Many times David it can be asserted that I reside in an alternate reality. This must be one of those times as I had an understanding that both DoJ and FBI had Financial Fraud offices responsible for investigating, indicting and prosecuting actions as outlined here.

Are those responsible for oversight in Financial Fraud crimes simply MIA (or were the offices closed at some point in the past/s)?

Thousands of financial fraud FBI agents were reassigned to counter terrorism efforts after 9-11. Although the FBI knew of problems, the Bush Administration had ordered such an increase in resources to the WOT that they had nothing and no one to assign to the task.
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/399753_bailoutfraud12.html

Thanks Toby

Thanks David.

This is also a failure of whistle blowers. Federal and State False Claims Acts are supposed to incentivize people to report this kind of stuff.

Hey, where is everybody? Great post, D-Day. You’re rockin’ my world. It’s looking more and more like a carefully orchestrated Perkinsian economic hit job.

Hey librty, didn’t you see Prof. Black’s testimony?

Financial institution leaders are not engaged in risk when they engage in liars’ loans — liars’ loans will cause a failure. They lose money. The only way to make money is to deceive others by selling bad paper, and that will eventually lead to liability and failure as well.

When people cheat you cannot as a regulator continue business as usual. They go into a different category and you must act completely differently as a regulator. What we’ve gotten instead are sad excuses.

The SEC: we’re told they’re only 24 people in their comprehensive program. Who decided how many people there would be in their comprehensive program? Who decided the staffing? The SEC did. To say that we only had 24 people is not to create an excuse — it’s to give an admission of criminal negligence. Except it’s not criminal, because you’re a federal employee.

In the context of the FDIC, Secretary Geithner testified today that this pushed the financial system to the brink of collapse But Chairman Bernanke testified we sent two people to be on site at Lehman. We sent fifty credit people to the largest savings and loan in America. It had 30 billion in assets. We had a whole lot less staff than the Fed does.

We forced out the CEO. We replaced the CEO. We did that not through regulation but because of our leverage as creditors. Now I ask you, who had more leverage as creditors in 2008? The Fed, as compared to the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, 19 years earlier? Incomprehensible greater leverage in the Fed, and it simply was not used.

That’s because the fraud was the policy.

Problem is the Dems never DO anything about the abuses they discover in hearings. I don’t bother listening anymore to their “How awfuls” anymore. Great at hearings, piss poor at action.

Yep, saw his Statement and testimony. And have followed his posts here at FDL.

I had a friend, retired FBI. His job was Financial Fraud on Wallstreet, Chicago etc.

I’m just left scratching my head, WTF happened to the folks whose beat this was. But the fog is starting to clear now.

Slight correction, my friend: they haven’t done anything. So what are we, the real sovereigns here, gonna do about it?

“Pressure, pressure, I got pressure!” –The Kinks (1979)

According to President Bipartisan and his DOJ the criminals of the banking “industry” are to big to jail. Of course the corporate media will assist Obama in his charade.

Yup, because we’re supposed to look forward, not backward — except when it comes to getting revenge on the people who blew the whistles on Bush-era crimes:

The more I think and read about the Obama DOJ’s prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the more I think this might actually be one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not the single worst step — and that’s obviously saying a lot.  During the Bush years, in the wake of the NSA scandal, I used to write post after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct.  But the Bush DOJ never actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-blowers were indicted during Bush’s term (though several were threatened).  It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen, as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted yesterday of the indictment against Drake.

Cool, I figger’d you had. No disrespect meant at all. Nice to meet you.

This is what I’m thinking lately. What do you think?

The fraud was the policy, right? The Great Collapse didn’t just happen, it was engineered. Now, maybe they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, maybe they didn’t know their own strength.

They still managed to swamp the ship of state with their economic hit job. Maybe they didn’t foresee crashing the whole thing, just hijacking it–and us–to hell.

Busting the myths of the fraudsters is a necessary first step toward accountability.

That’s because there is no “movement” holding Obama and the Democrats accountable. Until Obama and Dims in Congress fear the people more than they fear the oligarchy nothing changes. The right wing is able to get boots on the ground and media exposure far out of proportion to their actual numbers while the left would seem to be content with bitching and blogging.

The CIA couldn’t predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, the 9-11 attack, and no weapons of MD in Iraq. We are awash in crack after 30 years of a war on drugs, and the Justice Department has done nothing, nothing to stem monopolistic practices. FEMA failed in historic proportions in New Orleans.

