Quote of the day: Taibbi on Obama

Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He's good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

I just don't believe this guy anymore, and it's become almost painful to listen to him.

- Matt Taibbi, "Obama and Jobs: Why I Don't Believe Him Anymore."

The political left which vaulted Mr. Obama into the White House has all but given up on him delivering anything remotely resembling his promises as a candidate in 2007 and 2008.  The standard argument by centrists and those still on the Democratic party kool-aid, is that he has delivered substantial results and has been hamstrung by Republican opposition in going further.  I find this argument absurd.  

A firestorm was unleashed amongst the political left when Prof. Drew Westen in an NY Times Op-ed, described Obama's failure to articulate a cogent and realistic picture of the political landscape in the dreary days of January 2009 and ask Americans for collective sacrifice. This is a man who was voted by a majority of Americans to turn the country around after eight horrible years under the Bush administration. He was a given an unequivocal mandate to enact liberal and far-reaching changes.  None of that has happened.   Instead we have seen a massive capitulation to business interests, the expansion of the Afghan war, and a constant rejection of liberal stances and policies in favour of Republican talking points, which include low-taxes, reduced regulations, slashing government jobs, and anti-growth austerity economics. Mr. Obama was willing only a month ago to increase the age of retirement and slash Medicare benefits for the elderly to appease the Republicans in the debt-ceiling debate.

The only reason much of the Democratic base hasn't completely abandoned him, is that the Republican label is so toxic and filled with so many morons, racists, homophobes, crony-capitalists, and religious nutters, that it is impossible not to prefer him over his opponents.

***
Further posts expanding and justifying my thoughts on Mr. Obama's tepidness are included below:

• My open letter to Mr. Obama last year is here
• Robert Reich's comment on Mr. Obama as a centrist leaning politician is here
• A critique of Mr. Obama's support for the Bush Administration's torture program (here and here).
• Daniel Elisberg, noted whistle blower and source of the Pentagon Papers, condemns Mr. Obama's pro-corporatist agenda here.
• Eliot Spitzer on Obama's first year is here
• Ralph Nader on Obama's early failures and capitulations (here, here, and here)

John Boehner, keeping it classy.

Republican congressman, John Boehner (R-OH) has been sworn in as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  As all Republicans, he is committed to keeping it classy, just as it was when he was a regular congressmen and dispensing tobacco lobbyist checks to his fellow congressmen on the house floor.

Consider what Matt Taibbi, at Rolling Stone magazine, had to say about this indolent corporate shill and cocksucker:

Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, [Steve] Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize"...

(h/t Brad DeLong's blog)

NYT's Book Review of Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia"

The New York Times Sunday Book Review looks at Matt Taibbi's newest publication "Griftopia"

The reviewer summarizes the book with the following:

In “Griftopia,” a relentlessly disturbing, penetrating exploration of the root causes of the trauma that upended economic security in millions of American homes, Taibbi argues that what unfolded was far from accidental. Rather, the nation suffered the equivalent of a hostile takeover of key areas of its commercial life by investment banking houses, while regulators and members of Congress abdicated their responsibilities either because they were influenced by campaign cash or because they believed the fairy tale that unsupervised markets always work best. The result, Taibbi asserts, was a thieves’ paradise — Griftopia.

Taibbi takes on the zombie lie, pushed by right-wing hacks, that the banks were forced to sell subprime mortgages to poor people and that Fannie Mae and Fredie Mac were the root causes of the crisis.

Taibbi persuasively dismisses the argument that the financial crisis was caused by poor people with a taste for real estate, delineating how Wall Street eagerly handed out mortgages to anyone with a pulse, and then used the home loans as the material for a far more lucrative enterprise — the exotic investments known as derivatives. The derivatives market depended upon a steady supply of mortgages. But when too many of the bets went bad, Wall Street persuaded the Treasury to construct bailouts that Taibbi describes as a “labyrinthine financial sewage system designed to stick us all with the raw waste and pump clean water back to Wall Street.”

The book attacks the mindless Tea-Party movement, calls Alan Greenspan the biggest asshole in the universe, delves into America's bubble machine typified by the original vampire-squid, Goldman Sachs, and considers how Obama's health care initiative is nothing less than a boondoggle for the toxic-sludge dealers in big-Pharma and the nickle-and-dime kleptomaniacs in the so-called insurance business.  As emotionally cathartic as it is to find someone who will call the biggest thieves and crooks on the planet, what they truly are. It is Taibbi's constant attack on the enterprises of American capitalism, those revered and sacrosanct temples, in which he viciously and relentlessly dismantles and exposes as being little more than high-end criminal rings, that is most satisfying.

An excellent read.  I hope someone was generous enough to put it under your Christmas tree.

Matt Taibbi talks about the Tea Party, Palin, & the Banks

I really hope if you have an opportunity to watch Eliot Spitzer on his CNN news-talk show, Parker-Spitzer.  The man always impresses me when he's debating friend or foe, with his enormous knowledge of governance, financial affairs, and the inherent corruption that exists between government and big business.  There really isn't any other show on the MSM cable channels, in America at least, that I think is worth watching.  Even if you're into liberal talk shows, MSNBC's lineup tends to be a little repetitious and self-serving when it comes to engaging in substantive issues. 

