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It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary....dirty money..... Depends Upon His Not Understanding It
Upton Sinclair? H. L. Mencken? William Jennings Bryan? C. E. M. Joad? Christopher Matthews? Paul Krugman? Anonymous?
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
Dear Quote Investigator:
Financial incentives can compromise the critical faculties of an individual. Here are four versions of this insight:
1.Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
2.It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
3.It can be very hard to understand something, when misunderstanding it is essential to your paycheck.
4.It is rather pointless to argue with a man whose paycheck depends upon not knowing the right answer.
Not remotely a 'mind boggle'. Cut taxes, spend, keep the wars off the books and weaken financial regulation is the recipe that chef Bush cooked up.
Bush can share the blame for financial crisis
By MARK LANDLER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERGSEPT. 20, 2008
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/worldbusiness/20iht-prexy.4.16321064.html
But in Washington and on Wall Street, the debate has already begun. And while economists and other experts say there are plenty of culprits: Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Federal Reserve, an overzealous home-lending industry, banks, and also Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton - they do agree that the Bush administration bears part of the blame.
These experts, from both political parties, say Bush's early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate that, if it did not trigger the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it.
The president's first two Treasury secretaries, for instance, lacked the kind of Wall Street expertise that might have helped them raise red flags about the use of complex financial instruments at the heart of the crisis.
To his credit, Bush accurately foresaw the danger posed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and began calling as early as 2002 for greater regulation of the mortgage giants. But experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market, and much more to police Wall Street, which transmitted those problems around the world.
In retrospect, "it would have helped for the Bush administration to empower the folks at Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency and the FDIC to look at these issues more closely," said Vince Reinhardt, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization here. Reinhardt said it would also have helped "for Congress to have held hearings."
NOT a single boogeyman. Single has no room for qualifiers like primarily or mostly, the theory is an all or nothing proposition.
Read this again. The notion that the decisions over the 7 years leading up to the financial crisis were not mostly responsible for the crisis is...…...misguided.
The story of the 2008 financial crisis
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/22/5086/#67d745def92f
Summers was wrong. That doesn't change/invalidate any of the other causes listed in the two articles I posted.
Move to another cherry orchard, you've picked the one you've been working clean.
'LOL' didn't help your post to make a valid point.
That s The Way It Was And We Liked It
Really? It almost appears as though you are not reading, or perhaps not comprehending, the contents of my posts.
These are not my opinions, but the fact that they encompass a multiplicity of causes for the financial crisis suggests that they are sounder than opinions that are hidebound by ideological constraints, assumptions and predetermined conclusions which comprise 'The 'Single Boogeyman Theory'.
I think it's even more important to read for comprehension.
Ideological blinders tend to narrow focus.
F&F is mentioned in two of the three paragraphs you posted, and this....your words….."That's, in very simple terms, is what happened".....led to my response using the words 'simplistic' and "Because it overlooks...……..everything else."
The article I posted, as well as this one, mention both Clinton and Congress. I left them in because I don't expect everyone to be able to access the links and because it's the honest thing to do.
Emphasizing F&F and not mentioning a Bush Administration, surprise, surprise, hell bent on deregulation, is at the very least overlooking other actors and at worst, yes, oversimplification.
Bush can share the blame for financial crisis
By MARK LANDLER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERGSEPT. 20, 2008
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/worldbusiness/20iht-prexy.4.16321064.html
But in Washington and on Wall Street, the debate has already begun. And while economists and other experts say there are plenty of culprits: Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the Federal Reserve, an overzealous home-lending industry, banks, and also Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton - they do agree that the Bush administration bears part of the blame.
These experts, from both political parties, say Bush's early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate that, if it did not trigger the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it.
The president's first two Treasury secretaries, for instance, lacked the kind of Wall Street expertise that might have helped them raise red flags about the use of complex financial instruments at the heart of the crisis.
To his credit, Bush accurately foresaw the danger posed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and began calling as early as 2002 for greater regulation of the mortgage giants. But experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market, and much more to police Wall Street, which transmitted those problems around the world.
In retrospect, "it would have helped for the Bush administration to empower the folks at Treasury and the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency and the FDIC to look at these issues more closely," said Vince Reinhardt, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization here. Reinhardt said it would also have helped "for Congress to have held hearings."
Beyond its deregulatory bent, some economists argue that the administration's fiscal and tax policies made the United States more dependent on foreign capital, which fueled the bubble in housing prices.
"A different Treasury would have taken a different approach," said Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. "I don't think the economy has been well-managed, and that has certainly been crucial for the problems we're facing."
The White House and Congress wanted to make housing affordable to more Americans, and freeing up the lending markets was a way to do that. As Rogoff said, "It was a market-based way to help poor people. There was an incredible belief in free markets."
For all that faith, Bush's first two Treasury secretaries, Paul O'Neill and John Snow, came from top jobs in industry, not Wall Street. They were viewed in Washington as advocating the interests of business, and being less comfortable with the mysteries of the markets.
Every episode, thus far, confirms the validity of your observation.
