Bailout Hearings
By Barry Ritholtz - February 25th, 2009, 5:40PM
via Dilbert.com
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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
What can you say? We are all guilty.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
All I can say is it’s a good thing that MY elected representatives are honest and pure, not like all those other lying thieves.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
as the President continued his speech, you could see Boehner and McConnell visibly panic. “Damn,” they thought, “this guy is really good.”
Cue the vibrations of Blackberrys going off in the chamber. A text message to the Republican caucus:
“Guys, if we don’t clap at what the President has to say, we are going to look like real assholes. Get up outta your seats.”
So what did we get?
Republicans giving a standing ovation to more banking regulations.(!)
Republicans giving a standing ovation to health care reform.(!!)
Republicans giving a standing ovation to the end of torture.(!!!)
Um, hello? Seriously? Forget Obama triangulating the right. These guys just essentially wholeheartedly applauded the repudiation of their rule from the past eight years.
If I’m Rahm Emanuel, I’m writing down all their names and keeping it in a black book for later use.
Seriously, the “me-tooism” of these hypocrites was delicious to watch. As big as Bobby Jindal’s fail was, the massive fail of the Goopers in the House Chamber to latch on to the Obama agenda was the biggest fail of all.
And it made me laugh out loud the whole time.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/25/114423/161/62/701686
February 25th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
The irony? Pitchforks and torches for corporate executives using the tools of the trade to efficiently get somewhere and being damned for it, while the President of the U.S. can hop on Airforce One to take a date/long weekend on Valentines weekend. What was the cost of that? Were there no good restaurants in D.C?
One can be sure it costs less for the corporate exec to fired up the Gulfstream than to coordinate a small incursion into Chicago by the President…
Is it too much to ask for accountability from the President as he chastises corporate america? I suspect one could decorate a couple of John Thain’s Offices for the price of the Obama Chicago weekend…
BTW- I sooooo love Dilbert
February 25th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
@km4
So . . . if the Republicans sat on their hands that would be acceptable? Or maybe thay could follow the Britsh Parliament and shout Obama down while he is speaking? What pray tell should they do- I am dying to know.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
call me ahab – sour grapes much…have you head in a hole for past 8 yrs ?
February 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
The President also stated the same old, “I’m going to cut [ insert amount here] over the next ten years.” bullshit.
Stop selling us. Just tell us what you’re going to try to get done in the next four years you got.
Same B.S. different B.S. artist.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Sorry Barry I don’t see a lot of equivalence between some congressional rep earning 160k a year having to basically eke out a living in Washington and his home town of Bumf@#$, IA, and someone like Fuld, Caynes, Thain et al earning maybe 20-150 million a year, 15 million dollar apartment in the upper seventies, 12 million dollar home in the Hamptons, Palm Beach, the Vineyard, several corporate jets on call, 2 million membership of rolling hills, etc. etc. Sure the rep is a relative mediocrity by comparison with the master of the universe but this is apples and pears. But don’t let a bit of simple f$@%ing reality impede our comic strip view of the world. Thaddeus McCotter or Feingold has to be as venal as these guys from Wall Street.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
otto,
Thaddeus is a fine example of the exception, though Congress, writ large, is responsible for ‘the laws of the land’. Remember, they’re the Legislative Branch, and, by intent, anyway, the ‘most equal’ of the three..
IOW, if they don’t carry the ball, it’s the People that get scored on..
past that, it’s nice to see Scott Adams back..
February 25th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
@ ottovbs:
See Tom DeLay or any other member who cashes in his/her earmark chits for a nice payday courtesy of industry after leaving office.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Daschle, I meant.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
@ Transor Z and Mark Hoffer
The congress is full of Democratic and Republican McCotters, I know a couple. Sure there are the crooks and time servers like DeLay, currently under indictment, or Young, soon to be under indictment, but the majority of them are normal folks like you and me who have families, work hard, often have distinguished other lives, and do right as they see it. So spare us the generalized philosophical meandering. There is no equivalence between a McCotter, Charlie Grassley, Feingold, Barbara Mikulski, and the kings of wall street. If you don’t have the perception to see that …….
