The faces of financial disaster

If you don't know the faces pictured here, learn them. If any of them ever try to kiss your baby, punch him in the maw. Yet another way Talking Points Memo does the world a service. Thank you, Josh Marshall & Co.!



(TOH to my dad!)

The search for authentic GOP voices

I'm officially on the hunt for some truly original GOP or conservative voices. The party seems to be at a true breaking point, and will need to develop a drastically different message if it is to survive in a time when minorities are becoming the majority and the newer generation has a higher tolerance for individual differences in lifestyle and belief.

That isn't to suggest that I think conservatives or the GOP need to abandon their core values. Fiscal conservatism always has a place in a society that values responsibility and sacrifice. However, fiscal conservatism in the form of obstructionism is not a governing philosophy.

Who is going to embody the "New Republicansim"?

One voice making headlines is Meghan McCain. The Senator's daughter has been raising eyebrows with her every woman blogversation, straight talk (eh-hem), and inclusive personal outlook in her blog on the Daily Beast.

Another VERY intersesting voice is that of Frank Schaeffer, an original Religious Right-er cum Obama supporter and voice of reason. Schaeffer is clearly not a voice of conservatism, but he does provide interesting insight into the shrinking relevance of the Republican power structure in our current circumstance. Frankly, Schaeffer simply says what no Republican leader is able to say right now. Its truly refreshing.

One thing all of my favorite voices have in common is a willingness to stand up to the haters in the GOP, the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters who peddle in ugliness. Certainly the left has not had the luxury of allowing our most vocal extremists speak for all of us. Its time the right lived up to the same standards of responsibility.

Here's Schaeffer's recent appearance on D.L. Hughley's show:

The Stewart/Cramer battle continues...

If you haven't been watching the war of words between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Jim Cramer, you're really missing out on something grand.

The battle started last week when Stewart took the financial news network to task for holding up as absolute authorities people who really had no idea what was happening with the economy, including Cramer. Cramer responded with a column on MainStreet.com, accusing Jon Stewart of taking facts out of context. Stewart parried with a broader look at Jim Cramer's record of offering bad advice.

Cramer's next move can only be described as an all out PR blitz to defend his reputation, appearing on NBC's The Today Show and MSNBC's Morning Joe. And, coming through with flying colors, Jon Stewart fired back at Cramer last night.

These clips are long, but worth it in their prescience. And, BONUS: you get to hear Joe Scarborough complain about Jon Stewart's practice of cherry-picking and ridiculing sound bites. That one is rich.

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Facing forclosure? Make them produce the note.

I love this story. And the fact that the idea is spreading.

We all know about people who refinanced their mortgages into ARMs that subsequently ballooned to unaffordable proportions. Now it appears that people are figuring out how to beat the lenders at their own game: "produce the note".

See, it turns out that, in order to forclose on your house, the bank that holds the note on your house must produce the original note in court. However, due to rampant securitization of mortgages, lenders and investors did a poor job of keeping up with the paperwork. Many owners of the note on your house cannot produce the original.

Yes, its a tactic and not a solution, but if it forces lenders to stop and find another solution to forclosure, all the better. I say, more power to the homeowners. When forclosure is the only tool lenders have in this economy, where forclosed homes sit vacant and lose more money for the lender and cost other homeowners more of their home value, those lenders need to be forced to devise a better tool.

(Full disclosure: As I've said before, my family experienced first-hand the predatory practices of lenders, brokers and banks who gave bad financial advice in order to get us into an untenable financial position. Thankfully, we're naturally skinflint-y Scots and trusted our guts.)

NPR covered the "produce the note" tactic today. They do make the point that, aside from the fun Robin Hood-aspect of the practice, "produce the note" tactics could stifle one investment channel in a potential housing recovery. Thankfully, the securities lawyer they interviewed for the story, Talbott Franklin, puts the emphasis in the right place:

"My big fear," Franklin says, "is that we'll get a series of decisions, based on not fully understood facts, which will prevent securitization from going forward in the future."

