And now, a few words from Walter Russell Mead

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All that 99%/Occupy railing against Wall Street was so tres' adorbs was it not? The big moneyed interests of the financial sector were thieving the blue model of generous public services and lavish public employee benefit and retirement packages is what we were told, correct?


Well, Walter Russell Mead is here to remind us of just how wed the faux-populist blue model is to Wall Street:

The cycle of dependence on Wall Street usually follows a pattern. Public employee union leaders demand generous benefits as the price of their political support; politicians promise things like higher future pay and early retirement. Wary of public backlash, however, these officials don’t advocate cutting services or raising taxes to cover the shiny new pay packages they have established. The discrepancy between benefits promised and funds available becomes unbridgeable. Desperate to keep from falling too far behind, pension funds turn to the risky side of Wall Street, which gets rich off the panic. All too often, the Wall Street solution to blue model imperatives leaves taxpayers and pensioners stranded.

Fingers have been pointed at both sides. A piece in Rolling Stone last month argued that slimy “Gordon Gekko wanna-be[s]” have basically been stealing money in the dead of night from honest, hard-working pensioners. A piece from AEI this week shot back that pension funds are forced to approach Wall Street hat in hand by the self-serving politicians who make unaffordable promises in the first place.

Yes, those responsible for public pensions dug themselves into this hole, but the more interesting story concerns the confluence of interests between blue politicians, union leaders, and Wall Street. It’s unsurprising that few Democrats are willing to acknowledge this; the alliance doesn’t inspire confidence in the blue model’s sustainability or in the political base that supports it.

"The Occupy movement: brought to you by Wall Steet" has a nice ring to it, dontcha think?

Income inequality by the numbers

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Via Rich Lowry:

1.1 : the millions of dollars new White House Chief of Staff, Jacob Lew, made from Citigroup in one year, recently.


8.7 : the millions of dollars former Chief of Staff, William Daley, made in roughly one-year of work for JPMorgan Chase.


5.1 : the millions of dollars former administration economic advisor, Larry Summers made for managing a hedge fund.


16.1 : the millions of dollars Rahm Emanuel made from working for an investment firm.


2-3 : the millions of dollars former budget director Peter Orszag will pull down from Citigroup.


7 : the millions of dollars current national security advisor, Tom Donilon, made for his work at Fannie Mae back in 2000-2003.

Perhaps this class warfare exercised of late by the President is rather of the self-loathing variety.


However, good to know some people are prospering in this sluggish economy. Maybe it really is, who you know.




Lowry's exit question:

Is it too much to ask that one high-profile Obama official leave government and refuse to make more than $70,000 a year out of solidarity with the middle class and commitment to income equality? Of course it is. Just as the definition of a recession is when someone else loses a job, greed is when someone else makes a lot of money. For anyone hoping to get to the top, the collective message of current and former Obama officials should be clear: Do as they do, not as they say.

* Stephanie Cutter: adviser to the Obama reelection campaign who wrote a critique the other day regarding Mitt Romney’s days at Bain Capital, subtitled “Profit at Any Cost" and who herself served as a spokeswoman for J.C. Flowers... a private equity firm.

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Hey, #OWS...

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... Occupy Jay-Z?

From Mediaite:

Right now there is a slightly heated debate going on in the Abrams Media office as we’ve found a story that somehow intersects the purviews of three of our different sites; Jay-Z’s company, Rocawear, is now selling a t-shirt that says “Occupy Wall Street” with graffiti style lettering modifying the message to read “Occupy All Streets.” A mini scandal has brewed over the shirt as it’s become clear that Rocawear, currently, has no plans to give any of the procedes to the occupiers themselves.

Please feel free to substitute "profits" for "procedes" just to make everything perfectly clear as we don't think Jay-Z is going to take a bath on these t-shirts for #OWS.

Predictably, this prompted much debate and navel-gazing at Meidaite.

Is this a brave show of support or a cynical commodification of a genuine cultural movement? Here’s a Mediaite take.