So why should we expect our government agencies to be suddenly good at something, like preventing the fraud that occured in the Housing Bubble?

Thanks for highlighting this hearing, DDay. I saw a bit of it (near the end), and was struck that the people providing testimony seemed to be doing everything they could to cover their butts and pass off responsibility.

As you point out:

in many cases, the entities with which they were doing deals, like pension funds or banks or insurance companies, were legally bound to have a safe AAA rating on the security. So they would basically pitch the rating agencies to give their products the seal of approval.

These were the people who ‘professionalized’ the fraud of claiming that the brakes on your Ferrari were brand-new, excellent condition; in fact, the car has no brakes whatsoever.

Or, to use Rachel Maddow’s analogy: these were the people telling the baker that the white, odd-smelling powder was not chlorine — of course it was flour, since that’s what the vendor wanted them to say.

The spineless, weasel conduct of these people was just shameful.
I think that they view themselves as ‘powerless’: if they didn’t deliver bullshit, the banks would not pay them.

That was also true for appraisers.
But at some level, people need to take personal responsibility for the decisions that they make. All I saw from those who testified was butt-covering excuses.

Levin is taking on a Yoda-like ambiance, and that hearing — like some of his others — showed some really good staff work must have occurred behind the scenes.

this demonstrates unequivically, there is no such thing as “the market will regulate itself”, the market cannot possibly regulate itself and those “libertarians” who promote a market that regulates itself know it can’t possibly happen

The right wing is able to get boots on the ground and media exposure far out of proportion to their actual numbers while the left would seem to be content with bitching and blogging.

The right wing is a freak show. And most people, IMVHO, recognize that fact; look at the historically low numbers of people claiming to be Republicans.

The left has ActBlue, energy, smarts, and a sense of humor.
Plus, the left reads constantly, which means that month after month after month, they get smarter and snarkier.

I have to admit to a certain level of frustration reading posts like this one. It has been common knowledge since the bursting of the housing bubble that the ratings agencies whored for the companies whose deals they were supposed to rate. That’s 2 1/2 years. People with more expert knowledge knew years before that.

Let’s be real clear on this everyone knew: The CDO managers, the sellers, the buyers, the ratings agencies, the regulators, even Levin. But on the upside of a bubble all bets are good. Everyone had their reasons for signing off on these deals. Everyone got a fee or a bonus from them. Anyone who stood in their way was begging to lose their job.

The remedy is to close the ratings agencies down. They are still making bilge water ratings in the face of an enormous stock bubble. They are behaving just like they did last time. They still have the same conflicts of interest. Dodd’s proposal is so pathetic, make a little office and stick it in the largely toothless SEC. So what if Levin holds some hearings on things we already know. Unless he proposes and pushes strong legislation, unless he takes Dodd on, it is still all kabuki.

A “conveyor belt” of toxic assets.

The definition of a broken system. The business of ratings agencies is to statistically and financially assess risk and the ability to repay on agreed terms. That includes assessing the history of products brought to market by customers and their individual managers. These agencies knowingly stopped doing their jobs in order to “stay in business”. They knowingly “rated” products they did not understand and could not rate competently. That is more than their being too big, too irresponsibly ambitious or too greedy to fail. It’s a crime.

Ratings agencies without the staff, technology or resources to rate the products they were selling themselves – to their customers and the investing public (sophisticates and rubes alike).

When your lawyer advises you about, or your doctor treats you for something about which s/he hasn’t a bloody clue, and you lose your shirt or a limb because of it, it’s called malpractice. If done with intent to harm or with reckless disregard for consequences, the harm done is more then negligent. It is willful. It may be a crime. The practitioner should suffer the loss of their ability to practice. They should be rendered incapable of doing the same again and again to other unsuspecting customers.

It is not just “self-regulation that is at fault here. Bush promoted “voluntary self-regulation” because he knew it was an oxymoron. It is painfully obvious that self-regulation protects no one except the company that regulates itself. The failure here is not just business’. It is the government’s and on a massive scale.

Bush was the emperor who wore no clothes. Obama takes that as a given and tells us to admire the refined gate with which his government walks. No wonder his fondest wish is that we all move along, and find nothing to see. Not being blind as well as stupid, we ought not to give in to such royal fantasies. We live with the consequences; the royal court does not.

