As the Obama administration apparently prepares to launch Hankie Pankie II — buying troubled assets from banks at prices higher than they will fetch on the open market — it occurred to me that an updated version of an old Communist-era joke may be appropriate: under Bush, financial policy consisted of Wall Street types cutting sweet deals, at taxpayer expense, for Wall Street types. Under Obama, it’s precisely the reverse.Update: Maybe I was too cryptic. The original joke was, “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Socialism is the reverse.”
As our former comrades began to deploy bourgeois forms such as speakers' lists and take-out pizza at our meetings, we knew that even a project as potentially radicalizing as our Steve Forbes for Mayor of San Francisco campaign would be reduced to so much Spartacist-ish white noise: further fruit of a Trotskyite (not Trotskyist), surrealist (not dadaist) poison tree.The "Trots for Blago" leaders have promised to have their very own shitty newspaper up and running by next Wednesday.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/28/cable-news-stimulus/The Post's front page news article on the House's approval of the stimulus package described its cost as "staggering." Usually such characterizations are reserved for the editorial pages. Perhaps the Post should find reporters with more steady footing.[Seriously, you don't need to be any kind of wonk to get this stuff. I'd recommend that even the least politically obsessive make Baker's blog their 'go-to' news site for a week. Afterwards, you'll be surprised how much corporate media senselessness makes sense.]
Carrying through with this liberal use of adjectives, the article refers to the TARP as "massive." It also describes the TARP as an "effort to free up the credit markets." This is a questionable characterization. To date, the TARP has helped to keep many banks out of bankruptcy. Arguably, this is the main purpose of the fund, since Congress has thus far rejected proposals that would focused the money more on freeing up credit as opposed to paying dividends and executive salaries.
Interestingly, I learned recently -- and this is a bit of a counterpoint to my argument -- that Lawrence Summers called Stiglitz privately to get some counsel on what was going on. Summers apparently made clear that he didn't want to be making the call to Stiglitz -- but had to. In other words, there is someone above Summers who wants diverse inputs into his economic policy thinking. The problem is that this interest in diversity is completely missing on his actual team.Spike Lee's James Brown biopic to feature original music :: Film & TV News :: Articles :: Paste