Pic Of The Moment: So Let Me Get This Straight
2. Mueller Report in less than 280 characters
Mueller Report: 1) A hostile foreign power intervened aggressively to rig our 2016 elections to help Trump. 2) During the campaign, Trump welcomed & encouraged it. 3) As president, Trump obstructed justice, abused his power, slandered, fired & lied to block the investigations.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the apple. In the end it will be bad for him and the phony Democrats in Congress who have done nothing but waste time on this ridiculous Witch Hunt. Result of the Mueller Report, NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION!...
Grossly biased Donald Trump should put it to bed if it so exonerates him. Or allow it to be aired if it clears him, as he claims.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017547942
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019) Official Trailer | SHOWTIME Documentary Film
A Penguin, A Steeler and an alligator walk into a Pittsburgh bar.
Looking at the Penguin and the Steeler the bartender said "we don't serve alligators. That's ok, responded the Penguin and the Steeler, we don't eat them."
Yeah, I know, buries the needle. Still, I'll be here all week. Try the crab cakes.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-monday-july-22-2019/
4 alligators
A 2-foot-long alligator was found in the parking lot of a grocery store outside Pittsburgh on Friday, making for the fourth alligator sighting around the city since May. But this one was a friendly creature, said Paul McIntyre of Big Daddy Wildlife Removal, who took the gator from police.
“It was somebody’s pet, I can guarantee you,” McIntyre told the Tribune Review newspaper. “He’s so friendly. Somebody had him as a pet, couldn’t take care of him and let him go.” [The Associated Press]
The gulf between that comprehensive analysis of the costs and tradeoffs for a climate change response sufficient to the challenges, and Snowball Jim's clown act, is a virtual chasm.
His grandchildren will no doubt live to see an increase in frequency and severity of climate change 'events' such that
their foreheads will permanently reddened from their slaps to them.
Grandpa, WTF were you thinking the day you did that?!
Well kids, it was the beginning of the senior moments that have led to the even more blithering idiot before you now. Is it time for the early bird special yet?
Or, they want a weekend of respite from having to flinch from the fusillade of facts that we assail them with?
'Very substantial evidence' Trump is 'guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,' House Judiciary Chair
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/politics/mueller-investigation-nadler-says-evidence-trump-guilty-high-crimes-misdemeanors/index.html
Washington (CNN)House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Sunday said Robert Mueller's report presents "very substantial evidence" that President Donald Trump is "guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors" -- an impeachable offense.
"We have to ... let Mueller present those facts to the American people, and then see where we go from there, because the administration must be held accountable," Nadler, whose committee would lead impeachment proceedings, said on "Fox News Sunday."
Sounds like an opportunity for a 'Wag the Corgi'.
Don't sweat the cohab, we've got to get our boys back. And if it takes a bit of British shot and shell, well we're going to bloody well do it. We did it in the Falklands and we can do it in the Gulf.
This will be piped aboard British ships shortly, alternating with the Madonna version to, you know, get the Limey blood up.
Laying all or even most of the blame for the financial crisis on Fannie and Freddie is too simplistic. Because it overlooks...……..everything else.
Including, as I stated in my post, the almost religious fervor with which the GOP pursues financial deregulation whenever they hold the WH.
The story of the 2008 financial crisis
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/22/5086/#67d745def92f
The driving force behind the crisis was the private sector
Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that "Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."
Many actors obviously played a role in this story. Some of the actors were in the public sector and some of them were in the private sector.
But the public sector agencies were acting at behest of the private sector. It’s not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, “Let’s abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!” Or the SEC spontaneously happened to have the bright idea of relaxing capital requirements on the investment banks.
Or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of its own accord abruptly had the idea of preempting state laws protecting borrowers. These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders. And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits.
Now which political Party do you suppose is most receptive to being 'strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders.'?
So let’s recap the basic facts: why did we have a financial crisis in 2008? Barry Ritholtz fills us in on the history with an excellent series of articles in the Washington Post:
•In 1998, banks got the green light to gamble: The Glass-Steagall legislation, which separated regular banks and investment banks was repealed in 1998. This allowed banks, whose deposits were guaranteed by the FDIC, i.e. the government, to engage in highly risky business.
•Low interest rates fueled an apparent boom: Following the dot-com bust in 2000, the Federal Reserve dropped rates to 1 percent and kept them there for an extended period. This caused a spiral in anything priced in dollars (i.e., oil, gold) or credit (i.e., housing) or liquidity driven (i.e., stocks).
•Asset managers sought new ways to make money: Low rates meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields from municipal bonds or Treasurys. Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities.
•The credit rating agencies gave their blessing: The credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.
•Fund managers didn’t do their homework: Fund managers relied on the ratings of the credit rating agencies and failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them and did not understand these instruments or the risk involved.
•Derivatives were unregulated: Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.
•The SEC loosened capital requirements: In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission changed the leverage rules for just five Wall Street banks. This exemption replaced the 1977 net capitalization rule’s 12-to-1 leverage limit. This allowed unlimited leverage for Goldman Sachs [GS], Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America [BAC]), Lehman Brothers (now defunct) and Bear Stearns (now part of JPMorganChase--[JPM]).
These banks ramped leverage to 20-, 30-, even 40-to-1. Extreme leverage left little room for error. By 2008, only two of the five banks had survived, and those two did so with the help of the bailout.
•The federal government overrode anti-predatory state laws. In 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency federally preempted state laws regulating mortgage credit and national banks, including anti-predatory lending laws on their books (along with lower defaults and foreclosure rates). Following this change, national lenders sold increasingly risky loan products in those states. Shortly after, their default and foreclosure rates increased markedly.
