The NYT describes why Wall Street is turning against President Obama. It claims that Wall Street’s overwhelming support for Obama in 2008 (70:30 D-R) has flipped (32:68 D-R) because of 1) Obama’s new financial regulations and 2) a realization that while “bankers, hedge fund mangers and traders supported the Obama candidacy because he [once] appealed to their egos” they’ve suddenly realized they were being set up all along to become the “villains”.
The zig-zag relationship between the White House and Wall Street is a story of partnership and betrayal. Daniel Loeb, one of Obama’s new critics said “it is easy to see why so many people have concluded that the entire system is rigged.” Sure, because it was a case of Wall Street scratching the politician’s backs while the politicians scratched theirs. But now that things are going bad, somebody has to hold the bag and Wall Street resents having to do it.
Stephen Schwarzman, the founder of the Blackstone Group made a telling slip when he compared Obama’s decision to increase taxes on private equity firms to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Schwarzman later was criticized for comparing Obama to Hitler. But the really telling comparison isn’t to Hitler, but to the invasion of Poland. The invasion of Poland was an act of betrayal. The Nazis promised at Munich that Czechkoslovakia would be their last victim: they lied. In using the comparison to Hitler, Schwarzman appears to be suggesting that Obama failed to keep his part of some bargain.
Andrew Leonard of Salon says Wall Street is only getting what’s coming. He says “and now they are are upset about higher taxes? What they should really be nervous about is the prospect of 20 years in prison.” Yeah they’re upset because because Obama took 70% of its donations and now makes like Wall Street did it because they liked his suits.
Betrayal usually leads to counter-betrayal. The Munich Pact was seen by Stalin as an attempt by the West to pay off Hitler with parts of Eastern Europe, which Stalin regarded as being in his sphere of influence. Incensed, he repaid Chamberlain with a betrayal of his own. By executing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin threw in with Hitler and World War 2 become unavoidable.
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
The administration has a distressing ability to throw people under the bus, a practice based not on high idealism but pure opportunism. One day it is going to come back to haunt them with unforeseen consequences. Betrayals are not confined to Washington. Recently Lebanon found out what it had long suspected. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which had been set up to indict the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is not going to indict anyone any time soon. Not even after five years of investigation. The chief prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, has a message for all. Don’t hold your breath.
Q: When will the indictment be handed in?
Daniel Bellemare: I have read articles saying that some people had already seen the indictment. Let me state clearly that the indictment has not been drafted yet. As I have previously said, I will only file the indictment when I am satisfied that there is enough evidence
Q: So you are still not satisfied? We are now in 2010, more than five years after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. How much more time do you need?
Bellemare: I have a very impressive team that has been working in the past months with all their energies to generate the evidence. Currently I am working on what I would call the evidentiary process; I have to make sure that the evidence I will produce is admissible in court. That is exactly the key. If I file an indictment and there is no evidence, the whole structure collapses, and we will [have] found ourselves in trouble.
The Lebanese were told to rely on the Tribunal in the tumultuous days after the Hariri murder. It’s hard to believe that in those early days people actually believed the President of Syria was going to be indicted. They hoped, they believed. And now, five years later, they’ve got a zombielike prosecution shuffling around aimlessly like extras from Dawn of the Dead. This is a betrayal which once again may have consequences, not in the least to the credibility of Special Tribunals, but more importantly in the message it sends to the region. You know what, don’t trust us. It’s okay to betray as long you know there are consequences.
One of the factors which dragged Julia Gillard down in the recent Australian elections and which may cost her the position of Prime Minister is the wide perception that she stabbed her predecessor in the back, the by-then-unloved Kevin Rudd. People have an intuitive fear of double-crossers. Everyone knows that if Julia could shaft Kevin, her long time colleague and ‘friend’, then she could shaft anyone.
Kim Philby once wrote that “to betray you must first belong”. But those who deal in this currency must remember that in the coin of betrayal salvation is always on the flip side.
Was it Engels or Marx (Karl, not Groucho) who said something to the effect of, “When the last reactionary is hanged it will be with the rope that capitalist sold us.”
