Tag: ek Politics

Sometimes people say to me (in varying tones of accusation)- ‘ek, you don’t seem to focus much on Republicans.’

That’s because the Republican Party is a fringe group of insane, racist, Randians.

Their ideas and policies are no more worthy of consideration in rational political discourse than the lead addled ravings of a Caligulan Courtier.

Except, of course, in Washington D.C. which speaks more volumes about their bootlicking insularity than there are in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

With Huntsman’s departure the only lips on that stage tonight, including the audience, moderators, and questioners, that might breathe a word of truth, fact, or relevance are Ron Paul’s.

Does that scare you?  Let me say it again then- RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul, RonPaul.

What should scare you is that only a wacky, racist, Bircher operates in the same world of reality that you and I and the other 99.9% of us belong to and for that he is reviled and ignored by an establishment elite with a 30 year record of abject failure.

The debate is on Faux Noise.  If you feel compelled you can comment below.

Colbert in South Carolina

by Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling

January 10, 2012

Colbert’s key… (will be) to draw out Democratic voters in the state’s open primary.  34% of Democrats planning to vote in the Republican contest support him to 15% for Romney, 13% for Gingrich, and 10% for Santorum.   … (Will) enough Democrats… (go) out to vote for him to put him in the top tier of Republican candidates?  My guess is if he’d really put some effort into it he (can win) 10-15% of the vote and (nab) himself a 4th place finish there.

While Colbert’s prospects for actually winning in South Carolina may (be) limited, he would have found support on his proposed referendum. Just 33% of likely voters think that ‘corporations are people’ compared to 67% who think that ‘only people are people.’  Supporters of every Republican candidate believe that ‘only people are people,’ even 66% of Mitt Romney’s whose comments inspired this debate in the first place.

The hard cold fact is unless they print it, there is not enough money in the world to cover Banksters gambling losses.  They have bet on Black, hedged with Red, the wheel has stopped and the ball is now resting in that Green cup marked 00.

Debt talks falter, Greeks warn of disaster

By Dina Kyriakidou, Reuters

Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:13pm EST

“The main problem was the (European Union and International Monetary Fund’s) insistence on a coupon lower than 4 percent on the new bonds,” the banking source said.

That could mean an accounting loss of more than 70 percent for banks on their books, far more than the actual 50 percent cut in the original value of the old bonds laid down in the original deal.

Under the terms of the October plan, bondholders would take a 50 percent hit on the notional value of the old bonds. But the actual losses on their books depend on coupon and maturity of the new bonds, and could be far higher.

“When you’re dealing with a sovereign, you don’t have a huge amount of tricks up your sleeve, because if they choose not to pay you there’s not an awful lot you can do,” said Gary Jenkins, director of Swordfish Research.

…

Without using so called collective action clauses, the participation rate in any debt swap deal could be smaller than needed because many hedge funds would profit more if Greece defaulted because they would get paid in full from insurance.

“A lot of the (old) bonds have traded and are in the hands of the hedge funds. Do you think the governments are going to (pay out) to hedge funds? No way. So people like us, unless we are forced, we don’t have an incentive to accept,” said a source at a hedge fund, which owns Greek bonds.

Mark to Market can not be avoided forever and Mr. Market is going to have to realize a lot of this paper has a value of exactly zero.  Banks will collapse and if there is any justice there will be crowds on the ledges.

Nations will not suddenly wink out of existence, but Sarkozy and Merkel may find new amounts of time to contemplate their failure.

France to Lose AAA Rating From S&P: Finance Minister

By Mark Deen, Bloomberg News

Jan 13, 2012 2:10 PM ET

Standard & Poor’s is stripping France of its AAA credit rating for the first time, Finance Minister Francois Baroin said, reflecting the risk to the country from the spread of the euro-area debt crisis.

Coming 100 days before France’s presidential elections, the ratings cut to AA+ is a blow for President Nicolas Sarkozy. Other countries in Europe were also notified by the ratings company, Baroin said, without being more specific.