•Compensation schemes encouraged gambling: Wall Street’s compensation system was—and still is—based on short-term performance, all upside and no downside. This creates incentives to take excessive risks. The bonuses are extraordinarily large and they continue--$135 billion in 2010 for the 25 largest institutions and that is after the meltdown.
•Wall Street became “creative”: The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages. The highest yielding were subprime mortgages. This market was dominated by non-bank originators exempt from most regulations.
•Private sector lenders fed the demand: These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to relax underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending metrics such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.
•Financial gadgets milked the market: “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. These include 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, piggy-bank mortgages (simultaneous underlying mortgage and home-equity lines) and the notorious negative amortization loans (borrower’s indebtedness goes up each month). These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers to traditional 30-year fixed mortgages.
•Commercial banks jumped in: To keep up with these newfangled originators, traditional banks jumped into the game. Employees were compensated on the basis loan volume, not quality.
•Derivatives exploded uncontrollably: CDOs provided the first “infinite market”; at height of crash, derivatives accounted for 3 times global economy.
•The boom and bust went global. Proponents of the Big Lie ignore the worldwide nature of the housing boom and bust. A McKinsey Global Institute report noted “from 2000 through 2007, a remarkable run-up in global home prices occurred.”
•Fannie and Freddie jumped in the game late to protect their profits: Nonbank mortgage underwriting exploded from 2001 to 2007, along with the private label securitization market, which eclipsed Fannie and Freddie during the boom. The vast majority of subprime mortgages — the loans at the heart of the global crisis — were underwritten by unregulated private firms.
These were lenders who sold the bulk of their mortgages to Wall Street, not to Fannie or Freddie. Indeed, these firms had no deposits, so they were not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp or the Office of Thrift Supervision.
•Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac market share declined. The relative market share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped from a high of 57 percent of all new mortgage originations in 2003, down to 37 percent as the bubble was developing in 2005-06. More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions. The government-sponsored enterprises were concerned with the loss of market share to these private lenders
— Fannie and Freddie were chasing profits, not trying to meet low-income lending goals.
•It was primarily private lenders who relaxed standards: Private lenders not subject to congressional regulations collapsed lending standards. the GSEs. Conforming mortgages had rules that were less profitable than the newfangled loans.
Private securitizers — competitors of Fannie and Freddie — grew from 10 percent of the market in 2002 to nearly 40 percent in 2006. As a percentage of all mortgage-backed securities, private securitization grew from 23 percent in 2003 to 56 percent in 2006.
Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that "Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."
Fox News host shuts down Stephen Miller's defense of Trump's hypocrisy and racism
Baby steps, but progress!!
Chrishttps://www.democraticunderground.com/100212300546
Wallace did not let Stephen Miller gaslight his viewers.
Josh Israel
Jul 21, 2019, 10:30 am
Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser said to be the architect of the administration’s cruel anti-immigrant policies, went on Fox News Sunday to defend President Donald Trump’s latest round of racist and hypocritical attacks on congresswomen of color. The interview went rather poorly for him.
Host Chris Wallace began the interview by asking Miller about Trump’s recent tweets attacking Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and demanding that they go back to their home countries (Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a child, the other three are natural-born citizens). Miller responded that the president isn’t a racist because the jobless rate has been falling for racial minorities.
“I think the term ‘racist,’ Chris, has become a label that is too often deployed by left/Democrats in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear,” Miller began, asserting that Trump “has been a president for all Americans” because of “historically low black unemployment rates, historically low Hispanic unemployment rates,” and his crackdown on immigration “to protect safety, security, rising wages for all American citizens.”
Wallace responded that Trump’s claims that Mexican immigrants are mostly rapists and drug dealers and his proposed total ban on Muslims were “not protecting the American people” but “playing the race card.”
After Miller tried to change the subject to criminal gang members, Wallace shut him down, reminding him that Trump had pushed racist “birther” attacks on Barack Obama. Miller likened those efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the former president to questions that were once raised about John McCain. Wallace quickly fact-checked him, noting that concerns surrounding the late Arizona senator were not racial, but based on the 2008 nominee’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone.
Miller then argued that questioning people’s Americanism is okay as long as you don’t intend it to be racist.
Wallace also fact-checked Miller when he attempted to claim Trump had been “clear” that he disagreed with his supporters’ racist chant — repeating his own attacks on Omar and demanding she be sent back to Somalia.
“No, he was clear after the fact,” he responded. “He let it go on for 13 seconds and [it] was only when it diminished that he started talking again.” Wallace noted that Trump “said nothing there or in his tweet after that rally that indicated any concern about the chant.”
more...
https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-host-decimates-trump-aide-stephen-miller-racism-hypocricy-8a8b7b4b5db3/
They could have gone with either song for The Martian, but IMO this was the better choice.
Books by Mike Royko
Virtually any of the ones that are compendiums of his columns are worth the read. The writing is incomparable and the insight and opinions hold up very well over the decades.
Mike Royko
Average rating 4.23 ·3,240 ratings ·356 reviews ·shelved 6,141 times
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/31199.Mike_Royko
Buzz Aldrin to return to Moon to find missing space canteen
Published July 21, 2019
By blondesoverbaghdad ?