Although the anti-Obama coalition will eventually be huge, consisting of one faction after another that felt betrayed by our false messiah, it is not easy to resist the urge to gloat.
Anybody who had actually reads biographies of Barack Obama would know that he routinely betrays other people. Moreover, it is literally impossible for anybody to live up to the dreams that Barack Obama’s followers have projected onto him. So of course his fans will feel betrayed. I’m not favorably impressed with the outrage of people who feel betrayed by Obama because they should have known better. They shouldn’t portray him as the devil incarnate merely because he took advantage of their fantasies.
Look, I’ve gotten snookered by con men too. I’m not alone. It happens. It happens to the best of us. Especially to the best of us because “the best of us” are more vulnerable to con men than the rest of us; they don’t want to believe their judgment can be fallible. Chalk it up to experience. Don’t get mad. Get even. The important thing is to be wary of anything that looks too good to be true.
There won’t be time for gloating when the repair work commences on the damage inflicted by the Obama administration onto the American people. Besides, the gloating of Obama supporters two years ago and the leftist triumphalism of the Obama administration ever since should not be imitated, however tempting it may be.
That is the fate of all “useful fools” when they are no longer deemed to be useful. But it is the case that the essential flaw that makes one a useful fool is often the rather irrational premise that you will always be useful to the amoral powers you serve.
Hubris and stupidity is a very toxic combination.
I’m not convinced what Obama is doing is betrayal; I think as a product of affirmative action for so many years he believes actions don’t have consequences. Certainly his poor scholarship didn’t prevent him from attending the best schools in the land, his lack of writing didn’t prevent him from being named to the Harvard Law Review, his lack of legislative achievement didn’t prevent him from being elected to the US Senate and later to the White House. In short, his life is not the result of all his past history, as is usually the case, so he has not learned that hard work results in success, nor has he learned that taking campaign cash from donors incurs any responsibility. I used to think this was crass opportunism, now I wonder if Obama doesn’t just expect people to give him things with no expectation of anything in return? I could be convinced either way, but as is always the case with Obama we never learn anything more — just snippets of his history and his peculiar way of doing business. One thing I do know now: no one in their right mind should trust him to follow through on a promise, real or implied. F
Stephen Schwarzman is an embarrassment. Like a teenage girl who went to the football player’s room after midnight. Well, what did you expect?
I tend to go along with the suggestion that these ‘men’ of Wall Street should be grateful that they are not serving well deserved prison terms.
The classic game theoretic on betrayal is expressed in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Two perps are being interrogated separately. If they each refuse to talk, the cops can only bust them for a minor offense. But if one talks he can walk out the door clean at the price of sending up his buddy for a long stretch. The optimal strategy when facing a big sentence is to turn the other guy in. Wall Street may now believe this is exactly what Obama has done to them.
But if you assume that both parties are going to be around a long time, then the dynamic shifts to the iterated or extended prisoner’s dilemma. In this case it doesn’t pay to shaft the other guy because when the other guy gets out (remembering the assumption that he’ll be around) then the next time out, you’ll be it. So in situations where people have to live with each other for a long time you are careful not to stab too many people in the back.
If Obama is throwing people under the bus, either he isn’t planning on sticking around to see what happens or he figures they’re done for. Of course, he might not be thinking at all. And that is often the case. Never ascribe to malice what you can put down to sheer fecklessness.
During the presidential campaign, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric which owns CNBC (the financial network) called all the commentators of CNBC into a meeting and said “Don’t you guys think you are being too critical of Candidate Obama?”
GE was hoping to make billions from Obama’s Green Pork initiatives.
So now we know who the rubes are. The question is: can they do anything about it? If the Republican party suffers a coup from the right, as the Democrat party suffered a coup from the left, is there any longer a place for the ancien regime of the Northeastern Upper Crust? Currently, their free-wheeling CDO’s, the latest in a long line of creative finance since the Commodore Vanderbilt traded steamboats for steam cars, are being (more or less forcibly) replaced by Treasuries at 2.5%. What measure of power will they retain if their rent-seeking is curbed by a lack of access?