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The downgrade comes amid signs that France is slipping into a recession, complicating Sarkozy’s bid for re-election in voting in April and May.

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Sarkozy trails his main rival, Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, by about 14 points in voting intention for the second round of the election, according to a BVA poll for Le Parisien newspaper published Jan. 9.

Stop coddling Europe’s banks

Morris Goldstein, Vox

11 January 2012

After initial denials, Europe’s leaders have started to acknowledge that IMF Chief Christine Lagarde was right. Through their statements and decisions, policymakers are showing their agreement with her assessment in August 2011 at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium that there was an urgent need for recapitalisation of Europe’s banks (Lagarde 2011).

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(R)ather than converting that ratio into a target for increases in bank capital alone, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has increased the risk of a pro-cyclical response in a region where economic growth is fragile and weakening further.

This is because many banks may choose to reach the higher capital ratio as much by decreasing the denominator (shedding bank assets) as by increasing the numerator (raising bank equity). As an impressive body of research has shown, increasing bank equity need not be expensive or adverse for the real economy because the higher equity cushion makes bank equity safer and because the marketplace puts a positive value on such increased safety (Admati et al 2010); in contrast, reaching a higher capital ratio by restricting loan growth to the real economy and by engaging in fire sales of bank assets has an unambiguous contractionary effect.

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Any EU bank that was below the capital target should have been directed to stop paying dividends until it reached the new capital target and until it was not in danger of falling back below it over the next year. Clearly, some large and under-capitalised EU banks are operating under no such constraints.

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Neither the IMF nor the ECB seem to be rushing forward to give up their de jure or de facto preferred creditor status. All of this just increases the odds that future bank losses on sovereign debt will ultimately be assumed by the public sector and by taxpayers in the highly indebted countries – much to the detriment both of public-debt sustainability and of sustained public support for adjustment programmes. Once again, coddling the banks will impose higher costs on the rest of society.

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To sum up, throughout this European debt and banking crisis, Eurozone leaders have expressed their determination to “do whatever it takes” to restore stability and save the euro. But if one examines the stance the official sector has taken toward banks, it looks much more like Eurozone leadership “takes (sheepishly) whatever its large banks do” – even when those actions are much more in the banks’ narrow interest than in the wider public one. It is high time for a change.

Wolf Richter: Greece – Disagreement Everywhere, Rift in the Troika

Wolf Richter, Naked Capitalism

Friday, January 13, 2012

(N)ow the Troika itself is in disarray. It surfaced today at an IMF press briefing in Washington: the IMF no longer supports austerity as a guiding principle.

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The three Troika inspectors-Poul Thomsen from the IMF, Mathias Morse from the EU, and Klaus Mazouch from the ECB-are supposed to head to Greece next week to inspect its books; the budget deficit is once again higher than the revised limit that Greece had vowed to abide by. And they’re supposed to negotiate additional “structural reforms.” But there probably won’t be three inspectors, according to senior IMF sources. Missing: Poul Thomsen. The IMF has had enough.

Already, according to more leaks, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde had warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the fiscal and economic situation in Greece had deteriorated. Hence, the “voluntary” haircut on Greek bonds held by private sector investors should be increased to more than 50% to maintain the goal of bringing Greece’s debt load down to 120% of GDP. And the second €130 billion bailout package, agreed upon on October 26, should be enlarged by “tens of billions of euros.”

The German reaction was immediate. “There has to be a line somewhere,” said Michael Fuchs, deputy leader of Merkel’s party, the CDU. “This cannot be a bottomless barrel.” Even if Merkel were amenable to committing more taxpayer money to bail out Greece, she’d face a wall of opposition in her own party. And he wasn’t brimming with optimism: “I don’t think that Greece, in its current condition, can be saved,” he said.

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It may be too difficult to keep Greece in the Eurozone, but allowing it to exit would be even more difficult, at least in the short term. And not only for Greece. It would be a shock to the Eurozone economy, which is already fragile. Even Germany, economic superstar with unemployment at a 20-year low and exports at an all-time high, has smacked into a wall. Read…. Germany’s Export Debacle.

