dagblog - Comments for "For Hillary Clinton the buck stops somewhere else"

You make two specious

HSG — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 01:38:04 +0000

In reply to Ever deposit your pay in a

You make two specious arguments here.

1) You argue big investment banks are not big banks. Obviously, the former are subsumed in the latter and nobody, except you, thinks they aren't. Hence, in pro publica's Bailout List Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan are all classified simply as "banks".

2) Nevertheless, you attempt to define banks as financial institutions in which you can deposit your pay into a checking account. This is far too narrow a definition. Still under it, Shearson (the bank you contend isn't a bank) is in fact a bank. From a 1992 Hartford Courant article on Asset Management Accounts:

Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc., New York City.

Minimum: $10,000 cash and/or stocks or bonds to open; $5,000 to maintain.

Features: Free check writing, direct deposit, American Express Gold Card, ATM card.

You're right. Sure I know

Flavius — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 15:50:52 +0000

In reply to Flavius, I take it that you

You're right. Sure I know there are asset management accounts with checking privileges . I have one. But Hank Paulson wasn't terrified about my behavior in Sept 2008 he was frightened that the 95% would attempt to all take their cash out of Citicorp et al which would of course be illiquid and the resulting panic would morph in to a depression.

Unpopular as it is to say this , Bush/Paulson did the right thing (maybe the only time Bush did) which of course Obama continued.

Flavius, I take it that you

Oxy Mora — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 14:47:06 +0000

In reply to Ever deposit your pay in a

Flavius, I take it that you mean the average person, probably no one in the 95%, is going to deposit and extra ten grand in an asset management account which has checking privileges.( Actually, someone here pointed out that the average guy has about $1500 in savings.) Let alone deposit their paycheck. In that sense I agree with you---a significant difference between Lehman and Citicorp.

In 2008 Lehman was the

Flavius — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 14:35:17 +0000

In reply to You make two specious

In 2008 Lehman was the trigger that forced Paulson to act. Countryside- not a bank but a dodgy mortgage company was the most egregious offender. AIG -not a bank but an insurer- was the major problem.

Hal you know many things but nobody can know everything about everything . The crisis wasn't triggered by Chase, or Citi or B of A , or Wells Fargo - the banks- collapsing. It was by the failure of an Investment Bank not even a third of their size. Which was about to cause each an every one of them to collapse because of course their short term liabilities exceeded their immediate cash availability. As does that of every bank at every time.Banking consists of "borrowing short " and "loaning long." Accepting cash deposits which can be withdrawn overnight and using them to finance , say, home mortgages.

Gotta go vote for Hillary. Who I'm sure fully understands this. As BTW I'm sure does Bernie.

Cheers.

Ever deposit your pay in a

Flavius — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 03:24:32 +0000

In reply to I wrote "Gore wouldn't have

Ever deposit your pay in a Lehmans' checking account.? You couldn't. You could in Bank of America . .

Because it's a bank.

Lehman was an "Investment Bank"

It's like the difference between a pitch and a pitchfork.

I hope Bernie loses tomorrow but if he wins and goes on to get the Democratic nomination I'll certainly vote,and work for him. Obviously it will take you a while to recover from your disappointment but if Hillary wins I',m confident you'll do the same.

Cheers

I wrote "Gore wouldn't have

HSG — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 17:32:20 +0000

In reply to Hal,

I wrote "Gore wouldn't have ignored the warning signs that the big banks were overextended and likely to crash." You take exception to this unexceptionable statement by dismissing me as embarrassingly ignorant about banking matters. Without evidence you write: "For starters the trigger for the 2008 crisis was Lehman's failure. It's not a big bank. All banks are overextended, all of the time and "apt to crash".. That's called banking."

I wrote what I wrote based on my understanding of what happened in 2008. I didn't do any specific research in advance but, in response to your citation-free claim, I googled "Bush responsible for 2008 failure". Here are some choice quotes from the articles that came up:

From Brookings Institute Fellow Daniel Kaufmann at Forbes:

There are multiple causes of the financial crisis. But we can not ignore the element of “capture” in the systemic failures of oversight, regulation and disclosure in the financial sector. Concrete examples abound.

. . .
Fourth, how in April 2004, during a 55-minute-long meeting at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the largest investment banks persuaded the SEC to relax its regulatory stance and allow them to take on much larger amounts of debt.

From "Bush can share the blame for [2008] financial crisis" in the NYT.

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.

. . .

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.

. . .

voices inside the administration who favored tougher policing of Wall Street found themselves with few supporters

. . .

As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; as recently as February, for example, Mr. Bush was still calling it a “rough patch.”

. . .

To some extent, Bush was simply following a deregulatory pattern set by Clinton. Perhaps the most significant recent deregulation of the banking industry - the landmark act that allowed commercial banks to expand into other financial activities, like investment banking and insurance - was signed into law by Clinton in 1999.

