The free market case against capitalism

By Carl 

Theoretically, laissez-faire capitalism predicts that the actions of self-interested individuals, on the whole, will benefit society. The balancing act any society has to commit to is to ensure that the community standards are upheld while people pursue their greed (itself a moral value that is antithetical to any society).

There are very few political systems that allow for the existence of capitalism. Certainly, democracy's attempt to "form a more perfect union" is diametrically opposite of the goals of capitalism, which is to destabilize and unbalance society as much as possible.

Still, capitalism does work in the framework of a society if it is kept reined in. Democracy can exist with capitalism, even thrive if, as with religion, the two are kept separate.

That crucial distinction is starting to fray.

Now, we may find capitalism itself has come unglued. Comes Rana Foroohar of Time magazine:

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo.–based nonprofit that researches and funds entrepreneurship, has found that over the past several decades, the growth in size and importance of the financial sector has run in tandem with lower — not higher — rates of new-business formation. In the 1980s, when Wall Street really took off, the number of new firms created fell, and in the 1990s, it plateaued and has been stagnant ever since. Basically, the facts show the opposite of what Wall Street would have us believe. A number of factors explain that, but one of the most important, argue the study's authors, is that the financial sector is sucking talent and entrepreneurial energy from more socially beneficial sectors of the economy.

You can see it in the graduating classes of the country's top universities. Harvard graduates, for example, enter financial occupations at a far higher rate now than they did in the 1970s. It's a trend that accelerated markedly in the past decade, as the computerization of finance made the profession both more lucrative and more intellectually stimulating (one can now think about the 12th dimension rather than just golf). The proportion of graduates from MIT, for example, who went to Wall Street rose from 18% in 2003 to 25% in 2006.

The problem is that these are the types of people most likely to start the sort of dynamic, job-creating new companies that we need. No wonder economists like Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps speculate that the financialization of the U.S. and subsequent dampening of entrepreneurship may be at the heart of our long-term productivity slowdown (average productivity rates have been lower in the decades since the 1970s than in those before).

Whatever the corporate titans lobbying in Washington say, statistics show that it's new companies, not old, that grow the economy. Some 40% of U.S. GDP this year will come from firms that didn't exist in the 1980s. And nearly all the new jobs in the U.S. are created by firms less than five years old. "The political emphasis shouldn't be on making big firms work," says Kauffman Foundation head Carl Schramm, "but on helping new ones take root."

In other words, distilling these paragraphs to their essence, it's not the poor economy that's responsible for the slow creation of jobs.

It is, ironically, the excellent economy that's hampering job creation. The excellent economy in terms of Wall Street.

There's no getting around the fact that any rational person is going to engage in behavior that provides them with the best opportunity to create the most comfortable life for themselves. It's why Alex Rodriguez makes almost as much as a player for the Yankees than the entire Kansas City Royals baseball team.

It's why every kid on the farms of Indiana or the streets of the inner city plays basketball, for that one shot to make it to the NBA and earn bookoo bucks.

And it's why its ridiculous to whine about athletes when quants (those mathematicians who create these complex instruments that no one can explain without using higher mathematics), who do even less for Main Street America than any high-priced athlete, make fortunes while not creating a single job.

I mean, at least A-Rod puts fannies in the seats and that means you need a stadium and ushers and peanut vendors and security guards and ticket takers, all jobs for people like you and me.

Indeed, one could make the case that the job of a quant is to destroy jobs by betting on inefficiencies in the markets that hurt individual companies as well as individual investors. They suck money out of the economy and hide it in complicated financial instrument that can lose value faster than a banana can rot.

You'll notice that the free market still works for the community as a whole but the community itself has changed. Wall Street has wholly divorced itself from America, just as the rise of multinational corporations have guaranteed that "American" companies are no long American.

Wall Street has about as much fealty to Main Street as you have to the colony of mosquitoes forming on a puddle in your backyard. You come to view them as at best a nuisance and at worst an enemy.