Europe’s Road to Nowhere (Part 1)

Author: Satyajit Das, EconoMonitor

January 12th, 2012

Financially futile, economically erroneous, politically puzzling and socially irresponsible, the December 2011 European summit was a failure. Only the attending leaders and their acolytes believe otherwise. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s post-summit homilies about the “long run”, “running a marathon” and “more Europe” rang hollow.

The proposed plan is fundamentally flawed. It made no attempt to tackle the real issues – the level of debt, how to reduce it, how to meet funding requirements or how to restore growth. Most importantly there were no new funds committed to the exercise.

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The plan may result in a further slowdown in growth in Europe, worsening public finances and increasing pressure on credit ratings. This is precisely the experience of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Britain as they have tried to reduce budget deficits through austerity programs. This would make the existing debt burden even harder to sustain. The rigidity of the rules also limits government policy flexibility, risking making economic downturns worse.

Fiscal controls may not prevent future problems. Until 2008, Ireland, Spain and Italy boasted a better fiscal position and lower debt than Germany and France. The weak economic fundamentals of these countries were exposed by the global financial crisis, leading to a rapid deterioration in public finances.

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Unlike US banks in 2008/2009, European banks are reluctant to cut significant dividend payouts. Spanish bank Santander plans to pay shareholders Euro 2 billion in cash and more in stock (over 15% of its stated capital requirements). They argue the need to preserve their brand, compensate investors for poor share price performance and a return to profitability. Curiously, the EBA or the Bank of Spain has not intervened to force a suspension of dividends to husband capital.

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Credit Agricole, the third largest French bank, is planning to reduce assets by around Euro 15-18 billion by the end of 2011 and by Euro 60 billion by end 2013. This will improve the bank’s capital position and also reduce its funding needs by Euro 50 billion. If all banks undertake similar actions, selling foreign assets and shutting (mainly overseas) operations, then the effect on the broader economy will be significant. The tighter credit conditions and lower economic activity may increase normal credit losses setting off a negative feedback loop.

Asset sales by European banks to improve capital are acceptable to the EU as long as they “do not lead to a reduced flow of lending to the EU’s real economy”. Withdrawal from foreign markets is already having a noticeable impact in Eastern Europe and Asia. A slowdown in these economies will indirectly affect Europe, reducing demand for European exports.

Europe’s Road to Nowhere (Part 2)

Author: Satyajit Das, EconoMonitor

January 13th, 2012

Sarko-nomics perpetuates the circular flow of funds with governments supporting banks that are in turn supposed to bail out the government. It does not address the unsustainable high cost of funds for countries like Italy. If its cost of debt stays around current market rates, then Italy’s interest costs will rise by about Euro 30 billion over the next two years, from 4.2% of GDP currently to 5.1% next year and 5.6% in 2013.

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Debt reduction through restructuring remains off the agenda. The adverse market reaction to the announcement of the 50% Greek writedown forced the EU to assure investors that it was a one-off and did not constitute a precedent. Despite this, investors remain sceptical, limiting purchases of European sovereign debt.

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Even Ireland, the much lauded poster child of bailout austerity, has experienced problems. The country’s third quarter GDP fell 1.9% and its Gross National Product fell 2.2% (the later is a better measure of economic performance due to the country’s large export/ transhipment activity). Ireland must reduce its budget deficit from 32% of GDP in 2010 to 3% by 2015. Despite spending cuts and tax increases, Ireland is spending Euro 57 billion euros including Euro 10 billion to support its five nationalised banks, against Euro 34 billion in tax revenue.

Spain, which has voluntarily taken the austerity cure, is missing economic targets. Spain’s budget deficit is above forecast (at 8% of GDP, it is a full 2% above the target agreed with the EU) and the need for support of the Spanish banking system may strain public finances further. Unemployment increased to over 21% (nearly 5 million people). Spain’s economic outlook is poor and deteriorating.

