We all buy this and “read” it together? If for no other reason than a NYT business writer is involved in what is amounts to a massive, factual fisting of credentialed frauds like Paul Krugman, and an indictment of the Democrats, big government, crony capitalism, and the power-hungry machinations of leftist governance that has weakened this country to the point of near collapse.
Here’s Walter Russell Meade’s review, courtesy Rush Limbaugh and Democratic pollster Pat Caddell. An excerpt:
By Gretchen Morgenson, one of America’s best business journalists who is currently at The New York Times, and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two. It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot. The villains? An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros. (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.)
[…]
If Morgenstern and Rosner are to be believed, the American dream didn’t die of old age; it was murdered and most of the fingerprints on the corpse come from Democratic insiders. Democratic power brokers stoked the housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the increasingly rampant corruption and incompetence at Fannie Mae and the associated predatory lenders who sheltered under its umbrella; core Democratic ideas may well be at fault.
Will the GOP establishment be able to do anything with this?
Or will, say, Huckabee, et al., remind us that Obama and the Democrats are only doing what they thinks are in the country’s best interests, wrongheaded though they may be (and yet unsullied in their patriotism and goodness); and that the real problem for the GOP is people like Sarah Palin and her unintentional — though factually correct — snowbillyisms about Paul Revere or the date of the original Tea Party…?
Well yeah, or we could save ourselves the dough and just go back and re-read the Protein Wisdom archives circa ’07-’08 and watch the thing hashed out in comments and links.
Liberals are not a big fan of the truth, so I don’t get the impression this book, or any book for that matter, will ever convince them that their policies and pandering have taken our country’s economy to the brink.
Its not important to be solvent, its important to help the “less fortunate” so they’ll vote democratic.
Meade’s review continues thus:
Demonizing Wall Street makes me uneasy. I don’t loath Wall Street, I have a problem with the corruption of Wall Street by politicians.
Seems to me like saying the internet is bad because you got a computer virus. It’s not the internet that’s bad, it’s the assholes who corrupt it.
Eh? Right-wingers loathe Wall Street? What color is the sky on this guy’s planet?
I don’t know Slarti I think there is some anti-Wall Street animus within the Republican base – not because they are capitalists but the opposite: some Wall Streeters are just tax farmers with insider connections to the permanent governing class.
It isn’t Wall Street people hate so much as the front office types at Too Big To Fail Incorporated who are predominantly Ivy League liberal maggots with a profound case of cognitive dissonance.
WATF.
I hate to repeat myself, but there is nothing else left to say.
Greed has finally overcome the human(e) principles of God. And I think God is getting VERY pissed…
Laugh all you want, but it was our allegiance to God’s laws that made this country great. You know, humility used to be the norm, but now it has been replaced with raging, out of control hubris. BMW 750’s that drive right up your butt while laying on the horn and flashing their lights at 75mph have never existed before, and neither have the greedy, undeserving, hubristic assholes who drive most of them.
I hope thirty pounds of brown rice and my new Glock are enough (and I have ALWAYS eschewed guns, but also have always stood for the plain meaning of the second amendment). I have always believed that guns attract other guns, but the coming Obama wars scare the shit out of me. Beck is right. Once the Muslims defeat the West, they will turn on the Communists. When that is done, the Shi’a will turn on the Shi’ites, and THEN the real bloodshed will begin.
We could send all of these 7th century knuckle draggers to the Hell that they deserve (where they would have to fuck Kim Kardashian and her mother eternally), but Mr. Obama and his controllers think that terrorism is no more than street crime. Obama should be impeached, but the Re-stupid-publicans blew their wad on Clinton, and now have been effectively castrated, and unable to take on a piece of shit who ignores the constitution, the congress, and the courts as daily
This is not going to end well…
As usual, Abe hit it on the head.
Also, I know Rosner decently–a very bright guy. Gretchen I know only by reputation.
It’s probably a great book and, having been involved in several of the situations they describe, likely fairly told.
LB,
mv,
The problem is that Wall Street has become synonymous with Crony Capitalism.
When fascism finally came to America, it was brought in by the Left.
I second Abe’s assessment. ‘Nuff said.
Sure. To the extent that Wall Street is being hijacked to forward the agenda of those who want the government in everyone’s business, I think right-wingers tend to revile Wall Street.
But I think by “populist anti-Wall Street rhetoric”, he’s circumlocuting the banker/Fanny Mae/Congress/HUD axis. Which constitutes only a tiny fraction of Wall Street.
“The problem is that Wall Street has become synonymous with Crony Capitalism.”
But do you loath capitalism?
BMW 750?s that drive right up your butt while laying on the horn and flashing their lights at 75mph have never existed before, and neither have the greedy, undeserving, hubristic assholes who drive most of them.
Take heart, Lost Dog, that while times may change, some things remain the same. For instance, 17th Century well-to-do Englishmen routinely hired narrow sedan chairs to whisk them through the streets of London, where crowded traffic made travel by coach slow and tedious.
Granted, it was the chairmen, rather than the passengers, who hollered and pushed, but the spirit remains the same.
“…core Democratic ideas may well be at fault.”
They had ideas beyond “Mine! Mine! MineMineMine!”?
“Slartibartfast posted on 6/9 @ 12:11 pm
Eh? Right-wingers loathe Wall Street? What color is the sky on this guy’s planet?”
It is RED, but not the red used to depict Re-stupid-publican “areas”.
