Clinton

Liberals

Congress

Dems Again

Last But Not Least (drumroll please) Jimmy Carter

And now the dumb c*nt Pelosi and her whores are holding up the bailout package that will lessen the impact of the mess they are responsible for. Un fk believable!

I'm not giving the street a pass on this either. The old saying holds true..........The bulls make money, the bears make money and the pigs go broke. Well most of the pigs are broke now. But had it not been for the dems they would not have had the opportunity to go broke.

So let the blame fly.......... The facts cannot be refuted.

Let's Start by Finding Some People to Behead: Michael Lewis
Commentary by Michael Lewis

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- With Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsing, and Merrill Lynch & Co. surrendering, and all hell breaking loose in the financial markets, Bloomberg News sent reporters out to gather some impressions from ordinary non- financial Americans.

Many had no idea what any of it meant but few were happy about it. They sensed they'd just been handed the role of the little fat kid in the game of crack the whip, who, at the start of the game, feels nothing at all but then suddenly finds himself launched headfirst into the neighbor's bushes.

They hadn't suffered yet but were preparing to, and they were perplexed by their inability to figure out who had the idea for this game.

``If I knew more I could find someone to blame,'' said Linda Burke, a 57-year-old service consultant at AT&T in Atlanta, speaking, no doubt, for the American people.

She'll probably never get her hands on the real villains of this piece. They're obscure; their crimes are hard to understand. Who inside Wall Street dreamed up the first subprime-mortgage- backed mezzanine CDO and allowed BBB credit to be laundered through the credit-rating companies and come out the other end as AAA? Who inside the credit-rating companies made the decision to rubber stamp the paper? Who inside Lehman Brothers -- and at all the other Wall Street firms -- fought to get into the business over the objections of saner traders?

This is a pleasant side-effect of Wall Street's complexity. Not only does it enable the firms to hide the risks they run; it allows the people who make fortunes, while at the same time helping destroy vast amounts of capital, to remain essentially unknown to the wider public.

Two Culprits

Even if they were to be somehow dragged out into the square for a shaming, no one would understand what they did. It's impossible to publicly humiliate a derivative.

There are, however, two culprits whose crimes are easy to grasp. I offer them up to Ms. Burke, so she can get to work on her feelings about them.

1) Christopher Cox. He's the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and so has the job of regulating these companies that helped make it possible for every poor American to get a mortgage and are now, as a result, falling apart.

That, in itself, is no reason to blame him. He inherited a broken operation: the SEC has been morally bankrupt for some time now. The people who work for the place -- especially the ones who call the shots -- have for years had a disconcerting habit of leaving their low-paying government jobs regulating Wall Street firms for high-paying ones at those same Wall Street firms.

Systemic Corruption

They are meant to guard against systemic corruption when they are themselves systematically corrupt. It's hard for people who are paid $85,000 a year to police people who are paid $15 million.

Happily, you can still blame Cox for something. He went as far out of his way as he could to enable the brokerage firms by harassing the small group of informed financial people who have been trying to tell the truth to the markets: the short sellers. They bet against the stock price of a company and so have always had a bad reputation with the public. But in this case, they are the closest thing we have to heroes.

A man named David Einhorn is a case study. He runs a hedge fund called Greenlight Capital, which sells short some stocks and buys others. That is, he doesn't just bet against companies but for them, too.

Blaming Shorts

Still, for some time now, he's been standing up in front of large audiences, announcing that he was short Lehman Brothers stock, and then explaining in great detail its dubious accounting practices. The SEC responded by demanding to see his firm's e- mail, hinting darkly that he was part of some conspiracy to drive Lehman Brothers out of business, and generally making him feel that he'd pay a price for telling the truth.

Christopher Cox is probably a nice man who has no real idea what just happened. But for the way he treated people with the nerve to speak the truth to power you should feel free to blame him anyway.

2) The Wall Street CEO.

Stan O'Neal was the chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, Dick Fuld was the CEO of Lehman Brothers, James Cayne was the CEO of Bear Stearns Cos. Each took home tens of millions of dollars in pay for making the decisions that destroyed his firm.

Stan the Man

Of the lot, O'Neal deserves perhaps the greatest scorn as he took a business that wasn't well designed to take huge trading risks and wagered it all on a single bet.

He screwed up the lives of more innocent people than the others. But interestingly, if any of these men had behaved well and resisted the pressures and temptations of the moment, his firm would have, for several years, dramatically underperformed the competition. Probably he would have lost his job.

Even O'Neal can probably look back on his performance and say to himself, ``There's nothing I'd do different, given what I knew at the time.''

That's what they all say -- right before they're beheaded.

