Here come the Clampetts

By Mustang Bobby

Matt Taibbi sums up the bailout of Wall Street:

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

And now AIG, one of the companies we helped get through rehab – and is running a PR campaign to say "Thank you" – is thinking about suing the U.S. government because their stockholders didn't get a pony. 

Digby says that's chutzpah. Wrong; it's typical.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Top Ten Cloves: Possible new fees banks will start charging

By J. Thomas Duffy


News Item:  Banks likely to try range of new fees


10.  The Kardashian Charge - Get divorced after 72-days, fees, fees, fees ...


  9.  Don't have your own Deposit or Withdrawal Slips? ... Just rent one of the banks, for a fee


  8.  ATM's will have "Coin Slots" (like old public pay phones) if you want to use them


  7.  HuffPo Model:  You can work at the bank, not get paid salary - and get charged with a fee


  6.  Need to speak to the Bank Manager? ... You can book time with him, for a fee ...


  5.  Fee for just walking into the bank


  4.  Don't have a pen to write out deposit/withdrawal slip? ... Bank has one, for a fee ...


  3.  The Jeopardy Fee; You didn't phrase your transaction request in the form of a question


  2. Car loans, instead of based on amount/time/years/, will be based on cars' weight


  1.  Groucho Marx Fee - Don't know the Secret Word, it will cost you a $100 fee


 
(Image courtesy of Tom Priest at "In a Nutshell")


Bonus Riffs


Will Oremus: Fee-Market Capitalism - Bank of America learns it has to be more subtle about screwing its customers.


Lauri Apple: More Banks Scrap Debit Card Fee Idea


Even The S.E.C Thinks Goldman Sucks!

Cross posted on The Garlic: All The Cloves Fit To Peel

Wall Street bigwigs complain Obama not letting them rule America by oligarchic fiat

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If it weren't so goddamn annoying (and harmful), it'd be amusing listening to mega-rich bankers complain about President Obama.

As if he's done nothing to help them -- remember that bailout despised by both left and right?

But this is the sort of ridiculous thing you get from these ungrateful jackasses, raking in billions as they have their jackboots planted firmly on the necks of Americans, crushing them into debt-fueled submission. Here's the latest weeping, via Politico (which of course plays right along):

On the mental list of slights and outrages that just about every major figure on Wall Street is believed to keep on President Barack Obama, add this one: When he met recently with a group of CEOs at Blair House, there was no representative from any of the six biggest banks in America.

Not one!

"If they don't hate us anymore, why weren't any of us there?" a senior executive at one of the Big Six banks said recently in trying to explain his hostility toward the president.

"It's not so much just this one thing," he said. "Who cares about one event? It's just the pattern where they tell you things are going to change, that they appreciate what we do, that capital markets are important, but then the actions are different and they continue to want to score political points on us."

Still, the executive understands that it makes political sense for the White House to stiff-arm Wall Street, if not bash it with a massive sledge hammer.

After all, polls suggest most Americans believe Obama has handled the titans of Wall Street with an exceedingly light touch. He supported the deeply unpopular $700-billion bank bailout, pushed a financial reform package that stopped short of breaking up the biggest behemoths and, just this month, signed off on tax cuts for the wealthiest and continued low rates on capital gains and dividends.

And, of course, big-time bonuses at bailed-out banks are back, even as average Americans continue to get tossed out of their homes, corporate America has turned in its most profitable quarter in history and the stock market is at a two-year high.

First, are these bankers really that thin-skinned? Apparently so, and it's pretty pathetic. (Not one! Boo-fucking-hoo.)

Second, it's not just what the polls are saying, Obama has been soft on Wall Street, refusing to hold the big investment banks responsible for the havoc they wreaked on the economy -- and on the lives they destroyed.

Third, at this time of ongoing economic uncertainty (and, for many, crisis, if not disaster), the banks and those who run them are doing exceptionally well. These bankers complain when the president doesn't invite them to a meeting (like this is high school or something), but it's not like they have to worry about putting food on the table, paying the bills, and caring for their children.

Seriously, what the fuck? When has Obama ever said, or suggested, or implied, or hinted, that capital market aren't important? He hasn't even really played the anti-Wall Street populist card. Remember, it was the GOP, backed by the Tea Party, that went all populist this year, albeit from a right-wing, anti-tax, anti-government perspective. It was Republicans who went after the "elite," including positioning themselves against the bank bailout, while Democrats largely defended their record, which included the bank bailout. And yet it's Obama who has to take the brunt of Wall Street criticism?

Look, we all know what's going on here. Wall Street wants a one-way street. It wants government handouts to rescue it from the ocean of its own massive failure but doesn't want to give anything in return. It wants the president on his knees begging its forgiveness even as he's handing them billions of dollars and a presidential pardon. It wants not only to take no responsibility for its actions, not only to be left alone to make masses of cash in an unregulated market, but to be heralded as the repository of superhuman excellence. Socrates said there would never be justice unless philosophers ruled as kings. Wall Street doesn't really care about justice, but apparently it wants America to be ruled by banker-kings, or at least by politicians who do what bankers want, the puppets of the puppeteers of the world of high finance.

And, of course, Wall Street is fundamentally Republican. So it doesn't really matter what Obama does, he'll never get the bankers' vote of confidence and support. He could sign an executive order tripling the bonuses of Wall Street executives and they'd still slam him for not giving them enough.

Ungrateful? Ridiculous? That's a nice way to put it. It's all pretty despicable.

Debunking conservative lies and propaganda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mustang Bobby posted this -- from Dave Johnson at OurFuture.org -- at his place yesterday. It's a valuable reminder of the way things really are:

There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.

Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

This stuff really matters.

If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.

If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.

If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

Speak the truth. Make it prevail.