Horrifying and Hilarious

For Halloween I was determined to go as something original and topical, so I decided on being a fatcat from Wall Street. Yes, half cat, half Wall Street banker. My original thought was that this would just be something clever and comical, but in truth the costume is quite frightening.

The costume is so frightening because one of my props is the Wall Street Journal, the shameless Murdoch rag that has for so long trumpeted corporate America's interests, even so far as being the soapbox for climate change deniers, giving a false impression that there is a contentious debate between two equal competing camps in climate science.



However, I decided out of fairness that I would give The Journal a chance and actually read the whole thing before I went out. Here are some quick thoughts and observations about Friday's hilarious Wall Street Journal:

Let’s start with the first page, Economy Snaps Long Slump:

The most prominent article on the front page meticulously sifts through the economic numbers and reveals that this quarter’s modest recovery has largely been dependent on increasesd government spending and stimulus efforts. The export numbers are encouraging, 1.5% of the 3.5% rise in GDP, but government programs such as the cash-for-clunkers played an equally prominent role, accounting for at least another 1.5% of the rise 3.5% in GDP.

Here’s where things get strange: A Recovery At Last

The largest editorial of the day, as if they don’t read their own paper, called for a reduction in government spending because the economy has recovered. The contradiction here is laughable; you have one section saying the GDP is propped up by government expenditure, the other side employing the propped up numbers to argue for a reduction in government expenditure.

Covering the internal politics of the US Chamber of Commerce, we have, No Deal: Chamber Chief battles Obama

If you still believe big business does actually care for public welfare, read this compelling piece. In this article we are presented with the opinions of opposing farcical corporate cut-throats, neither of whom present the slightest concern for what is most probably the greatest challenge to ever face our species. You have one faction of the Chamber, nuclear energy, supporting climate change legislation because it would incentivize nuclear power, while the coal segments of the Chamber oppose climate change legislation because it could be harmful to their industry. The opponents of climate change make the strangest arguments. For example, according to sources, Fred Palmer of coal producer Peabody EnergyCorp argues against climate regulation because God has intended us to use coal. For equally bizarre arguments straight from the Chamber itself, just look to President Donohue who has argued against climate change regulation because warmer temperatures could help reduce cold weather deaths.

On House health care legislation: House Unveils $894 Billion Bill

The health care industry has contributed more to the Democrats than the Republicans, and this bill would seem to suggest they made a wise investment. The bill requires most Americans to purchase health insurance, with a government subsidy if necessary. Recalcitrants will face a steep 2.5% income tax penalty. The market for the insurance industry is poised to grow as statistics assert 96% of Americans will have health coverage by 2019, up from 83%. However, without power to negotiate costs for the government plan, its clear premiums will not be falling anytime soon.

In the WORLD NEWS section, we have a rather nefarious and misleading article about the Iranian objections to the IAEA deal for Iran to ship uranium for enrichment to Russia.

The byline claims this to be a large setback in nuclear talks. After speaking to the gravity of the setback, the article immediately makes the claim that the United States and her allies have limited patience in negotiations. Then the writer proceeds to consider aggressive policy responses. Only after citing a few anonymous sources within the administration for their thoughts on the difficulties of negotiating with such a fickle and conniving regime, and after framing the Iranians as sufficiently menacing for military intervention do we finally come to what the WSJ is so sternly concerned with:

“Details of the Iranian objections to the proposed deal weren’t clear…the UN nuclear watchdog had only received an ‘initial response’ from Tehran to the proposal.”

The article informs us of the Obama administration’s response before it even addresses what they are responding to! The article is practically drafting its war plans over something that could be the most mundane, technical objection to the IAEA deal. In fact, if you read to the very last words of the article, you might actually reach that very conclusion. The very last line of the article is: “Iranian officials in recent days had suggested they would object to any provision that would see them shipping out all of the fuel at once.”

The Wall Street Journal thinks we ought to go to war just because Iran doesn’t do combined shipping?

In the CURRENTS section we have a typical argument meant to confuse and obstruct the climate change debate.

Jeffrey Ball claims there to be a “renewed discussion of inherent shortcomings in climate change models coming on the cusp of potentially big financial commitments.” Juxtaposing the certain economic cost with the supposedly uncertain science, Ball delves into the particulars of climate change models and their esoteric and beguiling idiosyncrasies. Once everyone reading is sufficiently confused and climate change dissenters have their say, we have the conclusion that the debate simply "isn’t settled".

This is a typical tactic by business elite (also employed by the Chamber of commerce) to confuse the public as to where the scientific debate is. Ball spends a great deal of time addressing the varying scientific models between which there is some tension, pointing to this tension to suggest there is no general consensus within the scientific community as to the fundamentals of climate change. In reality, the general consensus within the scientific community is that man-made climate change is real and the world is warming at dangerously high levels, even higher than previously expected. The debate Ball is speaking to is one concerned with very narrow particulars within climate science, conflating it elemental agreed-upon truths. This is a shallow rhetorical tool to obfuscate climate discussion.

