likely to place first in the Iowa presidential caucuses.

To those who have followed Paul’s long career as a failed presidential candidate-these campaigns have become a family business-the appearance of yet another racist nut job in his orbit is scarcely news. The newsletters that earned millions of dollars for him from gullible subscribers over the decades were often soiled with vile invectives against blacks and other minorities. He is a perennial favorite of the John Birch Society and kindred extremists on the right. He once refused to return a donation from a leader of the Nazi-worshipping skinheads in the Stormfront movement.

What is it about the kindly old doctor that attracts some of the most violent and reactionary elements in society to his banner?

Dec 23 2011

Holiday Shopping Insanity & The Real Economy

I long ago stopped with the Holiday shopping and spending madness that now starts in September. I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a store the day after Thanksgiving. There isn’t anything that my family needs that badly that I would subject myself to obsessed drivers vying for the parking spot closest to the doors if over crowded shopping centers. Or to the rudeness of shoppers, young and old, who will do just about anything from pepper spraying you to walking over your dead body to get to one of the 24 pairs of Nike Air Jordan’s on the shelf, or some other heavily discounted item, that they have waited countless hours for with a thousand other shoppers.

This isn’t just shoppers behaving badly, this is pure insanity driven by greed.

Despite the all this spending frenzy, the economic outlook for retailers isn’t all the booming:

Half off at the entire store at Ann Taylor. Sixty percent at Gap. Forty percent off almost everything at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Aggressive last-minute deals in the days before Christmas are good for procrastinators, but they could be an alarm bell for the retail industry.

While scattered markdowns are standard every year, discounts across entire stores – which analysts say are more widespread than last year – suggest merchants are stuck with too much merchandise.

“It’s really a game of chicken,” said David Bassuk, managing director and head of the retail practice at the consultant firm AlixPartners.

Many retailers entered the season “with pretty optimistic plans” that shoppers would rush into stores and pay full price, Mr. Bassuk said. But that did not pan out, and the final days before Christmas have retailers being “much more aggressive in terms of promotions being offered,” he said.

Shoppers are filling their holiday lists against the backdrop of an uncertain year, with stubbornly high unemployment, increased food prices, volatile gas prices and unpredictability for stocks and Europe’s debt crisis. The government on Thursday said that third-quarter economic growth had not been as brisk as it previously estimated, because of a drop in consumer spending on services like health care.

The American worker is taking home less, if he’s even lucky enough to still have a job, with the real unemployment rate is 11%. The big deal in the news today is the House Republicans caved to demands for a two month extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits that will have to hashed out again when Congress comes back from their extended Winter vacation then end of January.  

Dec 23 2011

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Japan Times Editorial: Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Far from Resolved

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Dec. 16 declared that the stricken reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have entered the state of “cold shutdown” and that it has been confirmed that the nuclear crisis has “been resolved”(Shusoku ni itatta.) As far as Tepco and the goverment are concerned, “Step 2” of their “road map” to bring the nuclear crisis under control has been accomplished one month earlier than originally scheduled. After the completion of Step 2, work that will eventually lead to removal of molten nuclear fuel and decommissioning of the stricken reactors is supposed to start. But the prime minister’s declaration that the crisis has been resolved will not be accepted by many people, especially those in Fukushima Prefecture. [..]

Tepco’s middle- and long-range scenario includes such risks as spontaneous restart of a fission process, new hydrogen explosions, corrosion of the pools containing spent nuclear fuel, leakage of contaminated water or mud, and another strong earthquake and tsunami. Clearly, the nuclear crisis remains far from resolved and Tepco and the government must continue to make their utmost efforts to bring the situation at the Fukushima plant truly under control as quickly as possible and ensure that enough workers remain at the site to cope with any dangerous developments.

Alexander Cockburn: Loom of the Jackboot: Obama Gives Military Extreme Powers

Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama had signed into law a bill that puts the United States not immeasurably far from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in contempt of constitutional protections for its citizens or constitutional restraints upon criminal behavior sanctioned by the state.

At least the DPRK doesn’t trumpet its status as the least-best sanctuary of liberty. American politicians, starting with the president, do little else.

A couple of months ago, came a mile-marker in America’s steady slide downhill towards the status of a Banana Republic with Obama’s assertion that he has the right as president to secretly order the assassination, without trial, of a U.S. citizen he deems to be working with terrorists. This followed his 2009 betrayal of his pledge to end the indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial of prisoners in Guantanamo.