Can they still buy a seat at the table?
#7 Peter Grynch-
As someone once said, “green jobs” = “fake jobs”.
Can you really make billions from that?
Snookered, indeed.
#6 wretchard
Sure, he may not be logically thinking. As F says in comment #4 (does that make him 4F?) Obama’s AA existence and lack of real world metrics a la the private sector (which he calls literally an enemy in one of his books) have had a deleterious effect on his ability to perceive cause and effect.
I agree that incompetence rather than malice is often the reason why bad things come out of organizations.
However, would you agree that both can be present simultaneously?
The traitor Philby was probably paraphrasing the genius Joseph Conrad – knower of the soul of man: “They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience. ” Joseph Conrad
Obama isn’t capable of recognizing his own perfidy. Does he “belong” to America? Hardly. At least I don’t think so, and I doubt he thinks so either. Why else would this nation require fundamental transformation? Until he rose to the summit, his wife was being perfectly honest when she said it marked the first time in her adult life she was proud of America. Until there was a backlash against her harsh, astounding rhetoric, I don’t think it could have entered her shuttered mind that speaking thus is deeply shameful. And until America bowed to the seething egos of these monstrous narcissists, how could those seething egos revere America?
Nursed on decades of hatred and loathing against whites, and moreover against the nation that gave them everything, these two mutts, these unclean “mongrels” (to use Obama’s own word describing Blacks in America) chose not to belong – nor do they want to belong. But this wasn’t because of anything America did to them, but rather because the Obamas failed and betrayed this nation in the beginning, as soon as they could decide. They are, apparently, traitors by nature.
If I’m correct, there may be few limits on what this monstrous man may be willing to do against America. If I were religious, I’d worry we were gazing upon an Antichrist. At the very least we are gazing upon The AntiAmerican incarnate. No wonder he has such a deep affinity for the hateful doctrine of Islam. No wonder he thinks the call to prayer is the most beautiful sound he has heard.
Could you have read the New York Times in 2008 and got an inkling that Wall Street was overwhelmingly supporting the Obama candidacy? I commented at the time that Wall Street was playing along — allowing the Left Democrats to demonize them as greedy rich Republican Bankers. They could have said, no, no, no — we’re greedy rich Democrat Bankers! But standing by while their politician “friends” threw mud at them was one of their contributions to the campaign. But now they’re all weepy-crybaby as they approach their new masters, “you mean you really do think we’re pigs?”
When early on the Obama administration seized the 9 billion dollars in bondholder funds and gave it to the UAW, I speculated that they “promised” their hedge fund manager supporters that they would make it back in TARP bailout funds — and so the controversy would die down quickly after a token protest (and it did). But the managers may have got stiffed on that end, too (plus, the property market hasn’t rebounded as much as planned).
Such are the vagaries of crony capitalism (especially when you realize you ain’t the crony).
I don’t think President sees it as betrayal. That would require, as Philby noted, a pre-existing identification to begin with. There are a lot of people, especially in politics, but among shifty businessmen as well, who see things as a game. I remember a low life acquaintance of mine remarking that he felt unfulfilled if he hadn’t gypped anyone that day. When you circle around the fire at night and compare the days events, the people who play the game count scalps. They don’t really reckon in terms of loyalties and trust.
I think the President is slightly better than most politicians in that he’s actually an ideologue. And while one may not agree with his ideology or belief system, it seems plain that he has one, although one of the characteristics of that belief system is never to admit to what it is. But in his innermost self, there appear to be beliefs and loyalties that he cherishes, though they are kept from the world.
Wall Street thought they could read him. Maybe they figured him for a fancier kind of Chicago politician who could be brought onside and stay onside. What they didn’t reckon with was that Obama had a mask for every occasion. He has an endless supply. The one mask he may never don, perhaps because it is too sacred to him, is the one which is his true face.