TRANQUILITY BASE—Fifty years after the first moon landing, astronaut and former Air Force pilot Buzz Aldrin has demanded that he be allowed to retrace his steps and look for his missing space canteen.
“I’ve been getting my Medicare checks docked for years,” said Aldrin, nibbling on mint chocolate dehydrated ice cream in preparation for his upcoming trip. “NASA *CIF is bullshit. How can a space canteen cost $800,000?”
*(Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) is an expense paid by a seller to cover the costs, insurance, and freight against the possibility of loss or damage to a buyer's order while it is in transit to an export port named in the sales contract. …)
Sources report that Aldrin, who has a doctorate from MIT, failed in his attempt to wrap a canteen bought at the Army Navy surplus store in tin foil and get a bitter, bearded Vietnam vet in a trucker cap at space CIF to accept it.
“And it’s not like they ever properly paid my travel voucher,” he continued. “238,900 miles times 53 cents a mile ads up to fuck you, NASA CIF.”
“Those bastards tried to pin me with losing a flag as well,” said Aldrin. “Luckily, that was on Neil [Armstrong]’s hand receipt. Not to start rumors here, but I’m not completely sure that he’s dead.”
“I think he might be going back for that damn flag. It’s not lost—he knows exactly where it is,” Aldrin said. “The moon. The fucking moon.”
NASA CIF also charged Armstrong and Aldrin for damages made to their space suits, judged to be more than a million dollars.
“I didn’t write my name on my space suit. Someone else did that.” Said Aldrin. “There were only two guys on the moon. We didn’t need name tags!”
Aldrin since has been taking speaking engagements, selling children’s books, and cold-cocking fake reporters to pay off his debts.
When asked for comment, NASA referred this reporter to a GS-12 stuck paying off the Opportunity Rover, which was left on Mars.
https://www.duffelblog.com/2019/07/buzz-aldrin-to-return-to-moon-to-find-missing-space-canteen/?utm_source=Normal+Subscribers&utm_campaign=1ae62acfa3-Duffel_Blog_Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6d392bc034-1ae62acfa3-23791221&goal=0_6d392bc034-1ae62acfa3-23791221&mc_cid=1ae62acfa3&mc_eid=cc8af7284a
Not so fast GS&M girl. Plenty of blame to go around, so take off the ideological blinders that led to your confirmation bias.
As you read the word 'deregulation', repeatedly, keep in mind which Party drives that and the time frame leading up to the crash.....the Dubya years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/22/5086/#1510f3a9f92f
|Nov 22, 2011, 11:28am
Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis
Steve Denning Senior Contributor
The driving force behind the crisis was the private sector
Looking at these events it is absurd to suggest, as Bloomberg did, that "Congress forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."
Many actors obviously played a role in this story. Some of the actors were in the public sector and some of them were in the private sector.
But the public sector agencies were acting at behest of the private sector. It’s not as though Congress woke up one morning and thought to itself, “Let’s abolish the Glass-Steagall Act!” Or the SEC spontaneously happened to have the bright idea of relaxing capital requirements on the investment banks.
Or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of its own accord abruptly had the idea of preempting state laws protecting borrowers. These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders. And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits.
Now which political Party do you suppose is most receptive to being 'strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders.'?
GS&M!
Why didn’t anyone say anything?
As one surveys the events in this sorry tale, it is tempting to consider it like a Shakespearean tragedy, and wonder: what if things had happened differently? What would have occurred if someone in the central bank or the supervisory agencies had blown the whistle on the emerging disaster?
The answer is clear: nothing. Nothing would have been different. This is not a speculation. We know it because an interesting new book describes what did happen to the people who did speak out and try to blow the whistle on what was going on. They were ignored or sidelined in the rush for the money.
The book is Masters of Nothing: How the Crash Will Happen Again Unless We Understand Human Nature by Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi (published in 2011 in the UK by Biteback Publishing and available on pre-order in the US).
In 2004, the book explains, the deputy governor of the Bank of England (the UK central bank), Sir Andrew Large, gave a powerful and eloquent warning about the coming crash at the London School of Economics. The speech was published on the bank’s website but it received no notice. There were no seminars called.
No research was commissioned. No newspaper referred to the speech. Sir Andrew continued to make similar speeches and argue for another two years that the system was unsustainable. His speeches infuriated the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, because they warned of the dangers of excessive borrowing. In January 2006, Sir Andrew gave up: he quietly retired before his term was up.
In 2005, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, made a speech at Jackson Hole Wyoming in front of the world’s most important bankers and financiers, including Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers.
He argued that technical change, institutional moves and deregulation had made the financial system unstable. Incentives to make short-term profits were encouraging the taking of risks, which if they materialized would have catastrophic consequences. The speech did not go down well. Among the first to speak was Larry Summers who said the speech was “largely misguided”.
In 2006, Nouriel Roubini issued a similar warning at an IMF gathering of financiers in New York. The audience reaction? Dismissive. Roubini was “non-rigorous” in his arguments. The central bankers “knew what they were doing.”
The drive for short-term profit crushed all opposition in its path, until the inevitable meltdown in 2008.
Why didn’t anyone listen?
On his blog, Barry Ritholtz puts the truth-deniers into three groups:
1) Those suffering from Cognitive Dissonance — the intellectual crisis that occurs when a failed belief system or philosophy is confronted with proof of its implausibility.
