12 thoughts on “Revenge”

  2. “Tony Crescenzi, strategist and portfolio manager at Pimco, said in a note regarding Bernanke’s confirmation: “It would not be wise for Congress to politicize the institution vital to maintaining the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. If it does, and if fiscal profligacy continues, U.S. financial assets in general could be put under downward pressure.””

    In other words, if this bonehead keeps trying to make America in his image, we’re all in deep kimchi.

  3. This is why the other big news this week is the Supreme Court’s decision that Corporations enjoy the same right to free political speech as private individuals. No longer second class citizens corporations are now free to support candidates and run political campaigns to defend themselves.

    Yes, 2010 will be a very interesting election.

  5. Can’t be revenge because there’s no slight involved. I imagine it’s envy perhaps combined with a little face saving dressed up as revenge.

  6. I dunno. I think there are some things that happened while Hopey McChange was pondering Schechter in Hahvahd Law School:

    (1) 401k’s. Breathes there a working man or woman these days who does not own stock? Who is not distressed when the Dow and S&P take a beating? I think even Joe Sixpack shifts uneasily on his coach these days when Obama channels William Jennings Bryan. Damn those EEEvil bankuhs, I say, damn them! Well…maybe a little damning, a light touch of frost to keep them on their toes…but Joe has stock in GE and owns not a few shares of a fund run by T. Rowe Price or Goldman, so he doesn’t really want to see them gutted and the money managers — whom he hopes are making him money — to be begging on the street for crusts.

    So I think Joe is more likely to favor a Sarah Palin approach: stop with the God-damned bailouts, let the weak ones die, yes. Maybe a touch of sanity regulation here or there to prevent madness. But I don’t think Joe is thrilled with the idea of the heavy boot of government on Big Finance’s neck. He knows all too well that will reduce his return on investment in his 401k to passbook savings rates. Not good.

    (2) Small business and Hispanics. Hispanics are reliable Democrats so far. but they’re also one of the most entrepreneurial class in the country. They open small businesses like crazy. Sure, they resent the big guys, but one thing they resent about them is that they’re all too often in bed with government, get special deals, get regulations passed that cut the throat of the little guy, so they don’t have to worry about the competition.

    The more Obama demonizes business per se the more he is going to get some big chunks of Hispanics thinking twice about their allegiance to Democrats. Bring along a family-oriented maybe Hispanic Republican who starts talking about how small business is the engine of the economy, and while the big boys may need cutting down to size, and certainly ought not to be getting sweetheart deals from government, business in itself is an all-American and honorable pursuit — and watch out, Democrats.

    In this area Obama may be hobbled by his black roots; he may be aping some of his paternal family’s Afro-Socialism, the stuff that brought so much of Eastern African to sadness and ruin over the past 40 years. For some reason, it has broad appeal within those cultural roots. Too much “it takes a village” fantasies, maybe. But I don’t think it flies quite as well with Hispanics, particularly those who have immigrated from Mexico in part because Mexico is too damn socialist and anti-business as it is (plus the corruption of Pemex and the drug gangs).

    But finallly and most importantly, Obama just doesn’t know how to talk to people who work for a living, making things, servicing things; plumbers, factory workers, owners of dry cleaning shops, et cetera. Unless you’re at the very bottom, a minimum-wage drone, he’s never really met you, doesn’t really get you, will always treat you with bemused pity and contempt. That’s his problem. If he were as smart as people think he is, he’d hire a lot of people who did get those strivers…but he didn’t. That’s not who’s in his inner circle. He just hired a bunch of similarly academical yes-men, and now he’s paying the price. Or starting to. I think he’s got a lot further to fall.

  7. Or should it be called “hang-the-thieving-bastards-from-the-nearest-lamppost-ism”?

    Merchant bankers, especially American ones, along with mortgage brokers who encouraged their clients to commit fraud in the form of lying about their income to get a mortgage, are responsible in the main for the deepest depression since the 1930s – and their reason was chasing bonuses that the great majority of people consider obscene. The other people responsible are the regulators that were asleep on the job and let them get away with it.

    This relatively small group of utterly amoral, greedy parasites have done more economic damage to the USA than Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany managed. No punishment for their antics is excessive. Certainly, being stripped of everything except the clothes on their backs and thrown in jail for ten years would not be.

  8. Can’t be revenge because there’s no slight involved.

    No intended slight, perhaps, but that won’t stop one from being perceived. And the adherents of get-even-with-’em-ism are always happy to hijack meaning to suit their egos.

    The mere fact someone succeeded despite the get-even-with-’em-ists’ contrary preference, will suffice as provocation for revenge.

  9. the great majority of people consider obscene.

    And there’s a case in point: because a group of people Fletch calls the “great majority” perceives these bonuses as obscene, they are a crime that must be punished.

  10. Here’s a datum: I listened to NPR for an hour yesterday on my drive home [first time in a long time, but I was curious about their take on the Brown victory]. I heard the results described about twenty times by quite a few different people as “populist”, e.g. “a populist revolt”, “Brown’s populist message”, etc. I don’t recall them using the “c word” at all (conservative). Elite opinion seems to be gelling around the notion that it’s okay to think of the grave discontent with Obama as “populist”, but they still have cognitive dissonance with the notion that the revolt has any “conservative” component at all. This is the core calculation that is driving Obama to demonize the banks — he thinks that by repackaging his Marxism as “populist” all will be well.

    More rumination on this at Detailed Balance.

    BBB

  11. Merchant bankers ACORN workers, especially American ones, along with mortgage brokers who encouraged their clients to commit fraud in the form of lying about their income to get a mortgage

    FIFY

    Although the numbers are anecdotal.

  12. So this financial guru dude named Insana gets on one of the AM TV programs and says “a lot of us are calling the bottom on Citibank — an investor should think of adding some to their portfolio.”

    I turn to my wife and say, “Sure, all these guys on TV are shilling for something, but I have been thinking the same thing. Ford was at the same share price some months ago and has since tripled in price. You know how you keep telling me to “buy low, sell high”, here is an opportunity to “get in at the bottom.” For all I have been “dissing” the Obama Adminstration, maybe our liberal friends are right about his “financial brains trust” that includes Volcker and others, and stock prices are the first to recover before consumer spending, employment, and other factors, and this thing will eventually turn around.”

    I was so persuasive that my wife was eager to buy Citbank. The week before last. I really thought there was some reason to express a “vote of confidence” in what Mr. Obama was doing. Thanks . . . for . . . nothing . . . Barry!

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