Interestingly, even the Left is now beginning to understand that they don’t have the complete secret decoder ring either. Nor in fact, do the Muslims. Now while I know that some won’t agree, the disappointment with which he has been received in the Arab world suggests that they believe they’ve been misled too. As time goes by I think the number of people who truly trust Obama, in the unquestioning and implicit way that requires a certainty about his character, will grow fewer and fewer. The man is fuzzy around the edges. Who he is remains something of a mystery. All the passage of time has accomplished is determine the probability cloud in which he moves. We know it is disjoint from much of what many people feel is mainstream American life. But the moneybags got took. And that to me, means that not very many people, even at this late stage, know exactly who he is.
The betrayals started with the treatment of Hillary Clinton and her campaign, including the virtual theft of the caucus process during the primary season. Unbeknownst to the general public, the Obama people have been under “stealth probation” in the minds of many Democratic operatives because of those issues. A part of the wolfpack (OK, hyena pack; the Democrats resemble the stereotypical hyena in that they are 1) female dominated, and 2) they let everyone else do all the work and then steal from them) is waiting for the alpha male (Obama — no, really, stop laughing, he’s “alpha” for the purposes of this metaphor) to stumble, so they can take him down.
The pattern of turning on people who supported Obama and helped him get elected proceeded immediately after the inauguration. Witness what happened to Jim Cramer when he dared criticize Obama on financial policy, etc. It had me scratching my head and projecting future trouble for Obama. I was right, but not due to prescience; any half-wit who pays attention to human nature could see that these actions were potential blunders. Their “potential” as blunders has been realized.
The foregoing are all astute observations. 4 F in particular. One thing I’ve noticed consistently missing from civil internet discussions is recognition of the role Michele plays in all this. In her culture “Mama” is the prime factor in the family. Not the “player”, necessarily, but the “mover”. That she is unelected and seems in the background gives her greater import into every decision. I believe others ignore her influence at their peril. When the bus is rumbling by I wonder how often she is the one selecting the “disposee”?
Andrew Leonard of Salon says Wall Street is only getting what’s coming. He says “and now they are are upset about higher taxes? What they should really be nervous about is the prospect of 20 years in prison.”
After being stripped of all assets and decapitated, then 20 years in prison.
I see no signs of Obambus doing this, although someone in his position, with his politics, might be expected to go that way. And I for one would support him if he did. So, the crocodile tears of Wall Street leave me that much less touched, if such a thing were possible.
batman, I think that was Lenin, Vlad not John.
The man is fuzzy around the edges. Who he is remains something of a mystery.
Well, I’m probably missing something, but I don’t find him a mystery at all. He’s very much like the majority of university professors I worked with for 20 years, like the ones I hung out with in the university locker room and had beer with. Yes, he’s an ideologue. And one who has lead a sheltered life in a huge, arrogant liberal echo chamber. When he ran into trouble early in the health care fight, I predicted he would double down rather than back off, and he did.
But that was when he was confident about his future. He knew he’d never win over the bitter clingers, but he was confident the media, the club of “racism,” and his own wonderful personality would bring him majority support. After all, those things had always worked in the past. Now, he’s starting to doubt.
My prediction is that he will make an effort to change his tone and course soon, but his pride will cause him to founder. Because the one thing Obama loves more than anything else is that “true, sacred face” wretchard mentions. He has the stomach to betray everyone except himself.
People are throwing around the meme that the Wall streeters deserve to “go to prison”. How is this so? what law is not being prosecuted and on whom is it not being prosecuted?
Certainly not for covering the risk in CRA–both parties cheered this on for years–and it is unclear Just how the Oct. surprise worked. GS most likely broke some law but EVERYBODY on what street? This is demagoguery at its worst and BC should have no truck with it.
On the whole though, what exactly is this blame it on the bakers about? It was the democrat machine and perhaps their RINO enablers that did us in. Some banks were force to take TARP. Man more were forced to underwrite bad debt. Derivatives are not against the law.
You know, if they had stuck to the original 250bil tranche that Bush and co. had proposed in the first round of TARP, then lowered tax rate and not used the whole thing to hustle money and power, the whole thing would have been a momentary thing.