I worry about the future of this country. Can you blame a kid who's really good at math for going in and making as much money as he can without risking a dime out of his pocket?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Your call has been disconnected

By Carl 

Well, this is good news, right?

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the labor market is firming heading into the second quarter.

Jobless claims fell by 6,000 to 388,000 in the week ended March 26, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The government also issued its annual revisions to the seasonal- adjustment factors, which caused a “mild upward shift” in the number of applications, an agency spokesman said as the figures were released to reporters.

A slowdown in firings and growing payrolls may bolster further gains in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy. Companies added 210,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate held at 8.9 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show tomorrow. 

A sidenote: there is some reason for concern for the Obama camp, in that high unemployment is usually a harbinger of defeat in an election. The latest number, 8.9%, is notably down from the near-10% of this time last year, but more has to be done. Fortunately, these things have a way of gaining momentum.

Employment is like Sisyphus' boulder: once it starts up the hill, it becomes easier and faster, but when it falls, it plummets.

Americans getting jobs. Sounds like a sign of a healthy economy. 

You'd think.

As  I write this, the markets have just opened for the day. Mind you, nearly every index is up for the year at or near record paces not seen since the tech bubble of 1998, but today, when finally it looks good for an American middle class worker, the toilet lid flies up and the markets sink. The Dow is off 13 points, and S&P 500 and NASDAQ are both struggling to stay even.

What is it with corporate America that they can't sync up with Main Street Americans?

In a nutshell, there is no more Corporate America any more than there are American cars. So many companies have become multinational conglomerates that their fortunes no longer rise or fall along with those of you and I here in the USA.

It used to be "what was good for GM was good for America," but that's no longer the case. GM got bailed out. Americans got HAMPered, the plug having been pulled on the only sensible bailout program in the recession, the one that helped Americans keep their homes.

But I forgot. That program wasn't going to turn a profit for the US. Or a bigger one for the banks. My error.

Just like full employment means the banks can't hold your feet to the fire in interest and late payment charges.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

It's tough to be a billionaire

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Glenn Greenwald looks at the self-pity of the Koch brothers et al.:

Since the financial crisis of 2008, one of the most revealing spectacles has been the parade of financial elites who petulantly insist that they are the victims of societal hostility: political officials heap too much blame on them, public policy burdens them so unfairly, the public resents them, and -- most amazingly of all -- President Obama is a radical egalitarian who is unprecedentedly hostile to business interests...

I'm not someone who sees the Koch Brothers as some sort of unique threat. I mostly regard them as little more than a symbol of the death of democratic values in the U.S. -- the way in which the possession of vast financial resources is an absolute prerequisite to making any impact on the national political process, and conversely, how those without such resources are politically inconsequential and impotent (short of their fomenting serious social unrest)...

For billionaires to see themselves as the True Victims, to complain that the President and the Government are waging some sort of war against them in the name of radical egalitarianism, is so removed from reality -- universes away -- that's it's hard to put into words. And the fiscal recklessness that the Kochs and their comrades tirelessly point to was a direct by-product of the last decade's rule by the Republican Party which they fund: from unfunded, endless wars to a never-ending expansion of the privatized National Security and Surveillance States to the financial crisis that exploded during the Bush presidency. But whatever else is true, there are many victims of fiscal policy in America: the wealthiest business interests and billionaires like the Koch Brothers are the few who are not among them.

Much of this self-pitying anger is directed at Obama, which is pretty hilarious given that, as Greenwald points out, Obama has been very much a part of the problem, allowing the corporate control of America that was so much a part of the Bush II presidency (and so much a part of America -- see the excellent Inside Job, if you haven't already -- regardless of who's in the White House and which party controls Congress) to continue. In that regard, he hasn't really changed anything, even if Republicans keep trying to portray him as a socialist. He is nothing of the kind. He has been very good to Wall Street and very good to Corporate America generally.