And until they are able to get “boots” on the ground they will continue to be nothing more than a marginalized ineffective voice of reason and logic. Would the labor or civil rights movements have ever moved forward if they hadn’t been willing to put people on the streets?

Guilty. (/s to an ever greater degree)

And the Rightists who do read are probably just reading up on how to improve their methods for screwing us royally in the name of good governance. That goes for Rightists in Democratic costumes: effing Hamilton Project members, I’m looking at you. (/s to infinity and beyond!)

this demonstrates unequivically, there is no such thing as “the market will regulate itself”, the market cannot possibly regulate itself and those “libertarians” who promote a market that regulates itself know it can’t possibly happen

But, but it is a core tenet of both neoclassical and Austrian school economics that the markets will self-correct. This is why people like Greenspan and Bernanke had no interest in regulation. They saw it as irrelevant. It is why they could stand by in perfect equanimity while first the housing bubble burst and then the meltdown occurred. It explains Greenspan’s odd after the fact comment that everything that he thought about markets “may” have been wrong. As for the Austrians, they take the few that we should let the banks fail and that this will eventually lead to a correction. What they ignore is all the pain and misery that such a course will vist on ordinary Americans.

What if that’s an eight-track strategy in a YouTube world? What if we need new methods of demonstrating? Is “boots on the ground” the one and only measure of our discontent? Is it any longer the best way to get the attention of public servants?

I don’t know, that’s why I’m wondering out loud. Any thoughts?

Bush promoted “voluntary self-regulation” because he knew it was an oxymoron. It is painfully obvious that self-regulation protects no one except the company that regulates itself. The failure here is not just business’. It is the government’s and on a massive scale.

Yes, but the failure was intended. The basic purpose of both Bush and Obama economic policy is to facilitate looting by the elites for the elites. That is why, in the absence of any countervailing tendency or restraint, there was a collapse. It is why another and worse one is inevitable.

The issue is, and none of this is addressed by the reform bills, that some deals must have AAA rated securities in them, by force of law. This is true of pension funds, for example, where many state laws prohibit the fund managers from entering into deals or buying bonds that aren’t rated. So the rating agencies have to exist; they just need to stop getting paid by the companies whose securities they’re rating.

Yes. It’s sorta like the torture situation. We gotta look forward, not back. And besides, we might want to do it again.

Exactly. Each round leaves the plebeians more exhausted and the patricians wealthier, make each successive round more painful and brutal. When the last blood from that stone drips out, it’s not time to repent and to change one’s ways; it’s time to find another stone.

some deals must have AAA rated securities in them, by force of law. This is true of pension funds, for example, where many state laws prohibit the fund managers from entering into deals or buying bonds that aren’t rated. So the rating agencies have to exist

This is an incredibly silly argument. An AAA rating does not substitute for due diligence. It was a well intentioned law made stupid by events. There is no reason to believe that ratings agencies’ models have gotten any better. Just look at their current reaction to the bubble in stocks. So you are saying that ratings agencies should exist, even if their ratings continue to be crap, because there is a law somewhere that inanely requires a “rating”. Not that it will happen but change the damn law. Make pension fund managers personally liable.

Another point, it is important to realize that entities like state governments have underfunded pensions or allowed their underfunding for a long time. This has forced pensions to seek higher returns on investments to make up for shortfalls and meet their obligations. But here is the deal. Pensions are supposed to invest conservatively. That means accepting low returns for safety. The was the original idea behind the AAA rating requirement. But if they need higher returns than they that means higher risk, which is antithetical to their core policy. So this has led them to engage in a number of high risk behaviors by other means. High return fake AAA instruments were just a way to get around their investment restrictions. Same thing with hedge funds. The pensions couldn’t engage directly in high risk investments but if they channeled their money into hedge funds, the hedge funds could make the risky investments the pensions could not. The principle of minimizing risk was effectively circumvented.

An investment must have a AAA rating – by law – to be eligible for purchase by public investment trusts, such as as pension funds. It is not a mandate that a product be rated AAA. It is a mandate that investors with public responsibilities purchase only investments that earned a AAA rating. As usual, Wall Street gamed the system.

Yes, this is a better way of putting what I was saying. The ratings are effectively meaningless at this point and that’s the problem. But there are a whole host of laws still tied to them. Almost nothing in the reform bills address this.

We seem to have a lot of laws that are not being enforced. And the solution your side has is to make more laws, that won’t be enforced.