Franklin doesn't blame homeowners or their lawyers for bringing the challenges. He's more critical of lenders and their attorneys for not doing a better job understanding securitized mortgages and for not taking care of important legal matters before going to court to foreclose on a home.

Right on. More blame needs to be placed on a financial sector that didn't care how these investments worked as long as they were making money. Now that they're losing money, the sector need to deal with the troublesome consequences. Too bad for them.

UPDATE: If you haven't seen it, check out MSNBC's reporting on makeshift encampments ("tent cities") popping up all over the country. (TOH to Bosh56, who says "all the people who are calling the foreclosed people losers are hating and not seeing the human condition/these losers are real people".)

Is the President doing too much? WTF?

Every once in a while, I feel like sending out a reality check from the exurbs. Here's the newest idea floated by the beltway and the media: Is the President doing too much?

I can't even justify this one with an attempt at understanding. Do you know how big the Executive Branch staff is? Do you know how many people we have in Washington taking paychecks on our behalf? Dem or Repub, I think you do!

Let me state the obvious, for the record: we expect our government to walk and chew gum at the same time. We expect our leaders to be able to handle more than one thing at a time. What's that that the GOP is always saying about how we "regular Americans" can handle our checkbooks and we expect our government to do the same? Word to the GOP: we expect you to be able to multi-task a bit too.

While this may be too much for the geniuses who gave us the Iraq war, the Katrina disaster, inept drug coverage and the economic meltdown to handle, it is expected nonetheless.

Let me put it another way: I don't care what the GOP thinks. They need to prove to me that they can do anything - ANYTHING - constructive before they have any right to speak to "The American People." They also need to show that they can work with Dems on a Dem initiative before I am willing to consider a WORD from them on bipartisanship.

For far too long our government has told us that we are a nation of can't: can't do better with Katrina, can't do better against Al Qaida, can't solve the country's healthcare problems, can't hold people and institutions accountable from government officials to Wall Street firms, can't protect the nation and uphold the Constitution at the same time.

Chalk me up to one of the Americans who calls BS on all of this. Call me an idealist. Fine. But I do believe that we are a CAN do nation, capeable of marrying our motiviation with our innovation for the sake of a better society for all.

And by the way, that is NOT the definition of socialism. If you've heard it on TV, you don't know what it means. Look it up.

First thoughts on the President's budget proposal

Three things stand out:

1) Record deficit. I'm mindful of it, but not fearful. Leaving my children a deficit that their generation needs to pay off doesn't frighten me when I know that we're bringing our nation up to date infrastructurally and technologically. This country has been crumbling and gone from ranch home to tract home to mobile home over the last 30 years. Its time to bring the country back.

And, frankly, I firmly believe that my generation can pay off this deficit. We've done it before and with a little ingenuity and ambition, we can do it again. I mean that whole-heartedly.

2) As a "small business owner" who makes LESS than $250,000 a year, I think that a BIG piece of the picture that the GOP and the media are missing regards healthcare. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on $250k household from 35% to 39.6%, but if those small business owners are paying for their own healthcare, Obama's budget for his healthcare program will save them HUGE bucks if they opt in. And tell me why in god's name they wouldn't opt in.

3) The cap and trade portion of the budget is the smartest thing I've seen in ages. As long as he continues to implement ideas like this to increase revenue, I'm exceedingly happy.

The President's success and the Governor's failure

Barack Obama's speech was everything I hoped for last night. Simple as that. He demonstrated that he has clear goals, knows what needs to be done, and is plowing ahead with his agenda one way or another. He makes me confident in our leadership.

Bobby Jindal's response? OK, I won't go too much into it. The reviews are in and uniform. My response to it was much like Rachel Maddow's. (See below.)