And as for the billionaires:

This is exactly the psychological affliction that leads Wall Street plunderers and tycoons and billionaires to see themselves as the victims of the resentful lower-classes and the "radical egalitarians" who run the U.S. Government. Even as they get richer and everyone else gets poorer, even as the very few remaining restraints on their political power are abolished, even as the disparities in wealth and power grow ever-larger, they become increasingly convinced that everything is stacked against them, that there is a grand conspiracy to deprive them of what is rightfully theirs. All of this could be confined to a fascinating, abstract psychological study if not for the fact that the people who think this way exercise the most political power and continue to exercise more and more.

And for the fact that, as American democracy collapses in on itself and becomes a sham, and as American wealth is concentrated more and more in the hands of the plutocracy, the vast majority of the American people, many of whom are sinking further and further into debt and further and further into abject hopelessness and utter despair, have little to no power at all.

I'm not sure that's quite what the Founders envisioned.

What will it take for Americans to wake up and reform capitalism?

By Carl 

This is what:

Yes, the rich live in a different world. And no, information won't change them. But a revolution will. Revolutions build slowly over a long time. Then, suddenly, a critical mass, a flash point, something totally unexpected ignites the ticking bomb.

It happened recently in a remote Tunisian village. Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, unable to pay bribes, set himself on fire to protest police confiscation of his unlicensed vegetable cart. That triggered a revolution. And his death rapidly led to the collapse of a 24-year dictatorship.

Today we have four hot time bombs, tick-ticking, soon to make history; any one can easily accelerate the revolution that's already killing Wall Street from within. 

I'll list them but I urge you to go to Market Watch and read the descriptions in full:

1. Wealth gap: Super-Rich vs class wars, death of democracy
2. Wall Street's doomsday capitalism vs rule by anarchy
3. Pentagon's perpetual war machine vs America's budget time bomb
4. Global population explosion vs resources, jobs, better lifestyles

ANY ONE of those will trigger a mass collapse of the American economy. Any one. All four are in motion already.

You see, the rich really are different. As the article notes, they vacation in elite resorts, they meet at elite clubs, and they manipulate the economy from behind barriers and firewalls that would make Fort Knox blink. 

And they are woefully out of touch with the nations they "reside" in. "Reside" is in quotes because like there are now transnational corporations, there are now transnational people. They may reside in the U.S. or Britain or Switzerland or some small tropical island, but their power and influence and economic activity is so globally pervasive that they can influence far flung regions of the globe.

Prime example? Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who made his media bones in the UK before crossing the Atlantic, and then the Pacific to set up Asia's first pan-national satellite television system.

The rich not only are different from me and you, they don't even care about me and you.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Be careful which enemies you make

By Edward Copeland 

In Charles Ferguson's outstanding documentary on the financial meltdown, Inside Job, one of his interview subjects is former N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who'd been known as the Sheriff of Wall Street for going after shady business practices long before the collapse. Toward the end of Inside Job, it makes the point that none of the financial firms ever faced investigations for their traders writing off high-priced escort services as business expenses, but the Justice Department did pursue Spitzer when it was discovered after he was governor that he used an escort service. The work that Spitzer did and the promise he held as a gifted politician that came crashing down because of his personal weakness are detailed well in another excellent documentary from the prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

Gibney also made the great 2010 documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money as well as the similarly outstanding Taxi to Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the World. He also served in producing capacities on Ferguson's excellent No End in Sight and the brilliant Who Killed the Electric Car?

While Client 9 definitely makes the case that the political downfall of Spitzer may have been an orchestrated hit by his enemies in the business community and the Republican Party, Gibney doesn't try to downplay Spitzer's faults beyond the weakness that led him to seek high-priced sexual companionship in the first place. The film paints a broader portrait of the man's achievements and his hubris, which include a superiority complex and an approach that makes him come off as a bully, even if what he was trying to do was right.

As with the best documentaries, Client 9 teaches you things that you didn't know. It seems as if so many of the recent outstanding documentaries, no matter what their subject may be, show how spoonfed the U.S. media are, regurgitating "facts" that get handed to them while seldom checking their veracity. As far as I knew (and I imagine this to be the case with most people who heard about Spitzer and the call girl), his preferred escort was "Kristen" aka Ashley DuPre, who then turned herself into another of those freak celebrities, who ended up with a job at Rupert Murdoch's New York Post as a love and sex columnist.