Can anyone tell me why there are Government unions? Who exactly are the unions “organizing” against? The reason I bring this up, is that, the unions are the real culprit in the out of control costs of government employees.

I feel your pain. This whole mess started stinkin’ up the place a long time ago. They certainly tried to shake it off but the implications of massive rating agency fraud are worldwide when you stop to think about it. One can only hope that the lawyers are as hungry as the assembly line guys I work with.

They’re organizing against unfair employment practices. You think, just because someone works for the federal gov’t, they don’t deserve fair employment practices?

You want overworked, underpaid, resentful people as civil servants? D’oh, never mind.

Full speed ahead toward forming our more perfect Union!

There is Power in a Union –Billy Bragg (2002)

And…don’t forget about UBS informant Bradley Birkenfeld who blew the whistle on offshore tax evasion. President Obama first made public statements about how they expect to raise $86.5 billion through 2019 by ending a strategy that lets U.S.- based multinational companies effectively hide the role their foreign subsidiaries play in shifting profits into low-tax jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands. Instead, the President quietly backed away from that strategy and whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld went to prison.

Where Have All the Whistleblowers Gone?

Huh, isn’t it the “Government” who defines “unfair” labor practices? Isn’t it the legislative branch of the Government who is tasked with creating these laws protect workers from unfair labor practices and is it not the judicial branch of the Government who is tasked with enforcing these laws? So, again, I re-ask my question? Or are you saying that The Government does not always follow their own laws, rules, and regulations? Sounds like you may be in favor of less Government power and more people power. Maybe you should attend a Tea Party rally, as that is the sentiment they hold, too.

Oh, by the way, the Government employees you speak of, in my opinion, are mostly, under worked, over payed, resentful people people who could care less for the people they are tasked to deal with.

Sadly, my friend, you don’t appear to know what you’re talking about. How ’bout you do some homework, read up on exactly how laws come to be enacted? You’d be a much more worthy debate opponent.

Do you enjoy your weekends? Brought to you by the unions. How bout 40-hour work weeks? Extra pay for overtime? Go thank your nearest union member. Go lay a wreath on the grave of union members bludgeoned to death to earn for you the time off to denounce your benefactors.

hatenomor, our government is run by people whose interests are contrary to our own. The federal gov’t has to be sued, in too many cases to count, for the actual people who do the actual work to fulfill their actual oaths of office, instead of using their public offices as private for-profit fiefs.

Union lawsuits have brought you this weekend, on which you badmouth the people who fought, bled, and died to earn this practice. And the list union-won benefits, even to non-union members, goes on and on.

What, you think business interests just naturally, out of the goodness of their hearts, just up and gave us these things?

Government employees are often underpaid, overworked, under managed, under trained and under appreciated, which quite logically leads to the proverbial “service with a snarl” once common to China and to Parisian waiters, as well as town clerks who make as much as the proverbial Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton.

Unions, at one time, had a real purpose, which no longer exists today. Now, they are mostly greedy, mobbed up entities, that are our a major drain on the coffers of local, state and federal governments,not to mention the harm they do to private industry.

As to the Government thing, I agree. The Government, for the most part, is as you say. That is why I oppose any and all programs that increase the Governments power. The way I see it, the Government can and should be my recourse against unscrupulous individuals, companies and corporations, via the legislative and judicial branch’s of Government. On the other hand, when the Government starts to throw its weight around, unscrupulously, there is no recourse, not even via unionization. Just look at what happened to the air traffic controllers during the Reagan admin.

By the way, I am not bad mouthing those that came before, I am saying that those of today dishonor those that came before, by using the unions in other than honorable ways.

I think the greedy, mobbed up description fits better when applied to Wall Street than the SEIU. Besides, the Street no longer has to bury the bodies under a Jersey tunnel works or inside a back alley Vegas dumpster. It leaves them spread across Main Street America and cries, “Who could have predicted?”

SEIU? They are one of the most corrupt entities in the nation. To my way of thinking, SEIU is but one of many entities, historically, whites have used to exploit my community. Are you not aware that SEIU is founded and run by two southern white men, who are in it only for the power and money SEIU gives them?

As to your wall street screed, huh, if the Government was doing its job, instead of watching porn all day, none of this would have occurred.

The porn the government is not watching is made on Wall Street every day.

And,if the Federal Government had not told lenders to lend to those who where unable to pay back the loan, we would not be in the mess we are currently in.