You can read thier take at the link if you desire but frankly it's entirely irrelevant. To our knowledge, Jay-Z is not in violation of any copyright laws and beyond that, he owes absolutely nothing to the #OWS crowd or anyone else for that matter.

Just another lesson in capitalism and just the way things work in the real world for the #OWS set.

From the comments:

Why don't they make their own t-shirts? All they need is a loom, and then they could weave together the back hair from all the aging hippies in Zuccotti park...

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We had the day off yesterday, so we decided to wander on down to the Civic Center to see what was shaking at the Occupy San Diego site.

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This guy appeared to be one of the leaders of Occupy San Diego. We asked first before taking his picture and he politely obliged.

There was a pretty significant police presence and as we did not interact with any of the Occupiers it was not clear to us if the police were rousting them at sundown to prevent any sleep-overs.

We spent about 20 minutes just hanging out and taking in the vibe of the scene. Outside of some of the signage and sloganeering we were left with the impression that Occupy San Diego was nothing more than a filthy homeless encampment.




* You're crazy if you think we're rolling out a picture of Jay-Z without his lovely wife, Beyonce.

#OWS (hearts) Wall Street...

... they really, really do.





Stick a fork in "irony". It's done.

Last week, one or more Occupy Oakland protesters smashed the windows of a Wells Fargo branch.

This week, the group’s general assembly agreed — in a near-unanimous vote Monday — to temporarily place $20,000 of the group’s money in an account at the country’s fourth-largest bank holding company, Wells Fargo Bank.

Whether the decision was an abandonment of the movement’s opposition to big banks or an ominous affirmation of the hold that big banks have on Americans, Twitter was ablaze with outrage last night, as news spread about the 162-8 vote, from which 16 people abstained.

“I am so disgusted right now. the hypocrisy of it all is just amazing,” wrote @GiveMeThatJuice.

“ARE YOU F------ SERIOUS?!,” wrote @graceface.

“I can see the ad now: ‘People’s money is so safe here at Wells Fargo, even our sworn enemies use us for their banking needs!’” wrote @davidcolburn.

Oh, and you better believe that Wells Fargo is taking advantage of this. Here's Wells Fargo spokesman, Ruben Pulido on this most recent development regarding the unwashed 99%:

“If this report is true,” he wrote, “it demonstrates that even Occupy Oakland understands — firsthand — the value and service that Wells Fargo provides its customers. Wells Fargo welcomes the 100 percent of Americans to allow us to help them meet their financial needs.”

We're all 100%, now!

According to meeting minutes posted on a Facebook page for the “Oakland General Assembly,” the group’s lawyer, Tim Fong, will temporarily keep a $20,000 donation from Occupy Wall Street in a Wells Fargo account, until he can finalize paperwork needed to open a credit union account for the group. The move is necessary to expedite the money’s availability for bailing out jailed protesters, the minutes said.

Occupy Wall Street donated the money to Occupy Oakland with stipulation that it be put toward medical and legal needs.

Just a thought but maybe these vanguards for social justice and equality can put that 20 large to work by recompensating the storefront businesses that have suffered due to their Obamaville Occupations. Wouldn't the ultimate kumbaya gesture be for Occupy to pay for the broken windows of the institution they are now entrusting with their donated scratch?

And if that won't do, perhaps we can beg upon the Occupiers for their tent slums to be just a little more drug-free and just a little bit less rape-y.



And finally:

The minutes said Fong was waiting on the state to finalize paperwork establishing Occupy Oakland as an unincorporated association, which could take up to two weeks.

Bank co-founder Kat Taylor, whose unorthodox OneCalifornia Bank touts its commitment to local investment and supported the recent Bank Transfer Day, said she understands Occupy Oakland’s plight.

“Banks have to be vigilant about customer identification, knowing what their source of money is,” Taylor said.

Putting your money, immediately and with no questions asked, into an inherently amoral banking institution vs. waiting two weeks on the man to give you permission to put your money into a credit union.




Just a couple of days ago, we said that Occupy San Diego destroying a couple of food and beverage carts once they stopped "free" hand-outs represented the ultimate metaphor for the Occupy movement. This recent development in Oakland may have bested it.