Client 9, through interviews with one of the owners of The Emperors Club escort service, reveals that Spitzer saw "Kristen" maybe once but mainly went out with a woman who went by the name Angelica. Gibney interviewed her, but she didn't want her face or voice revealed, so an actress plays her part and reads the transcript of her interviews. Ironically, she's now a commodities day trader.

Where Spitzer really might have earned the enemies who were determined to stop him was when as attorney general he went after the head of AIG, Hank Greenberg, for the crooked financial games that company was playing, long before that company's collapse became a major cause of the world financial collapse and cost U.S. taxpayers billions in not one, but two bailouts. Greenberg was not at the helm by then, having been removed by his own board for violating company rules, but the methods AIG employed while Greenberg ran it were still going on and led to AIG's implosion.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia prevented Spitzer's pursuit of Greenberg prior to that by claiming the Justice Department was building a case against Greenberg, which they never filed. However, this same Garcia intercepted wire transfers Spitzer made and started looking into escort services that led to leaks that got Spitzer's sexual habits revealed. This also came at the time the Bush Administration was firing U.S. attorneys who weren't prosecuting enough Democrats.

Needless to say, when prosecutors go after prostitution rings, they rarely go after the clients, just the owners and the prostitutes. In contrast, around the same time, the D.C. Madam case surfaced and they only pursued the madam there, even though it was revealed that two of her clients were high-profile Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who was just re-elected. He faced no legal inquiries.

Many believed that Spitzer had a good shot at being the country's first Jewish president. I just wonder if he'd been able to keep after Wall Street as he was doing, whether some of the mess that happened could have been prevented since no regulatory fixes have really been put in place to stop it since. Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations shall not perish from the United States and we the little people always will be the ones paying the price. Thank goodness we have documentary filmmakers such as Alex Gibney to do the job that journalists have long since abandoned or forgotten how to do.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

The United States of Goldman Sachs

By Edward Copeland 

In 2007, Charles Ferguson directed the great documentary No End in Sight. Last year, he helmed another that told the story of an entirely different type of destruction, Inside Job, only this time the war wasn't against another country, it was against the world's financial system and instead of only those actually in Iraq and their families paying a price, we all suffered for Wall Street's greed and Washington's malfeasance.

As Ferguson did in No End in Sight, he makes a very complicated subject easier to understand through his masterful presentation of the facts and history of the situation (narrated by Matt Damon here) and interviews with key subjects. It's not an easy task in Inside Job because trying to explain the mechanics of financial derivatives and its role in the economic collapse is nowhere near as easy to do as it was to show all the mistakes and blunders involved in the Iraq war.

Not surprisingly, most of the key figures such as Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner, etc., refused to be interviewed for the film, but what's shocking is that Wall Street and financial service figures who do give interviews feel completely at ease showing their arrogance and defending the industry's actions.

Inside Job, briskly edited by Chad Beck and Adam Bolt, shows how decades of deregulation under presidents of both parties led to one crisis after another, each bigger than the last, with seemingly no one in Washington learning any lessons.

The film also provides fascinating tidbits such as the fact that as recently as the early 1970s bond traders' salaries were low enough, that some had to take second jobs to make ends meet. It also tells how employees of various financial firms engaged in cocaine-fueled parties with prostitutes which were billed to the companies as things such as computer supplies.

The handful of firms who would tell their clients a purchase was good while betting on its failure behind their back is staggering, though not as staggering as the refusal of regulators to do any regulating or the number of former top Goldman Sachs executives who end up serving in presidential administrations of both parties. (When Hank Paulson stepped down as Goldman CEO to be Dubya's treasury secretary, he had to sell $450 million in Goldman Sachs stock but thanks to a law signed by the first Bush, he paid exactly zero taxes on it and some say the rich are taxed too much?)

