A magic carpet tour of ‘The New Responsibility’
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In the wake of Sept. 11, we were treated to various musings about how everything had suddenly changed, how a new sobriety had settled upon a culture that had let its value system get a bit out of whack. That new era of responsibility lasted about, oh, a month. And then, for those of us who weren’t sent off to Afghanistan and later to Iraq, it was back to the mall, back to the party, let’s refinance the house and go on that vacation.
In the wake of the economic crisis, you’re now hearing a lot of that kind of talk again. And this time the changes might even have some sticking power. There really is a sense that an era has ended and a new one is still emerging.
So let’s take a brief, whirlwind tour of of this emerging new mindset. The first stop is David Brooks’ column in today’s NYT, dissecting President Obama’s recent speech on the economy. According to Brooks, Obama is abandoning the usual liberal rhetoric about economic equality and fairness in favor of a new rhetoric of responsibility:
“America once had a responsible economic culture, Obama argued. People used to save their pennies to buy their dream houses. Banks used to lend by “traditional standards.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used to stick to their “traditional mandate.” Companies like A.I.G. used to limit themselves to the “traditional insurance business.”
But these traditions broke down, Obama continued. They were swamped by irresponsibility. Businesspeople chased “short-term profits” over long-term investments. Smart people spent more time manipulating numbers and symbols than actually making things. Americans consumed too much and saved too little. America became corrupted by “excessive debt,” “reckless speculation” and “fleeting profits.”
Obama vowed to end this irresponsibility and the cycle of boom and bust. It’s time to get back to basics, he said. He embraced tradition, order and authority. He quoted the New Testament and argued that it is time that the U.S. built its economic house on rock and not sand.
If Republicans aren’t nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values. If he pulls this mantle away from the Republicans, it would be the greatest train robbery in American politics.”
I disagree with Brooks slightly on that last point. Obama doesn’t have to pull that mantle from the Republicans; they abandoned it voluntarily a long time ago, long before President Bush told us that our patriotic duty after 9/11 was to go shopping.
Brooks also makes the valid point that Obama hasn’t forced that new responsibility on himself.
“Federal spending is the leverage the administration uses to gain control over sector after sector, and yet this money is all borrowed,” Brooks writes. “Obama imposes hard choices on others, but has postponed his own. He presented an agenda that bleeds red ink a trillion dollars at a time.”
I think that’s right, but I also think that’s what the current economic crisis demands. Vast government spending is the right thing to do under these conditions. The test of Obama’s strategy will come if and when we emerge from this crisis and the markets stabilize. Will he then make the difficult steps to bring spending under control? That’s the part we can’t know yet.
Now, thanks to the magic carpet that is the Internet, let’s move the discussion over to New York magazine, where Gabriel Sherman gives us an enlightening peek at Wall Street movers and shakers trying to come to grips with the notion that the gravy train may no longer be in business. They don’t like it, they don’t like it at all. In their world, they are smart and they work hard, and they deserve that $2 million a year they used to be getting.
Among other things, Sherman provides a nice encapsulation of the mentality that helped create this mess:
“Newly minted Ivy League graduates flocked to the city to position themselves close to the ever-expanding capital pie and collect the seven-figure crumbs. In return, they joined charity boards, donated to philanthropic causes, booked reservations at restaurants, bought art, kept the waiters and artists and chefs employed, and, yes, paid taxes that cleaned up the city. Consumption and benevolence merged into an enlightened, if garish, form of economic organization. The noblesse oblige was trickle-down.
As Washington denuded the regulations that had constrained finance, the banks themselves encouraged their employees to pursue maximum risk. Bonuses were paid based largely on short-term profits. “It was the culture of what some called IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,” says Jonathan Knee, a senior managing director at Evercore Partners. Wall Street championed the ethos of “Eat what you kill.” The most aggressive employees, those who took the greatest risks, thought of themselves less as members of a firm and more as independent contractors entitled to their share of the profits. In this system, institutions tended to be hostage to their best employees.”
And then there’s the new world:
“To Wall Street people who have grown up in the bubble, the meaning of the crisis is only slowly sinking in. They can’t yet grasp the idea of a life lived on less. “Without exception, Wall Street guys have gotten accustomed to not being stuck in the city in August. So it becomes a right to have a summer home within an hour or two commute from Manhattan,” says the Goldman vet. “There’s a cost structure of going with your family on summer vacation that’s not optional. There’s a cost structure of spending $40,000 to send your kids to private school that is not optional. There’s a sense of entitlement, that you need that amount of money just to live, that’s not optional.”