After months of declaring that he would veto such legislation, Obama has now crumbled and will soon sign a monstrosity called the Levin/McCain detention bill, named for its two senatorial sponsors, Carl Levin and John McCain. It’s snuggled into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

Paul Krugman: The Post-Truth Campaign

Mitt Romney is blazing new trails in politics, where not telling the truth doesn’t seem to have any consequences.

Suppose that President Obama were to say the following: “Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people, and he believes that only corporations and the wealthy should have any rights. He wants to reduce middle-class Americans to serfs, forced to accept whatever wages corporations choose to pay, no matter how low.”

How would this statement be received? I believe, and hope, that it would be almost universally condemned, by liberals as well as conservatives. Mr. Romney did once say that corporations are people, but he didn’t mean it literally; he supports policies that would be good for corporations and the wealthy and bad for the middle class, but that’s a long way from saying that he wants to introduce feudalism.

Michael Winsap: Happy Holidays, Corporate America – I’d Like to File a Complaint

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to file a complaint – about complaints. Corporate America just doesn’t handle them the way they used to. As in, at all.

I grew up in retail. My father owned a drugstore in upstate New York and was as old fashioned as the next guy when it came to the rules of doing business. As in, Rule #1: the customer is always right. Rule #2: see Rule #1.

Unless, of course, he caught a customer shoplifting, in which case all rules and rights were suspended, including habeas corpus. Make an attempt to sneak out of his establishment with a bottle of moisturizer or a pair of sunglasses and prepare for the thunder of God’s own drums. I never heard him yell at his own kids the way he yelled at any young, incipient Artful Dodger who tried to skip the joint with a purloined Snickers bar tucked under his shirt.

New York Times Editorial: The House Backs Down

For a full year, House Republicans have replaced governing with confrontations that they allow to reach the brink of crisis, only then making extreme demands in exchange for a resolution. On Thursday, that strategy crumbled. Battered by public opinion and undermined by more reasonable Senate Republicans, the House’s leaders backed down and signed off on a deal to continue the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for two months.

The House Republicans’ stubborn opposition to the extension “may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world,” Speaker John Boehner said, in the understatement of the week. He still called it “a good fight.”

David Sirota: ‘Tis The Season of Fake Outrage

One of the defining qualities of late December is the predictable and ritualized nature of America’s holiday season. Other than discovering what’s inside the wrapped gift boxes, there’s no mystery or suspense to it anymore. The Christmas music starts right before Thanksgiving. Then come the flickering lights, the red-and-green decor, Hollywood’s vacation movie blitz, and finally, with media charlatans turning the key, the fake outrage machine rumbles back to life.

Like a narcissist’s souped-up 4-by-4, this turbocharged colossus of self-righteous indignation makes a lot of noise and leaves a mess in its wake-but ultimately says a lot more about its drivers’ pitiable insecurities than anything else.

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Dec 22 2011

Investigating Fannie & Freddie But Not The Banks

Another slap on the wrist by the government for the banks that caused the housing bubble and the crash that sank the economy world wide with unregulated derivatives and credit default swaps:

DoJ Settles – Again – With Countrywide on Fair Lending Claim

by David Dayen

The Department of Justice has announced a $335 million settlement with Countrywide, the former subprime mortgage giant now subsumed into Bank of America, on claims of housing discrimination.

   The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history, saying that Bank of America had agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom.

   A department investigation concluded that Countrywide had charged higher fees and rates to more than 200,000 minority borrowers across the country than to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk. It also steered more than 10,000 minority borrowers into costly subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit profiles received prime loans, the department said.

   The pattern and practice covered the years 2004 to 2008, before Countrywide was acquired by Bank of America.

   “The department’s actions against Countrywide makes clear that we will not hesitate to hold financial institutions accountable, including one of the nation’s largest, for discrimination,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.”

I’m waiting for someone to hold financial institutions accountable for discrimination against every one of its customers, by defrauding them and destroying the residential home mortgage market. That’s obviously not going to happen here.[..]

Here’s the settlement agreement, and once again you see that Countrywide doesn’t have to admit wrongdoing for their crimes.

