Yeah Taibbi here, to me at least, moves nearly into Glenn Beck territory. Sad. Even with the snotty, unfunny zingers sprinkled everywhere, showing immense bias. Oh well. Let real, undistorted facts speak the disdain, Matt.
One of the strangest things about the bailout is that it is reviled by both the T.E.A. Party and the Occupiers. Maybe there is hope for America after all?
I think both movements have been portrayed as laughingstocks in order to discourage even more organized public outrage. Another problem is that they generally imploded under their angry mob status and didn't self organize into anything useful. The Tea Party received loads of outside funding that allowed them to land people into office, but what were the costs involved... Social protests was a powerful though chaotic tool in the 70s, yet you don't see it much in the US anymore. The protestors against the Iraq invasion were set up pretty bad by the media, except the for the fact that they ended up aligned with how the rest of the nation felt 4 years later. So why have protests declined in number and stature? Improved outlook is one factor. Is it faith in the system that reduces widespread anger at the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression? Geez, I can't really believe that, but here we are...The usual suspects are still around. No real prosecutions at the top. We get Dodd-Frank, but nothing sweeping like the laws passed from the 70s.
Thanks for the interesting article, brantonli24. I'm wondering to what extent it'd be possible to shield those broken up companies from buyouts and mergers from other countries. If I understood the article correctly, winding down assets would also mean they'd have to generate even more liquid reserves. Hasn't the banks complained about deleveraging requirements being too high and causing them to lend less?
It is becoming your habit just to make blanket assertions that only you understand and others just make up facts. Comforting I guess. Perhaps you don't understand that a statement is not a proven "fact" just because it is the prevailing Wall Street/Washington consensus. or maybe you have fallen victim to a common idea that if conservatives say 1A and liberals say 2A, the truth is necessarily 1.5A
Hey it is pretty simple when you always apply the same formula: Huge problem: global warming, torture, too big to fail, restoring tax revenue from the wealthy, Afghanistan, Iraq, the deficit, etc. Small reform, change around the marginsAs amCould have been better, or could have been worse It is a fact the nibbling at the margins was the best realistic outcome
Yeah, okay, thanks. Knew all of that. I stand to my point. It wasn't 30% unemployment and starvation, which is what "the economy collapsed for everyone but bankers" would have looked like. None of those graphs suggest that TARP was ineffective in preventing something much, much worse. You can convince me that TARP was ineffective, but not with a column like Taibbi's. Cheers.
How does this have anything remotely to do with the 2008/09 bailouts? You know as well as I do that it doesn't.
Stuff like this makes my eyes glaze over. My simple question though is did TARP prevent a depression or not? Personally TARP didn't seem like a good idea but the alternative of going into a depression seemed much worse.
I am a big supporter of active democracy expressed through social protest but the follow through is always the problem. As I said about the Occupiers while I supported some of their goals the movement really fell apart when it came more about the act of occupation rather than advancing social or political change. While I don't agree with the TEA Parties goals they have affected politics.
No, it's fact because it was reality. Look - you don't understand international finance, and that's fine. Most people don't because it's a complicated issue, and if it's not something you focus on, there's no reason to understand it. It's no different than the fact that I don't know much about medicine or being a doctor. But many of us do know finance. We saw what was happening and we know how it was affecting the economy. It's not fact because Wall Street said so - it's fact because we saw it with our very own eyes. You seem to believe that just because Wall Street saw something, it must be wrong. That's horrible logic. Matt Tabibi got the facts wrong in his article - period. There's no real debate to be had there. If you want to continue believing that the government gave $7.7 trillion dollars to banks, that's up up to you - but it doesn't make it true. It just makes you no different than tea partiers, birthers, truthers, poll skewers, etc who just believe whatever they want to believe instead of what the facts tell you. If the facts don't match up with your beliefs, you're supposed to re-evaluate your beliefs rather than dismissing or ignoring the facts.
If your definition of financial recession is 30% unemployment and starvation, then nothing will ever be an economic collapse in America until oil reserves turn to zero without America adjusting. It's a strong consensus within the economic community that this was the second worst financial crisis after the Great Depression. TARP was inefficient because of the problems it creates for the future; the consolidation of banks too big to fail, the reward of moral hazard, the loosening of restrictions such that Goldman and Morgan are now bank holding companies with access to the discount window, the elimination of consideration of counter-party risk. I won't argue that it didn't make present conditions better, but at the cost of the future risk engendered, the cost-benefit analysis breaks down more on the cost side. In any case, rewarding the banks for blowing up the economy was not the only option (I will be glad to discuss others if you wish), and don't let anyone tell you that just because we didn't plunge off a cliff that the fundamental problems of banking pre-2008 still aren't there (in fact they are even worse). If the banks (who at the moment are being tentative as kitty cats) ever decide to forget the lessons of 2008, which they tend to do, America will be in an even worse situation. TARP was a salt-infested band-aid over a raging wound that still has not healed, partly because of TARP making conditions even worse for any hope of reining the banks in.
The fact that banks aren't "reined in" isn't the reason for the slow growth of the past 4 years. This is idiot Ron Paul tea party logic.
Addressing B-Bob's point that the economy "didn't collapse for everyone except bankers" more than the bailout.