Your #OWS update

Irony abounds at Zuccotti Park in NYC:

To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.
...
The Assembly announced the three-day menu crackdown announced earlier in the day -- insisting everybody would be fed something during that period.

Some protesters threatened that the high-end meals could be cut off completely if the vagrants and criminals don’t disperse.

Unhappiness with their unwelcome guests was apparent throughout the day.

“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer.

A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.”

Many of those being fed “are professional homeless people. They know what they’re doing,” said the guard at the food-storage area.

So, let's get this straight: a bunch of ne'er-do-wells existing essentially as homeless people and who are demanding things free health care and forgiveness on their student loan debt are chapped that some real homeless types and recently released from prison ne'er-do-wells are participating in some redistribution themselves. Good to know.


And still abounding:

Protesters got their first taste of the revolt within the revolt yesterday when the kitchen staff served only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips after their staff meeting.

Organizers took other steps to police the squatters, who they said were lured in from other parks with the promise of free meals.

A team of 10 security volunteers moved in to the trouble-prone southwest section of Zuccotti Park in a show of force to confront them.

“We’re not going to let some members of this community destroy the whole movement,” a volunteer said.

Some arguments broke out as the security team searched tents -- but no violence erupted.

Overall security at the park had deteriorated to the point where many frightened female protesters had abandoned the increasingly out-of-control occupation, security- team members said.

(italics, ours)

Yeah, they may be behaving like jack-booted pigs but at least they're #OWS jack-booted pigs. And #OWS jack-booted pigs with scant appreciation for the 4th amendment.

By rejecting the norms and institutions of civlized society they only find themselves recreating those institutions but without the underpinning of the rule of law. Without the rule of law, the Occupy "villages" become a study in the tyranny of the majority where pendulum swings in the "mood" of the General Assembly creates havoc in the encampments resulting in, as just one example, roving bands of "security" teams rousting its inhabitants and throwing them out of the village without any due process.

Governance by whim and capriciousness will collapse on itself.

Your #OWS update

Because nothing will more quickly garner you a resolution of support from the city council like barging into a city council meeting, interrupting it while chanting and demanding that the council vote on a resolution of support of your movement.

Council President Tony Young called for an end to the meeting when two dozen Occupy San Diego members began chanting.

The protesters asked council members for a resolution of support. One demonstrator says the city is not supporting they're occupation. "They are standing in the way, having police take us down with illegal pepper spray action, violently removing the protestors and their tents in an illegal action."

The council says they can't pass a resolution unless its on the agenda. There was nothing pertaining to the Occupy San Diego Movement on Tuesday's docket.

Then again, the way some cities have caved and/or pandered to the #OWS set, maybe behaving like unruly, uncivil and petulant children is the way to get that coveted good housekeeping seal of approval from the city fathers.





Also, former TARP watchdog and current candidate for Massachusetts U.S. senate seat (running against Scott Brown), Elizabeth Warren claims she laid the groundwork for the #OWS movement.

In a new interview, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren claims much of the credit for the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the nation.

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” the Harvard Law School professor and former Obama administration consumer advocate told Samuel P. Jacobs of The Daily Beast. “I support what they do.”

And in other totally related news:

Dallas Police continue to investigate whether a teenage runaway was sexually assaulted by an adult male at the Occupy Dallas encampment behind City Hall.

A source within the Dallas Police Department who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said the girl ran away from home in Garland last month and that she is now refusing to cooperate with investigators. She initially told officers that she had sex with a man in his early twenties and had engaged in sexual activity with several other people.

Some members of the group told CBS 11 the girl identified herself as a 19-year-old and never knew she was 14.

Not co-operating with the pigs in a rape investigation? That's the ol' #OWS spirit, girlfriend! And if they do find the sicko, we hope he's brought to... uh, we hope the abuser is provided with counseling resources.

Yeah, kind of like the tea party.


Own it, Lizzy.

Are you smarter than an Occupier?