2) The Innumerates, the people who truly disrespect a legitimate process of looking at the data and making intelligent assessments. They are mathematical illiterates who embarrassingly revel in their own ignorance.
3) The Political Manipulators, who cynically know what they peddle is nonsense, but nonetheless push the stuff because it is effective. These folks are more committed to their ideology and bonuses than the good of the nation.
He is too polite to mention:
4) The Paid Hacks, who are being paid to hold a certain view. As Upton Sinclair has noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Barry Ritholtz concludes: “The denying of reality has been an issue, from Galileo to Columbus to modern times. Reality always triumphs eventually, but there are very real costs to it occurring later versus sooner .”
The social utility of the financial sector
Behind all this is the reality that the massive expansion of the financial sector is not contributing to growing the real economic pie. As Gerald Epstein, an economist at the University of Massachusetts has said: “These types of things don’t add to the pie. They redistribute it—often from taxpayers to banks and other financial institutions.”
Yet in the expansion of the GDP, the expansion of the financial sector counts as increase in output. As Tom Friedman writes in the New York Times:
Wall Street, which was originally designed to finance “creative destruction” (the creation of new industries and products to replace old ones), fell into the habit in the last decade of financing too much “destructive creation” (inventing leveraged financial products with no more societal value than betting on whether Lindy’s sold more cheesecake than strudel). When those products blew up, they almost took the whole economy with them.
Do we want another financial crisis?
The current period of artificially low interest rates mirrors eerily the period ten years ago when Alan Greenspan held down interest rates at very low levels for an extended period of time.
It was this that set off the creative juices of the financial sector to find “creative” new ways of getting higher returns. Why should we not expect the financial sector to be dreaming up the successor to sub-prime mortgages and credit-default swaps?
What is to stop them? The regulations of the Dodd-Frank are still being written. Efforts to undermine the Volcker Rule are well advanced. Even its original author, Paul Volcker, says it has become unworkable. And now front men like Bloomberg are busily rewriting history to enable the bonuses to continue.
The question is very simple. Do we want to deny reality and go down the same path as we went down in 2008, pursuing short-term profits until we encounter yet another, even-worse financial disaster? Or are we prepared to face up to reality and undergo the phase change involved in refocusing the private sector in general, and the financial sector in particular, on providing genuine value to the economy ahead of short-term profit?
The G.O.P. Is Now a Personality Cult
The party no longer stands for much of anything.
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
July 20, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/opinion/sunday/republicans-united-states.html
The tragedy of today’s Republican Party lies partly in how far it has tumbled from its heights.
This is the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. It is the party that built interstate highways, championed family planning, founded the Environmental Protection Agency, opened relations with China, confronted the Soviet Union and managed the collapse of Communism.
It is the party that under Ronald Reagan welcomed refugees. It is the party of men who exemplified decency like George H.W. Bush and adherence to a moral compass like John McCain.
At a rally in 2008, McCain corrected a questioner who called Barack Obama untrustworthy and an “Arab.” “No, ma’am,” McCain told the crowd. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Today that Grand Old Party has devolved into a personality cult surrounding a racist demagogue who incites a mob to chant about a Somali-American member of Congress: “Send her back!
Elected Republican officials — with a very few brave exceptions, like Representative Will Hurd of Texas — protest the label “racist,” but not the racism. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even says that President Trump is “on to something.”
Yes, Trump is on to something: He has seized on the ugly nativist streak that runs through the anti-Catholic riots of 1844, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942. Most men grow after becoming president; Trump has not only shrunk but has also miniaturized party elders with him.
The collapse of the Republican Party is not just about this month’s fecklessness, however, and as The Economist noted in a recent cover article, this is a “global crisis in conservatism”: From Australia to Britain, Italy to Brazil, “the new right is not an evolution of conservatism, but a repudiation of it.”
Conservatism historically embraced institutions, honored personal morality and disdained personality cults; now it has latched on to charismatic, dissolute nuts who overthrow institutions, like Boris Johnson of Britain, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and our own Donald Trump.
A recent analysis in The Times by Sahil Chinoy found that the Republican Party is far to the right of mainstream conservative parties in Britain, Canada and Germany, and to the right even of groups like the National Rally (formerly the National Front) of France. On the international spectrum, the G.O.P. is not a center-right party but an extremist force.
Think of how the Republican Party used to define itself: pro-family, tough on fiscal policy and strong on national security.
On family policy, Republicans tore children from immigrant parents at the border and are now trying to rip apart health insurance for 21 million Americans.
If the Republicans’ lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act wins, 133 million Americans will also lose protection for pre-existing conditions.
The Republicans sued to end the health insurance law because of a revulsion for Obama, and they are incoherent about the consequences.
When a judge asked the Justice Department lawyer, August E. Flentje, if a stay should be lifted so that Obamacare would be dismantled immediately, he sounded horrified, saying, “We think it’s great the stay is in place.”
On fiscal policy, Republicans disgraced themselves in 2009 during the Great Recession when not a single G.O.P. member of the House of Representatives backed a desperately needed fiscal stimulus. To spite Obama, Republicans were willing to let Americans lose jobs, homes and savings, supposedly because of their concerns about deficits.
