Leroy N. Soetoro
2010-12-29 18:04:57 UTC
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/opinion/24rich.html?src=twrhp
By FRANK RICH
PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for
averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with
stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard.
And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go
unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on
Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate
indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8
percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers
a tax cut.
The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic
accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by
undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his
political opponents, and the White Houses surprising ineptitude at
selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief
executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous.
Its the countrys fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that
gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more
entrenched and powerful than ever.
No matter how much Obama talks about his tough new financial
regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed,
few believe theres been real change. Thats not just because so many
have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. Its also because
so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation
got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown
bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.
This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during
the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry
outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to
process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial
institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt
for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory
mortgages (and the reckless financial products concocted from them) in
the first place. And why should they have learned anything? Theyve
often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.
The latest example is Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of
Countrywide and the godfather of subprime mortgages. On the eve of his
trial 10 days ago, he settled Securities and Exchange Commission charges
for $67.5 million, $20 million of which will be footed by what remains
of Countrywide in its present iteration at Bank of America. Even if he
paid the whole sum himself, it would still be a small fraction of the
$521 million he collected in compensation as he pursued his gambling
spree from 2000 until 2008.
A particularly egregious chunk of that take was the $140 million he
pocketed by dumping Countrywide shares in 2006-7. It was a chapter right
out of Kenneth Lays Enron playbook: Mozilo reassured shareholders that
all was peachy even as his private e-mail was awash in panic over the
toxic mortgages bringing Countrywide (and the country) to ruin. Lay,
at least, was convicted by a jury and destined to decades in the slammer
before his death.
The much acclaimed new documentary about the global economic meltdown,
Inside Job, has it right. As its narrator, Matt Damon, intones, our
country has been robbed by insiders who destroyed their own companies
and plunged the world into crisis and then walked away from the
wreckage with their fortunes intact. These insiders include Dick Fuld
and four other executives at Lehman Brothers who got to keep all the
money (more than $1 billion) after Lehman went bankrupt. And of course
Robert Rubin, who encouraged Citigroup to step up its investment in
high-risk bets like Countrywides mortgage-backed securities. Rubin, now
back as a rainmaker on Wall Street, collected more than $115million in
compensation during roughly the same period Mozilo earned his half a
billion. Citi, which required a $45 billion taxpayers bailout, recently
secured its own slap-on-the-wrist S.E.C. settlement at $75 million,
less than Rubins earnings and less than its 2003 penalty ($101 million)
for its role in hiding Enron profits.
It should pain the White House that its departing economic guru, the
Rubin protégé Lawrence Summers, is an even bigger heavy in Inside Job
than in the hit movie of election season, The Social Network. Summers
like the former Goldman Sachs chief executive and Bush Treasury
secretary Hank Paulson is portrayed as just the latest in a procession
of policy makers who keep rotating in and out of government and the
financial industry, almost always to that industrys advantage. As the
star economist Nouriel Roubini tells the filmmaker, Charles Ferguson,
the financial sector on Wall Street has step by step captured the
political system on the Democratic and the Republican side alike. But
it would be wrong to single out Summers or any individual official for
the Obama administrations image of being lax in pursuing finances bad
actors. This tone is set at the top.
Asked in Inside Job why theres been no systematic investigation of
the 2008 crash, Roubini answers: Because then youd find the culprits.
With the aid of the Manhattan Madam (and current stunt New York
gubernatorial candidate) Kristin Davis, the film also asks why federal
prosecutors who were perfectly happy to use Eliot Spitzers personal
vices to force him to resign in 2008 have not used rampant sex-and-drug
trade on Wall Street as a tool for flipping witnesses to pursue the
culprits behind the financial crimes that devastated the nation.
The Obama administration seems not to have a prosecutorial gene. Its
shy about calling a fraud a fraud when it occurs in high finance. This
caution was exemplified most recently by the secretary of housing and
urban development, Shaun Donovan, whose response to the public outcry
over the banks foreclosure shenanigans was to take to The Huffington
Post last weekend. The notion that many of the very same institutions
that helped cause this housing crisis may well be making it worse is not
only frustrating its shameful, he wrote.
Well, yes! Obama couldnt have said it more eloquently himself. But with
all due respect to Secretary Donovans blogging finesse, he wasnt
promising action. He was just stroking the liberal base while the
administration once again punted. In our new banking scandal, as in
those before it, attorneys general in the states, where many pension
funds were decimated by Wall Street Ponzi schemes, are pursuing the
crimes Washington has not. The largest bill of reparations paid out by
Bank of America for Countrywides deceptive mortgage practices $8.4
billion was to settle a suit by 11 state attorneys general on the
warpath.
Since Obama has neither aggressively pursued the crashs con men nor
compellingly explained how they gamed the system, he sometimes looks as
if hes fronting for the industry even if hes not. Voters are not only
failing to give the White House credit for its economic successes but
finding it guilty of transgressions it didnt commit. The opposition is
more than happy to pump up that confusion. When Mitch McConnell appeared
on ABCs This Week last month, he typically railed against the
extreme government of the last year and a half, citing its takeover
of banks as his first example. That this was utter fiction the
takeover took place two years ago, before Obama was president, with
McConnell voting for it went unchallenged by his questioner,
Christiane Amanpour, and probably by many viewers inured to this big
lie.