New York Magazine asks relevant questions of 50 Wall Street Occupiers... claims "results were mixed". If by "mixed" they mean that young people with the time and means to be spending their days and nights camping out in a wanna-be hippie shanty town actually possessing the knowledge to know why they are there, then, yes, by all means the results were as mixed as a tossed salad. See for yourself below and more at the link.



What does the government spend more on? Health care and pensions, education, or the military?

The Military - 94%

Health care and pensions - 4%

Education - 2%




What is the "SEC"?

Don't know - 68%

The Securities and Exchange Commission - 28%

The Southeastern Conference - 4%


Hey, at least some people have their priorities straight.

Blogging about bloggers and those blogger's commenters and those who opine upon those commenters

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Our blog bud Harrison over at Capitol Commentary was opining on the #Occupy Wall Street movement and its followers, here which prompted the following comment from "Jack":

I think they want the opposite of chaos and anarchy. They want a world in which “bad stuff” doesn’t happen to people. The idea of chaos and anarchy is frightening to them, which makes it all the more ironic because their actions lead to chaos and anarchy.

Sure, they want a world without consequences, but I think it’s a bit more nuanced than the way you’re looking at it. Instead of removing the consequences, they want to remove anything that would cause the consequences to happen.

I’m a pretty reasonable guy, but I whole heartedly believe that if they could, every one of those fools would prefer a world in which people were not able to make bad decisions. What they don’t understand about freedom and liberty, things that they say are important to them, is that you have to take the good with the bad. Liberty doesn’t exist if you’re rendered incapable of making bad decisions.

Jack makes a great point: a lot of the #OWS pose as anarchists or revolutionaries to establish street cred, we suppose, but at heart, they are collectivists who are clamoring for government redistribution schemes. Far from being revolutionaries or even reformers, they are clamoring for more of the statist status quo... more regulations that will only be gamed by the Wall Street "fat cats" that will only worsen the situation.

And as far as accomplishing some of the "demands" of #OWS such as forgiving student debt, banning foreclosures and making having a job a "right", how is that accomplished but through a totalitarian regime that involuntarily confiscates the wealth/private property of others?

We could be wrong but that seems to be the way things are trending out on the street with #OWS. And either they don't quite realize what it will take to accomplish their demands or they are down with the concept of a thuggish federal government that will "spread the wealth around".

Photo image and video clip of the day

From I am the 53%

H/T: W.C. Varones


Check out the link for more great testimonials.

At first blush, we thought the 53% was a reference to the popular vote percentage garnered by the President and that the site was devoted to folks who voted for him but who now feel they had been duped, when in reality it represents the percentage of people in America who pay income tax.




And here's Steven Crowder breaking things down at Occupy Dallas:

Never let a distraction go to waste

From The Financial Times:

Barack Obama, US president, offered more support for protesters against the global financial system after a weekend of demonstrations in cities around the world, but called on them not to “demonise” those who worked on Wall Street.

On Sunday, Mr Obama honoured Martin Luther King at a dedication to a new memorial on National Mall in Washington. Referring to protests that have spread from Wall Street to London, Rome and elsewhere, Mr Obama said: “Dr King would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonising those who work there.” Mr Obama had previously said the protests “express the frustration” of ordinary Americans with the financial sector.

Unreal.

The man who voted for TARP, raised gobs of money from Wall St. for his 2008 election campaign, pushed through the $800 billion Porkulus which was nothing but a bailout of state and local governments as well as political payback to his union pals and who also oversaw the bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors and has turned his green jobs program into a cronyist adventure... this man, the Cronyist-in-Chief is attempting to co-opt this movement.

Of course, he is.

When one has a scant record of accomplishments upon which to run for re-election, one is left with attempting to ride the coattails of a broad and generally incoherent movement whose general dissatisfaction is aimed (we think) at policies and actions largely of Obama's own doing.

