From Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi on money, cap and trade, markets, and, uh, bipartisanship. h/t the skyrocketing Zero Hedge blog:
Fast-forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Probably Keynes didn’t foresee that kind of ambition. Apparently somebody didn’t.
From earlier in the piece, and in response to the rote anti-capitalism noise that dominates the usual pro-socialism myths about the private sector and money since roughly the last election:
…an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
Which in the context of this piece can be taken to mean: they’re no longer free markets. To which should be added, utterly not when they’re built on modern currency. Speaking of which, from wither the 2008 implosion, the one the recession-preventing Fed didn’t prevent (along with the rest of them over the last fifteen years, which Taibbi goes into, or even the last ninety-five)? Hints:
It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions.
[...]
By the end of March [2008] the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.
“Read the whole thing” — it’s interesting that the comments to a piece in RS would be as conservative as they are. From boom to bust and back again rankles some.
All of which again brings up this, one of the more intriguing efforts of our time, and one that’s evidently straddled the political divide. Which, now that the various bosses are indistinguishable from one another, is also interesting.
Happy Fourth.
Comment by Bob Reed on 7/4 @ 7:37 am #
Why am I not shocked that Cap-n-Tax will most benefit Goldman, GE, and Al Gore. A terrible troika that all worked hard to get that putz Obama elected…
Comment by Joe on 7/4 @ 7:43 am #
I knew General Electric was all into Cap and Trade for the money they could generate from milking the regulatory system, makes sense that Wall Street is too.
Comment by Kevin B on 7/4 @ 7:45 am #
There’s this market, see, where traders trade with one another. There’s high risk/high reward trades and low risk/low reward trades, and occasionaly a trader loses his shirt.
Then one day a lot of traders lose their shirts, and the press creates a big fooferaw about the number of shirtless people wandering around outside the market.
The gubmint decides this is a good issue on which to impress the people with its caring policies and intervenes to protect the shirtless.
Bye bye free market.
Immediately, anyone who’s anyone in the trading business hires loads of lawyers to get round the laws and loads of lobbyists to get the laws changed and loads of politicians to write new laws in their favor.
It’s that first step that kills it.
Comment by JHo on 7/4 @ 7:53 am #
You got it, Kevin B — it starts with closing that necessary divide between sectors. It’s swamped by so much interwoven, contradictory, and artificial manipulation-by-legislation that it can’t but fail. Poof goes liberty. For the too-big-to-fail failures, for the children, for the dependents, for whatever, goes the reasoning.
Comment by B Moe on 7/4 @ 8:13 am #
The separation of Church and State was the key concept the first time around, it looks like we are going to have to try to get a separation of Market and State in there the next go round.
Comment by geoffb on 7/4 @ 10:15 am #
One step needed would be to eliminate the progressive poison injected into our political system by Wilson. The Federal Reserve system, progressive inome tax and the 16th amendment which allowed it, the direct election of Senators, and many other pernicious laws implanted by the original Progressive President.
Comment by JHo on 7/4 @ 10:23 am #
Wilson later expressed great regret at the FRA he enabled, giving us something with which to gage its monstrous nature with.
Comment by B Moe on 7/4 @ 10:34 am #
FairTax
And I am keeping an eye on these ones, also.
Comment by JHo on 7/4 @ 12:05 pm #
Interesting that the biggest fraud afloat isn’t taught in school. Money is fundamental. Thanks NEA.
Comment by SBP on 7/4 @ 12:56 pm #
#8: Looks pretty good, but I’d be happier if their platform explicitly endorsed nuclear power.
We’re going into a bad, bad hole and nuclear is pretty much the only way out of it.
Comment by Bob Reed on 7/4 @ 9:54 pm #
geoffb, I am in compltet agreement with your #6…
#8 looks good to me too! But, like SBP, I too would like an explicit endorsement of nuclear power…
Comment by B Moe on 7/5 @ 10:43 am #
I got an email from them- personal, not a form letter- that said nuclear power was going in the new draft, and that the FairTax wasn’t on the national platform yet but had been endorsed by several states.
Comment by SBP on 7/5 @ 11:12 am #
Good to know, B Moe. If they get nuclear power in there, I’ll even consider joining (a drastic step for me — I haven’t belonged to an organized political party in probably 15 or 20 years).
Comment by thor on 7/5 @ 11:47 am #
JHo quoting Taibbi, will the spinning moonbattery never cease.
Comment by JHo on 7/5 @ 1:03 pm #
Go document Ne Win, moonbatter. In your inimitable, I-gots-issues style.
Comment by josh on 7/6 @ 11:04 am #
Yeah, reluctantly side with Thor again. Nonetheless, it’s good to know the “conservatives” on this page aren’t fighting the battles of the 60’s or even the New Deal. They’re fighting the battles of the Progressive Age! Hah. Soon the paeans to Calvin Coolidge, that “new and interesting” speaker will emerge. JHo as Andrew Jackson’s soul mate? Who knew? He’s a Democrat after all!
Finally explains why O’brain and spies muck around with “democrats are secessionists.” Their politics hasn’t advanced since 1922!
I mean I knew we favored plutocrats, but I didn’t know it was because we proteiners sided with robber barons!
Comment by B Moe on 7/6 @ 11:08 am #
Heh.
Comment by Andrew the Noisy on 7/6 @ 12:43 pm #
Soon the paeans to Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge is un-paean-able? Completely non-praiseworthy in every respect?
I dig it man, it’s because he’s so OLD. The Depression was his fault, right?
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