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In the third quarter of 2011, Italy’s economy contracted by 0.2%. The government forecast is for a further contraction of 0.4% in 2012. The government forecasts may be too optimistic. Confindustria, the Italian business federation forecasts the economy will contract by 1.6% in 2012.

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German export orders are slowing, reflecting the fact that the EU remains its largest export market, larger than demand from emerging countries. Germany exports to Italy and Spain total around 9-10 per cent in 2010), higher than to either the US (6-7%) or China (4-5%).

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Greece faces elections in April 2011. The polls indicate a fractious outcome, with the major parties unlikely to gain majorities with significant representation of minor parties. An unstable government combined with a broad coalition against austerity may result in attempts to renegotiate the bailout package. Failure could result in a disorderly default and Greece leaving the Euro.

The French presidential elections, scheduled for May 2012, also create uncertain. The principal opponents to incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy either oppose the Euro and the bailout (the National Front led by Marine Le Pen) or want to renegotiate the plan with the introduction of jointly guaranteed Euro-Zone bonds (the Socialists led by Francios Holland).

The European debt crisis is also creating political problems in Germany, Netherlands and Finland, especially among governing coalitions. The risk of unexpected political instability is not insignificant.

In the weaker countries, austerity means high unemployment, reductions in social services, higher taxes and reduced living standards. Social benefits increasingly below subsistence are widening income inequality and creating a “new poor”. Protest movements are gaining ground, with growing social unrest.

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A downgrade of Germany’s cherished AAA rating or any steps to undermine the sanctity of a hard currency (by printing money or other monetary techniques) will force increasing focus on the costs to Germans of the bailouts. Germany’s commitment to date is Euro 211 billion in guarantees, Euro 45 billion in advances to the IMF and Euro 500 billion owed to the Bundesbank by other national central banks – around 25% of GDP.

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The debt is concentrated in countries where growth, productivity and cost competitiveness is low, which is what caused the problems in the first place. The relevant wealth is in the hands of a few countries like Germany that appear unwilling to bail out spendthrift and irresponsible neighbours. A substantial portion of the savings is also invested in European government debt directly or in vulnerable banks, which have invested in the same securities.

The total debt of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) plus Belgium is more than Euro 4 trillion. A writedown of around Euro 1 trillion in this debt is required to bring the debt levels down to sustainable levels (say 90% of GDP). In the absence of structural reforms and a return to growth, the writedowns required are significantly larger. This compares to the GDP of Germany and France respectively of Euro 3 trillion and Euro 2.2 trillion.

Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?

By ARTHUR S. BRISBANE, The New York Times

January 12, 2012, 10:29 am

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

…

This message was typical of mail from some readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here?

Big Banks Face Inquiry Over Home Insurance

By LOUISE STORY, The New York Times

Published: January 10, 2012

Mr. Lawsky’s office issued 31 subpoenas or other legal notices related to the case in early October, just as the state’s insurance and banking departments were merged under his new agency. His office has already turned up instances where mortgage servicing units at large banks steered distressed homeowners into insurance policies up to 10 times as costly as the homeowners’ original plans.

In some cases, those policies were offered by affiliates of the banks themselves, raising questions about conflicts of interest; in other cases, there may have been kickbacks between unrelated companies, according to the person briefed on the investigation.

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The investigation is yet another legal battle for the nation’s largest banks and points to the sorts of problems they may continue to face nationwide. The banks, in separate negotiations with federal and state authorities over suspected foreclosure abuses, have been trying to negotiate a settlement with state and federal officials to avoid future investigations, but it is not clear if businesses like home insurance would be covered if a deal were reached.

These policies are called ‘forced placement’ because homeowners are forced to take them as a condition of the loan.