I still have a hard time dealing with the illiteracy (historical, at the least) of the left and the morons who inhabit their media. I was gonna change the world too, but only for about three minutes did I ever think that I was smarter than the greatest minds in history. My conclusion? Self-esteem is self-made, not given to you by fascists. Look at the wildings in Chicago and elsewhere, and tell me these brainless pieces of shit have even one shred of decency, or even humanity, for that matter. They are nothing but wild, hydrophobic DOGS, who need to be put out of their misery.
FEAR! The only thing proggs understand…
We need to understand that, once you have secured a slot in the Bozo Media, it is way too easy to make people think that you are “reporting” popular opinion, when, in reality, you are just trying to implant your own ridiculous, infantile personal bullshit into other’s heads – with the ink of a “paper” giving you “cred” (The Advocate? TheNYT?)
By the way. The Advocate, no matter how hard it tries to appear to be local, is a national newspaper. I found it in Idaho, and was impressed by the fact that the exact same bullshit was in The Advocate in CT. They leave some space for local Marxists to help them appear to be “local”
A lack of historical perspective and knowledge (or humility) does not slow these “change the world” Cretins down one iota. In fact, history is no teacher to them. The founders were nothing more than old, stupid, white fuckheads. They are PROUD to be so much smarter than the founders! They have never experienced what they cry for, and therefore think that it will be “cool”.
Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? Well, they just didn’t do it right! Our useful idiots WILL GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME! As soon as their leaders murder another million or two (or maybe ten or twenty million) people – anyone with half a brain, let’s say. That is the progg’s MO..
THEN all will be right! Then they can sit on their ass and have the rich (who, by the way, will all be murdered and way dead) buy their flat screen TVs and feed them (after having paid their rent, of course).
And they are determined to get their part of the God given pile of money back, because those white bitches stole it from them. Fantasy Land Rules! Too stupid to know which side their bread is buttered on, they are headed, unflinchingly, into the maw of fascism.
Unlike intelligence, ignorance knows no bounds
Required reading: The Haj – Leon Uris
Whirlwind – James Clavell.
Over and out
TLD
There’s a difference between being pro-free-market and pro-business.
The problem is that Wall Street has become synonymous with Crony
CapitalismSocialismFixed!
“Squid posted on 6/9 @ 1:32 pm
BMW 750?s that drive right up your butt while laying on the horn and flashing their lights at 75mph have never existed before, and neither have the greedy, undeserving, hubristic assholes who drive most of them.
Take heart, Lost Dog, that while times may change, some things remain the same. For instance, 17th Century well-to-do Englishmen routinely hired narrow sedan chairs to whisk them through the streets of London, where crowded traffic made travel by coach slow and tedious.
Granted, it was the chairmen, rather than the passengers, who hollered and pushed, but the spirit remains the same.”
True, and I see examples in history all the time of people like that. The problem is, if I couldn’t see the sedan chair carriers headlights in my rearview (so to speak), it was not a problem. At three miles per, no great damage would be done.
I didn’t really mean to single out BMWs (incredible machines – I once owned an AWESOME 1972 2002 tii), but I DID mean to single out the morons who drive two feet off your bumper at 75mph (usually in a fobiddingly expensive car), who could kill everybody in both cars if you had to slam on your brakes. I’ve been in an almost fatal (for me) accident, and do not wish to repeat that experience because of some egotistical idiot who thinks he OWNS the road and it is my job to JUMP off the road because he paid $50,000 for his car.
Shit. I used to ride my bike anywhere and everywhere in town, but my son is not allowed out of the driveway on his bicycle. It’s just too dangerous when people are driving 50-60 mph in a thirty mile zone.
Just sayin’
LB,
No, not at all. I loathe corrupt cronyism.
McGehee
And it will introduce itself with, in the words of former House Speaker Jim Wright,
We, we jus’ wanna help yooo.
o_O
(He began the “Democratic Response” to a Reagan SOTU speech with that. No, I am not kidding. I’m sure Reagan was laughing his ass off at it.)
Sorry, I was late.
You’re not getting a new 7-series for $50k any more zino3. That would barely get you into a 5-series Bimmer these days.
I would read it, but I’m afraid it may keep me up at night .
I see there is a kindle edition. Perchance …
Aaooogaaah! sdferr sighting, call off the SAR mission and break out the medicinal malt beverages.
That is all.
I believe I’ve had a grip on what happened to the economy for some time now, and so have most of you. I’ve seen nothing in the reviews of this book that made me perk up with the hope there are new insights within.
Oh sure, maybe some names, but in the larger scheme of things, names don’t really matter unless there is a warrant issued. It’s who they are. It’s who they all are.
Here’s a Michael A. Walsh post that reminds me, despite the pleasures inherent in a good factual fisting of credentialed frauds, that the faces may change, but tyranny is always tyranny.
link
Bump in the road to what, Mr. President?
“Serfdom”, obviously.
In a lifeboat, you could probably go 2 or 3 days with the model of “He went to Harvard, he’s in charge” when you’re other 9 people consist of 5 idiots and 4 sailors/survivalists. But when the Harvard guy and the 5 idiots continue the meme that information and strategy coming from anyone other than the Harvard guy is wrong, and the sailors/survivalist begin to only be concerned with their own welfare, and a couple of idiots die, the worm turns.
Investors are surviving, and waiting for the Harvard guy to die. When it looks like he’s about to fall overboard, things will perk up. It’s close.
[…] Goldberg and Stanley Kurtz are pushing a David Brooks piece on Reckless Endangerment (the book I earlier pitched that traces to the Bill Clinton, the Democrats, and their Wall Street cronies the source for […]