In the past week or so, Lefty journos — including David Corn and Josh Marshall — have been flogging the notion that former US Senator (and current McCain campaign adviser) Phil Gramm is responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis (by having sponsored the Financial Services Modernization Act), in order to hang it around McCain’s neck, though neither went as far as Shawn Mullen of The Moderate (but reliably Lefty) Voice, who called Gramm a “terrorist in pinstripes†back in April.
Mickey Kaus reprints a reader e-mail noting that banking deregulation has been a bipartisan enterprise for some time — and continues under the current Democratic Congress. Tom Maguire has an in-depth look at the background and history of the Act, noting (among other things) that it “basically emerged from the Clinton Working Group, with a Treasury then headed by Larry Summers.”
This is not a particularly smart move for Lefty journos. The seem oblivious to the fact that if their story ever got traction, it would spark others to take a closer look into the many financial connections between subprime lenders and the Obama campaign, not to mention asking what advice Obama got from subprime defender Austan Goolsbee and Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin in developing his stance on the issue.
Karl – When have Lefty journos ever been known to be smart?
Karl:
In what universe do you think the press is going to be giving equal time to Democratic malfeasance?
Or asking hard questions of Obama? Especially when any such questions will be portrayed as racist pursuit of irrelevancies?
Is there such a thing as lefty journalists? I mean, fair and balanced an’ all. Or are we discussing lefty opinion writers?
Oh, I’m sorry. They’re the same thing, aren’t they?
In the one two doors down in the continuum where the sentient beings never fell from grace.
Important Safety Tip to David “Chuckles” Corn:
“If you pick up the end of a rope that leads into a cave and start pulling on it, be very careful: you may discover that something very large, ugly, and disagreeable is holding on to the other end of the rope.”
see, I agree here, Karl.
Good points.
That is not right to put all the blame in mortgage crisis on one side.
Majority of dems in congress were on it as well.
And you also mentioned the other day some guys from Obama donors side who were heavily involved in that as well
This goes to the core of the reason I don’t like John McCain.
Leftist policies always[1] result in disaster, generally in the form of making things worse instead of better. They long ago perfected the tactic of involving good-hearted members of the other Party in their shenanigans, in the interest of Collegiality and Good Chumship — then, when the thing crashes, explodes, and spreads radiation all around, the involvement of the Left is utterly forgotten, disregarded, and their rightist dupe gets all the blame. This is a perfect example. Poor People Can’t Get Nice Places to Live Because Nasty Rightist Lenders Insist On Irrelevancies Like Seeing If the Loans Will Be Paid Back! Immediate Solution Required! Now that the whole thing has blown up in their faces, in exactly the fashion logic would dictate, it is utterly forgotten that it was Democrats who pushed for it, and Gramm[2] gets the blame.
Cap-and-trade is another one. When the people of the Northeast discover that it’s difficult and expensive to survive in a Maunder Minimum when you don’t have any “carbon credits” left over, it will be utterly forgotten that there was ever a Democrat AGW-crier involved, and the measure’s Republican supporters will carry the can entire.
McCain’s centrist, accommodating, cooperative instincts make him a natural target for that tactic, and he always goes along with it.
Regards,
Ric
[1] Exaggeration. Perhaps only nine times out of ten.
[2] They do have something of a point, in that Gramm knew lots of his friends would make nice bits of change before it all went pear-shaped.
In the end, the mortgagee didn’t have to sign on for a mortgage they couldn’t pay. Nobody forced them to do that.
MikeyNTH – Good and salient point, but it hardly matters. It’s this country’s unfair economic policies that disallows the poor to be able to afford homes, so it was incumbent upon gubment to enforce lenders to offer low interest loans. I work for a large country governement and the leaders in this county were pushing hard for subprime loans and other risky financing for low income people. Now that it’s “come home to roost” they’re blaming the evil banks.
In the end, the mortgagee didn’t have to sign on for a mortgage they couldn’t pay. Nobody forced them to do that.
Racist.
Ric, same thing with HMOs. They were pushed by the left initially as a cost-saving measure to improve health care. Now they demonize them.
Ric, don’t you know, left never takes responsibility for it’s action. They would blame the bad implementation.
Like is USSR case. That’s not the Marxism’s fault that Communists in USSR did not implement correctly it’s ideas.
Ask them , what’s correct way, they would have no answer…
But they’d tell you O! will do it right, this time.
He is not the Marxist.
Stop listening to crap they feed you, rob.
Did he say anything about means of productions?
Or increasing the welfare system ?