New York Investigates Forced-Place Insurance Scams

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday January 11, 2012 7:35 am

I first wrote about forced-place insurance back in November of 2010. Basically, banks who take over the insurance for homeowners whose policies have lapsed end up getting a kickback when the insurer ramps up the price. And the homeowners pay the cost. In some cases, the policies didn’t even lapse; the bank assumed the homeowners’ insurance costs and steered the borrower into costly deals, adding the balance to principal. Sometimes the servicer just purchased redundant coverage for borrowers who were current on their policies. And this provides yet another incentive for servicers to keep borrowers delinquent: they can take over their insurance in that case, and jack up the price, getting a kickback in the process.

Dodd-Frank made this type of forced-place insurance scam illegal. Yet, despite the fact that we’ve known about this for years, it takes the New York State Department of Financial Services to run the investigation. Presumably the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now newly bolstered with the ability to regulate non-bank financial operations like mortgage servicers, can get involved. But Dodd-Frank makes it unclear who is supposed to regulate forced-place insurance scams at the federal level. Until then, we have to rely on the states.

It’s just another example of how most bank profits really do come from criminal enterprises. As American Banker reports today, JPMorgan Chase has recently stopped filing consumer debt collection lawsuits, because a whistleblower charged that the bank “falsely overstated the balances of thousands of delinquent accounts it sold to a third party.” And, they also found the exact same robo-signing problem we’ve seen in foreclosure fraud.

Florida AG Office Encouraged to Intervene on Behalf of Foreclosure Fraudster LPS

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday January 11, 2012 8:15 am

The invaluable Abigail Field has a long piece about Pam Bondi, the Florida AG, incidentally a member of the executive committee on the foreclosure fraud settlement led by Iowa AG Tom Miller, and her ties to the foreclosure industry in Florida. These include the usual financial ties, but also the sense that the Florida AG’s office was a no-go zone for investigations against banks, servicers and the entities that pushed foreclosure fraud. And Field uncovers a long history of this.

The Economic Crimes Division of that office habitually ignored or dismissed crimes happening in the state. And in one case, they lobbied an AG in another state on behalf of the target of a national investigation.

The story concerns Lender Processing Services (LPS), the foreclosure document processor currently under indictment in Nevada for its practices. Michigan’s Republican Attorney General, Bill Schuette, issued criminal subpoenas to LPS in June of last year. And Lisa Epstein, the foreclosure fraud blogger, obtained through a public records request communications between LPS’ attorneys at Baker & McKenzie and the Florida AG’s office. In them, Baker & McKenzie asks the Florida AG to help them persuade Schuette to switch his subpoenas from criminal to civil ones.

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Joan Meyer is a partner for Baker & McKenzie; Victoria Butler works in the AG’s office. She asks in the first email to “catch up” about the Michigan criminal subpoenas, and adds that “These public announcements can deeply impact LPS’s business operations and stock price and seem unnecessary if the AGs who issue them have already agreed to a meeting. Wondering if there’s anything we can do.” The meeting she refers to is part of the wider foreclosure fraud investigation.

In the second email, Meyer adds that “Sue Sanford from the Michigan AG’s Office is going to call you about the State AG meeting with LPS. She may ask about converting her investigation from criminal to civil. If you are comfortable, please encourage her to join the civil group. I would like to share information with her and get her up to date regarding the information we provided at the meeting but thus far cannot because of the criminal restrictions.”

This is a lawyer for LPS encouraging one AG office to lobby another, to get criminal subpoenas converted to civil ones. This came at a time when LPS was under active investigation by the state of Florida.

IG Report Whitewashes Firing of Foreclosure Fraud Investigators in Florida

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday January 9, 2012 7:22 am

June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards were career lawyers in the South Florida office of the Attorney General, economic crimes division. Back during the dark days of 2010, Clarkson and Edwards were the most aggressive law enforcement officials, from the top down, in identifying and investigating the web of foreclosure fraud, particularly the stew that emerged in Florida, with bogus documents, forgeries, go-go foreclosure mills valuing speed over accuracy, and document processing companies providing menus for law firms to finish off the theft of homes from borrowers.