For the last and most hilarious piece, in the OPINION section we have two opposing views on net neutrality: one by the chair and CEO of Mozilla in support of net neutrality, another by two trite Republican Senators opposing net neutrality.

What’s so great about juxtaposing these articles is that they are actually making very similar arguments. Mozilla is in favor of net neutrality because it spurs innovation that allows for smaller firms like themselves to create revolutionary products that can compete with bigger firms who have failed to adequately meet consumer needs. Both pieces spend a great deal of time trumpeting various innovations and romanticizing the smart but small Internet start-up that changes the world. Only the Senators from Utah and South Carolina claim that the FCC enforcing neutrality is somehow a great obstruction to innovation, putting a bureaucrat between you and your Internet. But in fact, as the Mozilla CEO and chair point out, net neutrality preserves the integrity of the Internet and allows for the small guys to compete on a level playing field. The Senators fail to realize that those beloved innovations would not be possible if larger Internet companies had advantages that made their leads insurmountable.

The opponents of net neutrality, instead of actually addressing what they see as being the spur of innovation, roll out tired Republican talking points about government obstruction. In the reality-based community these criticisms don't even apply to this particular scenario. The government has not suggested that they will play the role of deciding which traffic or which company is worthy of favor, only that they will stop unfair industry obstruction that amounts to just that.

A plan-less party's pathetic panning of the President's plan.

Krugman is bewildered by the Republican critique of Obama's stimulus package and its alleged lackluster affect on the labor market:

By and large I’ve long been inured to the deliberate stupidity of much political discourse. But for some reason the vision of Republicans whining, “where are those 3.5 million jobs Obama promised” — less than four months after the stimulus bill was signed, and with hardly any funds disbursed — got to me.

Without presenting an adequate alternative, Republicans have no grounds to criticize Obama’s stimulus. Republican plans for economic resuscitation were retarded by a dogmatic commitment to an unadulterated free market -- an avenue which most certainly would have been worse on the labor market.

The perverted logic employed is akin to the entire Republican car dealer fiasco: Republican dealerships are closed down, prompting conspiracy theories that the Obama administration was insidiously attacking Republican supporters, but neglecting the fact that all the Republican car dealers would have been facing the prospect of closure if there were no auto bailouts.

You can’t stand on the sidelines watching somebody bleed to death and then criticize one who desperately attempts to stop the bleeding (be it successfully or unsuccessfully).

Colbert: Closet Conservative?

A new study highlightned on Mother Jones contends that many conservatives actually interpret Stephen Colbert's caricature of a firm conservative ideologue as genuine. I always suspected that the more rigid ideological conservatives had cognitive dissonance and the complete inability to interpret material outside of an ideological prism, but this study is an incredibly frightening indictment beyond anything I could ever contemplate.

I cannot imagine anyone understanding Colbert as a closet-advocate of his preposterous diatribes and invectives. What Colbert does is arrange slogans, buzz words, and distortions in a manner that exposes the fallacy of conservative punditry logic. The slogans, buzz words, and distortions Colbert considers to be comic gold are clearly something more important for herds of Palin-ists. This is troubling because it is empirical evidence that Colbert, to some degree, hardens ideological predilections. However, doesn't it take Colbert's humor to new heights knowing that these people actually exist?

Update I

Olberman discusses the study with the author:

Don't ever trust your laissez-faire friend to be designated driver

In the midst of the greatest financial catastrophe since the great depression, already we are being bombarded with revisionist accounts of our collapse. The Bush administration will dismiss any notion that they are to bear blame, rather opting for the this has been brewing before I got here defense or shifting the blame to wall street greed--as if these Ayn Rand-ians ever had a problem with greed (see Greenspan's devotion to the ignominious author of pop-fiction spuriously christened as philosophy).

Mr. Bush claims that "wall street got drunk," but Naomi Klien quips that "Mr. Bush was serving the drinks."

Klien might be on to something; the NY Times reports that, at the very least, our laissez-faire protectors knew of the liberal servings of libations and rejected the possibility of our reckoning:

A soft-spoken Texan, Mr. Falcon ran the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a tiny government agency that oversaw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two pillars of the American housing industry. In February 2003, he was finishing a blockbuster report that warned the pillars could crumble.

. . .

Mr. Falcon’s report outlined a worst-case situation in which Fannie and Freddie could default on debt, setting off “contagious illiquidity in the market” — in other words, a financial meltdown. He also raised red flags about the companies’ soaring use of derivatives, the complex financial instruments that economic experts now blame for spreading the housing collapse.

Today, the White House cites that report — and its subsequent effort to better regulate Fannie and Freddie — as evidence that it foresaw the crisis and tried to avert it. Bush officials recently wrote up a talking points memo headlined “G.S.E.’s — We Told You So.”

But the back story is more complicated. To begin with, on the day Mr. Falcon issued his report, the White House tried to fire him.