The real tragedy here, though, is not whatever happens in midterm
elections. Its the long-term prognosis for America. The obscene income
inequality bequeathed by the three-decade rise of the financial industry
has societal consequences graver than even the fundamental economic
unfairness. When we reward financial engineers infinitely more than
actual engineers, we lure our most talented graduates to the largely
unproductive chase for Wall Street riches, as the economist Robert H.
Frank wrote in The Times last weekend. Worse, Frank added, the continued
squeeze on the middle class leads to a wholesale decline in the quality
of American life from more bankruptcy filings and divorces to a
collapse in public services, whether road repair or education, that
taxpayers will no longer support.
Even as the G.O.P. benefits from unlimited corporate campaign money,
its pulling off the remarkable feat of persuading a large swath of
anxious voters that it will lead a populist charge against the rulers of
our economic pyramid the banks, energy companies, insurance giants and
other special interests underwriting its own candidates. Should those
forces prevail, an America that still hasnt remotely recovered from the
worst hard times in 70 years will end up handing over even more power to
those who greased the skids.
We can blame much of this turn of events on the deep pockets of oil
billionaires like the Koch brothers and on the Supreme Courts Citizens
United decision, which freed corporations to try to buy any election
they choose. But the Obama White House is hardly innocent. Its failure
to hold the busts malefactors accountable has helped turn what should
have been a clear-cut choice on Nov. 2 into a blurry contest between the
party of big corporations and the party of business as usual.
--
Obama's black racist USAG appointee.
Eric Holder, racist black United States Attorney General drops voter
intimidation charges against the Black Panthers, "You are about to be
ruled by the black man, cracker!"
Eric Holder, prejudiced black United States Attorney General settles the
hate crime debate, "Whites Not Protected by Hate Crime Laws."
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to
former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New
York's million dollar tax evasion. On December 3, 2010, Congress voted
to censure Rangel for 11 ethics violations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
fought removal of Charles B. Rangel from the House Ways and Means
Committee.
Felony President. 18 USC, Sec. 600. Promise of employment or other
benefit for political activity
Obama violated the law by trying to buy Joe Sestak off with a political
appointment in exchange for not pursuing an election bid to replace
Arlen Specter. Obama violated the law by trying to buy former Colorado
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff off last fall to see if he'd be interested
in an administration job -- instead of running against Sen. Michael
Bennet.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ***@netfront.net ---
By FRANK RICH
PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for
averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with
stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard.
And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go
unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on
Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate
indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8
percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers
a tax cut.
The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic
accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by
undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his
political opponents, and the White Houses surprising ineptitude at
selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief
executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous.
Its the countrys fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that
gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more
entrenched and powerful than ever.
No matter how much Obama talks about his tough new financial
regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed,
few believe theres been real change. Thats not just because so many
have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. Its also because
so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation
got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown
bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.
This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during
the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry
outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to
process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial
institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt
for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory
mortgages (and the reckless financial products concocted from them) in
the first place. And why should they have learned anything? Theyve
often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.
The latest example is Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of
Countrywide and the godfather of subprime mortgages. On the eve of his
trial 10 days ago, he settled Securities and Exchange Commission charges
for $67.5 million, $20 million of which will be footed by what remains
of Countrywide in its present iteration at Bank of America. Even if he
paid the whole sum himself, it would still be a small fraction of the
$521 million he collected in compensation as he pursued his gambling
spree from 2000 until 2008.
A particularly egregious chunk of that take was the $140 million he
pocketed by dumping Countrywide shares in 2006-7. It was a chapter right
out of Kenneth Lays Enron playbook: Mozilo reassured shareholders that
all was peachy even as his private e-mail was awash in panic over the
toxic mortgages bringing Countrywide (and the country) to ruin. Lay,
at least, was convicted by a jury and destined to decades in the slammer
before his death.
The much acclaimed new documentary about the global economic meltdown,
Inside Job, has it right. As its narrator, Matt Damon, intones, our
country has been robbed by insiders who destroyed their own companies
and plunged the world into crisis and then walked away from the
wreckage with their fortunes intact. These insiders include Dick Fuld
and four other executives at Lehman Brothers who got to keep all the
money (more than $1 billion) after Lehman went bankrupt. And of course
Robert Rubin, who encouraged Citigroup to step up its investment in
high-risk bets like Countrywides mortgage-backed securities. Rubin, now
back as a rainmaker on Wall Street, collected more than $115million in
compensation during roughly the same period Mozilo earned his half a
billion. Citi, which required a $45 billion taxpayers bailout, recently
secured its own slap-on-the-wrist S.E.C. settlement at $75 million,
less than Rubins earnings and less than its 2003 penalty ($101 million)
for its role in hiding Enron profits.