In rational world, this move would backfire but a compliant media will give scant coverage to fringe elements such as the Nazi and Communist party's endorsements and the inevitable anti-semitism that always... always seems to lay right beneath the surface of these types of movements. (ed. note: the difference in the media coverage of the tea party vs. OWS speaks volumes with respect to the ideological bent and integrity of said media)


A friendly message to the OWS crowd: If we don't see a more forceful and focused pushback against the failed statism and cronyism of this administration that has done a great deal to create the conditions you are protesting against, we will only be left to believe that you are being entirely hypocritical and willing to be used as tools for the (P)resident's re-election efforts and ultimately the continuation of the policies and status quo you claim to be railing against.



P.S. Wonder how Martin Luther King would feel about being thrown into bed with Nazis?


(UPDATE #1): Awwwww.... anti-capitalist OWSers selling OWS t-shirts on Google.

Video clip of the day

Reason.tv went down to lower Manhattan last week to check out the Occupy Wall Street protests and this is what they saw.






We've been kind of rough on the OWS crowd and perhaps unfairly so as though we sympathise with over-arching complaint of corporatism/crony capitalism (something that we have railed against in full throat on these pages) that is the coin of the realm here in America currently, we see a generally anti-free market/anti-capitalism and, at times, authoritarian values system that informs the movement and that will, of course, draw our suspicion and ire as warranted.


Labor unions and the Democratic Party will attempt to co-opt the movement but as the video shows, what cogent message is there to co-opt? And as far as the establishment Democrats are concerned, who cares? as long as a lap dog media gives it heavy rotation and allows it to become a distraction from the failed statist/cronyist policies of a failed administration.

Why is this just a "Wall Street" thing?

We've suggested it before, so now we will re-iterate our call for the #OccupyWallStreet set to perhaps take their anti-corporatist message to a different venue.

Despite his rhetorical attacks on Wall Street, a study by the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project shows that President Barack Obama has received more money from Wall Street than any other politician over the past 20 years, including former President George W. Bush.

In 2008, Wall Street’s largesse accounted for 20 percent of Obama’s total take, according to Reuters.

When asked by The Daily Caller to comment about President Obama’s credibility when it comes to criticizing Wall Street, the White House declined to reply.

Being Wall Street’s campaign cash king is hardly the image President Obama has been trying to project in public, where he has been setting himself up as the champion of the progressive Occupy Wall Street movement and as the avenger of jilted Bank of America customers.

“Banks can make money,” Obama said last week, responding to questions during an interview with ABC News about Bank of America’s decision to levy a $5 monthly fee on debit card users. “They can succeed, the old-fashioned way, by earning it.”

In fact, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks lobbyist spending and influence in both parties, found that President Obama has received more money from Bank of America than any other candidate dating back to 1991.

Filing this one under the law of unintended consequenses, it should be noted that this BofA bashing is a direct result of a law pushed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that limited the fees that banks could levy on retailers where that bank's purchase card was used. The banks minus that revenue just passed the delta on to the customer. Statists like Durbin and the President continually miss the point that extracting pounds of flesh from "corporate fat cats" will, in turn, get taken out of hide somewhere else and that somewhere else is almost invariably the "little guy" consumer. So, thanks... Dick.

In fact, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks lobbyist spending and influence in both parties, found that President Obama has received more money from Bank of America than any other candidate dating back to 1991.

An examination of the numbers shows that Obama took in $421,242 in campaign contributions in 2008 from Bank of America’s executives, PACs and employees, which exceeded its prior record contribution of $329,761 to President George W. Bush in 2004.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street firms also contributed more to Obama’s 2008 campaign than they gave to Republican nominee John McCain.

“The securities and investment industry is Obama’s second largest source of bundlers, after lawyers, at least 56 individuals have raised at least $8.9 million for his campaign,” Massie Ritsch wrote in a Sept. 18, 2008 entry on the Center for Responsive Politics’s OpenSecrets blog.

By the end of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, executives and others connected with Wall Street firms, such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, UBS AG, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, poured nearly $15.8 million into his coffers.

And on it goes... you get the point. You can read much more evidence of how Barack (hearts) Wall Street at the link above. We'll get around to adding this to our O > W tally sheet in short order.

The bottom line here is this: to what degree is the #OWS set willing to acknowledge that Obama has, in the past, and will ultimately be swimming in Wall Street cash? At this point, we highly doubt it.