. . .

His warnings were buried in the next day’s news coverage, trumped by the White House announcement that Mr. Bush would replace Mr. Falcon, a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton, with Mark C. Brickell, a leader in the derivatives industry that Mr. Falcon’s report had flagged.

Jason Thomas' unheeded warnings (same article):

Typically, as home prices increase, rental costs rise proportionally. But Mr. Thomas sent charts to top White House and Treasury officials showing that the monthly cost of owning far outpaced the cost to rent. To Mr. Thomas, it was a sign that housing prices were wildly inflated and bound to plunge, a condition that could set off a foreclosure crisis as conventional and subprime borrowers with little equity found they owed more than their houses were worth.

People must remember that the neo-conservatives in office are ideologically opposed to financial or housing regulations or any sort of corruption of the precarious free-market. So trapped are these economists in their dogmatic principles, much like the rigid Communists of old, that only if their purity is achieved will their plans work. The concessions made today do not mark an ideological shift, but they are the pathetic last life-lines of unimaginative clowns (it would indeed be a grand comedy if such veritable despair were not the result). There remains still opposition to the idea of moderation, regulations, worker's rights(see the ignoble attacks on blue-collar autoworkers), and what they might besmirch as banal Keynesian economics. The financial bailout is more-or-less a grand swindle with the cursory hope of restoring our confidence in inadequate casino-capitalism and not an attempt at restructuring the very fabric of what makes our economy so precarious, environmentally unsustainable, inequitable and subject to such arduous boom-bust cycles.

The grand swindle is becoming painfully obvious

Part of a letter sent to congress declaring over 100 prominent economists' reasons for disdaining the bailout:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries “systemic risk.” The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America’s dynamic and innovative private-capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

The AP on a lack of transparency:

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

. . .

There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money — not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks that don't comply.

Naomi Klien draws parallels between the corporatist nature of the bailout and that of Iraqi reconstruction:

Still the original impulse underscores the many worrying parallels between the administration's approach to the financial crisis and its approach to the Iraq War. Under cover of an emergency, Treasury is rapidly turning into an economic Green Zone, overrun with private companies collecting lucrative contracts. Fittingly, one of the first to line up at the new trough was none other than the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani — yes, that Giuliani. The firm's chairman, Patrick Oxford, could scarcely conceal his glee over the prospect of cashing in on the bailout. "This one," he told reporters, "is very, very big." At least four times bigger, in fact, than the post-9/11 homeland-security bubble, from which Giuliani and his various outfits have profited so extravagantly. Even bigger, potentially, than the price tag for the Iraq War itself.

He started it! No Mr. Speaker, he started it. . .

Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister whose pathological need to destroy the opposition set in motion an unprecedented parliamentary crisis which resulted in prorogation (dissolving of parliament,) has continued to play his brand of incendiary power-politics. In an about-face, Harper has abandoned his promise of not stacking the Senate and pushing for Senate reform (subjecting Senators to elections) in favor of appointing 18 conservative senators. The new appointments, all party-friendly hacks (fundraisers, old members, even a talk-show host) are said to be a sign of compromise and party-building aimed at assuaging Harper's rather irritated but impotent party of yes-men.

Coral Goar on Harper's Cabinet pre-parliamentary fiasco:

The members of the Conservative caucus know better than to express an independent thought or opinion. Their job is to be compliant cheerleaders.

Bob Plamondon, a Conservative party expert, on Harper's approach after the fiasco that threatened to make the Harper Conservatives Canada's shortest minority government:

Mr. Harper has concluded that rallying the troops is important to his future as party leader. . . There is place for loyalty in politics and with this Prime Minister it's been in short supply.

Brian Lagh, from the same article:

Mr. Harper seems to have realized the need to make friends and appease critics at a
time when his reputation as a parliamentary strategist is in doubt.

As to whether Mr. Harper has offended the Western base of the party - many of whose members support Senate reform - at least one party worker said the disappointment will be balanced by the fact that the PM has finally recognized the party needs nurturing.

This political crisis and the unrepentant aftermath--Harper's lack of mea culpa for derailing our Government during the worst financial times since the great depression (making the economists who beg for swift action cringe)-- is emblematic of how political brinkmanship destroys the possibility of having worthwhile leadership. By initiating a crisis that threatens to destroy the opposition, the opposition was left to fight for their political lives with their pathetic coalition (a rather unholy alliance with separatists and socialists, although Conservative derision was a truly artificially inflated panic). One political pot-shot after another (the reality of contemporary scandal-ridden Canadian politics) consumes leaders into these petty political games rather than imaginative policy making--something we truly need during a time where our traditional definition of how an economy should be governed (or not governed) is very much in question.

Although on second thought, with the apparent tendency for Canadian policy to be rather similar to their Southern counterparts, I can't help but wonder if Canadians aren't just xeroxing Bush bills into Parliament--a task which would leave them much time for their wretched squabbling.