From FactCheck.org's "Who caused the [2008] Economic Crisis":

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

. . .
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

From Time Magazine's "25 People to Blame for the [2008] Financial Crisis":

George W. Bush: From the start, Bush embraced a governing philosophy of deregulation. That trickled down to federal oversight agencies, which in turn eased off on banks and mortgage brokers. Bush did push early on for tighter controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he failed to move Congress. After the Enron scandal, Bush backed and signed the aggressively regulatory Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But SEC head William Donaldson tried to boost regulation of mutual and hedge funds, he was blocked by Bush's advisers at the White House as well as other powerful Republicans and quit. Plus, let's face it, the meltdown happened on Bush's watch.

. . .

Bill Clinton: President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.

So four very credible (not progressive) sources provide specific examples supporting exactly what I wrote. Two also blame Bill Clinton's policies for the 2008 crash, which I have also argued.

Finally, you claim bizarrely that Lehman Brothers wasn't a "big bank." From Investopedia:

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. With $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt, Lehman's bankruptcy filing was the largest in history, as its assets far surpassed those of previous bankrupt giants such as WorldCom and Enron. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank at the time of its collapse, with 25,000 employees worldwide.

My sincere hope Flavius is that you now recognize that you really don't understand financial matters and will henceforth choose not to comment on them lest you embarrass yourself further. Seriously.

"A man's got to know his limitations."

Hal,

Flavius — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 14:44:49 +0000

In reply to We can't know what would have

Hal,

A word of advice. I'll be voting for Hillary on Tuesday and of course you will have, or already have, voted for Bernie but I'd prefer for you to not embarrass yourself. Stay away from arguments based on the banking crisis.With respect you don't know as much about that as many of your readers and your cringe- making statements about it tend to cast doubt on your other positions.

For starters the trigger for the 2008 crisis was Lehman's failure. It's not a big bank.

All banks are overextended, all of the time and "apt to crash".. That's called banking.

I could go on but that's not the subject here. Really, stay away from it, or give a draft of your proposed comments to a "Bankers for Bernie" friend. .Surely there is such an org. A friend of mine once headed Wall Street For McGovern.

We can't know what would have

HSG — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 17:43:31 +0000

In reply to Hal. I've enjoyed your

We can't know what would have happened if Gore had won as he would have if Nader and his supporters and acted responsibly instead of betraying America. But here are a very few well-educated guesses:

Gore wouldn't have signed off on the 2nd and 3rd most irresponsible tax cuts in the past 80 years (1st worst was Reagan's).

Gore wouldn't have ignored/denied the onrushing global warming ecological cataclysm.

Gore probably wouldn't have ignored the warning signs that Al Qaeda was going to hit us and even more probably wouldn't have launched a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Gore wouldn't have ignored the warning signs that the big banks were overextended and likely to crash and we wouldn't have gotten Citizens United because he wouldn't have appointed Alito and Roberts.

Hal. I've enjoyed your

Peter — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:29:16 +0000

In reply to I would say it's fair to

Hal. I've enjoyed your Sisyphus like quest to roll back the crushing inevitability of the Clinton Machine but when you spout the sour-grapes BS about Nader or his supporters being responsible for the downfall of that POS AL Gore i have to call your lame and typical Liberal projection what it is, sniveling and weak. I doubt that you or anyone else can say with any certainty or predict what would have transpired under that corporate, militarist elitist who is not that different from todays HRC.

My 2 cents from the Gore

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:24:56 +0000

In reply to Simply look at the other

My 2 cents from the Gore travesty is it's the candidate's responsbility to attract voters in a reasonable way, it's the voters' responsibility to assess both the candidate and the total ramifications in how he/she votes, and it's the media and others' responsibility not to lie and mislead the public at large as to the issues and the candidate's character.

In Gore's case, I felt he sadly ran from the successes of his own administration and tried to be a populist that he wasn't, and sometimes just being daft (like answering a question in the debates about his message for youth, and his answer was Social Security Safety Deposit Box and some other old fart priority).

And the media trashed his reputation, with lie after lie after lie, along with personal smears. Including the media on the "left" and the 2 awful disgraced juvenile rags, the NY Times & Washington Post.

Still, I blame American voters the most for being dumb as a bag of marbles for what what was obviously going on. "Compassionate conservatism" my ass. "Candidate I'd like to have a beer with" - an unreformed clueless ornery drunk that was only outsneered by his conniving VP pick?

Sure, Nader purists a tiny bit, but there weren't that many, and protest votes are needed in our society - candidates should factor them in. Nader got 97,000 votes in Florida, which is fewer than a NASCAR race.

But Gore had a record with Clinton of job growth, tackling tough problems, environmental concerns, bolstering new tech. Bush had a record of mimicking people on death row unsympathetically and skipping out on his Guard obligations. Case should have been fucking closed. Instead we got Iraq, and even that's gotten shifted to Hillary rather than staying stuck on Bush & Cheney & Powell & Condi & Scooter Libby where it should have stayed.

Blame? dumb white Americans, especially men. Blacks voted 90% against Bush both times - no need to worry about them.