So, whaddya say 99%! Who among you is up for a OccupyDemocraticPrimary?

Photo image of the day

Corporate America marches on Wall Street this past week... makes strong showing.

Occupy Wall Street: "Hey, look over there!"

A few thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement...


As we wrote yesterday, we are sympathetic to some of the gripes that appear to be central to the Occupy Wall Street's message as they parallel our opposition to the bailouts and corporatism/crony capitalism that have been the business as usual of both the Bush and Obama administrations. However, there is a latent anti-capitalism that informs the movement by which we cannot abide.

And what may have been a well-intended grass roots movement by a very loose collection of liberal-leftists, anti-Fed populists and anarchists rallying against Wall St. "greed" is morphing into a somewhat organized distraction from the spectacularly failed statist domestic policies of the Obama administration. There is evidence that MoveOn.org is attempting to co-opt the movement.

After largely staying out of the protests thus far, “MoveOn.org is expected to mobilize its extensive online regional networks to drum up support for the effort,” reports Crain’s New York Business.

The Obama front organization has supported the demonstrators by way of its website coverage, but this marks the first time that MoveOn will actively engage to organize ‘Occupy Wall Street’ events which its members will attend.

As for the opinions of those in the movement itself, Adam Kokesh talks to a few occupiers in D.C. and as you'll see there isn't much of a coherent theme as to what the occupiers actually want done, although Kokesh seems just as intent in getting his point of view across as he is in allowing the occupiers to express their opinions.



We will credit Kokesh, however, at the 7 minute mark for attempting to address the role of the government in the crony capitalism equation that always seems to go missing in rallies and protests of this nature. Occupying Wall Street is fine but doesn't it stand to reason that you should be doing the same on Capitol Hill and in front of the residence of the biggest crony capitalist around at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.? One doesn't get the feeling, however, that any of the people interviewed won't be voting for Obama in 2012.

And then there was this:

The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.

One sign to be sure but the one gentleman in the overcoat in the video seemed to hedge towards this philosophy and as we saw during the debate over ObamaCare, the reigning-in of the power of government just ain't what it used to be for liberals.


So, are the people that are part of this movement taken aback by what appears to be a high-jacking of this movement by a Democratic front group or are they totally cool with being co-opted and being used as campaign tools for the re-election effort of the Corporatist-in-Chief.

It makes perfect sense for the President to not only welcome this Occupy Wall St. movement diversion but to get one of his front groups to start pulling the strings behind the scenes. After all, his jobs bill, which is a re-hash of the failed Porkulus bill of February 2009, is DOA as there are not even enough votes in the Democratic-controlled Senate and majority leader Harry Reid has come out and said that the jobs bill that absolutely has to be passed now! will be taking a back seat to more pressing legislative matters.

So, after all that, for the smartest man ever to be elected President, demagoguing the rich and demonizing Wall Street by proxy is all he's got left.

Quickies

A round up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




So, about that jobs bill that we absolutely have to jump on right now... right now!

Well, damn that John Boehner

President Obama is still pressing Congress to pass his jobs-stimulus bill immediately, but Democratic Party leaders in the Senate once again have delayed taking a vote on the legislation and instead will take up a bill to punish China over its currency valuation.

Senators late Monday passed a bill to keep the government open into the next fiscal year and then adjourned for the rest of the week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said when they return they’ll take up the China measure rather than Mr. Obama’s jobs plan.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” said Mr. Reid, who is the chief Senate sponsor of Mr. Obama’s plan, but who said taking on China is a bigger priority right now.

You know, considering the abject failure of the original $800 billion Porkulus "jobs bill" which is mirrored by half, the son of Porkulus, perhaps the Senate Leader is doing the President a favor.





Here's some more of that post-partisan civility we've been hearing so much about.

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,”

Wild fires as causal evidence of climate change. Interesting.