One thing I did react to (audibly) in Jindal's speech was his suggestion that Republicans "went along with" big government spending over the last decade. "Went along with"? "Went along with"?? Um, I lived through the last administration and was PAINFULLY aware that the Republicans were in full control of government for 6 years of that administration. They went along with irresponsible government spending? That was too much to stomach.

The rest of the speech was meaningless nonsense, as far as I'm concerned. Here is some interesting reaction:

"Bailout" vs. "Stimulus"

We know the difference between the mind-boggling bundles of cash we're talking about, right?

"Bailout" = $700billion given to Treasury (originally under Hank Paulson) to bailout financial services companies.

"Stimulus" = $800billion bill just passed by House and Senate, comprised of spending and tax cuts, meant to "stimulate" the economy-at-large. AKA "Recovery Bill" or "Rescue Bill".

All clear?

Before you commit to "the bailout failed"...

See, I know that what bailout there has been has not ENDED the economic crisis, but to say "it failed" is not convincing. What would have happened had we NOT injected billions into the financial services industry? Check out this recollection from Rep. Paul Kanjorski about the initial purpose of the bailout. Fear mongering or fact?

Austan Goolsbee: FOUND

I don't know why I'm so enamored of Austan Goolsbee (aside from his sexy/geeky name). This wunderkind of the Obama campaign's economic advisors, I suspect Goolsbee of being a genius, and I was a little brokenhearted when his name didn't appear in the ranks of the new Obama administration.

But Goolsbee has been found. Per NPR via AP, Goolsbee will direct Obama's outside economic advisory board:

Obama Names Outside Economic Advisory Board

NPR.org, February 6, 2009 · Choosing from corporate boardrooms, labor unions and academia, President Obama named a team of outside economic advisers Friday that he says he will turn to for help in boosting the sagging U.S. economy.

As promised in November, the president signed an executive order that creates the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Obama introduced members of the team at a White House ceremony Friday morning. Volcker will serve as chairman. Austan Goolsbee, one of three members of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, will be the group's staff director and chief economist.

Board members include:

William H. Donaldson, who served as SEC chairman from 2003 to 2005
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., president and CEO of the TIAA-CREF retirement fund
Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO of the financial services firm UBS Group Americas
David F. Swensen, CIO of Yale University
Mark T. Gallogly, founder and managing partner of the investment advisory firm Centerbridge Partners LP
Penny Pritzker, chairman and founder of Pritzker Realty Group
Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO of General Electric
John Doerr, a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
Jim Owens, chairman and CEO of the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc.
Monica C. Lozano, publisher and CEO of the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion
Charles E. Phillips Jr., president of the computer software maker Oracle Corp.
Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union and chairwoman of the labor coalition Change to Win
Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the labor organization AFL-CIO
Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who served as a key economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and is dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley
Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University

The announcement came as employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and the unemployment rate soared to 7.6 percent.

In a statement, the White House said the board will offer independent advice in regular briefings to the president, vice president and their economic team.

The White House said the board's initial focus will be programs to "jump-start economic growth."

From NPR reports and The Associated Press

Jim, Mika, and Baby makes three

OK - I love being a working mom and I love politics, so this video just tickled me. I've held conference calls with one finger on the mute button and a baby in the other arm. I've had meetings with ad reps with a baby in my lap. I've come in on my day off with a kid, a snack, and a portable DVD player. Hey, modern moms! This is us!

I can't help it. I love this.

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"Rumored lesbian" Hagen back at Justice

More from the "Undoing the Damage" front. Today, NPR's Ari Shapiro filed this story:

On Monday, the Justice Department undid a small part of the damage that top officials caused in a scandal of politicized hiring and firing during the Bush administration. The department rehired an attorney who was improperly removed from her job because she was rumored to be a lesbian.