But the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission will enthusiastically pursue the one agency that didn’t cause the crash but just inherited it, at tax payers expense:

FBI Now Investigating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

by David Dayen

The walls have closed in over the past couple weeks on mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The SEC charged former CEOs and executives at the companies with fraud. California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued them for imformation (sic)in a wide-ranging fraud investigation. And now we learn that the FBI is investigating them[..]

If Fannie and Freddie are guilty of misleading investors, they deserve to pay the penalty. And yet, I do sense more enthusiasm to go after these government sponsored enterprises than to go after the private banking firms which were far more responsible for subprime. This feeds a false narrative that government somehow caused the financial crisis by forcing lending to poor people. Fannie and Freddie followed the market in subprime and did not originate it.

Dec 22 2011

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Gail Collins: Housebound for the Holidays

Right now, you are probably asking yourself: What exactly is going on with Congress? What’s all this yelling about a tax increase? Also, are they shutting down the government again? Because I was really planning to spend my Christmas camping out in a national park.

Good news! Congress did not shut down the government this month. It was sort of dancing around the idea, but the country has grown so inured to this kind of behavior that nobody paid any attention.

Then our lawmakers moved on to a crisis over the payroll tax, unemployment compensation and Medicare. On which they totally dropped the ball.

Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Not Government’s Size, but Who It’s For

The defining political issue of 2012 won’t be the government’s size. It will be who government is for.

Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.

But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn’t about government’s size. The cynicism comes from a growing perception that government isn’t working for average people. It’s for big business, Wall Street, and the very rich instead.

In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.

Robert Sheer: On to the Next ‘Bubble Fantasy’

Few journalists have greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East, than New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But his tortured obit of a column this week on the official end of the neocolonialist disaster that has been the Iraq occupation reminds one that the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner often gets it wrong.

Was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which he did so much to encourage, a “wise choice”? Friedman hides behind one of his trademark ambiguities: “My answer is twofold: ‘No’ and ‘Maybe, sort of, we’ll see.’ I say ‘no’ because whatever happens in Iraq, even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.”

Aside from the stunning amorality of assessing the cost of war from the standpoint of the royal “we,” Friedman seems wildly optimistic about what the invasion has wrought. On a day when Iraq’s prime minister, a Shiite, demanded that the leader of the Kurds arrest the Sunni vice president, Friedman celebrated the unity of the three groups as “the most important product of the Iraq war.” He blamed the failure of the U.S. occupation to accomplish more, in roughly equal measure, on “the incompetence of George W. Bush’s team in prosecuting the war,” “Iran, the Arab dictators and, most of all, Al Qaeda,” which he seems surprised to report “did not want a democracy in the heart of the Arab world.”

Richard D. Wolff: Occupy the Corporation

Imagine a democratic alternative to police evictions of Occupy encampments across America’s cities and towns. What if the decision to evict or not had been made by referendum? Voters could have determined whether to continue the long overdue public debates over inequality, injustice and capitalism that were launched and sustained above all by the Occupy encampments.

But that never happened in a society where private corporations own parks, lots and other possible Occupy sites. The corporate shareholders and boards of directors of those sites – a tiny minority of the population – could shut down Occupy encampments by invoking property rights. That tiny minority never wanted a national debate that questioned its disproportionate wealth and power. Private property enabled a minority with 1 percent of the wealth and income to make decisions affecting everyone regardless of what a 99 percent majority might want.

Eric Altman: Governor Cuomo Is Still Governor One Percent

As 2011 slips into history, it appears a safe bet that despite tough competition, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has walked away with this year’s coveted award for “stupidest and most offensive analogy made by a non-Republican candidate or a journalist not covering said candidate.” Asked why, when he was being forced to lay off thousands of city and state workers, cut the pensions of countless others, and reduce aid to mass transit and education, he insisted on fighting tooth and nail to kill the so-called millionaire’s tax on the state’s highest earners-a tax, by the way, that would have ensured an additional $4 billion for such needs, and that was favored by 72 percent of respondents in an October poll-Cuomo replied, “The fact that everybody wants it, that doesn’t mean all that much.” Cuomo then recalled that his father, Mario Cuomo, famously opposed the death penalty despite strong majority support. “Reporters would say, ‘Well, people want it,'” Cuomo added. “And the point was, you know, we don’t elect-you can’t just have as a governor a big poll-taking machine, right?” So Andrew Cuomo’s willingness to thwart the will of the majority and stick a thumb in the eye of his own party on behalf of the interests of multimillionaires and billionaires-literally, the “1 percent”-is somehow analogous to the lonely, brave and extremely costly political stand his father took on behalf of condemned prisoners on death row.

