"even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

[jk]

the rise of populism

“Wall Street owns our government,” Beck declared in one rant this July. “Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged.” He drew a chart to dramatize the revolving door between Washington and Goldman Sachs in both the Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner Treasury departments. A couple of weeks later, Beck mockingly replaced the stars on the American flag with the logos of corporate giants like G.E., General Motors, Wal-Mart and Citigroup (as well as the right’s usual nemesis, the Service Employees International Union). Little of it would be out of place in a Matt Taibbi article in Rolling Stone. Or, we can assume, in Michael Moore’s coming film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which reportedly takes on Goldman and the Obama economic team along with conservative targets.....

Too many Americans are impatiently waiting for results. It’s hard to argue that the stimulus package reviled by big government-loathers is a success when unemployment continues to rise and most Americans feel none of the incipient “recovery” spotted by Ben Bernanke. The potential dividends to be gained at the end of the protracted health care debate also remain, for now, an abstraction to many who have lost and are continuing to lose their jobs, their savings and their homes.
Nor has Obama succeeded in persuading critics on the left or right that he will do as much for those Americans who are suffering as he has for the corporations his administration and his predecessor’s rushed to rescue. To mark the anniversary of Lehman’s fall, the president gave a speech on Wall Street last Monday again vowing reform. But everyone’s back to business as usual: The Wall Street Journal reported that not a single C.E.O. from a top bank attended. The speech sank with scant notice because there has been so little action to back it up and because its conciliatory stance was tone-deaf to the anger beyond the financial district.
That same day a United States District Court judge in New York, Jed S. Rakoff, scathingly condemned the Obama Securities and Exchange Commission for letting Bank of America skate away with what Rakoff called an immoral and unjust wrist tap to settle charges that it covered up $3.6 billion paid out in bonuses when it purchased Merrill Lynch. How is this S.E.C. a change from the Clinton-Bush S.E.C. that ignored all the red flags on Bernie Madoff?

rich's column http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/op...h.html?_r=1&hp

glenn beck's goldman rant http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_237481.html

[Slimprofits]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/art...cle/198/15375/

Glenn Beck: Bank bust - Who's to blame?

One of my favorite parts of this transcript is where he mentions that subprime loans as a % of all mortgages went from 5% in 1996 to 20% in 2006, but fails to mention that the number was still 5% until sometime in 2001. Seems to me like a twisted way to present a statistic.

So no, it was not the fault of Alan Greenspan, the chief of all bankers, the man that not only lowered the funds rate and kept it low, but equally importantly used his powerful pulpit (at the time, a financial god in the eyes of the msm and the population at large) to encourage the housing bubble.

According to Glenn Beck and thousands if not millions of other self described "conservatives", the Debt Deflation Depression of 2008 can be laid at the feet of the entity known as ACORN.

In fact, Greenspan was simply riding ACORN's coat tails and the subprime lenders such as the JPM~Chase entity were some of the biggest victims in all of this.

And of course there is no mention of the % of subprime loans originated by lenders (i.e. Countrywide, et. al) that weren't under the thumb of the FDIC and the CRA boogeyman.


******

Which all begs the question, why did Beck briefly go after Goldman Sachs before turning his attention back to the Obama czars and the 9/12 project?

Why go after Goldman, but let Greenspan, the Fed, the subprime lending banks and non-banks off the hook?

[metalman]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/art...cle/198/15375/

Glenn Beck: Bank bust - Who's to blame?

One of my favorite parts of this transcript is where he mentions that subprime loans as a % of all mortgages went from 5% in 1996 to 20% in 2006, but fails to mention that the number was still 5% until sometime in 2001. Seems to me like a twisted way to present a statistic.

So no, it was not the fault of Alan Greenspan, the chief of all bankers, the man that not only lowered the funds rate and kept it low, but equally importantly used his powerful pulpit (at the time, a financial god in the eyes of the msm and the population at large) to encourage the housing bubble.

According to Glenn Beck and thousands if not millions of other self described "conservatives", the Debt Deflation Depression of 2008 can be laid at the feet of the entity known as ACORN.

In fact, Greenspan was simply riding ACORN's coat tails and the subprime lenders such as the JPM~Chase entity were some of the biggest victims in all of this.

And of course there is no mention of the % of subprime loans originated by lenders (i.e. Countrywide, et. al) that weren't under the thumb of the FDIC and the CRA boogeyman.


******

Which all begs the question, why did Beck briefly go after Goldman Sachs before turning his attention back to the Obama czars and the 9/12 project?

Why go after Goldman, but let Greenspan, the Fed, the subprime lending banks and non-banks off the hook?

[Master Shake]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

Rich is jealous because that's two more times than he's even been right.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

Rich is jealous because that's two more times than he's even been right.

it's wrong to be rich
and rich to be wrong
right on if you're rich
stay left if you're wrong
say something
besides

this guy doesn't get it

he gets it a lot

[raja]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

Which all begs the question, why did Beck briefly go after Goldman Sachs before turning his attention back to the Obama czars and the 9/12 project?

Why go after Goldman, but let Greenspan, the Fed, the subprime lending banks and non-banks off the hook?

Because the Goldman/government connection is so blatant and egregious . . . and anything that is critical of the present government feeds his particular audience. If he went after the other criminals in power during the Bush era -- even though they are culpable -- it would dilute his simplistic rant.