“You can’t live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000,” he continues. “And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He’s being disingenuous. He knows that you can’t live in New York on $75,000.”
That was an argument I heard over and over: that the high cost of living like a wealthy person in New York necessitates high salaries. It was loopy logic, but expressed sincerely. “You could make the argument that $250,000 is a fair amount to make,” says the laid-off JPMorgan vice-president. “Well, what about the $125,000 that staffers on Capitol Hill make? They’re making high salaries for where they live, maybe we should cut their salary, too.”
As Sherman points out, they just don’t get it, because they don’t want to get it.
“The public registers how fundamentally the system has changed; the bankers are far from getting to that point. “When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like Goldman, they would tell me, ‘If the government doesn’t bail us out, we’re going down.’ They really thought they were going to zero, and without exception, they all forget that now,” he says. “They forget that their company’s stock was going to zero. It’s a state of delusion; they don’t remember those days. The flip side of that is, every guy except the Goldman guy remembers that Goldman was bailed out.”
The sense of entitlement that developed on Wall Street still exists, in other words, and given the chance it will reassert itself. At one level, they have to know that the previous world was artificial and unsustainable, that in the end it had to be propped up with trillions of dollars from the federal government and Federal Reserve. They have to know it’s over.
But on another level, it was just so much fun. Life was so great. And by the ethos of that earlier dream time they had earned everything they had gotten and they just can’t let it go.
I think there’s a lot of that still around, and not just on Wall Street.
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152 comments Add your comment
I Report/ You Whine
April 21st, 2009
8:17 am
Ok, so if we have to be “responsible” from now on, what is Obozo trying to “stimulate?”
What’s interesting here is that no matter how much people complain about materialism and greed, when the economy gets in trouble, the first thing demand-siders want to do is stimulate demand. And in order to do this, they take resources from one group and increase government spending or turn right around and give that money to someone they think will spend it.-AmSpec
Try as you may, you brainwashed cannot have it both ways.
Bud Wiser
April 21st, 2009
8:29 am
I could not help but notice that in his current “blame game”, Obozo happily blamed virtually everyone in sight – except of course Democrats. Barney Frank has as much responsibility as anyone, yet no one goes after him, blames him (except O’Reilly, who Frank became incensed at and launched a personal, slobbering and spitting diatribe).
Redistribution of wealth has been a game card for the Dimwittocrats for decades, only now instead of shifting wealth from the haves to the have-nots, they are shifting it to the government. If you notice the disapproval of the Govt from banks converting stocks on the market to common, you see that Obozo is concerned that any potential repayment of loans will actually go to stock buyers (ie., the people) instead of the Govt. Obozo looks at it as “his” money to loan to keep these operations afloat, instead of “our” money, which it truly is, and he wants the lions share of any payback.
One-term is cementing his, and his party’s future – and you thought the Republicans were becoming irrelevant? People do not like having money that is theirs being used by Govt to make money for Govt; that’s not how it is supposed to work.
May as well change the title on the currency now to “United Soviet States of Amerika”.
I Report/ You Whine
April 21st, 2009
8:34 am
Greed and irresponsibility, blah, blah, blah-
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Will the brainwashed ever point fingers at………….. themselves?
Why is it always small potatoes us?
Joey
April 21st, 2009
8:39 am
I recommend this article to the AJC Management and Board. Can you apply any of this to the AJC operations?
I can not help but wonder if the AJC Management finally understands, as Julia Wallace claimed Sunday. Will they be able to live up to Wallace’s commitment? They have at least 3 failures under their belt.
My hope is eternal. Or to failure.
I Report/ You Whine
April 21st, 2009
8:40 am
Worse, wholesale equity conversion would mean the government owns a larger share of more banks and is more entangled than ever in their operations. Giving Barney Frank more voting power is more likely to induce panic than restore confidence. Simply look at the reluctance of some banks — notably J.P. Morgan Chase — to participate in Mr. Geithner’s private-public toxic asset sale plan. The plan is rigged so taxpayers assume nearly all the downside risk, but the banks still don’t want to play lest Congress they become even more subject to political whim.-Wall Street Journal
Hence, the stock market plummets.