Ferguson's No End in Sight proved to be not only informative, but to provoke outrage at all of the things that were and weren't done prior to the Iraq war. Inside Job does just the same for the history of the financial collapse, especially when you see all of the names who profited from Wall Street's greed that have populated the Obama Administration, not that he invented the problem.

It began with Reagan, got worse with the first Bush, declined further under Clinton and took the big nosedive under the second Bush. Now, Obama's advisers come from the same group and Congress passes reforms without teeth because Wall Street controls what happens. Inside Job tells this infuriating story in great detail and it tells it well.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

Cuomo targets government employees, will call for pay freeze

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As the Times is reporting, new New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is targeting government employees as part of a broader program of fiscal tightening:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will seek a one-year salary freeze for state workers as part of an emergency financial plan he will lay out in his State of the State address on Wednesday, senior administration officials said.

The move will signal the opening of what is expected to be a grueling fight between the new governor and the public-sector unions that have traditionally dominated the state's political establishment.

It will also come days after the New Year's Eve layoffs of more than 900 state workers, an event that union representatives marked with a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Capitol and outside government offices in five other cities.

"The governor said during his campaign that the difficult financial times call for shared sacrifice," said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the governor's address. "A salary freeze is obviously a difficult thing for many government workers, but it's necessary if the state is going to live within its means."

I have very much the same response to this as I had to President Obama's targeting of federal employees. It's a stupid and cynically symbolic move: Big headlines, minimal actual impact on the actual budget. As I put it at the end of November:

Of course, government is an easy target. People generally want government to do what they want -- and to be there when they need something (you know, like disaster relief or police protection) -- but don't want to pay for it.

And while even in this time of economic crisis companies are making huge profits and CEO are taking home huge salaries and bonuses, government employees can easily be scapegoated as the problem, or at least as a large part of the problem, even if they aren't.

It's not about reality, it's about public perception -- and conservatives have managed to convince much of the public that government employees are all a bunch of overpaid layabouts with their snouts in the public trough.

To be fair to Cuomo, things appear to be a bit more challenging at the state level, particularly in New York, where there isn't a bloated military budget that could be significantly pared down and where there aren't tax cuts for the wealthy that ought to be repealed. 

But what I also objected to was Obama's language. He talked back then about how "getting this deficit under control is going to require some broad sacrifice and that sacrifice must be shared by employees of the federal government." Fair enough, but who else is being asked to sacrifice other than those who are already having so much difficulty dealing with the ongoing economic situation? It is likely that any deal with Republicans over the deficit will require cuts to Social Security, and of course Republicans federally have blocked various efforts to extend unemployment and other benefits to those who need help the most. So the rich get their ridiculous tax cuts for another two years while the poor struggle even to put food on the table. And government employees (while, admittedly, not poor) face a pay freeze while Wall Street execs, bailed out by the government, end up with bonuses as massive as ever and corporate America piles on the profits while refusing to hire.

Where exactly is the shared sacrifice?

Look, I get it. Obama and Cuomo have to appear to be doing something about their respective deficits and, as government executives, they're in a position to target government employees, not Wall Street bigwigs and corporate bloodsuckers. And I'm not saying that government should regulate the pay of the private sector -- yes, I'm still a capitalist.

But stop it with the "shared sacrifice" nonsense. We all know who's being asked to sacrifice -- or, rather, who's being forced to sacrifice -- and who isn't.

And we all know that what Cuomo is doing, like what Obama is doing, is almost purely symbolic. As the Times notes, "the immediate budget savings from the freeze would be relatively modest -- between $200 million and $400 million against a projected deficit in excess of $9 billion -- achieving it would be politically meaningful." It's a way around the Assembly, a way around his own state Democratic Party, and a way around the public-sector unions -- a way to look aggressive and non-partisan. The good thing is that any freeze would have to be collectively bargained, and the unions should demand a good deal in return should they agree to it. (A good thing, too, is that a freeze would likely just be for one year -- so it's possible that a fair deal could be reached.)