If you've been reading this blog for a while, it probably won't come as a surprise that we are not entirely unsympathetic to the Occupy Wall St. crowd given our common gripe of the bailouts and corporatism/crony capitalism that have been the hallmarks of the Bush and Obama administrations. However, at the end of the day, you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find a virulent anti-free market, anti-capitalist Marxism that is driving this movement and it is there where we must part ways.

"Greed", they cry...

.... and speaking of greed, it always reminds us of this guy:

A conversation no one seems willing to have: Executing alleged terrorists who are U.S. citizens.

Let's get this straight: We have a Justice Department and an Administration that still very much appear to desire to close Gitmo and bring suspected terrorists to civilian trials, essentially affording them the same rights as U.S. citizens. Yet, we just whacked Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, U.S. citizens, in a drone strike in Yemen this past week.

And just so you know our hearts in the right place, we commend the President for his aggressive pursuit of terrorist ring leaders and continuing many of the policies of his predecessor. But killing U.S. citizens without due process? We need to talk about this.




W.C. Varones on corruption, Wall Street and Washington D.C.:

Liberals always paint this as an issue of tax policy and campaign finance reform. But that is a naive view. Where there is money and power, it will find influence. The Wall Street - Washington cabal is far too deep and intertwined to be restrained by campaign finance rules, and they will always find a way to push the burden of higher tax rates onto the middle class while buying loopholes for themselves. The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington is far more pernicious than any campaign contributions. Hank Paulson was a Wall Street multi-multi-millionaire before he came to the Treasury and used his position to bail out his Wall Street buddies. And Timmy the Tax Cheat knows that he'll have a seven-figure Wall Street job waiting for him as long as he does Wall Street's bidding as Treasury Secretary. That kind of giant personal wealth incentive makes any campaign contributions seem quaint by comparison.

Quote(s) of the day:

President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. has lost some of its competitive edge and gotten a “little soft.”

Mr. Obama, in an interview with WESH-TV in Orlando, said his administration has been tough on the country’s trading partners and tried to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”

To which Jonah Goldberg retorts:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

And whom we might add, his charges believe food stamps and extensions in unemployment benefits are an economic stimulus. Yeah, soft, indeed.




B-Daddy on the GOP field:

I am struck by who is not running in the Republican field, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin. It seems that each of these potential candidates has a cache of highly enthusiastic supporters that none of the current crop, Ron Paul excepted seems to bring to the race. The good news is that Republican voters tend to be grown-ups about these choices and are less likely to fall in love with a candidate who is all show and no dough like the incumbent. The bad news is that this will leave the tea party movement split, whose energy will be needed to unseat Obama. Further, since the eventual nominee is unlikely to please the tea party to the extent that Palin might have, the movement may suffer a loss of enthusiasm for participation in the political process. The other bit of bad news is that Republicans have shown a certain trend over the last 20 years. Two Bushes, McCain, and Dole all have that "I'm a conservative, but maybe not one to limit government growth and interference in the markets when it suits my purposes" quality.

Check out here what B-Daddy thinks qualifies the best Republican candidate.




That's it for today, gang. We'll see you all on Monday.

Tales from Bailout Nation: the apocalypse edition

“Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,...every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

So, what would you say to a TARP-receiving Wall St. exec making $800,000 accepting zero dollars in the way of bonuses? You might look at that salary and think that was mighty big of that guy but that you were greatly appreciative just the same of that symbolic gesture considering all the other shenanigans going on with Wall St. bonuses.

Then what would you think if ol' boy in 2009 purchased a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the upper east side of New York for $13.5 million? You might say that perhaps this guy had some spare change setting between the seat cushions in order to make this purchase. No biggie.

But then what if we told you that instead of his own money, he possibly used that of his wife who along with her girlfriend received $220 million from the Feds for their start-up investment firm Waterfall TALF Opportunity?



Sunshine laws passed last year have thrown the door open and have shed light onto just how dirty the dirty Fed may be. We apparently have two budgets: one that's on the books and the other that's off the books. One with which you are familiar with income via taxes and expenditures via aircraft carriers and Social Security payments and the other that is giving out hundreds of billions in near-interest-free loans only to be lent back to the Treasury Department at 3%.

This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it’s insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can’t make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.