Can you blame them, how would you like to have your hard earned money being controlled by emotional wreckage like bookman and his merry band of know it all brainwashed libs, deciding what is best for all of us without risking squat?
eewwwwwww
Shawny
April 21st, 2009
8:40 am
You can’t have it both ways. You just can’t. Everything quoted from Obama in the first section above, I agree with. Personal responsibility has been abandoned and needs to return. Spending beyond our means has come to bite us and needs to stop. However, massive spending by the fed govt, the most inefficient use of cash possible isn’t the answer.
Bookman says, “Vast government spending is the right thing to do under these conditions.” Nope. Sorry, have to disagree. There is no need to pile on the debt. Let badly managed companies fail. There will be well managed companies waiting to pick up the pieces. No need to saddle Americans with more debt then they could possible ever get out of.
RJ
April 21st, 2009
8:43 am
This reminds me of lyrics from the mid-1970s:
“We dress our days in silken robes/The money comes, the money
goes/We know its all a passing phase.”
Thank you so much for this entry, Jay.
jt
April 21st, 2009
8:46 am
Once you go Obama, there’s no going back.
Taxpayer
April 21st, 2009
8:52 am
Good morning, Jay. I enjoyed reading that. I think you took a good snapshot of where many on Wall Street are currently stuck. I liken it to a sort of purgatory for many of them, especially the ones that have managed to build their daily lives around a now non-existent cash flow. Some will pull through and manage to continue their life style — there are always the savvy ones that happen to do the “right thing at the right time” — and others will either adjust or perish. A few have even chosen suicide as their only logical career path.
As for the Obama administration’s moves to date to deal with this mess, I still believe that he has had this nation’s best interests in mind and has taken steps that, based on as thorough an analysis as was practical, are intended to insure our viability as a nation. We clearly cannot judge the success or failure of his actions until some time in the future but we can certainly hope that his moves were the appropriate ones given the situation. Finally, I too look forward to seeing what his steps will be once we emerge from this mess. Will he set the groundwork for a more sustainable economy, implement policies to help prevent future financial crises, etc. Let’s hope so, in spite of certain Republicans that would just as soon see him fail for their own petty and selfish “reasons”.
Davo
April 21st, 2009
8:54 am
It’s unfortunate that you didn’t bother to read the articles you pilfered Bookman. Somehow you interpret the cure to reckless spending as…reckless spending. I guess because Obama and the fraud Krugman say so then it must be true.
And this hope that “he then make the difficult steps to bring spending under control?”…idiot…he will be long out of office by then. Besides, theres still his ‘right to healthcare’ farce to push down our throats…the spending, and the collapse, have just begun.
Paul
April 21st, 2009
8:54 am
[[If Republicans aren’t nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values.]]
So Brooks says Pres Obama thinks like what Republicans, or that now extinct species of conservative Democrat, used to sound like. LOL!
He’s not arguing on class-consciousness? One more battle with his Congressional counterparts, coming up!
I wonder, can he do the morality thing without interjecting Christian values? Oops, guess not. He already has. Prepare for the firestorm of criticism…. not!
Obama’s positioning the Democrats as the party of responsibility and small-town values? Republicans aren’t gonna have anything to reinvent themselves as.
Seriously, Pres Obama’s been saying that for a long time. I’ve related before his remarks at the rally I attended when he was candidate and the quieting effect his points had on the crowd. I do think a number of Democratic constituencies have chosen to ignore or gloss over his remarks. But not any more. Remember, this is a man who graduated from a prestigious law school, would have been heavily recruited by big-buck firms, but put that aside to put his rhetoric into action. This is not a political ploy.
The rest of the article – one can say the reason the Wall Street salary and bonus structure was where it was was because the people, through our representatives, let it be that way through our tax and regulation code. People are concerned about gov’t telling Wall Street what to do? We’ve been doing that for decades – but this time the results are different.
[[I think there’s a lot of that still around, and not just on Wall Street.]]
This is one area where I hope Pelosi, Dodd, and Frank would want the Obama Administration to succeed. But I’ll wager they don’t. Which is why this is going to be so entertaining to watch. In fact, I’ll wager we’ll see more support from Congressional Republicans than from Congressional Democrats.
We’re gonna need new score cards to keep this straight.
Donovan
April 21st, 2009
8:56 am
Has anyone checked out how well Nancy Pelosi and family has done in California? It is sickening how she and hubby’s real estate dealings have blossomed with the help of her political stature. Just like Feinstein and Frank, no investigations have occured. Always remember…when thinking about Democrats, always think about hypocrisy.