And remember, the pay that government employees don't get is money that won't be spent, that won't help stimulate the economy at a time when economic stimulation, far more than fiscal restraint, is most needed to get the economy moving again.

I understand the need for all of us -- individuals, corporations, and governments alike -- to live within our means. It is deeply irresponsible, not to mention deeply unfair to future generations, for governments to rack up massive debt. And, yes, tough choices need to be made. But now is not the time for tightening before all else, for restraint over stimulation, for stupid, cynical moves that target the public sector, moves dressed up in the high-falutin', hypocritical, and simply dishonest rhetoric of shared sacrifice.

I have high hopes for Gov. Cuomo and for the most part I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We'll have to wait for Cuomo's State of the State address on Wednesday for the details of the plan, but I'm just not sure targeting government employees at this time of economic uncertainty and widespread despair is really the way to go.

It's not alright, Jack

"We've lost sight in Washington of what Congress is for, of who Congress serves. It serves the people of the United States. Instead, we've found it serves Chinese sweatshop owners, Russian gangsters — Congress is now serving those interests. The thing is it has become accepted now, so part of our political culture now, that it's normal. Your average citizen doesn't have the voice you'd expect him to have because these voices are much louder and much better financed."
— J. Michael Waller, director, Institute of World Politics

By Edward Copeland 

It's slightly confusing that jailed former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has inspired two 2010 films about his escapades and that both have Casino Jack in the title. I've yet to see the fictional feature starring Kevin Spacey and directed by the late George Hickenlooper, but the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money by Alex Gibney, the great documentarian behind past gems such as the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room has made an excellent nonfiction version. On top of that, Gibney also directed or co-directed THREE other 2010 documentaries I've yet to see, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Freakonomics and My Trip to Al-Qaeda. He also executive produced the phenomenal No End in Sight and was a consulting producer on the exquisite Who Killed the Electric Car? Busy man and from the films I've seen him make so far, a damn fine nonfiction filmmaker as well as a prolific one.

Even if you followed the tale of uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff closely, Gibney's film will keep you riveted as it tells the story of his life and various malfeasance through interviews with many of the associates who were involved in his schemes, either as victims or perpetrators. You also get handy reminders of what a true character the man really was, dating all the way back to his days as he took over the national college Republicans to spin them in a more conservative direction with friends such as Karl Rove and Grover Norquist.

It's also funny to remember his interest and obsessions with pop culture, such as when he grew tired of his secular Jewish rearing and decided to become orthodox based on, of all things, seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof. Then there is the obsession he and other college Republicans had with the movie Patton, repeating the famous speech George C. Scott delivers in the film, only replacing every German or Nazi reference with Democrat. Longing for spy games at heart, when an Angolan adventure goes awry, Abramoff even turned to movie producing, financing the Dolph Lundgren hoot Red Scorpion.

However, lobbying proved far more lucrative to Abramoff than show business ever could have been, ethics and laws be damned. It led to the the top our system of legalized bribery (and some instances of not-so-legalized bribery) as he peddled influence on Capitol Hill, mostly with Republicans though Democrats cashed in on his largess as well. The shocking parts are watching as he enlists Indian tribes as clients to promote gaming on one hand and charges them huge fees while on the other hand helps forces out to stop the Indian gaming movement if it interferes with specific clients. Rest assured though, Abramoff and his associates were making money on both sides of the equation.

Casino Jack and the United States of Money tells Abramoff's story in a sleek, informative way and it's still unbelievable that only member of Congress, Bob Ney, R-Ohio, went to jail for his involvement with the man, even if he did help shove Tom DeLay out the door. Gibney saves his suckerpunch for the epilogue though, when you realize that as bad as the system is and as horribly as Abramoff abused it, it turned out to be small potatoes compared to what the lobbyists for the titans of Wall Street have and continue to accomplish.

The result should really be more depressing than it is, but it's made too well and entertains too much for much sadness to seep in.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

Wall Street bigwigs complain Obama not letting them rule America by oligarchic fiat

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If it weren't so goddamn annoying (and harmful), it'd be amusing listening to mega-rich bankers complain about President Obama.