February 25th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I picked this up off Krugman’s website commenting on the ivory tower or shorters view of why we should nationalize the banks. Makes sense to me.
“I am an investment manager with investments in bank stocks (not C or BAC). I do not agree at all with Mr. Krugman’s contention that my shares have postive value primarily because of the expectation of further governement bailout. To the contrary, “bailout” money to date has been dilutive to the value of my shares. My shares have value because in my estimation my banks’ assets exceed its liabilities, even allowing for loss reserves. The banks I own don’t want government money, nor do I want them to take any. Mr. Krugman and other investors might disagree with my analysis of what my banks’ loan losses are going to be. Disagreement is what makes markets. If bad loans eventually wipe me out, I am willing to bear the loss that arises from my faulty projections – that’s investing. But I and my fellow shareholders are entitled to see what losses develop in the fullness of time rather than have the government, at Mr. Krugman’s urging, confiscate our capital from us on the theory that they already know what the future holds.
The Fifth Amendment prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. If you want to “nationalize” my bank, buy it from me. Stealing it from me is simply an abuse of government power in a manner more suited to Venezuela or Russia than the US.
By the way: the shareholders that Mr. Krugman seems to villify are not a bunch of evil rich folks preying on society. They are taxpayers. They are pension funds. They are retirees and savers. Somehow it is in the societal interest to wipe them out as shareholder in order to save money for them as taxpayers?
— AM
19. February 25, 2009
6:01 pm
Link
You cannot deleverage the banking system – as we must – without additional equity capital. You are not going to get more equity capital as long as you are giving the impression that you are the sort of government that likes to confiscate equity capital periodically.
— AM
February 25th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Transor Z Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Daschle, I meant.
…..There’s not a lot of difference except that DeLay actually has committed criminal acts while Daschle has sailed close to teh wind but stayed legal.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
@Otto: I don’t think the strip suggests equivalence. It suggests that the congressmen are all Dogbert’s bitches.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
what a country
February 25th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Hoffer says about congress,
“IOW, if they don’t carry the ball, it’s the People that get scored on..”
Damned right! Good one!
And the people are keeping score…
The Dogberts of this world may be pulling the strings, but the legislative lackeys don’t have to always dance to their tune.
Barry,
Thanks for that cartoon. It’s great to see my thoughts about those “grilling” sessions by the congress.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
@otto- If you think that just because the legislators make less it is ok for them to take advantage of the power of their position, then you don’t get it. Neither post is about money, it is about power. In fact, I think we have seen that the lower paid government worker is more likely to abuse power and the system than the corporate executive whose excesses were done corporate governance (or apathy…whatever the case may be). How many people in the last couple months have withdrawn from Obama’s nomination process because of skirting taxes? While the pay of the executives was likely excessive, I doubt that the government complained as they was collecting their hefty chunk of taxes.
Lack of accountability and abuses of power have corrupted the best, whether you are a local mayor earning 80k, a representative with a six figure salary, or a Fortune 500 exec earning millions…
February 25th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
ottovbvs,
Tragedy plus time equals comedy. The hearings were enough to make a decent person grind their teeth. Putting the whole corrupt mess in carricature is what makes it funny. It also REALLY pisses off the Dogberts and the hypocritical congress persons. Thereby we get a small bit of enjoyment knowing they will squirm when they see this cartoon AND hopefully make them more discrete about their corruption in the future. Lighten up. We’ve got em’ on the run.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I’d like to see a stress test on Congress. Change their districts from these gerrymandered right/left safe seats to a grid across their state, then let’s see them toot on about flag-burning, stopping stem cell research, compensation caps, private jet use etc… etc…
February 25th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Al Bergette Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
The President also stated the same old, “I’m going to cut [ insert amount here] over the next ten years.” bullshit.
Stop selling us. Just tell us what you’re going to try to get done in the next four years you got.
Same B.S. different B.S. artist.