It should pain the White House that its departing economic guru, the
Rubin protégé Lawrence Summers, is an even bigger heavy in Inside Job
than in the hit movie of election season, The Social Network. Summers
like the former Goldman Sachs chief executive and Bush Treasury
secretary Hank Paulson is portrayed as just the latest in a procession
of policy makers who keep rotating in and out of government and the
financial industry, almost always to that industrys advantage. As the
star economist Nouriel Roubini tells the filmmaker, Charles Ferguson,
the financial sector on Wall Street has step by step captured the
political system on the Democratic and the Republican side alike. But
it would be wrong to single out Summers or any individual official for
the Obama administrations image of being lax in pursuing finances bad
actors. This tone is set at the top.
Asked in Inside Job why theres been no systematic investigation of
the 2008 crash, Roubini answers: Because then youd find the culprits.
With the aid of the Manhattan Madam (and current stunt New York
gubernatorial candidate) Kristin Davis, the film also asks why federal
prosecutors who were perfectly happy to use Eliot Spitzers personal
vices to force him to resign in 2008 have not used rampant sex-and-drug
trade on Wall Street as a tool for flipping witnesses to pursue the
culprits behind the financial crimes that devastated the nation.
The Obama administration seems not to have a prosecutorial gene. Its
shy about calling a fraud a fraud when it occurs in high finance. This
caution was exemplified most recently by the secretary of housing and
urban development, Shaun Donovan, whose response to the public outcry
over the banks foreclosure shenanigans was to take to The Huffington
Post last weekend. The notion that many of the very same institutions
that helped cause this housing crisis may well be making it worse is not
only frustrating its shameful, he wrote.
Well, yes! Obama couldnt have said it more eloquently himself. But with
all due respect to Secretary Donovans blogging finesse, he wasnt
promising action. He was just stroking the liberal base while the
administration once again punted. In our new banking scandal, as in
those before it, attorneys general in the states, where many pension
funds were decimated by Wall Street Ponzi schemes, are pursuing the
crimes Washington has not. The largest bill of reparations paid out by
Bank of America for Countrywides deceptive mortgage practices $8.4
billion was to settle a suit by 11 state attorneys general on the
warpath.
Since Obama has neither aggressively pursued the crashs con men nor
compellingly explained how they gamed the system, he sometimes looks as
if hes fronting for the industry even if hes not. Voters are not only
failing to give the White House credit for its economic successes but
finding it guilty of transgressions it didnt commit. The opposition is
more than happy to pump up that confusion. When Mitch McConnell appeared
on ABCs This Week last month, he typically railed against the
extreme government of the last year and a half, citing its takeover
of banks as his first example. That this was utter fiction the
takeover took place two years ago, before Obama was president, with
McConnell voting for it went unchallenged by his questioner,
Christiane Amanpour, and probably by many viewers inured to this big
lie.
The real tragedy here, though, is not whatever happens in midterm
elections. Its the long-term prognosis for America. The obscene income
inequality bequeathed by the three-decade rise of the financial industry
has societal consequences graver than even the fundamental economic
unfairness. When we reward financial engineers infinitely more than
actual engineers, we lure our most talented graduates to the largely
unproductive chase for Wall Street riches, as the economist Robert H.
Frank wrote in The Times last weekend. Worse, Frank added, the continued
squeeze on the middle class leads to a wholesale decline in the quality
of American life from more bankruptcy filings and divorces to a
collapse in public services, whether road repair or education, that
taxpayers will no longer support.
Even as the G.O.P. benefits from unlimited corporate campaign money,
its pulling off the remarkable feat of persuading a large swath of
anxious voters that it will lead a populist charge against the rulers of
our economic pyramid the banks, energy companies, insurance giants and
other special interests underwriting its own candidates. Should those
forces prevail, an America that still hasnt remotely recovered from the
worst hard times in 70 years will end up handing over even more power to
those who greased the skids.
We can blame much of this turn of events on the deep pockets of oil
billionaires like the Koch brothers and on the Supreme Courts Citizens
United decision, which freed corporations to try to buy any election
they choose. But the Obama White House is hardly innocent. Its failure
to hold the busts malefactors accountable has helped turn what should
have been a clear-cut choice on Nov. 2 into a blurry contest between the
party of big corporations and the party of business as usual.
--
Obama's black racist USAG appointee.
Eric Holder, racist black United States Attorney General drops voter
intimidation charges against the Black Panthers, "You are about to be
ruled by the black man, cracker!"
Eric Holder, prejudiced black United States Attorney General settles the
hate crime debate, "Whites Not Protected by Hate Crime Laws."
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact, to
former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New
York's million dollar tax evasion. On December 3, 2010, Congress voted
to censure Rangel for 11 ethics violations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
fought removal of Charles B. Rangel from the House Ways and Means
Committee.
Felony President. 18 USC, Sec. 600. Promise of employment or other
benefit for political activity
Obama violated the law by trying to buy Joe Sestak off with a political
appointment in exchange for not pursuing an election bid to replace
Arlen Specter. Obama violated the law by trying to buy former Colorado
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff off last fall to see if he'd be interested
in an administration job -- instead of running against Sen. Michael
Bennet.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ***@netfront.net ---