As if he's done nothing to help them -- remember that bailout despised by both left and right?

But this is the sort of ridiculous thing you get from these ungrateful jackasses, raking in billions as they have their jackboots planted firmly on the necks of Americans, crushing them into debt-fueled submission. Here's the latest weeping, via Politico (which of course plays right along):

On the mental list of slights and outrages that just about every major figure on Wall Street is believed to keep on President Barack Obama, add this one: When he met recently with a group of CEOs at Blair House, there was no representative from any of the six biggest banks in America.

Not one!

"If they don't hate us anymore, why weren't any of us there?" a senior executive at one of the Big Six banks said recently in trying to explain his hostility toward the president.

"It's not so much just this one thing," he said. "Who cares about one event? It's just the pattern where they tell you things are going to change, that they appreciate what we do, that capital markets are important, but then the actions are different and they continue to want to score political points on us."

Still, the executive understands that it makes political sense for the White House to stiff-arm Wall Street, if not bash it with a massive sledge hammer.

After all, polls suggest most Americans believe Obama has handled the titans of Wall Street with an exceedingly light touch. He supported the deeply unpopular $700-billion bank bailout, pushed a financial reform package that stopped short of breaking up the biggest behemoths and, just this month, signed off on tax cuts for the wealthiest and continued low rates on capital gains and dividends.

And, of course, big-time bonuses at bailed-out banks are back, even as average Americans continue to get tossed out of their homes, corporate America has turned in its most profitable quarter in history and the stock market is at a two-year high.

First, are these bankers really that thin-skinned? Apparently so, and it's pretty pathetic. (Not one! Boo-fucking-hoo.)

Second, it's not just what the polls are saying, Obama has been soft on Wall Street, refusing to hold the big investment banks responsible for the havoc they wreaked on the economy -- and on the lives they destroyed.

Third, at this time of ongoing economic uncertainty (and, for many, crisis, if not disaster), the banks and those who run them are doing exceptionally well. These bankers complain when the president doesn't invite them to a meeting (like this is high school or something), but it's not like they have to worry about putting food on the table, paying the bills, and caring for their children.

Seriously, what the fuck? When has Obama ever said, or suggested, or implied, or hinted, that capital market aren't important? He hasn't even really played the anti-Wall Street populist card. Remember, it was the GOP, backed by the Tea Party, that went all populist this year, albeit from a right-wing, anti-tax, anti-government perspective. It was Republicans who went after the "elite," including positioning themselves against the bank bailout, while Democrats largely defended their record, which included the bank bailout. And yet it's Obama who has to take the brunt of Wall Street criticism?

Look, we all know what's going on here. Wall Street wants a one-way street. It wants government handouts to rescue it from the ocean of its own massive failure but doesn't want to give anything in return. It wants the president on his knees begging its forgiveness even as he's handing them billions of dollars and a presidential pardon. It wants not only to take no responsibility for its actions, not only to be left alone to make masses of cash in an unregulated market, but to be heralded as the repository of superhuman excellence. Socrates said there would never be justice unless philosophers ruled as kings. Wall Street doesn't really care about justice, but apparently it wants America to be ruled by banker-kings, or at least by politicians who do what bankers want, the puppets of the puppeteers of the world of high finance.

And, of course, Wall Street is fundamentally Republican. So it doesn't really matter what Obama does, he'll never get the bankers' vote of confidence and support. He could sign an executive order tripling the bonuses of Wall Street executives and they'd still slam him for not giving them enough.

Ungrateful? Ridiculous? That's a nice way to put it. It's all pretty despicable.