Class of '98
April 21st, 2009
8:57 am
So I guess if Bobby Jindahl, John Boehner and Sarah Palin started espousing ideas about income redistribution, abortion on demand, open borders, and a weakening of the military it should make Democrats nervous?
I don’t follow the logic.
If, and that’s a big “if”, Obama really practices what he preaches about fiscal responsibility and leans more towards conservative values, isn’t the liberal who should feel threatened?
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:00 am
I defintely think things have changed.
Driving a luxury car seems to be less of a status symbol these days. Used to be, people would see someone driving a Rolls and think, “That guy has it made.” Now, people think, “That guy is an ass”.
Now, driving an economy car is a better status symbol.
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:01 am
To have the leader of our federal goverment preach about responsibility is laughable. I guess it would be “fairer” for the whole country to look like Detroit. Ya know, spread the misery around.
Red Foreman
April 21st, 2009
9:03 am
Tards…all Tards!
Bosch
April 21st, 2009
9:10 am
Bush was a liberal – BWA!!!
pat
April 21st, 2009
9:11 am
Responsibility?! Is he serious? Did he not just sign in to law, two bills that total 1.3 trillion dollars of incredibly reckless spending on wasteful needless government projects? Does he really think people don’t notice these things? Pot meet kettle. I love it when the Feds preach about greed and fiscal responsibility, because they are so good at it.
And who the hell is he to talk about morality? The man voted to let live children die, he is completely unfamiliar with the word morality…You can just change the meaning of it to suit you when ever you feel like it.
Hillbilly Deluxe
April 21st, 2009
9:15 am
The one thing you can be sure of is that humans never change. It took us about 60 or 70 years to forget the 20’s and 30’s. After all this works itself out, whenever that might be, in a few decades the country go through it all again. Most every generation thinks everything starts with them and ignores the past.
Our leaders have already forgotten the high inflation of the 70’s and in a very few years we’ll be back there again.
I’ve never lived anywhere but Georgia but my guess is there are millions of people living in the New York City area who get by on less than $75k per year.
Hillbilly Deluxe
April 21st, 2009
9:17 am
That should be “the country will go through it all again”.
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:17 am
Nothing will change because of our tax code. You will still be coerced into a Goverment Sachs like 401K. this time ran by bankers AND politicians. you balance will continue melting not unlike the snow on lookout mountain. Take a long look at the missing money and think of what REAL asset you could have bought.
Paul
April 21st, 2009
9:17 am
Donovan
I don’t think either party has a lock on it. Remember middle class Dennis Hastert went to Congress and a couple years later leaves as a millionaire? But there was nothing illegal….
Class of 98
How have Democrats spoken of weakening the military? The Obama Administration endorsed the Bush Administration’s recommendation on the F-22. Congressional Democrats are going to fight cuts in other programs. Pres Obama’s increasing the size of the Army and Marines – and remember, he kept Pres Bush’s Defense Secretary.
Personally, I think all these things (Congressional preservation of Defense programs, increasing the size of the force, etc) make us weaker, but that’s another discussion.
Hi Bosch!
Does that mean Obama’s a conservative?
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:18 am
” Did he not just sign in to law, two bills that total 1.3 trillion dollars of incredibly reckless spending on wasteful needless government projects?”
No, he didn’t. There is wasteful spending in the bill, however, it is not anywhere near wasteful in its entirety. The VAST majority of the bill is not wasteful spending.
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:20 am
A small bunglow near the beach is a better retirement than anything associated with FIAT currency easily manipulated by politicos.
Paul
April 21st, 2009
9:21 am
Hillbilly Deluxe
[[I’ve never lived anywhere but Georgia but my guess is there are millions of people living in the New York City area who get by on less than $75k per year.]]
There are – even in Manhattan. And one reason they can is there is government control over rents, the types of businesses that can locate in neighborhoods to protect other businesses such as mom and pop groceries, etc.
So we have people making less who can live there because of programs many conservatives rail against because they are not free market. Interesting, eh?
Bosch
April 21st, 2009
9:26 am
Paul,
Yes, he is!!! Double BWAA!!! Just kidding. My point was there is a really fine line between calling someone a liberal or a conservative (or Democrat, Republican) – they are all too intermeshed now. In other words, there’s really no such thing.