Then under Trump, those same Republicans approved a tax break that was far costlier, with the benefits disproportionately going to corporations and zillionaires. This year the administration expects the budget deficit to surge to $1 trillion (which means we are terribly positioned for a recession), but those fiscal hawks are silent. They proved themselves unprincipled opportunists.
On national security, Republican firmness toward Russia disintegrated the moment it was needed, when Russia interfered in the 2016 elections. The Obama administration shared intelligence about Russian interference with 12 congressional leaders in September 2016, seeking a bipartisan warning (including those running elections around the country) about Russia’s actions. Republicans led by McConnell blocked any serious response, thus enabling Russia’s assault on American democracy.
Meanwhile, we have a president who vigorously defends Russian President Vladimir Putin and jokes with him about getting “rid” of journalists. In polls, Republicans are more than twice as likely to approve of Putin (25 percent) as of Nancy Pelosi (9 percent).
Folks, we need a center-right political party in this country. Yet today’s Republican Party isn’t the steadying force of the past but is rather a blood-and-soil movement that stands for nothing larger than one bombastic hothead.
That’s why the 2020 election will matter so much. One of America’s great political parties has lost its compass and its concern for the issues that once defined it.
Only if it is walloped at the ballot box will it, perhaps, wake up and rebuild itself to become again the principled conservative party that America needs.
Rail-Splitter Versus Hate Spitter
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist
July 20, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/opinion/sunday/dowd-trump-racism-republicans.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
WASHINGTON — Sorry, Abe.
I can’t come down to your memorial on a sultry night for my usual midsummer outing of mindful meditation and astral projection.
The time is out of joint, as Hamlet said. And it is too discombobulating to spend precious hours with Honest Abe in the specious era of Dishonest Don.
How do you commune with a Republican president known for his spiritual stability in a constitutional crisis when a mere mile away sits a Republican president known for his amoral instability in a constitutional crisis?
How do you commune with the man who sacrificed his life to bring the races together when nearby dwells the man who is soiling his life — and ours — driving the races apart?
I love all the luminous white marble monuments and the landmarks in my hometown, the permanent Oz within our transient capital. I still shiver when I think that the 9/11 terrorists might have destroyed any one of them.
But my favorite has always been the Lincoln Memorial, because on its north chamber is engraved the brief, inexpressibly beautiful Second Inaugural Address — the most poetic expression of what the American soul should be.
Lincoln tried to knit his unraveled country, knowing his side was right, yet accepting those on the other side as God’s children: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other,” Lincoln said. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”
It is a travesty that Donald Trump, 154 years after Lincoln tried to bind the wounds of the nation on race to keep the dream of America viable, is pouring salt into those wounds to keep himself viable.
Lincoln tried to wrestle down a clash of civilizations. Trump is ginning one up to get re-elected.
He doesn’t worry about inciting violence against those he slimes. When I asked him about that in 2016, he said that he thought the rabid mood and physical altercations at his rallies added an air of excitement, and that his political journey into the heart of darkness is what got him to No. 1, so why wouldn’t he continue on it?
The president who hates flies is like flypaper. No matter how you come at him, buzzing past his outrages and lies like the Republicans or landing hard on them like the Democrats, you get stuck.
Both parties end up caught and struggling in the sticky mess.
Nancy Pelosi was trying to keep the Democrats in the center-left lane, where their best chance of beating Trump lies. But with his vile “go back” rant against four American Democratic congresswomen, the president — at least for now — achieved his stated aim of “marrying” the speaker to the far-left squad.
Given some of the hyper-liberal ideas tossed out by the Democrats in the first round of debates, Pelosi will have to work harder than ever to keep her party’s image where it needs to be with the real base, as opposed to the Twitter base.
The Republicans typically prefer a more subtle racism to rev up the base. In the past, they have handed the racist ploys off to hidden allies, then denied knowledge of Willie Hortonesque efforts to rouse hate. It’s ugly and disorienting — even to many Republicans — to see the toads jumping directly from the mouth of a president.
But as the boorish Trump has told reporters, “I don’t really care about offending people.”
He doesn’t rely on division only for elections, like his predecessors; he uses it to govern. And while that is a tad embarrassing for Republicans, they know from half a century of experience that it works to stir up racial animus and label foes wild-eyed socialists and commies.
Mitch McConnell admitted this on Thursday when he told Fox Business that “the president is on to something” with his fragging, though he denied Trump was a racist.
While it is awful to contemplate, this trade-off of our national ideals for strong stock returns and more millions for billionaires could be working.
As The Times’s Nate Cohn wrote on Friday, Trump’s Electoral College edge could grow in 2020 because “a strategy rooted in racial polarization could at once energize parts of the president’s base and rebuild support among wavering white working-class voters.”
After pretending fleetingly that he had been unhappy that some in the crowd at his North Carolina rally chanted “Send her back” about Representative Ilhan Omar, the president returned to his natural habitat of hate.
On Friday, he resumed attacking the squad as “terrible” and a “disgrace,” praising himself because he said he could have filled the North Carolina stadium 10 times and calling the rallygoers “incredible patriots.”
As with Charlottesville, he will never disavow his people. He loves even the hardest of his hard-core base because they boost his crowd size, his electoral count and his ego.
We’re all stuck on the flypaper. Democrats need to up their game to avoid the traps Trump is constantly setting for them.