Theresa Brown: Looking for a Place to Die

THE patient was a fairly young woman and she’d had cancer for as long as her youngest child had been alive. That child was now walking and talking and her mother’s cancer had spread throughout her body to the point where there were no more curative options. Aggressive growth of the disease in her brain had stripped her of her personality and her memories. [..]

No one could say for sure how long she would live, but continued hospital care was clearly pointless. Nor could she go home: she needed more attention than her family could provide. Everyone – her physician, the husband, the palliative care team, we nurses – agreed she needed inpatient hospice care, and that it should be provided close to home.

The problem was, she had no place to go. There was a hospice facility near her house, but it would accept her only if she would die within six days.

Dec 22 2011

Yes, We Can: The Case for Indefinite Detention & Rendition

Twist as the president’s supporters might with the “look over here” tactic, the National Defense Authorization Bill (NDAA) does not change any existing law that Barack Obama has interpreted to mean he has the power to throw your sorry butt in prison anywhere in the world for as long as he chooses. Or he can just declare you a terrorist without providing evidence and have you executed without due process. Ignoring the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that was recently renewed giving the president the authority to send in the military to fight that ubiquitous enemy “terror”, the Obama loyalists, keep pointing to section 1022 of the NDAA, the section that makes military detention presumptive for non-citizens but doesn’t foreclose military detention of US citizens, while completely ignoring section 1021, the section that affirms the President’s authority to indefinitely detain people generally. As Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel points out while the NDAA does not authorize indefinite detention for American citizens, it does not foreclose the possibility either:

The NDAA doesn’t do anything to exempt Americans from indefinite detention. And the reason it doesn’t-at least according to the unrebutted claims of Carl Levin that I reported on over a month ago-is because the Administration asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to take out language that would have specifically exempted Americans from indefinite detention.

   The initial bill reported by the committee included language expressly precluding “the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.”  The Administration asked that this language be removed from the bill. [my emphasis]

So the effect is that (as Lawfare describes in detail) the bill remains unclear about whether Americans can be detained indefinitely and so we’re left arguing about what the law is until such time as a plaintiff gets beyond the Executive Branch’s state secrets invocations to actually decide the issue in court.

Nor did the amendment from Sen. Diane Feinstein clarify that point either, in fact, she may have codified it. So the only recourse is for some poor fool to have his civil liberties abrogated and try to fight in court without being allowed access to lawyers or courts. Those are some hurdles. Scott Horton, contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and New York attorney known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, discussed this with Keith Olbermann:

Constitutional expert and George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley, appeared on C-Span with his take on this discussion. He made it very clear that Obama says that he can assassinate American citizens living on U.S. soil:

(starting at 15:50):

President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.

Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.

You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion [..]

I don’t think the the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn’t relax …

h/t Washington’s Blog

How quickly the president’s defenders forget Anwar al-Awlaki. Marcy points to the contortions of the law that Obama used to justify his assassination and then issued a “secret memorandum” which was conveniently “leaked” to New York Times reporter Charles Savage:

And, as Charlie Savage has reported, the legal justification the Administration invented for killing an American citizen in a premeditated drone strike consists of largely the same legal justification at issue in the NDAA detainee provisions.

           

  • The 2001 AUMF, which purportedly defined who our enemies are (though the NDAA more logically includes AQAP in its scope than the 2001 AUMF)

    •            

  • Hamdi, which held the President could hold an American citizen in military detention under the 2001 AUMF

    •            

  • Ex Parte Quirin, which held that an American citizen who had joined the enemy’s forces could be tried in a military commission

    •            

  • Scott v. Harris (and Tennesee v. Garner), which held that authorities could use deadly force in the course of attempting to detain American citizens if that person posed an imminent threat of injury or death to others

    •    In other words, Obama relied on substantially the same legal argument supporters of the NDAA detainee provisions made to argue that indefinite detention of American citizens was legal, with the addition of Scott v. Harris to turn the use of deadly force into an unfortunate side-effect of attempted detention.

    There is no question that the Obama administration, by signing the NDAA, believes that it has the broad power to indefinitely detain and assassinate American citizens and guarantees that the next president will too.

    The late George Carlin said it several years ago, “this country is circling the drain“.  