Copyleft
April 21st, 2009
9:28 am
It’s a good tactic: point out that get-rich-quick schemes and a “screw the poor” mentality are, fundamentally, un-American.
They always have been, of course, but it’s amazing how we’re still struggling with the legacy of the Reagan Yuppie generation.
Californication
April 21st, 2009
9:28 am
FairTax.org
Eddy
April 21st, 2009
9:31 am
Entitlement mentality on Wall Street….probably true! Of course no one will mention the entitlement mentality of the welfare hoards who perpetuate this mentality from generation to generation…..that would be racist, you ‘no.
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:34 am
Californication, since you are a supporter of the Fair Tax, perhaps you can help me answer a question. I was a supporter of a National Sales Tax long before someone termed it “Fair”. However, this question always dogs me.
How, under a national sales tax, could a Municipality raise the funds it needs for its special projects?
For example, when Atlanta needs a new runway at Hartsfield, it issues Municipal Bonds. These bonds are sold easily (most of the time) because of their tax free interest. If there was no Income Tax, then that special feature would be meaningless and Municipalities would then be forced to issue new debt at an interest rate that competes with Corporate debt. This would cost Municipalities more in interest charges. And what would happen to the price of existing Municipal Bonds if the tax free coupons were suddenly comparable to the coupons of corporate debt yet MUCh lower?
Thanks for your reply.
Taxpayer
April 21st, 2009
9:34 am
There are – even in Manhattan. And one reason they can is there is government control over rents, the types of businesses that can locate in neighborhoods to protect other businesses such as mom and pop groceries, etc.
I think they call those the servant’s quarters. It’s a by-product of a trickled-on, Republican approved, form of economy. On a side note, I think Laissez faire doesn’t mean what some people think it means, at least not when used by those that truly benefit from it. I think it got re-defined to mean something else. ewwww
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:34 am
By the time Obama is through, your 401k will probably in “goverment credits”.
Wes
April 21st, 2009
9:35 am
Jay,
Unfortunately a blog doesn’t lend itself to a really long winded hypothesis so let’s simplify. Let’s think that when the country was at full employment (5% unemployed), the savings rate was fairly close to zero. Now historically, people saved at around 8% and needed to save in order to pay for weird things like college, house down payments, and retirement. So if we were at full employment we would still need to get used to the fact that our GDP is going to drop a fair percentage.
The primary point that I’m trying to make is that the government can not get us back to our former levels of spending.
The best thing that they could try to do is offer work on long term projects that might pay off down the road: roads, electrical transmission lines, dams, and bridges.
Instead we get the standard pork barrel museums and subsidies. We get money for health care which is not notorious for its long lasting effects (sick people tend to have trouble working). We get to pay for more government buildings which are only useful if we need more government.
Do you really think either party is really interested in helping the United States or are they interested in helping the people who will vote for them?
Susan Myers
April 21st, 2009
9:35 am
It’s too bad some people still don’t get it – the Republican policies and their self-serving attitudes sent us down this path. We need to be thankful that we have a leader who does get it and knows what needs to be done.
Paul
April 21st, 2009
9:36 am
Bosch
Maybe it’s more of question of attitude, or of making actions congruent with rhetoric?
Either way, while Republicans are searching for new leadership, a new message and a new image to connect with America, it seems to me Pres Obama is doing the same for the Democratic Party.
And I’ll still offer the Old Guard are none too happy.
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:37 am
The days of McMansions and Hummers are over!
At least for a few years….
Hillbilly Deluxe
April 21st, 2009
9:38 am
Paul @ 9:21
Yes it’s interesting. I heard someone the other day say that there are two extremes. One extreme is everything is government controlled. The other extreme is everything is completely unregulated, which is anarachy. I think most people would be against either extreme. The hard part is figuring out where is the best place to be in between.
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:40 am
“Municipalities would then be forced to issue new debt at an interest rate that competes with Corporate debt”
Imagine that. If the project was truly needed and the people really wanted it, this would be no problem.
Barry
April 21st, 2009
9:40 am
End the FICA tax
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:43 am
“Imagine that. If the project was truly needed and the people really wanted it, this would be no problem.
”
I disagree. How many Muni bond buyers today buy the bonds because they feel the “project is really needed”?
As a person who has nearly their entire “fortune” invested in these securities, I can tell you that is rarely a consideration.