Ditto for the housing market. What completely freaks us out is that Fannie and Freddie are still holding mountains of toxic assets that have not been allowed to be wrung out of the system. To say the housing market is making a rebound is folly until we unwind the entire mess.

Read the entire article here. And since it will appear in Rolling Stone, remember, it was all the Republicans' fault.

"Desire" just didn't carry that alliterative punch

A little too edgy for ya? Too representative of rapacious Wall St. fat cats getting over on everybody?

Well, think of the alternative where nobody has the desire to seek a profit from the goods and/or services they have the ability to sell on the market. That wouldn't be too cool now would it?

Allow KT to round some of the rough edges off mankind's natural naked ambitions, here.

Revolving doors

Peter Orszag is headed to Citi.

Rumors swirled that the former White House budget director will join the worldwide bank Citigroup.

Bloomberg first reported Mr. Orszag is close to taking an investment banking job at Citigroup, where his former mentor Bob Rubin served as an executive and board member.

Citi declined to comment on the rumors.

The move is the latest for Mr. Orszag who left the White House earlier this year. The Financial Times reported that Mr. Orszag will was likely to be offered a position dealing with clients and top government officials rather than running a business.

(italics, ours)

Yeah, no kidding - would you let this guy anywhere near a business enterprise?

Considering the revolving door between Wall St. and the levers of power in D.C., we suppose we wouldn't be so opposed to crony capitalism and this American economic fascism, if the people involved weren't so god-awful at what they do.

Another vetting FAIL

Look, if you're going to populate the cabinet with tax cheats, why is it such a stretch to have a criminal as one of your White House props?

Charlottesville resident Leslie Macko was once employed at ACAC in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center. In April 2009, she lost her job as an aesthetician in the spa at ACAC.

President Barack Obama called on Congress last week to extend unemployment insurance. Macko stood next to the President of the United States as his example of the need to extend jobless benefits.

CBS19's Jessica Jaglois has learned that Macko was found guilty of prescription drug fraud in March 2009, one month before Macko lost her job at ACAC. She served a one year probationary sentence.

Macko joined two other unemployed people and President Obama at the podium for a speech designed to encourage lawmakers to extend jobless benefits.

And in other competency-related news today...

President Obama's choice to be the government's chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year -- after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout.

The money was paid to Jacob Lew in January 2009, about two weeks before he joined the State Department as deputy secretary of state, according to a newly filed ethics form. The payout came on top of the already hefty $1.1 million Citigroup compensation package for 2008 that he reported last year.

Administration officials and members of Congress last year expressed outrage that executives at other bailed-out firms, such as American International Group Inc., awarded bonuses to top executives. State Department officials at the time steadfastly refused to say if Mr. Lew received a post-bailout bonus from Citigroup in response to inquiries from The Washington Times.

But Mr. Lew's latest financial disclosure report, provided by the State Department on Wednesday, makes clear that he did receive a significant windfall.

We suppose this is evidence of the strategy of flogging and demonizing the evil ways of Wall St. fat cats by employing.... Wall St. fat cats.

Redux?

From the Wall St. Journal:

Fannie Mae,(...) launched an initiative in January that allows some first-time home buyers to get a loan with a down payment of as little as $1,000. Securities firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a brokerage operation jointly owned by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., is offering some clients home-equity credit lines of as much as $2.5 million.

Credit-card issuers mailed 84.8 million offers of plastic to U.S. subprime borrowers in the first six months of this year, up from 43.7 million a year earlier, estimates research firm Synovate. Nearly 8% of loans for new cars in the latest quarter went to borrowers with the lowest range of credit scores, up from 6.2% in (...)'s fourth quarter, according to J.D. Power & Associates and Fair Isaac Corp.

(deletions, ours)

So when was this written? 3 years ago? Maybe 5? How about last week.

What does this tell us possibly about the financial reform bill's ability to address sub-prime lending and too big too fail?

It would appear that, at least on the surface, there has not been a fundamental change to how business will be done on Wall Street and that the large financial institutions know that Bailout Nation is here to stay.