Much of the information Clarkson and Edwards got into the public sphere motivated the investigations and lawsuits we see today. At the end of 2010, Clarkson and Edwards prepared a Power Point Presentation, called Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases. That Power Point, bringing together all the types of document fraud seen in Florida foreclosure courts, had a profound impact. I described it at the time as “a full pictorial history of the past decade in the mortgage industry, complete with actual shots of improper mortgage assignments. They show the same name of a bank officer being written four different ways, clearly forged. They show stamps from notarizations that expired before they were used to certify foreclosure documents.”

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McCollum left the AGs office in January, replaced by a different Republican, Pam Bondi. At the same time, the longtime director of the economic crimes division left, and Richard Lawson, a former defense attorney for white collar criminals – mainly bank officials – came in. As Lawson acknowledges in his statement to the IG report (more on that in a minute), he received complaints from the lawyers of several of the defendants in Clarkson and Edwards’ cases, in particular Lender Processing Services (LPS), which was part of a multistate investigation at the time.

Lawson immediately went to work criticizing Clarkson and Edwards’ conduct, disputing their claims, savaging the work of their office, and micromanaging their investigations (but only the foreclosure fraud investigations, not their other work). By May they were out, fired by Lawson and Bondi. They were given 90 minutes to pack up their things and leave the office, and lost access to all their files and emails.

This looked suspiciously like a politically motivated firing. Advocates for homeowners, along with the group Progress Florida and a couple Democratic lawmakers, urged an investigation. Two days before state Rep. Darren Soto and state Sen. Eleanor Sobel asked the Justice Department to investigate, Bondi personally requested an investigation, outsourcing it to the inspector general for the state’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Atwater, a Republican former member of the state legislature. That report came out late Friday, and it completely exonerated the AG’s office for the Clarkson and Edwards firing. “During the course of the inquiry there was no specific allegation of wrongdoing made by any person, and no discovery of evidence of wrongdoing on the part of anyone involved in the matter,” the report concludes.

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The media has accepted the narrative that this IG report cleared Bondi of any wrongdoing in the firing. But it really just raises more questions. Why were so many attorneys defending targets of investigations talking to the head of the economic crimes division? Why was he listening to their concerns over his own investigators in his office? Why was Lawson faulting Clarkson and Edwards for a failure to do “independent investigations to confirm third party complaints” when he was accepting third party complaints from the targets of the investigations?

Thomas Perrelli, DoJ Point Person on Foreclosure Fraud Settlement, Stepping Down by March

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Thursday January 12, 2012 6:17 am

I keep hearing from everyone “in the know” that these foreclosure fraud settlement talks are just about wrapped up. Surely everyone’s just practicing their signatures for the big signing ceremony, right? Except that there hasn’t really been any news on the settlement for a few weeks. And now the number 3 at the Justice Department, Thomas Perrelli, the central figure running the talks from the federal government side, will step down in a couple months.

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Aside from the obvious fact that there’s not going to be a number three at Justice for the next year, because Obama made four recess appointments over the holiday break and Republicans are so mad about it they’re going to retaliate as soon as they get back from vacation, Marcy Wheeler writes that this “sets a finite deadline” for the foreclosure fraud settlement. I actually think it seals its fate. No deadline has yet been responded to on the settlement. Aside from the half-dozen or so Democrats who aren’t on board, there are plenty of Republicans who don’t want to see the banks take any penalty at all. The talks haven’t even gotten around to that persuasion stage, as there remain outstanding issues with the banks in terms of the nature of the penalties and the level of release from liability.

Live free or die!  I suppose I should mention in the sake of rice wine and full transparency that if I claimed it residency in the first post-colonial sovereign nation in the Americas could be mine.  Instead I’m an adopted son of the State of Benedict Arnold.

Richard and Emily’s Lake House is in a town just like Dixville and she does go to meeting there in the Congregational Church across from the General Store and next to the Free Library (sadly deficient in Bonapart references for a holiday term paper should you happen to get caught by a storm).

Outside of slushy ice which happens every winter, quadrennially the Circus comes to town.  Last time she voted for Hillary despite my advice to the contrary.  This year the 30 year veteran educator will not vote at all, once again against my advice.