(Michael Lewis is a Bloomberg News columnist and the author, most recently, of ``The Blind Side.'' The opinions expressed are his own.)

And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

Nice try Shemp, but muhtajones left out a few facts................


Really? Why did they not mention the name of the bill? All bills have names. Why did they not mention the co-sponsors? And why did they not mention the perverted f*ck that signed it AND MADE IT LAW????

Educate Yourself Fool

Of course economists criticized the way in which the Bush administration manufactured money by allowing anybody and everybody the opportunity to buy or refinance homes.

Really? Why did they not mention the name of the bill? All bills have names. Why did they not mention the co-sponsors? And why did they not mention the perverted f*ck that signed it AND MADE IT LAW????

Who signed that bill Shemp???????????????????????

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

Really? Why did they not mention the name of the bill? All bills have names. Why did they not mention the co-sponsors? And why did they not mention the perverted f*ck that signed it AND MADE IT LAW????

Who signed that bill Shemp???????????????????????

John McCain unveiled a new TV ad this afternoon that tries to paint Democratic rival Barack Obama as so inexperienced on the economy that he has to listen to shady characters.

"Obama has no background in economics," the announcer says.

"Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for 'advice on mortgage and housing policy,' " the announcer says, citing a Washington Post report this week.

"Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed 'extensive financial fraud,' " the announcer says, as another newspaper headline appears on screen. "Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed."

Raines, the head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, agreed in April to pay nearly $25 million in a settlement with the government in an accounting scandal.

"Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill," the announcer continues, as an image of an elderly woman appears. "Barack Obama, bad advice, bad instincts. Not ready to lead."

UPDATE: Obama's campaign just issued a response, including a denial from Raines.

"I am not an adviser to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters," Raines said in a statement.

"This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever. And by the way, someone whose campaign manager and top advisor worked and lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn't be throwing stones from his seven glass houses," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

In the tug-of-war this week over who can best respond to the Wall Street crisis, McCain has cited his proposal two years ago to rein in the quasi-public mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and criticized Obama for his ties to them and his inaction.

"He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them," McCain said today in Iowa. "He put Fannie Mae's CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie's former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign. Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent. He didn't lift a hand to avert this crisis. While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments. That's not change, that's what's broken in Washington."

Apparently, the Times still has "Davis envy," as McCain's chief called it earlier this week when another Times story prompted him to deny he had any ties to mortgage giant.

Jackie Calmes and David Kirkpatrick:

WASHINGTON-- One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.

They said they did not recall Mr. Davis doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee composed of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the coming midterm congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s his firm, Davis & Manafort, was kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who was widely expected by 2006 to run again for the White House.

Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafort for the duration of the campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to share in its profits.

Also, conservatives have a habit of blaming past democratic presidents for all the current crisis - even after two terms under Bush. ...

And now the dumb c*nt Pelosi and her whores are holding up the bailout package that will lessen the impact of the mess they are responsible for. Un fk believable!

I'm not giving the street a pass on this either. The old saying holds true..........The bulls make money, the bears make money and the pigs go broke. Well most of the pigs are broke now. But had it not been for the dems they would not have had the opportunity to go broke.

So let the blame fly.......... The facts cannot be refuted.

He's not going to answer you, Nomad. He doesn't want to say that Clinton signed the bill and pressured to have this written in order to allow low-income folks to get loans for houses....a pet liberal project for years now. And, found realtors and lenders eager to comply. They knew a lot of these buyers couldn't repay the loans, but what-the-hay it's all about commissions and $$. Right?

He'll just keep posting the same thing over and over, and calling it "done." (Personally, I worry about him.... ) for him to think this is convincing anyone but.......him that he's answered anything.

This tactic always strikes me as odd: blame the folks who didn't stop the bad guys, instead of blaming the bad guys.

I can see it with the people entrusted with security at a mental hospital, or those responsible for security at a nursing home for Alzheimer's patients - they are supposed to prevent the incompetent and deranged from harming themselves and others.

But to blame the Dems for not stopping the Reps from launching their binges of bad government and insane policies, one would assume that first the Dems would have to be in charge, at least. And the Reps not really capable of minding their own behavior.

Funny stuff. Moe, Larry & Curly all post back to back with the same old lies and rhetoric. Looks like a multiple personality disorder here or at the very least mass delusion. Notice how the same old liberal pap was spouted and not one specific allegation was included in any of the three stooges posts.

Who Signed The Gramm Bill????

Funny stuff. Moe, Larry & Curly all post back to back with the same old lies and rhetoric. Looks like a multiple personality disorder here or at the very least mass delusion. Notice how the same old liberal pap was spouted and not one specific allegation was included in any of the three stooges posts.

Who Signed The Gramm Bill????