Brit Hume has a hissy about his friends who stole all the money

Brit Hume was upset Sunday because President Obama plans to raise taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year. Well, I would be upset too if my whole world view was trashed in the course of a couple years as my house of cards came crashing down. The problem for people like Hume is they have no idea they did anything wrong. I have only a few words to say about that….

And the idea that you’re going to be able to squeeze out of the rich, who will move their money around and invest in such a way to avoid it as much as they can, this much money in tax receipts is crazy. There’s only one way to get a big gusher of tax receipts out of the wealthy and everybody else and that is with an extraordinarily booming economy. And normally what happens is you get that when tax rates, which he proposes to allow to increase here go down. Not up.

Williams: Let me give you an alternative point of view. An alternative point of view is that 40% that you’re talking about, those people earn about half of all the money that’s earned in America. They’re blessed to be in this country and to have the opportunity and why shouldn’t they be responsible and pay their fair share of taxes?

Brit Hume Has a Snit Over Obama’s Tax Plan “Squeezing the Rich”

See it’s like this Brit:

YOUR FRIENDS STOLE ALL THE FUCKING MONEY AND IF NO ONE IS GOING TO JAIL THEN THEY OWE RESTITUTION.

GET OVER IT!

Zombie Banks Need to be Nationalized

One of the items mentioned in President Obama’s address to Congress was about the continued mess in the financial sector. Billions have been given to various banks yet the credit market is still too tight to help ease the economic mess we are in. If credit isn’t flowing then businesses have no way to buy new inventory or equipment and some may not be able to make payroll. Economist Paul Krugman makes the case that these “zombie” banks need to taken over and I agree.

Krugman writes:

Let’s be concrete here. There’s a reasonable chance — not a certainty — that Citi and BofA, together, will lose hundreds of billions over the next few years. And their capital, the excess of their assets over their liabilities, isn’t remotely large enough to cover those potential losses.

Arguably, the only reason they haven’t already failed is that the government is acting as a backstop, implicitly guaranteeing their obligations. But they’re zombie banks, unable to supply the credit the economy needs.

To end their zombiehood the banks need more capital. But they can’t raise more capital from private investors. So the government has to supply the necessary funds.

But here’s the thing: the funds needed to bring these banks fully back to life would greatly exceed what they’re currently worth.

Banking on the Brink

What has been happening is the previous administration as well as Obama’s have done everything short of taking over the essentially failed banks. What I don’t understand is the aversion to do it since it happens all the time.

During the Great Depression and earlier it was common to have bank panics. There would be some incident or economic downturn which then led to a “run” on banks – where depositors lose confidence in a bank and remove their money. If too many people did this the bank would close and go out of business. Generally banks didn’t keep enough cash on hand to pay out all the deposits so unless you got your money out early you would lose any money still at the bank.

In 1933, 4,004 banks closed putting thousands of people in a world of hurt. One of the ways bank runs were minimized and are rare today was the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It provides insurance for up to $250,000 of a person’s deposit at a member bank. In return FDIC has oversight on the bank. If the health of a bank reaches a certain point, FDIC moves in, removes the management, cleans up the books, and runs the bank for a short time before it either liquidates it slowly or sells the assets to private investors.

In 2008, 30 banks have been taken over in this way by FDIC.

It is clear that the recent bail outs provided to the various banks haven’t freed up the credit market and in some cases the banks have continued on as if nothing is wrong – like spending on lavish parties or using tax payer money to give out bonuses. The bad management needs to be removed and the banks made over.

I know some are saying “But Doug, you support a bail out of the auto industry. Why can’t we let those fail too?”

The simple fact is there is a program to allow a bank to be cleaned up and continue under new ownership. If an auto maker was allowed to fail, more than likely it would be liquidated meaning it would be gone along with the thousands of jobs they had and the ones at the associated suppliers on down the line.

The solutions can’t be the same since the problems are completely different and the outcome of not doing anything are completely different.

President Obama announces recovery agenda – Jindal and the GOP trapped in time worm hole

Tuesday night President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to announce his agenda for the economic recovery and other issues that have long been put off like health care reform. Meanwhile, the GOP seem to be trapped in the 1990’s. They picked Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to respond. He proved once again that political Republicans just plain hate America.