_______
Clinton got it done. Remember? But he never did promise the American people he wouldn’t get a BJ. And for that, he was tarred and feathered. Priorities.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
@ ottovbs:
See Tom DeLay or any other member who cashes in his/her earmark chits for a nice payday courtesy of industry after leaving office.
_____
The most glaring example of that crapola is Cheney.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
>The most glaring example of that crapola is Cheney.
Phil Gramm (UBS) and Wife (Enron) — double win on the confict of interest/whoring from your gov position.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Yea Dilbert. Always a slam dunk.
I’m not sure it’s fair to lump all Representatives in the same boat. Some really, really bad people have been already named here. Who the hell voted for them? We get the government we deserve.
Fact is only a few Representatives have the luxury of being principled and getting re-elected. They never quit running for election. Two years is not very long. And once elected, they get frustrated they don’t have more power. Only a few have any real power.
Actually, the House is an anachronism that is a huge part of the problem. Most of them are always seeking fat cat sponsorship to pay for their zillion dollar media election campaigns. Fifteen years ago, in a simpler cheater setting a Senator from my home town made the point he had to raise $10,000 a day (every day of his six year term). I suppose inflation has crushed that number. We don’t want to know.
Point is few can afford to represent their constituents best interest to the detriment of their contributors, which frequently aren’t even from their districts. And that’s a major problem for Democracy.
That’s allowed for Upper House, not the Lower.
We’d be better off dumping the House for an Internet public vote on Bills written simply enough for the layman, not lawyers. Oops. Any lawyers listening?
Oh well, welcome to post-modern America.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:03 am
As we learned from our mums and dads, the weakest play ever is saying “they all do it.”
Scott Adams really screws up here. Thanks to media scrutiny and the Abramoff scandal, very few members of Congress take junkets to warm, tropical places on industry dimes anymore. So for Adams to imply this is commonplace is simply false. The bottom line of a comic is that its key factual assertions have to be true. Adams fails.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:13 am
a simpler “cheaper” setting. Mea Culpa
February 26th, 2009 at 8:03 am
The posters who think so much of these politicians that shouldn’t all be painted with the same brush has to be naive at best , delusional, or rabidly partisan.
How many of these characters have been feted for decades only later to be found out as on the take for that long and more?
Adams does not fail at all but depicts the Body Politic, if anything, with moderation.
Politics all of it is nothing more than bribery ‘misspelt’.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Wouldn’t hurt if the entire Congress did the same thing. Resign.
The Resigning Illini (WSJ)
Never underestimate the capacity of Chicago politics for spectacle. True to this form, Illinois Senator Roland Burris is now tilting at multiple ethics inves tigations barely a month after arriving in Washington.
Yesterday, Governor (and fellow Democrat) Patrick Quinn called on Mr. Burns to resign for his evolving accounts of the contacts he did or did not have with Rod Blagojevich before being appointed to Barack Obama’s former Senate seat. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that Mr. Burns needs to “come up with an explanation that satisfies” and that President Obama “is supportive of an investigation that would get some full story out.” Mr. Burns, for his part, denies any wrongdoing.
This latest turn is the direct result of the refusal by Illinois Democrats to hold a special
election to fill the seat. Democrats resisted that option once it became clear that a Republican might win. Senate Democrats in Wash ington then declared that Mr. Blagojevich shouldn’t make an appointment and they wouldn’t accept his choice if he did.
They relented once it became clear that embarrassment was not enough under the law to disqualify Mr. Burns from office. But now Mr. Burns has become a running embarrassment, so Mr. Quinn wants him to go too.
By now it’s clear enough that the problem is less Mr Burns or Mr. Blagojevich than the entire rotten Illinois political culture.
So here’s a modest proposal: Every elected state official should resign at once, giving voters a chance to start over with special elections for everyone. State government couldn’t get any more dysfunctional than it is now, and maybe Diogenes could find an honest man.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I liked Jindal’s response : “Everything we did the last 8 years was wrong. But trust us to fix it!”