It is not good to repeat here this sort of deflective propaganda that has as its main function scapegoating the entire financial sector in order to hide government culpability and stir up the stupid.
On the whole though, what exactly is this blame it on the bakers about?
Follow the dough.
There is still one more card to be played – class warfare. Anti-capitalism permeates the left (did I really even have to say that?). In spite of the fact that Wall Street has been thrown under the bus now, they are still hanging on to the door frame. The counter-betrayal by Wall Street will occur, at which point the anti-capitalist rhetoric can be cranked up: “See? Those Wall Street bankers are to blame for our current economic malaise, and their lack of support for my programs proves it. Those selfish bankers need to share their wealth – with you.” It doesn’t matter that this statement is pure fabrication – it’s all about owning the narrative. Wall Street can’t call upon Alinsky-esque reservists for the battle, unlike their adversary. And the reservists that Wall Street *can* call up can always be cut down by charges of racism.
Not saying that this will happen, of course, but it would certainly follow the pattern.
And while one may not agree with his ideology or belief system, it seems plain that he has one
Huh?
There must something in the water in Cambridge, and it must last a lifetime..
Obama is a sociopath. He is only an Marxist to the extent that it enables his pathology.
And he is not “better than most politicians”; He is one of the worse politicians in our history and has one of the most despicable characters of anyone who has ever held nationwide office in the history of this nation.
If Obama has dissappointed the left, he has done so only to the extent that events forced him to. He would have been a far more pure leftist, if the power had been given to him.
The lie told to the left is not “Who is Obama”. They got the real story there. The lie is when they were told (and tell themselves) what is possible, and how popular they will be when they implement it. Utopians don’t have to lie to anyone, they lie enough to themselves. They are most disappointed when the lies they tell themselves don’t come true.
Which might be the question at the bottom of this pile of thought. To what extent does Obama lie to himself? To what extent does he really believe that everyone will love his laws if they only experience the results?
I accept that the Wall Street crew were deceived by Obama. But on the leftist core issues, he hasn’t deceived anyone. He really is that. He just doesn’t know what to do when none of it works.
Someone seems to trust Obama though:
“U.S. President Barrack Obama seems to be sincere in his intentions to improve relations, Putin said. “I would like to see whether he will manage or not. But he wants to. I have an instinct that this is his sincere position,” Putin said.”
But if he see through Obama’s eyes deep to the heart like Bush did for him, hmmm nothing good can come of it !
“Putin slams West for deceiving Russia”
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100830/160392617.html
Someone seems to trust Obama though: — Putin.
The word in this case is not “trust” it is “pegged” as in Putin has got him pegged. Now that is no trick at all for those individuals who are widely acquainted with a certain kind of society. Those who spotted the President for what he was sooner than the general population relied not on their moral superiority but rather on that innate Spider Sense that comes from knowing the wrong sort of people.
One thing the wrong crowd has over the right crowd is that they’ve been around the block too often to buy a bridge in Brooklyn. It’s the nice, trusting guys who wind up going through the door with the grifters. As in all nature the predators stick to the unsuspecting. If they try the funny stuff with those wise to their ways it apt to end badly for them.
“I have an instinct that this is his sincere position” = ‘I have got him where I want him’, or ‘I have got his number’. Now there is no contradiction between this and “Putin slams West for deceiving Russia”, because that’s part of the way you deal with people you’ve got pegged. You know exactly how far you can slap them around and what exactly switches on their grasping little hearts.
slightly off-topic…but hits the bullseye on PC,’the Narrative’,…and perhaps also Alinsky’s
‘personalization of the target’:
‘[anti-psychiatry advocate] Thomas Szasz consistently pays attention to the power of language in the establishment and maintenance of the social order, both in small interpersonal as well as wider socio-political spheres:
“The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?…[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed.” ‘
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
F/4–You’re absolutely right: as an affirmative action baby, O has learned what life has taught him–ask and it shall be given. Why should he not feel gifted? So many important people have applauded him.