President Obama gave a great speech calling for fixing education, health care, and returning the US to leadership in research and development of technology.

My favorite part was:

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery 

and this part:

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive. 

and finally:

But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American.

Of course after the speech, the Republicans decided to respond. Unfortunately they picked Governor Bobby Jindal to read the usual talking points that pretty much says “government is the problem”. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if it his remarks didn’t include outright lies.

But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history – with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

Governor Bobby Jindal’s Republican Address

Well there is no specific plan for a train from Las Vegas to Disneyland. Why wouldn’t buying new cars for the government create jobs? Those cars won’t just appear. They have to built by someone right? It is also ironic that Jindal would criticize a program to monitor volcanoes. Wouldn’t it be good to try to know ahead of time if one was about to erupt. That’s like complaining about the money spent for weather radars used to track Hurricanes.

All Jindal had was “tax cuts, tax cuts, more tax cuts and drill baby drill”. YAWN! That was the same platform that helped them win the White House in 2008…. oh yes that’s right they didn’t win. I also loved Jindal complaining about the $1 trillion deficit while ignoring that the GOP helped President Bush squander our surplus from the Clinton years and spend more than that on an unnecessary war in Iraq.

As David Brooks noted during the speech coverage on PBS:

JIM LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?

DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well. You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale “government is the problem,” “we can’t trust the federal government” – it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we’re just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say “government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,” it’s just a form of nihilism. It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is. There’s an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he’s making that case. I think it’s insane, and I just think it’s a disaster for the party. I just think it’s unfortunate right now.

No wonder no current Republican in Congress wanted to give the response.

CEO who took bail out tries to lecture on obligations

The CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, whose bank took $25 billion in TARP money tried to lecture people having mortgage problems about obligations.

“I don’t think just because someone’s underwater they say I don’t have to stay there. But they’re supposed to pay the mortgage, and we should teach the American people, you’re supposed to meet your obligations, not run from them. Because you have a mortgage doesn’t mean you should run away as it goes down.”

Bailed-Out Chase CEO Dimon: People Should Pay Mortgages “Even If They’re Underwater”

Dimon may not be aware, but before President Obama announced a plan to help people in mortgage trouble and before banks were forced to work with borrowers, their only option was to ditch the house and the mortgage and leave it to the bank before the official foreclosure.

Many of the people in mortgage trouble were on the fringe to start and any economic trouble would push them over. They don’t want to “run away” but you know the old saying about getting blood from a turnip. It makes no sense to hold on to a property if you know you can’t pay the mortgage and no one will buy it from you.

It is also funny for a CEO whose bank took TARP money to be talking about not running away from an obligation.

Rep. Jim Jordan continues search for clue on economic meltdown

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R – Ohio 4th Congressional District) once again proves that the GOP are slow on the uptake. In a Q & A with Hancock County leaders he just restated talking points while failing to remember that he is in the party that helped lead us to the economic meltdown.

The Republican from Urbana voted against the package Jan. 28, believing that the $819 billion tax and spending bill would only balloon the federal deficit, reportedly headed toward $2 trillion.

Jordan told officials that a “bailout fever” has infected Washington.

“Once you go down this road, everyone gets in line,” he said.

“A much better solution is to reduce the tax burden on small business owners and entrepreneurs” and cut interest rates and capital gains, he said.

Jordan said he and the other 176 House Republicans who voted against the bill did so on principle, not partisanship.

Jordan says Obama plan won’t work

Remember, we tried the tax cuts and those didn’t work either. But at least Jordan didn’t say anything more ridiculous than another Ohio Congressman.

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria (R- Ohio 7th Congressional District) said to the Columbus Dispatch editorial board:

“When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”

U.S. Rep. Austria blames Depression on Roosevelt

WOW! Steve Austria is a dumbass. The depression started in 1929. Roosevelt took office in 1933. In 1933 Unemployment was 25% and by 1940 it had been lowered to 15%… etc etc etc.

And these guys think they have a better plan?