Abraham Lincoln led us through a tragedy. Donald Trump is one. With malice toward all; with charity for none.
He and his mom preserved a 1969 moon landing newspaper. 50 years later, he unwrapped it for the first time
By Heidi Stevens
| Chicago Tribune |
Jul 20, 2019 | 5:00 AM
He and his mom preserved a 1969 moon landing newspaper. 50 years later, he unwrapped it for the first time.
Glen Williams, 65, opened his preserved original of the July 21,1969, historic moon landing edition of the Chicago Daily News at the Chicago Tribune on July 19, 2019. Williams was 15 years old when he and his mother, Edna Williams, followed the preservation instructions on the newspaper's edition and stored it away. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
Fifty years ago, Glen Williams, along with an estimated 600 million other people around the globe, watched, transfixed, as a television screen showed Apollo 11 touching down on the moon.
Williams was 15 at the time, living in south suburban Riverdale. He was crazy about astronomy, and the moon landing, which he watched with his mom, dad and two sisters, was an enormous, life-changing event.
“I remember there was a lot of apprehension,” Williams said. “I remember thinking, ‘OK, they have to take off again from the moon. What if that goes wrong? What if they’re stuck there?’ That would have been terrible.”
There was tremendous excitement too. A sense of unity embraced the nation. Tens of thousands of people gathered in New York’s Central Park to watch gigantic television screens. Cheers erupted in living rooms and bars and airports and parks across the country when Neil Armstrong took his first, powdery steps.
The day of the landing, July 20, 1969, the Chicago Daily News included a note to readers regarding the following day’s newspaper. It would be a historic edition, editors noted, filled with coverage of the landing: How it went. Who watched. How they reacted. What it all meant.
The note offered instructions on how to preserve that history-recording newspaper as a keepsake, should readers be so inclined.
Edna Williams, mother of Glen Williams, was so inclined.
“She was doing it more for me,” said Williams, now 65 and a professor of physics and astronomy at Central Michigan University.
Together, mother and son gathered the Sunday evening paper (the Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily) and followed the prompts.
“We got a cotton sheet and rolled it up in that,” Williams said. “Then we wrapped it in aluminum foil and put a layer of plastic over that.”
They covered the whole thing in thick, clear packing tape and labeled it: “MOON LANDING JULY 21, 1969.”
The newspaper sat in a dresser drawer at Edna Williams’ Riverdale home until 1978, when she retired and moved to Arkansas. She brought the newspaper with her. She passed away four years ago, and Glen Williams has held onto the paper in his central Michigan home ever since.
As the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approached, he thought about opening it.
“I told Karen, it just seemed like if it was just the two of us opening it at home it would be anticlimactic,” he said. (Karen is his wife.) “After 50 years, we wanted to share it with somebody else.”
They emailed a Tribune editor and offered to drive to Chicago and open it inside the newsroom. The Daily News ceased production in 1978, so the Tribune newsroom would have to do. (Besides, Williams wasn’t altogether sure which newspaper he and his mom wrapped up for safe keeping. He just knew that it came to the house each day.)
The Williams’ grown sons, 29 and 31, live near O’Hare. They’d make a two-day visit out of it.
On Friday, we gathered in a conference room for the big reveal. I brought my son, who wanted to read how the Cubs were doing on July 21, 1969. A photographer and videographer captured the unwrapping.
“My best hope is it will look like a brand-new paper,” Williams said, as he unfurled the plastic, then foil, then cotton sheet.
The newsprint had browned a bit, but it remained in excellent condition. The ink still came off on our fingers as we paged through the stories and photos and ads and opinion pieces.
The Sunday paper cost 10 cents. Smoked ham was on sale for 45 cents a pound, and a frozen pizza went for $1.49. Cartons of ice cream were five for $1. A color television from Marshall Field’s would set you back $900.
Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress, had just endorsed John Lindsay’s re-election bid for mayor of New York City. Sen. Ted Kennedy was facing questions about the death of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger in Kennedy’s car who died when Kennedy drove off a one-lane bridge.
The Cubs just beat the Phillies in a double-header, 1-0 and 6-1.
On the op-ed page, Sydney J. Harris wrote a piece headlined, “The ‘love it or leave it’ nonsense.”
“One of the most ignorant and hateful statements that a person can make to another is, ‘If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?’” Harris wrote. “Most people who want to change conditions do like it here: they love it here. They love it so much they cannot stand to see it suffer from its imperfections, and want it to live up to its ideals. It is the people who placidly accept the corruptions and perversions and inequities in our society who do not love America.”
Still haven’t resolved that one, have we.
Mostly, though, that Sunday paper was filled with the moon. The entire front and back page were taken up by the moon landing. The front-page story was datelined, “Tranquility Base, THE MOON.”
Inside, stories captured the mood around the country and the world as observers grappled with one of humankind’s greatest feats. A photo of Pope Paul VI witnessing the landing filled one page. There was a photo of soldiers in Vietnam huddled around a radio. “Faces painted with grease, U.S. Rangers listen to an Apollo 11 radio broadcast,” read the caption.
Mike Royko penned a lovely column, “Other walks need walking.”
“I’d like to see a black man walk through the Back of the Yards, Gage Park or Cicero without being forced to flee for his life,” Royko wrote.