Why did you stab him in the back
They asked me many times
And though they put me on the rack
I can’t confess my crimes
For loyalty’s a sometime thing
And honesty a curse
For what does blind devotion bring
But harsh ride in a hearse
I see no wrong in what I’ve done
You truly have no case
We thought him the Anointed One
But now we’ve seen his face
Mongoose, #21: Obama is a sociopath. He is only an Marxist to the extent that it enables his pathology.
And he is not “better than most politicians”; He is one of the worse politicians in our history and has one of the most despicable characters of anyone who has ever held nationwide office in the history of this nation.
I took Wretchard’s remark as meaning Obama is better at being a politician than most politicians are. (Bill Clinton also had this “gift”.) His character has nothing to do with it, much less his abilities as President.
Wretchard, Putin isn’t a naive, he chose his word for purpose. I guess that the clique of advisers around Obama got the subliminal message too
O’page turner:
“Now, it is time to turn the page,” Obama said”.
How did 17. Salt Lick know?/read O like a book?
Salt Lick: “My prediction is that he will make an effort to change his tone and course soon, but his pride will cause him to founder.”
Reuters’ headline is outta synch, no?
…-
“Obama: Time to turn the page in Iraq
Tue Aug 31, 2010 8:13pm EDT
By Steve Holland and Serena Chaudhry
WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – President Barack Obama declared an end to the seven-year U.S. combat mission in Iraq on Tuesday and told war-weary Americans his central responsibility now is to restore the sagging U.S. economy.
“Now, it is time to turn the page,” Obama said in an Oval Office address, speaking from the same desk former President George W. Bush had used to declare the 2003 start of the war.”
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE67U1IJ20100901
Hey, I trust Obambus as much as anyone – trust him to mess up whatever he touches. Even Bubba Clinton got stuff right, every now and again. Next time Obambus gets something right is going to be his first since taking office, near as I can tell.
OK, that’s a tad unfair, on the very day that he goes on the air to gloat that he’s finally fulfilled George Bush’s plan to reduce troops in Iraq. The reduction seems to have been going smoothly, whatever tomorrow brings. Is that the very first blue point for Obambus? Thinking, …
All successful frauds are based on manipulating the mark’s social amabitions, to be honored, to be part of the inner circle. Bernie Madoff was masterful at that. BO is a flimflam man of the first water. The NYT article focuses on that aspect of the 2008 election.
“The prevailing view is that bankers, hedge fund mangers and traders supported the Obama candidacy because he appealed to their egos.
“Mr. Obama was viewed as a member of the elite, an Ivy League graduate (Columbia, class of ’83, the same as Mr. Loeb), president of The Harvard Law Review — he was supposed to be just like them. President Obama was the “intelligent” choice, the same way they felt about themselves. They say that they knew he would seek higher taxes and tighter regulation; that was O.K. What they say they did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains.”
Those of us who bothered to figure out what BO really was like, before the 2008 election knew there were deep problems. His relations with Rev Wright and Bill Ayers were a clue. His willingness to throw Wright, and his ailing grandmother, under the bus for mere expediency were signals that anyone else in his way was going to get the same treatment.
So, I have a question for the Wall Street guys. Who was the mark?
==================================
Life has rules. Here is one of them: \”If you are gambling, and you don’t know who the mark* is, you are the mark.\”
*The mark — a/k/a the rube or the sucker — is the target of a scam.
If you are mark, here is what you need to do:
1. Own up to it. Say to yourself I was scammed, because I was a sucker.
2. Grow up. Learn that nobody cares about you other than your mother. You dog is only interested in the food. Politicians regard you a something to be used and thrown away, like a paper towel.
3. Watch your back. Don’t believe what people say, believe what they do, after they have done it.
4. Be a man. Stop whining. You were had, by your own cupidity. Wise up. Deal with it. Get a life.
5. Remember what W.C. Fields taught: “You can’t cheat an honest man”
There is of course a much simpler explanation. Bankers, hedge fund managers and “traders” (aka gamblers with other people’s money) are being cast as the villains because they are the villains.
I found this yesterday:
http://theburningplatform.com/blog/2010/08/29/the-age-of-mammon-featured-article/
“bankers, hedge fund mangers and traders supported the Obama candidacy because he [once] appealed to their egos” they’ve suddenly realized they were being set up all along to become the “villains”.