Perspective

By Carl 

Buried in this article is a very interesting line of thought for liberals: 

Compare these circumstances to those of 1911, a century ago. Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labor, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world's culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort. Most people today may not articulate this truth to themselves in so many words, but they sense it keenly enough. So when average people read about or see income inequality, they don't feel the moral outrage that radiates from the more passionate egalitarian quarters of society. Instead, they think their lives are pretty good and that they either earned through hard work or lucked into a healthy share of the American dream. (The persistently unemployed, of course, are a different matter, and I will return to them later.) It is pretty easy to convince a lot of Americans that unemployment and poverty are social problems because discrete examples of both are visible on the evening news, or maybe even in or at the periphery of one’s own life. It's much harder to get those same people worked up about generalized measures of inequality.

This is why, for example, large numbers of Americans oppose the idea of an estate tax even though the current form of the tax, slated to return in 2011, is very unlikely to affect them or their estates. In narrowly self-interested terms, that view may be irrational, but most Americans are unwilling to frame national issues in terms of rich versus poor. There’s a great deal of hostility toward various government bailouts, but the idea of "undeserving" recipients is the key factor in those feelings. Resentment against Wall Street gamesters hasn’t spilled over much into resentment against the wealthy more generally. The bailout for General Motors' labor unions wasn't so popular either—again, obviously not because of any bias against the wealthy but because a basic sense of fairness was violated. As of November 2010, congressional Democrats are of a mixed mind as to whether the Bush tax cuts should expire for those whose annual income exceeds $250,000; that is in large part because their constituents bear no animus toward rich people, only toward undeservedly rich people. 

The question is, what is "undeservedly rich"?

Warren Buffet and United For a Fair Economy posit that all wealth is derived from society, and indeed, there is much truth there. A business cannot sell unless there is a collection of consumers ready to buy. That business relies on the population for its workers. It relies on the resources of that society, the infrastructure, and the raw materials that it or its suppliers need to produce goods which ultimately are provided for free by Mother Earth... indeed, it is estimated that a fair price for those raw materials, like air and water and minerals, would equal the cumulative gross domestic product of every economy on the planet, thus making world net profit precisely zero.

Clearly, one can make the case that between the raw materials and labor pool, society should devolve the majority of revenues from any business (the value-added tax is an attempt to put this into practice, however marginally). In practice, the individual entrepreneur is the one who stands to most benefit from commerce. In truth, he risks an awful lot too, but that's a different article. We're talking here about the ones who succeed.

I think we'd all agree that a guy who opens up a shoe repair shop and works long hard hours for little money building his business is entitled to some kind of payoff for his hard work. In practice, the truth is very different: success usually occurs more from sheer blind luck than from hard work. You can work really hard and make nothing of a company, but add a little luck, and you have success.

And I think we'd all agree that the guy who makes megamillions from his raw talent at hitting a ball with a bat is probably less deserving. Except we forget he had to work really hard and, yes, he plays a game but he plays it well enough to attract fans who pay the club even more money than he pays (here we're back to society as customer), and the money would either go to him or the even richer fellow (or woman) who owns the club.

In truth, both the shoe mogul and the ballplayer owe us a debt, and it is when they do not pay that debt that we get angry. Bailout a banker and we get mad, especially when a banker pays that loan back in a much shorter time that expected. Why did he need bailing out?

And yet, there's this curious construct that has us blaming the guy next door for taking a chance similar to the banker and biting off more than he could chew. The homeowner with the ubermortgage doesn't have the ability to take a loss on his house (like the banker, he can deduct interest off his bottom line, however). If the banker sells a house for less than he mortgaged it out, he can deduct that loss. If a homeowner sells a house for less than his mortgage, not only is he still in hock to the lender, but he can't even deduct the loss off his taxes.

Yet, we blame the homeowner and rant about bailing him out, but the banker may get our contempt, but we still enrich him with the use of his bank and his credit cards!

Tyler Cowen, the author of the article cited above, posits that the people who should be getting our contempt are the people who play with other people's money, and yet we tend to cut them slack because they are more removed from our day-to-day perspectives, yet they make enormous sums of money off our backs with very little risk.

From the mergermania of the 1980s to the recent housing bubble, these speculators have made trillions of dollars doing nothing but playing with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors.

You say you want a revolution? I know where to begin.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)