To which one should add blasphemy. From Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God? in the Guardian:

The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman’s international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas Shrugged, told an audience at St Paul’s Cathedral that “The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest” [sic]. A few weeks later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Times that he was doing “God’s work” [sic].

Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car salesman won’t sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is done almost as a matter of routine in the financial services industry, where the attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family was dumb for getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!

Watched the video. It seems to contain nothing but stereotypes of those of us who are against people entering this country illegally.

Banks built their primary business model on lending to those who could not repay their loans, betting that they could offload the “assets” to “investors”, while reaping profits via usurious penalty, interest and late fees and charges. The government forced them to do it about as much as it forced Goldman Scratch to make massive, destabilizing bets against the securities it was selling as AAA rated.

I think what we have here is an economic version of the Nazi big lie. Of course these people knew that what they were doing was fraud, but they also knew that if enough of them did it, individuals couldn’t be singled out because if they were all doing it, it was then established as a sort of “conventional wisdom”. And so if something was big enough to be thought of as “conventional wisdom” it was (like the big lie) also too big to question, and consequently, made it impossible to think of as fraud.

It’s also the case that if the lie was “too big to question”, it must then also big “too big to fail”. Or so they, also like the Nazi’s, thought.

What you don’t seem to understand is that there will always be unscrupulous people doing business, regardless of what type of Government you have. It is the Governments job, on the local, state and federal level, to protect it’s citizens from these unscrupulous individuals. At the same time, no entity can protect one from one’s own greed.

Hey hatenomor, let’s cut to the chase here: so here we are, on a weekend brought to us by union blood, sweat and tears, but, because the potential for mismanagement exists in any human endeavor (where’s your outrage over many times worse fraud and corruption, say for example, in the Defense Department? There’s more wasted money in many weapons systems, on their own, than the GDPs of umpteen countries.

So, for the sake of argument, I’ll entertain your hypothesis. Say I agree with you. Say you’ve won the day. What are you proposing? What’s your answer?

Do you have an answer? Are you here sincerely to advance, or to obstruct, the movement of our shard narrative away from engendering hellscapes (I suppose you’d like to live under the rule of absolute divine-right marketeers?) and toward forming our more perfect Union?

What are you getting at? Are you going to go all Ayn Rand on us? If that’s the case, I’d rather go do yard work, so can you help a fellow citizen out here? Thanks pal, much obliged.

They did? First I heard of this absurd business model.

D’oh, pardon my clumsiness, that paragraph should read:

…say for example, in the Defense Department? There’s more wasted money in many weapons systems, on their own, than the GDPs of umpteen countries), are you saying we should do away with unions?

Etc.

That would require not having read a credit card contract, mortgage note or much financial news for the past twenty years. Yes, the model is absurd; it’s also extremely profitable in the short term, in the same way that Sherman’s march to the sea “pacified” Georgians for a short time.

Like I said before, there was once a need for unions, but that need does not exist anymore, and that need never existed, in my opinion, for Government employee’s. There used to be a civil service system in place, prior to the unionization of government employee’s that worked pretty well. I say lets go back to that system, re-tooled to fit the reality of the twenty first century.

And I would also insist on Government workers doing their job, or risk losing that job.

I say ALL FEDERAL PROGRAMS,including DEFENSE, should be scrutinized, and those found to be lacking in protecting the PUBLIC’S money should be terminated from their positions, and those programs should be eliminated, if possible.

But it is not profitable in the long run, and most institutions tend to take the long view of things. That’s how they became institutions in the first place.

Again, I ask y’all to pardon my clumsiness. I’m trying to get some yard work done over here.

Thanks for that answer.

Hey Union Members, pack your bags! hatenomor wants to send us on a guilt trip to hell. Any takers?

By the way, I do not hold or have a mortgage, or credit card, preferring cash for all my transactions. I choose to live within my means.

Please refrain from putting untrue words in my mouth.

OK, that says it all.

Shorter hatenomor: I say the world should be run the way I say it should! Everything should be done the right way! That’s not exactly a new proposal, my friend.

You got nothing, have you? Just empty anti-union platitudes. Like a kid joining in on the grade-school complaining about a food he’s never tasted.

Before you go ‘n throw Atlas Shrugged at us, I’ve got dirt to play in. Buh bye.

I bow in all y’all’s virtual directions.

OT

Hey knowbudd, do you understand why Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine was a non-union shop?