ByteMe
April 21st, 2009
9:43 am
For those of you railing against excessive spending during this little period people are calling “a recession”, let me provide a little reality check.
We are in what’s called a “credit crisis”. There have been many of these in history (the depression was one of those periods, but many other countries have had them as well). These periods have been studied, compared, sliced and diced to understand what worked and what didn’t. Turns out that what works looks exactly like this: massive liquidity being pumped into the system as quickly as possible and without hesitation. The average time to get past the crisis is about 39 months and the determining factor on the length appears to be the amount and speed of liquidity being pumped into the system. Only a government has the resources and the will to pump the necessary level of liquidity into the system during a credit crisis.
Sorry, I know this hurts to find out, but government spending in a recession is the right answer always, since that is the “spending of last resort” to keep the system going until corporations and consumers start spending again.
However, once the recession ends, the punch bowl needs to be taken away and the government needs to run a surplus in order to keep its own books in order.
So I ask: where were you in 2003-2006 when the Republicans in the Congress and White House were spending like there was no tomorrow? Did you meekly let them run deficits during good times? Were the “Bush Tax Cuts” just the holy grail, but you forgot to look to see that no one was paying for those cuts or cutting spending at all?
Just askin’.
sd
April 21st, 2009
9:47 am
“End the FICA tax”
I know a blind guy. He has no family and is under educated. He recieves $800 a month from your FICA taxes.
If we adopt your system, will you take him in to your house or should we just round up the people who drain our taxes and kill them? Just curious.
Paul
April 21st, 2009
9:49 am
Taxpayer
[[I think they call those the servant’s quarters. It’s a by-product of a trickled-on, Republican approved, form of economy.]]
Never been to Manhattan, eh? It’s heavily Democratic.
Susan Myers
[[It’s too bad some people still don’t get it - the Republican policies and their self-serving attitudes sent us down this path.]]
According to Pres Obama, this began ‘decades’ ago. Hmmm, let’s see…. what party was in power back then?
Hillbilly Deluxe
[[The hard part is figuring out where is the best place to be in between.]]
Don’t you wish the Congressional leadership of both parties would figure that out?
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:49 am
sd- Nothing would change. Just like what you are doing now (tax free)(I’m dissappointed) the municipal bonds would still be tax free. You would just pick the best rates of return. It would force even goverment bonds to be more competitive. I know that that is anathema to a good socialist but I believe we would all see benefits.
Brad Steal
April 21st, 2009
9:50 am
Obama’s economic staff is ex-Goldman, ex-Wall Street and a smattering of Ivy Leaguers who are also in collusion with the Wall Street crowd.
With this staff, how does Obama expect the world to see any credibility in this “new age” rhetoric?
There seems to be nothing but a continuation of the Washington-Wall Street financial complex (e.g. billions of AIG’s bailout dollars went directly to cover default swaps owned by who? …. Goldman, of course). Anyone see this any differently?
Bosch
April 21st, 2009
9:51 am
Paul,
Obama was trying to do that before he became POTUS, but now he’s actually in the job and trying to fix things. That’s not the image the Dems want – or maybe it is – “we can fix anything the Republicans screw up.”
Neither party can get a “coherent” message out there because we are in some strange times and either party will not be able to send out a valid message.
ByteMe,
Good post @ 9:43.
Bosch
April 21st, 2009
9:53 am
Paul,
And one more thing. The Republicans are going to have a harder time getting a coherent message out because they aren’t in control anymore, but again, that could help them, who knows.
But right now it seems they are only running around trying to kill their young or in need of a series of rabies shots.
jt
April 21st, 2009
9:53 am
“If we adopt your system, will you take him in to your house or should we just round up the people who drain our taxes and kill them? Just curious.”
It is amazing at the lack of faith in human beings that typical liberals have. Our society flourished before FICA. Sure there were tragedies then, but there aren’t any now?
Taxpayer
April 21st, 2009
9:55 am
Never been to Manhattan, eh? It’s heavily Democratic.
Ever been to Wall Street. Those are the guys that those Democrats work for.
Wes
April 21st, 2009
9:55 am
ByteMe,
You’re assuming that the business cycle isn’t self correcting. Government interference can drag a bust cycle out and while spending may help alleviate the problem as you mentioned there usually isn’t any political will to take the punch bowl away. That will probably just aggravate the problem in the future in the same manner that leverage creates a more volatile stock.