NPR first broke the story of Leslie Hagen's dismissal last April, and the Justice Department's inspector general later corroborated the report. Now, Hagen has returned to her post at the department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys' committee on Native American affairs. The chairman of that committee, Tom Heffelfinger, described Hagen to NPR last year as "the best qualified person in the nation to fill that job." Hagen's performance evaluations had the highest possible ratings — "outstanding" in each of five categories.

The job came up for renewal every year. After the first year, Hagen was surprised to hear that she would have to move on.

As NPR reported in April, a top aide to the attorney general had heard a rumor that Hagen was a lesbian. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is against Justice Department rules. But Monica Goodling, senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, had Hagen removed from her job anyway.

That was more than a year ago. The inspector general eventually confirmed the NPR report and added new details, saying Goodling not only ousted Hagen but also blocked Hagen from getting other Justice Department jobs she was qualified for.

Last year, the Justice Department posted Hagen's old job again. The department conducted a national search. Applications came in from around the country. After several rounds of interviews, Hagen eventually won the job.

The paperwork makes it official as of Monday, Feb. 2. Hagen now has her old position back, but this time it's a little different. Her contract no longer comes up for renewal every year. Now, the job is permanent.

It is not a perfectly happy ending for Hagen. Nobody official from the department ever apologized to her for what happened. She still owes thousands of dollars in attorney fees, and the Justice Department has refused to pay those bills.

That was the department's position under the Bush administration, anyway. Hagen's attorney says her client hopes the new attorney general will take a different view.

Why special elections are not much better

You know, I'm starting to have a geriatric crush on Ed Rendell. The Governor of Pennsylvania just knows politics like the back of his hand and is able to tell it like it is.

In the wake of the human circuses that have been the appointments of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's Senate seats, Sen. Russ Feingold (another personal fav) has proposed legislation that would mandate special elections to fill replacement Senate seats, not gubernatorial appointments. Seems like SUCH a great idea right? Let the PEOPLE decide!

Wrong, says Gov. Rendell. He explained on MSNBC that, in actuality, the political parties would be choosing the replacement. There would not be time for open primaries in these cases, so the state GOP would choose one candidate, and the state Democratic party would choose one candidate. In a state like New York, that is all but assuring the Democratic party is choosing your next Senator. And does that sound much better to you?

More on the "Bush kept us safe" meme.

I just needed to share this blurb from The Brad Blog, commenting on the current assertion that "Bush kept us safe". I was doing the math in my head the other day, and I couldn't figure out how someone who was responsible for so much war death could be seen as "keeping us safe".

Counting only the dead (and only the American dead, in this case, since estimates of violent Iraqi civilian fatalities during the war are currently estimated to be anywhere from a conservative 150,000 to more than 1,000,000) that totals 4,245 Americans killed by terrorists, or in optional conflicts with terrorists, since 9/11.

"Bush kept us safe"?

You can read the full text here. Brad has some other figures that put the whole argument into stark perspective.

A human horror that should not be ignored: rape in Congo

This story is so difficult to listen to, but chalk this up to something we should all face periodically: the systematic rape of women and children as a form or warfare.

This story on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday had my husband and I dumbfounded, quiet, and profoundly sad this weekend. In it, Scott Simon interviews the playwright Eve Ensler and Dr. Denis Mukwege, "the founder of a hospital in Congo that's helping victims of rape and mutilation":

Mukwege, a gynecologist, founded the Panzi hospital in the Congo — a place where victims can find treatment and counseling. He's been honored by the United Nations for his humanitarian work there.

Honored may be the most mild way one should regard Dr. Mukwege. The things he describes are tragic and outraging and remind us all that we can and should - we MUST - do more.

GOP: the party of Failure and "Can't"

You'd think rank-and-file Republicans would be jumping ship like rats at this point. I'm struck by the severity of the GOP's ideological bankruptcy. Party leaders an Conservative thinkers appear, in the last few weeks, to be embracing an identity as the party of Failure and the party of "Can't".