You have repeatedly made your point that you are against unionization. Have you considered the following:

a. Less than 12% of the employed population belongs to a union.

b. Since our government is supposed to work for the citizens of the country, it is the one place that employed citizens feel free to actually belong to a union. However, those employees often need a union because policies can change depending upon who is in office. Example, since former President Bush strongly believed in deregulation and basically wanted to show that government was incompetent, he put people into agencies which would bring about that outcome. I wouldn’t be surprised if the employees of regulatory institutions were directly or indirectly told to look the other way. In addition, all of the people who are involved in regulation (and certainly not management which made the decisions) do not belong to unions, so it is disingenuous to blame unions.

c. There are a variety of unions which are not greedy as you stated but are trying to work in the best interests of a group of employees. Here is a list of unions.

Labor Union List: International, U.S., State, and Local Web Sites

You’re right, I’m sorry. You’re probably not trying to guilt-trip us. I’m sure you meant nothing by what you said about unions once having a purpose, but now, they’re dragging us all down.

It is a lovely weekend for bashing the people who brought weekends to us, though, isn’t it? (/s to a leisurely degree)

Shorter hatenomor, take 2: Once upon a time, the Unions were good. Alas, you union members today, you’re corrupt and the real enemy here.

Thanks for the invite on a guilt trip to hell, but I’m not setting foot in your framing.

Can you do us the honor of maybe putting your whole thesis in a diary? I promise, I’ll be gentle.

I have no freakin’ clue. Your point being?

Did Massey Energy support, or oppose, unionization? In what context are we talking: fantasy land, where big-hearted business men are eager to share the wealth with the people whose labor produces it? Or the one in which people die for the obscene profits of said business men?

the one in which people die for the obscene profits of said business men?

is what it certainly appears to be

Yeah, that’s why they concentrate pretty much solely on quarterly profits.

No, you are totally misconstruing what I said, which is that their should be strict accountability for those charge with doing the people’s business. Seems you have a problem with that and I for the life of me, can’t understand why you would have a problem with strict accountability for Government workers, etc.

I think that view of the American business model is dated, like the once partially accurate but now infamous HR claim that “Employees are our most important asset”.

The systemically destructive models of American business depend on an attribute that has proven alarmingly durable: obsequious, unchallenging and bottomless support from government, the same sort of support that has made George Bush’s extreme disregard for the law a bipartisan given for the current administration.

You misunderstand. I am not against unionization. I just think their time has passed. I also don’t understand why Government workers have a need to be unionized, as the arguments I have heard all ring hollow. As to your 12% comment, maybe you should familiarize yourself with the percentage of that 12% are government workers. And please, stop laying everything at Bush’s doorstep. Bush was nothing but an elected Government worker, just as Obama is, and whoever will in the future occupy the office of the presidency. Seem in this light, your argument only serves to re-enforce my belief in limited Federal involvement in the private sector. That way, WE THE PEOPLE aren’t held hostage to the whims of who ever holds office, be it a democrat or a republican.

Dude, are you intentionally giving the unions a pass for their role in the economic mess we are in? Or are you just not aware of the negative impact unions have played in the economic scheme of things?

I thought reporting profits quarterly is mandated by law, not powered by greed, as you suggest.

It is not hard to avoid conflating the requirements of reporting operating results to public investors with management’s decision to focus on short-term, bonus-driven goals, to the exclusion of a firm’s long-term success and profitability.

I agree that the business model currently in play is out dated, but it still is the best model the world has. And please, don’t cite China as a model to be considered, as there model allows the “forced movement of labor”, as was done for the Olympics .

That may be true, but it also is short-sighted, and those companies don’t exist long.

Ask former and now non-union government employees how important union membership and civil service rules are in protecting them from the ambitions of short-term political appointees.

Yes, it is short-sighted; no, such companies endure or their managers move on to other Enrons and Lehmans, leaving the public to pick up their mess. Most of all, it is the business model that endures.

I see your reductio ad absurdum, and raise the obvious point: Unions need criticizing, just like we all do.

By all credible accounts (sorry, that does not include you, hatenomor), their role in the Great Collapse is minuscule, compared to the role of our home-grown economic hit men in positions like the White House itself, Congress (can you say Phill Gramm? Chuck Schumer? Joe Biden?), the Cabinet, the Fed (can you say Alan “What bubble? I don’t see no bubble? Holy Crap! What a bubble! Surely you don’t think I coulda done a thing about it?” Greenspan?), Treasury, Council of Economic Advisers, and so on. Next you’ll be telling me FannieMae did it in collusion with the unions in the union hall with a lead-pipe strap on. (/s to a bawdy degree)

Dude, are you intentionally giving a pass to the blatant accountancy and control frauds committed under the color of law? Are you that enamored of men in uniforms?