I recommended Huntsman since if you’ve got to have a Republican you might as well have a sane one.

Glub, glub, glub.

The new WH Chief of Staff and Citigroup

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Tuesday, Jan 10, 2012 4:58 AM Eastern Standard Time

(T)he 2008 financial crisis is the new Iraq War: it does not matter how prominent a role someone played in enabling it, or how much they profited from it, or how centrally they were part of the corrupted machinery that brought it about. If they have the right ideology and good standing in Washington circles, all is forgiven and they do not suffer any consequences at all, even reputationally. Indeed, not only is it no impediment to their advancement, but it’s actually an asset.

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The General Accounting Government Accountability Office this week issued a report criticizing the Treasury Department for incomplete and misleading press releases designed to make the results of the TARP program look better than reality warrants. In particular, “GAO’s analysis of Treasury press releases about specific programs indicate that information about estimated lifetime costs and income are included only when programs are expected to result in lifetime income“; “however, press releases for investments in AIG, a program that is anticipated to result in a lifetime cost to Treasury, did not include program-specific cost information.” In other words, Treasury loudly touts in its Press Releases when it makes money from TARP, but excludes the losses.

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For his work at Citigroup, work that included betting on the housing collapse, Lew received a salary of $1.1 million. After Citigroup received its $45 billion taxpayer bailout, Lew – two weeks before joining the Obama administration – received another $900,000 from Citigroup as a bonus. This was revealed only in 2010; in 2009, when Lew first joined the administration as a State Department official, both he and the administration refused to say if he had received a post-bailout bonus from Citigroup (at the time, there was a huge political scandal over Wall Street executives receiving large bonuses despite needing taxpayer bailouts). There’s certainly nothing illegal about betting on a housing market collapse, but it’s quite symbolic that those who made millions of dollars from the crisis are now running government policy.

Lew (like so many key Obama officials) also participated in the orgy of Wall Street de-regulation that took place in the 1990s when he served as Clinton’s OMB head; after leaving Citigroup to join the Obama administration, he unsurprisingly said in response to questioning from Sen. Bernie Sanders that he does not believe deregulation contributed to the financial crisis.  The New York Times today says that Lew “has built a reputation as a pragmatic liberal who believes Democrats must compromise with Republicans on long-term deficits in order to forestall draconian cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.” The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein was a bit more blunt: Lew “has emerged as one of the members of the Obama administration Republicans prefer working with.” Whatever else one might want to say, Lew, a fairly standard-issue Democrat with less of a “centrist” reputation than Daley, is a perfect fit for this administration.

Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology

Pew Research Center

May 4, 2011

(A) growing number of Americans are choosing not to identify with either political party, and the center of the political spectrum is increasingly diverse. Rather than being moderate, many of these independents hold extremely strong ideological positions on issues such as the role of government, immigration, the environment and social issues.

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Independents have played a determinative role in the last three national elections. But the three groups in the center of the political typology have very little in common, aside from their avoidance of partisan labels.

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Using a statistical procedure called cluster analysis, individuals are assigned to one of the eight core typology groups based on their position on nine scales of social and political values – each of which is determined by responses to two or three survey questions – as well as their party identification. Several different cluster solutions were evaluated for their effectiveness in producing cohesive groups that are distinct from one another, substantively meaningful and large enough in size to be analytically practical. The final solution selected to produce the political typology was judged to be strongest from a statistical point of view and to be most persuasive from a substantive point of view. As in past typologies, a measure of political attentiveness and voting participation was used to extract the “Bystander” group, people who are largely not engaged or involved in politics, before performing the cluster analysis.

Based on your responses, YOU are a…   Solid Liberal!

(h/t Susie Madrak)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com…

The Contentious Debate on Ron Paul Among Progressives

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Monday January 9, 2012 5:01 pm

There’s something deeply bothersome about the way which Raw Story executive editor Megan Carpentier misquoted Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald in a post published at The Guardian on January 8 that was titled, “Ron Paul’s useful idiots on the left.” What she did was no different than what someone with a news organization like Fox News might do to form the basis for a news story designed to further transform someone into a person that deserves to be hated and ignored.