First, there is the notion that the GOP's solution to the drumming they received in the last election is to wait for the Dems to fail. As George Will plainly said on ABC's This Week, they wait for failure on the part of the other party. In order to... What, exactly? Get back some votes? When the youth vote broke by 30 or more votes for Barack Obama, that hardly seems like the path to a bright future. So your plan for resurgence is "wait for the other guy to fail"? That's really all they've got?

Next, the "Can't Do" party. Apparently, all Repubs can say to any proposed changes in this country is "No We Can't". I am waiting to hear a good reason why we "can't" put GitMo prisoners in to American supermax prisons. (I'm talking to you, Sen, Kit Bond, R-MO.) If its good enough for Sirhan Sirhan, it's sure as hell good enough for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, no? Also, we "can't" stop using torture, "can't" build the economy in any way other than tax-breaks-to-corporations and -the-wealthy, and "can't" come up with an alternative to free-market health care.

I know I'm not the only person in this country sick to death of "can't". How is this a path to the future for the GOP? Don't get me wrong. I'm totally happy to watch the party pursue this road to nowhere. As happy as I am to let them pick Sarah Palin as their candidate for 2012. Be my guest, GOP!

Don't Repubs at least pretend to think that positive ideology and plans for the future of this country matter to people? Or have they resigned themselves to be the party of the curmudgeonly and hateful (see Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the musical preferences of Chip Saltsman)?

Who's been attacked in the last 7 years?

Ugh. If I have to hear one more person try to stick up for the legacy of the Bush Administration with this tired argument one more time, I may explode: "But you HAVE to admit, we haven't been attacked in the last seven years!"

As my sainted grandmother used to say, BULL. Attacked in the last seven years:

• Our civil liberties
• The Genenva Conventions
• Reproductive rights
• Stem-cell research
• The public school system
  
• Science
• The United Nations
• The environment
• Freedom of Information
• Government accountability
• Truth
• The English language

What did I miss?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

Oh what a night.

courtesy bob_weaver @ DemocraticUnderground.com

Obama, by Sorkin

If you thought that the Obama campaign occasionally sounded like it was scripted by Aaron Sorkin, this is for you:

Do you want a middle-class tax cut?

If you know me (and I don't flatter myself: you probably only read this blog if you know me), then you are middle class, or even "working class" (read: the verbotten words "lower class").

Do you want a tax cut?

See, here's the thing: I would take a tax cut, but I don't need a tax cut. If the nation is in such dire financial straights, I'll give up my tax cut to ease the deficit and still spend money. After all, we have a steady income: I can still shop. And the tax cut wouldn't represent enough money for me to buy a new car or anything. It would amount to - what? - $100 a month? What are we talking about here?

The tax cut aspect of the Obama Administration's proposed economic stimulus package is pretty fuzzy - as all tax cut plans seem to be - and is steeped in politics from both sides of the aisle. Personally, I'm more interested in seeing significant infrastructure spending. I've been bitching about that forever. But Professor Krugman makes a good arguement in yesterday's Times:

...there’s a problem with a public-investment-only stimulus plan, namely timing. We need stimulus fast, and there’s a limited supply of “shovel-ready” projects that can be started soon enough to deliver an economic boost any time soon. You can bulk up stimulus through other forms of spending, mainly aid to Americans in distress — unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.. And you can also provide aid to state and local governments so that they don’t have to cut spending — avoiding anti-stimulus is a fast way to achieve net stimulus. But everything I’ve heard says that even with all these things it’s hard to come up with enough spending to provide all the aid the economy needs in 2009.

What this says is that there’s a reasonable economic case for including a significant amount of tax cuts in the package, mainly in year one.

I don't know about that. Because we need as much economic stimulus as we can get, you think a middle class tax cut that will not be spent, but saved, is something we HAVE to do? I'm not convinced.

By the way, you are still OBLIGED to read Krugman as long as this financial crisis persists. If you haven't, DO IT.