How about asking the average taxpayer if he or she feels we are getting the best bang for the buck with these unionized employee’s?

I don’t know why people are surprised that the credit people indulged in fraudulent activity when we had Reagan causing the “greed is good” phenomenon followed by the Bush’s lies and protection of the rich. What a wonderful example (sarcasm) got set – you can say and do whatever you want, lie about it and it will just be fine. No one will know or care and it will sort of take care of itself like trash vanishing into the ocean – except it doesn’t. The stink will eventually out. And who gets to clean it up??
Also, if I hear more tea party crap about illegal aliens and wanting small government, I will throw up. It’s the corporations, people, who are bringing illegals into this country to work longer hours for less than any American wants to be paid. It’s mega corporations, like states within states, who are controlling our government to put more and more power and money into their coffers at the expense of the American taxpayer. Get your heads on straight – masses of people all working to make as much money as possible while denying consumers any benefits do not care about you or what they make the government do. You need to look BEHIND the smokescreen!

I am against government bailouts, so your argument is not valid to me.

Bullsh*t dude. I live in Calif. and the unions are helping to bankrupt this state. And again, your argument about the government just reinforces my belief that we should limit the power they have.

I don’t believe it’s a R vs D issue, and that’s what provides the largest challenge along with creating the financial terror.

Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama. It’s basically one financial/business/corporate plan, very little has changed.

So limiting the taxes (such as property taxes) paid by corporations through Prop 13 and exempting things like yachts from sales taxes if held out of state for 90 days after the initial sale and requiring super majorities to pass the budgets and get anything done have not been a problem in your California huh?

I hasten to add, I say that as a man dressed in Carhartt’s from head to toe, including my long underwear.

Furthermore, I do in fact love my brother union members. I’ll go so far as to say I’m bi: I’ll love you even if you’re not in a union, ‘cuz we’re all part of the much more primordial union of life. How we arrange things among us is subordinate to the fact that, according to the power of the principle of universal common descent, we’re all what?

Not competitors, not atomized Newtonian cellves self-imprisoned in cellves of our own mistaken making (ie, the Freudian ego, aka the Judeo-Christian soul), in eternal peril unless we use our freedom to do exactly as we’re told, aka suspected enemy combatants, no longer citizens. What are we?

Kin, baby, kin! That makes compassion, not Social-Darwinistic competition, one of our most central organizing principles.

So, if we’re really Newtonian mechanisms, then brute force, kinetic power, most often invested in patriarchal power structures, is the proper way for us humans to behave. If, on the other hand, that’s been proven to be bullshit, from whomever dumps it on us, then maybe we should organize ourselves around principles that actually form, instead of pillage, our more perfect Union.

Nope, not a problem at all, seeing as how those yachts being built employed Californians, who did pay taxes. It also helped those in the service industries that supplied the yacht makers with the items needed to built said yacht. This also holds true to your corp. screed.

so you’re ok with corps paying less in property taxes than homeowners? (Since corp property changes hands far less often than residential property) Looks like the corporations have a champion to screw the taxpayer.

You should run for office. If you could con enough people into voting for you, you could probably create quite a sinecure for yourself

Assuming what you say is true about Reagan, etc, it just goes to prove my position, and that is the government is just as bad as the private sector is. What you fail to understand, is that we really have no “redress” against the bad behavior of government employees, be they elected, appointed or hired, whereas I do have redress against private enterprises. My position, in a nutshell, is that the Government’s role should be that of one whom I seek out to assist me in my “redress” against private enterprise’s and individuals. The Governments “sole” role should be that of referee of the rules we, the people have put in place, so that we can conduct business, equability between parties. The government should never be put it’s own citizens in the position of having to seek redress against it. After all, our form of Government is: By the People, and for the People.

I believe we should not tax corps to the extent that they feel they should go elsewhere, which has happened to a great extent in Calif. Why stay in a place that has high tax rates, when it’s just makes more sense to move to a place where they are more friendly to you, tax wise?

So cut the taxes of the corps, who use the most resources and lay on the taxes for the individuals who do not use as many resources.