Link added, but op.cite

Now, you might be saying, what does it matter? Why recount this argument? Why not let it remain another clash between two progressives worth forgetting? And, because it involves GOP candidate Ron Paul, this is a waste of time. Paul is anti-reproductive rights, a gay-demonizer, a candidate opposed to public education and Social Security, a favorite congressman of the John Birch Society and someone with links to the Constitution Party, which promotes Christian Reconstructionism. That is all fair. But, that lets progressives condemning whom they call “useful idiots” off the hook.

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Why is it so difficult for progressives to concede the basic point that Ron Paul’s presence in the race, the fact that he is polling second in many states and has been a part of primetime debates, means many Americans are exposed to talk about war, civil liberties (excluding reproductive rights and marriage equality) and national security and this raises their awareness and understanding of these issues?

Why does this point immediately become construed as anything more than this basic point, one where there should be no argument? Here’s why.

Progressives refuse to concede that Obama is that poor on these issues or that Paul is in fact genuinely antiwar or for individual liberty. Somehow, as Ben Adler of The Nation argues, his views against reproductive rights make the views he expresses on all other civil liberties issues insignificant.

…

(T)he back-and-forth on Paul exposes how presidential elections are a complete sideshow for the 1% or the powerful lobbies in Washington. The election industrial-complex limits voices and choices. It renders candidates, like Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson, “unpeople” the moment it looks like they no longer have momentum, the instant they look like they have no chance of winning. They do this immediately to people constantly spouting off views that seemingly threaten the establishment. They will even do it to someone like Paul who has actually gone up in the polls in New Hampshire (see this report from CBS’ “The Early Show”).

Did I mention Naked Capitalism is now a Bircher site?

What else would you expect from people who claim all criticism of Barack Obama’s policy failures are racism.

C’thulhu fhtagn.

The story Washington doesn’t want you to hear.

American People Turn Against Party Identification

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Monday January 9, 2012 10:15 am

In 2005 the disaster of the war in Iraq and the corruption of the Republican Congress starting turning votes away from the GOP and towards the Democratic party. As a result we saw big wins for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 as Americans stopped identifying with Republicans and starting seeing themselves as Democrats.

President Obama’s horrible mismanagement of his first two years in office caused a massive movement away from the Democrats and a small return to the GOP. This produced the big Republican wave of 2010.

Since taking control of the House the Republicans’ awful behavior has driven support for Congress to new lows and turned regular people against the GOP. This drop in support for the GOP, however, hasn’t caused people to start seeing themselves as Democrats again. The American people still feel burned by the Democrats’ failure to deliver for regular people from 2009-2010.

We have a country upset with both parties and the whole political system that is rigged to keep these two failed parties as our only choices. This dynamic is manifested in different ways. In addition to having a record number of people saying their are not aligning with either party, the young populist energy in the country is now flowing into direct political action that isn’t partisan, such as the occupy movement.

Making it safe for Billionaires to ride the Subway again.

Relax, if You Want, but Don’t Put Your Feet Up

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY, The New York Times

Published: January 6, 2012

It is perhaps the most minor crime New Yorkers are routinely arrested for: sitting improperly on a subway seat. Seven years ago, rule 1050(7)(J) of the city’s transit code criminalized what was once simply bad etiquette: passengers putting their feet on a subway seat. They also cannot take up more than one seat if it interferes with other passengers’ comfort, nor can they block movement on a subway by doing something like standing too close to the doors.

…

Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman, said enforcement of subway regulations had made the transit system much safer.

“One of the reasons that crime on the subways has plummeted from almost 50 crimes a day in 1990 to only seven now is because the N.Y.P.D. enforces violations large and small, often encountering armed or wanted felons engaged in relatively minor offenses, like putting their feet up, smoking on a platform, walking or riding between cars, or fare beating,” Mr. Browne said.