The only thing you have against him is his alleged tax policy, which may, allegedly again, raise taxes on some of us.
Tax policy is not an indication of a Marxism, Rob.
Don’t be paranoid and see commie hiding under every bush .
“Comment by sashal on 6/6 @ 9:08 am #
Ric, don’t you know, left never takes responsibility for it’s action.”
I think that’s the only sensible thing you’ve ever posted here.
Every politician who gets money from donors profited from real estate going nuts over the past decade. Hell, most people did. Some still are.
What the Gramm story is about is that Gramm is still working for companies trying to work out a deal out of this mess while at the same time working for McCain’s campaign. There’s political dissonance there, but you’re right in that some are going waaaaay over the top in suggesting that Phil Gramm is some sort of mad financial architect of the housing bubble. He’s just another guy with a lot of money to throw around and did throw it around at a time when more money was to be made. Not exactly a paragon of virtue, that. But not evil by most accounts, unless paired with the wrong party.
In addition to the numerous financial ties into Obama, it should be noted that one of the three members put in charge of his Vice President search committee is disgraced former biggie at Fannie Mae, Jim Johnson. Johnson was the guy hanging around there when so many of the disastrous home lending practices were put in place.
You’re forgetting his long associations with race-baiters, his asinine foreign policy, and his personality-cult followers. Then there’s the likelihood he’d appoint “living Constitution” asshats to the courts and that his administration would be staffed by leftists who only think in terms of “means of production”, “institutional racism”, and “white skin privilege”.
Oh, and his long association with avowed Marxists.
Seriously, sashal, if I think the government’s gone too far in taking responsibility and power from the people, why the hell would I support a socialist for president? (And note, I’m not a great fan of McCain’s; it definitely a lesser of two evils election, but the “lesser” covers a HUGE gap in this case.)
And why the hell isn’t tax policy a good enough reason on its own to oppose someone? The bulk of what are taxes go to are not legitimate functions of government, yet we have to keep forking it over or go to prison.
Says the fellow who calls “neocons” “bolshevists”.
Corn is a joke. He proves all over again that lefties know nothing about economics. The article of his that you linked is about as useful as that toilet paper apologia he wrote about the Plames, “Hubris”, to cover up his involvement in the disclosures.
Where to start? Let’s see, encoutaging home ownership has never been part of the democratic aganda has it? Using community pressure and groups such as ACORN to bludgeon banks into making mortgage loans in areas or to borrowers they otherwise wouldn’t was also never part of the left’s agenda, was it? Was making loans with little or no borrower documentation part of the regulation that Corn and Marshall and the other lefties are complaining about or did the banks do that all on their own? How about the lenders devising various adjustable rate mortgage products that bite borroewers when they adjust or making loans to less credit worthy borrowers? Did Gramm and the neocons mandate those developments?
Corn tries to pawn off a big part of the problem on the lack of supervision of the CFTC over credit default swaps but provides no evidence other than a quote from a former employee. I thought the basic problem was people defaulting on mortgages – kind of a root cause to choose a favorite left phrase.
What complete and total bullshit these guys are peddling!
“Like is USSR case. That’s not the Marxism’s fault that Communists in USSR did not implement correctly it’s ideas.
Ask them , what’s correct way, they would have no answer…”
I thought they said the problem was 70 years of bad harvests or something. That’s a long string of bad weather. Tough luck that.
hilzoy has been spending a bit of time attacking Gramm of late. For all I know, she’s right.
Corn, on the other hand, earned himself no respect at all from me for his coverage of the 2000 election. A more transparently agenda-ed body of work seldom appears in the major media.
Well, sashal, Obama’s father is a Marxist. He grew up in a household that admired and taught Marxist principles; as an adult, he sought out a church whose doctrine is solidly based in Marxism, attended it for years, gave substantial contributions to it, and wrote glowingly admiring articles and a book about it. Many of his associates outside the church have been dedicated to Marxist principles. So no, we can’t say he’s a Marxist, because he doesn’t say he’s a Marxist, right?
But you’re right. He isn’t. It’s worse than that.
He’s what we call a “machine politician.” In your terms, that’s equivalent to what has been described as “Russian mafia” — opportunist assholes who mouth the ideology beautifully, but in fact divide all the world into three categories: those they have to suck up to, those who suck up to them, and rocks. Their goal is to minimize category 1 and maximize category 2, using whichever of the rocks may come to hand. Some of the rocks may be animate, but from the machine politician’s point of view they’re just rocks, some of which are useful and get used, some of which are in the way and have to be removed by whatever means may come to hand, and some of which are irrelevant. You grew up in an atmosphere almost completely controlled by such people; you ought to recognize one. Perhaps the fact that his name doesn’t end in -ov and he doesn’t have direct KGB experience is confusing you.