The above video post is another with Matt Taibbi, who grouses on the media obsession with Caribou Barbie and the Tea Party movement, the criminality of the banks, and the incompetence of Tim Geithner and Alan Greenspan.  Spitzer and Taibbi unleash a real pummelling on the ass-clowns of casino-capitalism!

Matt Taibbi explains the Financial sector's hold on Democrats

I personally think the reason Rick Sanchez got cut from CNN was that he rubbed some of the MSM top honchos the wrong way during his time at the anchor desk.  Populism is fine for the plutocrats when it works to their advantage, as in the case of the ignorant and deranged Tea Party advocates.  However, when discussions of the collusion between those at the top of the economic pyramid (i.e. the banks) and government officials begin, which leads to the magnification of the nexus of institutional corruption, the grand-poobahs get antsy. 

Consider the above video with Sanchez and Rolling Stone magazine contributor and author Matt Taibbi, where the discussion veers into understanding the basis of the 2009 financial sector bailout pursued by the Obama administration. In it, Sanchez makes the connection that Washington DC is effectively corporate controlled territory. He notes that Goldman Sachs and other bankers wield inordinate levels of power over the legislative and executive branches and control the system through campaign contributions to both parties and the installation of their people into key government portfolios. There was no requirement for Obama to bring people like Larry Summers, who had been an architect of the deregulatory fiasco of the 1990's that lead to this current economic malaise, into the fold.  There was no requirement to appoint Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury or to re-appoint Ben Bernanke, other than it appeased the poobahs on Wall Street.

For all the talk of change, the Obama administration made sure that corporate America knew that the new sheriff in town was going to be the same as the old one.  They let it be known that "Greed was still good," and regardless of how the economy reacted, all the merry sociopaths, looking down at us little people from the glass towers in the Financial District, would still get all their bonuses that would allow them to feed their insatiable want for coke, hookers, and good times.

All this nonsensical talk that Obama is somehow a socialist is the musings of truly stupid people.  The facts are plain to see that this administration is not terribly different than any of its Republican or Democratic predecessors.  The facts are also clear that it is the greedheads at the top of the financial food chain who have been the winners for the past 30 years.  When the next economic calamity arises in the near future, we'll see who gets saved again and who the ignorant masses will blame for it.

Quote of the Day: MSM you're useless

If there's a lower form of life on the planet earth than a "reputable" journalist protecting his territory, I haven't seen it.

- Matt Taibbi on Lara Logan's riposte to Rolling Stone's McChrystal article

Everybody hates Goldman Sachs

“Our model really never changed, we’ve said very consistently that our business model remained the same” - Goldman Sachs CFO

One fine afternoon last October, George W. Bush, in a scene for the history books, tilted over the large oak table in the White House and said to Hank Paulson, "If money isn't loosened up, this sucker is going to go down." The public was told in no uncertain terms that if the American public didn't agree to saving the reptilian army of bankers that had brought about this disaster, that we would all go down with the Titanic. The deal was made, the money transferred, and like children waiting for Santa, the public expected that the banks would begin lending and the economy would right itself. It didn't happen. Instead Goldman Sachs hoarded the cash in their vaults and then disgorged themselves of their nimiety by giving their staff the largest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year. The company is believed to have paid 973 bankers $1m or more in 2008, while this year's payouts are on track to be the highest for most of the bank's 28,000 staff.

What we now know is that "sucker" as Dubya put it at the time wasn't the US economy or the American public, but rather Goldman Sachs and the pirates of high-capitalism. Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone magazine, states that the public was hoodwinked to make a, "Political decision in the middle of an economic crisis to use the state as a crutch to prop up exactly one sector of the economy, and we chose exactly the wrong people."

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, explains that,

Goldman's high-risk business model hasn't changed one bit from what it was before the implosion of Wall Street. Goldman is still wagering its capital and fueling giant bets with lots of borrowed money. While its rivals have pared back risks, Goldman has increased them. And its renewed success at this old game will only encourage other big banks to go back into it...

[That] Goldman has reverted to its old ways in the market suggests it has every reason to believe it can revert to its old ways in politics, should its market strategies backfire once again -- leaving the rest of us once again to pick up the pieces.

Paul Krugman further elaborates that what has been done is not in the public interest and in fact, has created the groundwork for an even greater economic catastrophe in the near future because,

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you’re a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded — and you don’t have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don’t understand.

Max Keiser, broadcaster, former broker, and options trader, has the harshest and absolute best words I've seen or read in regards to Goldman Sachs,

They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague. They should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/max-keiser-goldman-sachs-are-scum

Would Goldman Sachs still be pulling in record profits if the government didn't bailout AIG, which at the time owed Goldman nearly $20 Billion, or given the fact that the FED gave them another $10 Billion through the TARP program and undefined additional millions (billions?) from other government programs, when the company converted itself to a bank holding company? The latter number is impossible to determine, because Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have refused to disclose this information to the public; the very people who made the loan to these bankrupt bankers and greedheads!

What does this say about the American government or for that matter, Hank Paulson who was then secretary of commerce and former CEO of Goldman Sachs? Clearly, the primary objective of both the Democrats and the Republicans wasn't in getting Americans back to work, but instead in saving their wealthy donors/friends in high places. The banking industry and Goldman Sachs have gamed the system and the entire Bush and Obama administrations are part of this orchestrated fraud. Goldman Sachs has made fools of every tax paying American and are laughing all the way to the...