Thomas Frank on Wall Street RipOffs
(Watch the SEC discussion at the 8 minute mark)
click for video
Bill Moyers
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.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Retail Sales in Jan rose .4% headline m/o/m, .7% ex auto's, .6% ex auto's and gasoline and .7% at the core. The headline figure was less than expected while the rest were slightly better. But, with respect to non headline sales, because Dec figures were revised lower, taking the two months together were about in line with forecasts overall. Sales rose in electronics, building materials, food/beverages, clothing, sporting goods, dept stores and restaurant/bars and fell interestingly for online retailers, health/personal care, furniture and motor vehicle/parts. Bottom line, headline sales were below expectations due to the greater than expected fall m/o/m...
read more »
Tweet
Facebook
Reddit
Digg this!
January 17th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Wow, didn’t expect to be watching a video that was ment to trash President Bush. Yes Bush was partly respnsible for some of the things that took place over the last 10 years, but Obama’s one year has already made things much worse, and if Obama gets his socialist programs passed such as Obamacare, Cap and Trade, Card Check and others, the country will be in much worse condition. PBS is nothing more then the talking piece for the Liberals. Now better called Socialist.
The Housing collapse was brought on in big part by Barney Frank and his Socialists who pushed the banks and Freddie and Fannie to give mortgates to those folks who shouldn’t have gotten them. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. And Obama and PBS continue to put all the blame on Bush. Time for Obama to grow up and take responsibility for his own mess. From a number of reports, Obama has less then 10% of his cabinet that has any business experience. Its no wonder all the jobs saved or created are being shown to be a total lie. Billions of tax dollars going to pork projects mainly in Democratic states.
Will PBS do a program that actually bashes Obama? Dont hold your breath. And remember PBS is partly funded by your tax dollars. Where’s the fair and balanced?
~~~
BR: I thought it was dead on.
For those of you who are either Dems or Repubs, when it comes to objectivity, your brains are broken.
Literally. You do not have the ability to objectiviely evaluate things. All partisans — and sports fans, auto enthusiasts, etc. — suffer from selective perception. You do not have the capapbility to see the world, except thru your own filters.
I have been critical of both Bush and Obama, but the right seems to have forgotten that W ever was President.
(here are my bonafides)
January 17th, 2010 at 10:59 am
The point that the Conservative ideology delivers on the promise of government failure is what most do not understand. How can we allow an ideology that does not believe Government can be effective to govern is the most daunting paradox we face as a democracy. The scorched earth, left in the wake of such ideas, is most evident in the failures of the regulatory apparatus charged with enforcing the rules of the financial landscape.
January 17th, 2010 at 11:03 am
BTW Clinton a Democrat, embraced this ideology in his support for the liberalization of the financial markets. Funny how liberalization of the financial markets is a Conservative idea but it is.
January 17th, 2010 at 11:37 am
It is good to be reminded of the purposeful dismantling of watchdog systems by the likes of Cheney, Rove, etc, over the prior 8 years, though years prior under Clinton and Greenspan got the ball rolling, so crony capitalism is not a new phenomenon specific to either political party.
The purpose of this interview seemed to be to redirect frustration of Obama’s core supporters with lack of progress over the past year in taking on the crony capitalists, saddling us (on the financial front) with the likes of Summers and Geithner while seemingly failing to head the sage advice of the likes of Volcker. The problem for those who supported Obama is seeing that he hasn’t demonstrated the backbone to stand up to anyone, e.g. Wall Street, Defense Dept, Israel settlements, Guantanamo, etc, and that rather than replacing people who stand in the way of solution, his just offers to spend more money.
We can’t rewind the past 8 or 16 years, but we can address where we are today. Maybe one year isn’t sufficient time for anyone to accomplish anything, but it’s easy enough to see on a day-by-day basis how core issues are not getting addressed, and what Moyers and Frank fail to address in this segment is core to why the Republican party is regaining its voice, as best demonstrated in what is happening in Massachusetts this week with Brown / Coakley.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
“For those of you who are either Dems or Repubs, when it comes to objectivity, your brains are broken.”
Thank you Barry; that needed to be said.
Foxmuldar is one of those who cannot possibly capture reality without a partisan political filter. Listening, which is already a difficult Art, seems impossible for people like that.
I ought to know: I have a brother who’s an engineer but become a Faux News, Tea party fanatic when it comes to AGW.
Truly pathetic to see someone loses all capacity to use the only organ that distinguish us from the lower life forms.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
When I listen to Thomas Frank, I realize that other western countries are protected from this kind of destruction by ideology.
The reason is simple: civil service is much better insulated from politicians than here. THere are no political appointees which are utterly incompetent ideological hacks that come to a department to fuck it beyond repair.
It is also pretty extraordinary that the MSM has NEVER published ( I mean, in front page) any of the stories that Frank relates in this interview. This investigation of the department of labor was a stunner to me.
We are paying a very high price by refusing to change the model we have. And it’ll get far worse before it gets better…assuming we will be able to get out of the hole.