Regards,
Ric
Ric, by the same token we can judge, I.Kristol, J.Podhoretz at al ? And they did not have their father who they did not know as a Marxists, they actually were Marxists themselves. Right?
They’re not running for the presidency. That they’re your personal boogeymen is inconsequential to the question of Obama’s far, far left origins and connections.
Are you saying, Rob, that the child born to the lefty parents shall stay lefty himself all his life?.
It is like blood or religion? Stays for life with you ?
Obama wasn’t born to these influences, sashal, or at least the extent that he was is irrelevant. His father abandoned him, and his mother…well, left him for her parents to raise. The concern is more for the associations he sought out.
Bah, sashal. You beg the question.
Rob is right. Obama is running for the Presidency, and “President” is not a prize, not a chrome-plated cup with accompanying wall plaque engraved with effusive compliments. It’s a job, very possibly the hardest and most influential job in the world.
There is no clue, anywhere in Obama’s past life and associations, of any training or teaching that establishes free markets, free speech, individualism, entrepreneurship, or any of the other principles upon which the laws and customs of the United States are founded, constitute anything other than deliberate misdirection. All of his influences have been Marxist, and when he sought associations outside his immediate family he turned to Marxists. It’s not a question of “born to lefty parents”, although one of my principles is that it’s damned hard to shake your toilet training. It’s that there’s no evidence of anything else in the mix.
And even if such a person deliberately intended to avoid all that, even if he genuinely intended to leave Marxism aside and do the job according to American principles, because that’s the right way to do it here — even then, with the greatest good will in the world, whenever he was called upon to make a judgement or decide among alternatives, most especially when he was hurried (as often happens), it is simply not possible for him to do so based on anything other than what his entire life’s makeup has consisted of, which is Marxist theory more or less distorted. The best we could hope for in such situations would be that other influences would block or deflect the resulting actions, leading to stasis. The worst… well, the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces; the orders he issues will be carried out. It is difficult to say which would be the worst alternative should he order, say, destruction of the wall around Gaza.
And, of course, Obama isn’t a Marxist. He’s an Obamaist, which is a philosophy devoted to the aggrandizement of Barack Obama using whatever philosophical or ideological tools come to hand — which, in this case, is the Revelation in the British Museum. As has been seen many times over the years, the Manifesto and Kapital are marvelous tools for the installation and maintenance of dictatorships and oligarchies, especially when the people involved don’t believe a word of it but can project sincerity. I think the American system is robust enough to ward off a Chavez, but the process wouldn’t be painless by any means.
Regards,
Ric
This is not a particularly smart move for Lefty journos.
It is if they control the message. They can manipulate perceptions rather handily still, despite the new media and deep distrust by readers. Look at the lobby corruption issue, although they let slip that Democrats were involved a few times, the message still got out: it was all Republicans. Ask any ten people on the street who Abramoff was tied to and at least 8 will think it was only Republicans.
“I think the American system is robust enough to ward off a Chavez”
Amen to that, Ric.
As far as Obama’s presidency, I do not share in your foreboding( i hope I used this word correctly).
In my view, he will be much more moderate pragmatic the Hillary…
sashal:
You point to Horowitz and Kristol as somehow supporting your arguments, when, in fact, they undermine it.
First, both Horowitz and Kristol have been quite public in their break with the Left. No claims by either that “this was not the Left I knew” or “this was not the Marx I followed.”
Second, yes, there are some who have broken, just as in previous generations, there were those who wrote about “The God that Failed.” But how many who were raised in that system did not break? How many remained true to the Communist Party even after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? How many remain good Communists in Russia today (not to mention Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Cambridge, MA)?
Both of which go to the question of evidence. We know that Obama remains friends with the likes of Ayers and Dohrn. That, until they were too public, Wright and Pfleger were his spiritual advisors. What is the evidence that supports your argument that he is not of the Left, or even more startling, a more moderate pragmatist than Hillary?
Normally the latter would be a low bar; it says a great deal about Obama that he does not convincingly clear even that bar.
Despite the evidence of his past?
And, seriously, if you’re looking for a “moderate”, ain’t any more moderate than McCain — for better or worse.
Ric, Obama’s pop left when he was two. I can’t imagine that he left much of an impact on ickle Barry. I am not sure that his mom and grandparents were Marxists. Maybe they were.
His dad was a dickhead though for skipping town. What a bitchass.