Yeah, that’s definitely a platform you can get elected on.

Republicans are bankrupting the government of California by refusing to pass tax measures that will pay for what used to be the best public services – schools, universities, parks, roadways, bridges – in the country. Even billionaire Warren Buffett complains that he pays as much in real estate taxes on his modest house in Oklahoma as he does on his considerably more expensive house in coastal California.

Unions that demand a living wage and adequate social services – paid for with their taxes – are not bankrupting California. It’s their work that make up much of the economy, which is still one of the world’s top ten.

The obvious question is in whose interest is the economy, the government, the legal system run. Whose interests are regulatory agencies designed to promote? A few thousand at the top or everyone else. I am forever surprised at how durable is the Republican Party’s propaganda that measures designed primarily or exclusively to benefit the wealthy will generate an economy and civil society that benefits everyone else. It doesn’t. It builds gated Rancho Santa Fe after gated Rancho Santa Fe.

MTV you say? Well, not exactly cutting edge hip-hop autotune but here’s my attempt to remix (right click link, download to listen, 5mb mp3) the hearings:

http://tpajax.x10hosting.com/mp3/I-Would-Say-to-Run-2.mp3

Corporations use most of what resources?

The lower the tax rate, the higher the tax revenue. That is a fact, born out by the history of our tax system.

You know David Stockman was one of the first to spout that gibberish to support St Ronnie’s early tax cuts and then got vilified when he actually came out to William Greider and and admitted that it was nonsense.

You lower tax rates, you get less long term revenues. There is no legitimate mathematical formula that can prove otherwise.

Whether that’s a “fact” that has meaning without the proper context is open to question. It is certainly overly simplistic. It seems to ignore the distribution of who is paying tax and at what differential rates; it also seems to avoid including payroll taxes. Corporations and top wage earners pay the least they have ever paid. A significant minority of the biggest companies pay no tax; their offshore earnings escape US tax altogether.

That comment also seems to ignore changes in societal values about the necessity of paying income tax. Anecdotally, among tax professionals, the difference between tax planning and tax avoidance used to be five to ten in a federal pen. Now it’s the difference between making partner and looking for work. Federal regulators who collect taxes are as gutted by the past administration as the SEC, an administration that also broke the bank by failing to regulate and by lowering taxes at a time of rapidly and semi-permanently increasing military expenditure. Suffice it to say that I think the comment omits material facts that would give it credibility.

Bottom line is that those who pay taxes leave when the taxes they pay become excessive. They move to places that have lower tax rates, leaving the middle class to pick up the slack.

By the way, tax revenues went up, not down, under Bush.

No, the elites buy that portion of the legislature needed in order to keep both taxes and regulatory enforcement low. Bush hired hundreds of former lobbyists to head the agencies that formerly regulated their clients.

Whatever his revenue, Bush spent like a Bush: he spent gobs of the middle class’s money with no idea how any of it would be paid back, but with a firm idea of where it was to go – into the pockets of supposedly stand-on-your-own-two-feet military contractors and other outsourcing vendors. The middle class paid heavily and, as with the gains in productivity since 1980, the benefits went elsewhere.

Baby, I wish all you folks talking about leaving would go ahead and leave. There are places where you can go find your John Galt paradise and leave the rest of us to muddle along on our own.

And once again you make a factual assertion without offering anything verifiable by way of proof.

And this is how you do it:
Time Magazine, 12/6/07: Tax Cuts Don’t Boost REvenues
Taxes and revenues — another history lesson

Just 2 examples

Holy shit, guys. I can’t believe how hatenomor has managed to entirely hijack and dominate this thread. To the extent that the primie moves in the crisis, the rating agencies, are hardly getting any mention at all. He’s becoming the most successful troll of all time.

Y’all should stop taking him seriously. On another comment thread this weekend, he self-identified as a “nihilist.” Why waste time and energy arguing with a person who does not believe in ANY moral code?

Hatenomor, please writenomor. And Firepups, please answerhimnomor.

Edit: “prime movers,” not “primie moves.” My bad.

Shit, I hate having to write this, but I got hatenomor confused with laker, who declared himself a “nihilist” in Comment #85 to Massacio’s post on Obama’s approach to financial reform on Thursday. These guys feel so much alike, I got them confused in my memory.

Apologies to hatenomor. We’ll have to decide whether to dislike and disregard you based on your own merits.

Could swear I typed “Comment #87.”