[jk]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

i think frank rich is a very smart and perceptive guy [and a terrific writer, to boot]. he's become increasingly critical of obama because he sees obama, or at least his "economic team," as extensions of the [fire] status quo. and he thinks obama is missing the point.

krugman made a similar point this morning:

I was startled last week when Mr. Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg News, questioned the case for limiting financial-sector pay: “Why is it,” he asked, “that we’re going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or N.F.L. football players?”

That’s an astonishing remark — and not just because the National Football League does, in fact, have pay caps. Tech firms don’t crash the whole world’s operating system when they go bankrupt; quarterbacks who make too many risky passes don’t have to be rescued with hundred-billion-dollar bailouts. Banking is a special case — and the president is surely smart enough to know that.

[emphasis added-jk]

so you have both krugman and rich criticizing obama for his bailout of the fire economy and the financial oligarchs. and rich acknowledging that even someone on the [somewhat loony] right, like glenn beck, understands at least this more than obama does.

[necron99]

Re: Rich is a Complete bore and jealous - Doesnt' get it

Rich and Glenn are both ENTERTAINERS. ... Glenn gets that people get bored by detail and need a person or organization to focus on - and they are angry with whats going on. ... Glenn exaggerates because he is primarily an entertainer - sometimes he educates, sometimes he slightly mis-educates, but he puts on an entertaining show.

The problem I have with the "Entertainer" theory -- that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc. are "just entertainers" and so shouldn't be held to factual and logical accountability -- is that neither fixing, reforming, disbanding, abolishing, castigating, nor assassinating every staff member of ACORN and eradicating the CRA from the law books is going to do a damn thing to ameliorate the financial crisis. Sure, ACORN and/or its members should be punished to the extent they broke any laws, but blaming these entities for causing the crisis is pure horsepuckey.

Its clear to me that Glenn gets it and Rich doesn't. Rich will continue to write articles geared to hard line democrats and Glenn will focus on the Americans frustrated by a stagnate economy and rising inflation.

So, yeah, Glenn Beck "gets" how to whip people into an emotional frenzy against targets completely counter to factual evidence; whereas Frank Rich, Krugman, and yes even Michael Moore, understands the system's problems and who or what agencies actually deserve the blame (and are still continuing to cause the problems, by the way). You may feel free to guess which of these two skill sets I think is actually more valuable. Frank Rich is 'boring'? Funny, I bet most Glenn Beck listeners don't think "boring" is a valid excuse to reject teen sexual abstinence, or properly managing one's credit card debt. Those things are both quite boring.

I suppose my whole objection is moot because the country has absolutely no journalistic standards anymore, or even political accountability for that matter. But from what I recall, it was Rush and Sean who blazed that particular trail, with their "mix" of entertainment and journalism. Chew on this, folks: if it wasn't for Rush's pioneering work, Michael Moore and Jeanene Garofalo would probably be about as famous as Pete Camejo or Alexander Cockburn today.

[jk]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

the interesting phenomenon for me is that essentially the same critique is coming from both sides. and that obama and his team, and their fire wardens, want somehow to coast above it all. their success hinges on their ability to get the economy back to business as usual. since i don't see that happening, i think that something will undermine obama's - and summers' - sense of being in control. then we'll see what they're made of.

[we_are_toast]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

Putting Beck in the same category as Rich, is simply absurd. There are conservative commentators, who I strongly disagree with, that at least try to give a reasoned approach to the issues of the day. George Will, David Brooks, Bill Kristol, Ed Rollins, are a few conservative columnists who at least try to carry on a civil conversation.

Glenn Beck would be in the same category as Jim Jones, Nostradamus, P.T. Barnum, Joseph Goebbels, Jim Bakker...

Every time I see Summers or Geithner or the President speak, they always drop a hint or 2 that they understand the problem, but they have to stabilize the mess before they can confront the problem head on.

The public option for health care reform is a sharp stick in the "I" of the FIRE interests. They've been dropping a lot of hints that there would be no more bailouts of the big finance banks, a shot across the bow of "F" in the FIRE interests. I think they don't really need to do much to the "RE" in FIRE, since it's pretty much dead anyway. Most of the attempts to rescue "RE" have been half-hearted, but dropping the $8,000 subsidy would send a good signal.

Everyone knows the FIRE lobby is extremely powerful, and they might have concluded they can't win a fist to fist fight. They're certainly not as aggressive at fighting FIRE as I would like to see, but if they truly wanted to prop up FIRE, they would be adopting the calls for more deregulation from the people who accuse them of being socialists.

[sishya]

Re: "even glenn beck is right twice a day": frank rich

The public option for health care reform is a sharp stick in the "I" of the FIRE interests. They've been dropping a lot of hints that there would be no more bailouts of the big finance banks, a shot across the bow of "F" in the FIRE interests. I think they don't really need to do much to the "RE" in FIRE, since it's pretty much dead anyway. Most of the attempts to rescue "RE" have been half-hearted, but dropping the $8,000 subsidy would send a good signal.

"a shot across the bow of "F" in the FIRE interests" - funny. Finance has bought washington and major contributor for Obama's ascendency and campaign. some old saying - "you can always wake up a sleeping man, but not a man who is pretending to be asleep".