    Dec 21 2011

    The Spiral Dance To The Bottom

    Round and round, downward, repeating the same mistakes, shoveling good money after bad, all to save themselves.

    ECB lends Europe’s banks a massive €489 billion over unprecedented 3-year period

    FRANKFURT, Germany – The European Central Bank flipped its credit tap wide open Wednesday to help Europe’s troubled banking system, allowing hundreds of nervous banks to take out a record €489 billion ($639 billion) in loans.

    The move was the biggest ECB infusion of credit into the banking system in the 13-year history of the shared euro currency. It aimed to keep the Europe’s debt crisis from choking off credit to businesses – since a credit crunch could cause a continent-wide recession that would make the debt loads hanging over the 17 nations that use the euro even harder to pay.[..]

    Although the ECB credits can help banks and the economy get through the crisis, they don’t attack the cause of Europe’s problems – too-large amounts of government debt – or convince markets that European governments can get a grip on their public finances. And it doesn’t remove one of the main reasons why banks remain wary of lending to each other – their thin levels of capital reserves against potential losses.

    All that means despite the massive influx of cash, Europe’s debt crisis will still be churning in the New Year.

    Spain awaits a painful dose of medicine

    It was an election victory the polls had predicted. Second guessing what policies Mariano Rajoy will pursue has not been so easy. Behind his centre right party is a huge parliamentary majority, ahead of him what seems to be a contagious European disease, debt.

    Healing the Spanish economy teetering on the edge of recession will be painful, where, when and how will the medicine be administered?

    He has promised deep spending cuts announcing he aims to cut the budget deficit by 16.5 billion euros in 2012 and yet such action needs to be balanced against measures to stimulate growth.

    Successful Spanish Debt Auction

    PARIS – Spain’s borrowing costs plummeted Tuesday at a debt auction, helping to lift the euro and stocks, as the European Central Bank began rolling out a new lending program that could encourage banks to buy euro-zone government bonds. [..]

    The central bank’s policy move “is something very big,” Mr. Fransolet said, but he questioned whether it represented “a complete change of direction” for the euro zone.

    “I think you need a lot of other things,” he said. With a huge round of government debt up for refinancing next year, he added, “The jury is still out.”

    In a reminder of the sword hanging over the heads of European leaders, Fitch Ratings warned that the AAA rating it has assigned to the debt issued by the euro-zone bailout vehicle, the European Financial Stability Facility, “largely depends on France and Germany retaining their AAA status.”

    Italian economy shrinks by 0.2% fuelling recession fear

    Italy’s economy shrank by 0.2% in the three months to the end of September, fuelling fears of a recession in the eurozone giant.

    The figures, released by the country’s official statistical agency, Istat, show the first contraction in the Italian economy since 2009.

    Italy’s government has predicted the economy will contract by 0.4% in 2012.

    Earlier this month, the government announced an austerity plan to “save Italy”.

    The package of emergency austerity measures included raising taxes on the assets of the wealthy, increasing pension ages, and a major drive to tackle tax evasion. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti also said he would give up his own salary as part of the effort.

    However, analysts expect Italy’s economy will struggle for some time yet.

    Moody’s gives UK high scores but warns of ‘challenges’

    Ratings agency Moody’s has given the UK high scores for economic governance but warns the country it faces “formidable and rising challenges”.

    In its annual guidance for investors, Moody’s says the UK has “significant structural strengths” and deserves its top AAA rating.

    But it says weakness in the eurozone could hold back growth and weaken the government’s debt-cutting plans.

    Rating agency opinion affects the cost of borrowing.

    This is only because England has a sovereign currency

    On the other side of the globe from Herr Prof.Krugman:

    I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the Chinese situation, in part because it’s so hard to know what’s really happening. All economic statistics are best seen as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction, but China’s numbers are more fictional than most. I’d turn to real China experts for guidance, but no two experts seem to be telling the same story.

    Still, even the official data are troubling – and recent news is sufficiently dramatic to ring alarm bells.

    The most striking thing about the Chinese economy over the past decade was the way household consumption, although rising, lagged behind overall growth. At this point consumer spending is only about 35 percent of G.D.P., about half the level in the United States.

    So who’s buying the goods and services China produces? Part of the answer is, well, we are: as the consumer share of the economy declined, China increasingly relied on trade surpluses to keep manufacturing afloat. But the bigger story from China’s point of view is investment spending, which has soared to almost half of G.D.P.

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