“Come the first day of school in September, I’d like to see all the kids in all the big cities walk into their classrooms to a decent education.”
He continued:
“When gravely sick poor people walk into a hospital, let them get the same treatment and kindness that is afforded to rich people who are there to get a nose job or just take a rest.”
“The diplomats,” he wrote, “should walk into the peace talks like they are dealing with flesh and blood, not dealing a crooked card game.”
He concluded:
“When people start taking some of these walks, history will do more than stagger; it will do a dance of joy.”
I asked Williams if he talks to his students about the moon landing.
“We talk about things that have been discovered about the moon from a lot of the rocks that were brought back by Apollo,” he said. “They’ve given us a lot of insight into the history of the moon.”
It’s lovely to think about that long-ago exercise between a mother and a son, carrying into today, 50 years later. The mother no longer with us, the son sharing his love of astronomy with college kids. (And a journalist. And her son.
I’m so grateful to Williams for his history lesson — about the moon, and about humankind.
If that sign is that he is an amoral, ends justifies the means, ideologue, yep, he's 95% of the way there.
Fortunately he's a fatalist who shared his intimations about mortality. I hope that he's more of a Cassandra RE himself than a Homer.
In any case nobody will mistake him for a hero, Homeric or otherwise.
And don't you hate people who say 'you know' because they can't express themselves with clarity? No Bill, I don't fucking know.
https://splinternews.com/goth-william-barr-reminds-us-were-all-gonna-die-1835146155
“I am at the end of my career,” Barr said. “Everyone dies, and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that you know, immortality comes by, you know, having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?”
Damn, Bill. Way to bring down the mood.
Still, for the time being Barr—and the rest of us—are happily(ish) alive, and, according to the attorney general, everything is going great.
“I think one of the ironies today is that people are saying that it’s President Trump that’s shredding our institutions,” Barr told CBS. “I really see no evidence of that.”
Reminds me of another phrase that could be melded into a new phrase.....the banality of complicity in evil.
The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt on the Normalization of Human Wickedness and Our Only Effective Antidote to It
Thanks for a post that brought Arendt's phrase to mind and which led me to this....
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/07/hannah-arendt-the-banality-of-evil/
“Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not… No more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”
is through this lens of bureaucracy (which she calls “the rule of Nobody”) as a weapon of totalitarianism that Arendt arrives at her notion of “the banality of evil” — a banality reflected in Eichmann himself, who embodied “the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them.”
In a passage that applies to Donald Trump with astonishing accuracy — except the part about lying, of course; that aspect Arendt addressed with equal prescience elsewhere — she describes Eichmann:
What he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else.
And that's why her book is one of several reasons it is the very definition of a 'classic'.
No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.
The Nazis, Arendt argues, furnished this deliberate disconnect from reality with what she calls “holes of oblivion.” (Today, we call them “alternative facts.”) In a searing testament to the power of speaking up, she considers what the story of the Holocaust — a story irrepressibly told by its survivors — has taught us:
The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.
[…]
The lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody’s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere.
Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.
Gee, who does this sound like? Complicator General Bullfrog Barr would be in the dock as well.
For sure they would be rooting for the defendants and the 'we knew nothing' populace, oblivious to the 'make Germany great again' subtext that placed those men in the dock.
This climactic scene from "Judgment at Nuremberg."
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017547842
Geez, Rand, there's gotta be a way somehow...
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212298406
...or how about all those golf trips that BLOTUS takes? Cut those in half and find the cash.
3. I actually got a letter from the dimwit today.
I do not live in Ky. He was ranting about abortion. The jerk who never said a word about those caged children and tied up funds for those sick and dying heros of 9/11!
And as of two days ago, which qualifies as 'breaking':
Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? Her hometown newspaper investigated and told us what they found
By Louis Jacobson on Thursday, July 18th, 2019 at 5:48 p.m.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/jul/18/did-ilhan-omar-marry-her-brother-her-hometown-news/
On July 18, PolitiFact interviewed Kevin Diaz, the Star-Tribune politics editor who oversaw the article co-bylined by reporters J. Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor.
Here is our conversation with Diaz, lightly edited for space and clarity.
What kind of reaction have you had since the most recent story came out?
We have been slammed by both sides. On the left, people are saying, "Why are you dignifying these unproven allegations?" To which I reply, "Look at the tax filings — it would be journalistic negligence if we didn’t try to find out what’s behind it."
On the right, the complaint has been that we did too little, too late: "This has been the story for years — where have you been?"
Since the article came out, no one has come forward with smoking-gun, decisive proof that would make it look like we missed something. You see circumstantial evidence that begs for some kind of explanation from a member of Congress, but there’s no smoking gun that she married her brother.
72-year old Buzz Aldrin approached by a moon landing denier. This is BEAUTIFUL!!
Now don't be too hard on Buzz 'to the moon Alice' Aldrin. He's VERY old school military and he was provoked, chased and provoked some more.
Lotta funny comments. Mine is Buzz 1 bible zip.
I always thought that these lyric probably landed a little harshly on the ears of any Navy man drinking in a bar near Annapolis….
And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy
And probably will be for life.
These lyrics had me talking back to that song in my car...
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth
No, shitkickers, my conscience doesn't bother me because Watergate DOES bother me.
And your governors suck too.
I guess there's practically no song that can't be appended to footage of the Vietnam War....