An alternate explanation is that they simply were displaying the same kind of brilliant business acumen and judgement that led them to invest heavily into bright new firms that proposed to sell dry dog food over the Internet as well as staid established companies that sold houses to people with less investigation than is required to purchase a Saturday Night Special in Alabama.
Maybe they are just mostly stupid.
I can think of a simpler, more cynical explanation for the behavior of the Wall Streeters.
In 2008, it was obvious that it was going to be a good year for Democrats. Many people were tired of the Bush presidency, and the Republicans ran a very weak candidate. The media helped by relentlessly depicting the Vice Presidential candidate as an idiot and a clown, while simultaneously depicting the Democrat candidate as the solution for all our problems, up to and including rising sea levels.
2010 is equally obviously going to be a good year for the Republicans. Many people have had about enough of Obama’s radicalism, and Congress’ approval numbers are approaching zero.
The denizens of Wall Street and other big corporations are simply betting smart. The important thing is to have an “in” with whichever party is in power. Principles don’t enter into it.
Sorry to one and all, but I have seen it time and time again when I was practicing criminal law. Most of my clients were basically decent people who made some bad choices; first time DWI’s or possession of marijuana cases where they were apprehended because of something like a burned out tail light.
And then there are the others. The sociopaths for whom loyalty is purely a one way street. They can throw people “under the bus” and they simply cannot see why anybody would object to them doing so. But when it is them being thrown “under the bus” their outrage rises to biblical proportions. I dealt with a lot of such people, and they were all scum.
This is the thing that bothers me so much. The personality profiles of the current ruling elites seem to fit that of the criminal class whom I most detest.
I can recognize them and smell their stench at a distance.
Ah–but they are just the rapists your wife and daughters have been waiting for.
All hail the Obammanation.
An alternate explanation is that they simply were displaying the same kind of brilliant business acumen and judgement that led them to invest heavily into bright new firms that proposed to sell dry dog food over the Internet as well as staid established companies that sold houses to people with less investigation than is required to purchase a Saturday Night Special in Alabama.
RWE, it wasn’t wall street who invested in the dog food companies, they made it available for you to invest, and pocketed the fees. To a large extent, ditto on the mortgages, they just passed thru the Fannie and Freddie money. Regular blind piano players, is what they are. In fact, that was exactly Goldman’s defense when they were sued a couple of months ago, “hey, just making a market, folks!” The difference between that morality and Bernie Madoff, would not burden a gnat. Only this time they got caught. Shock and dismay! But Washington has made them whole now threefold, minus a couple of random casualities.
Actually, the sins of the Wall Street bankers in the latest fiasco are numerous and blatant far beyond merely making markets, but I’ve recited them so many times, it’s like trying to explain to a liberal just what our business was in Iraq or explaining just how jet fuel melts steel, if you’re still resisting knowing the facts, then whatever.
I’m not very knowledgeable about financial affairs, but I’ve been reading Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker.
Over the past couple of years, he has been diligently chronicling the incestuous antics of the big investment banks, politicians, and government regulators. His constant refrain is “Where are the cops?”
Tcobb: you got that right.
Anyone that has ever lived in a tyrannical State can see these people coming a light year away and not only knows what they are up to but what is coming 1, 10 and 100 steps down the road.
And of course, they employ just the sort of people that you have had as your nastier clients.
It has nothing to do, BTW, with wretchard’s strange and recurring notion that to understand people like Obama one has to somehow be morally tainted or comprised oneself. He confuses innocence with morality.
(W, I never understand this fixation of yours in this area.)
To anyone that ever spent time in the USSR, the Warsaw Pact of the PRC these people are all too familiar.
One has to pinch oneself sometimes–it seems so surreal. At times out of of the corner of my ear I pick up on their propaganda, cant or rationalizations and wonder why I am hearing this nonsense spoken in American English. When did Moscow turn into NYC? I have this strange nanosecond or two of disorientation as though I am hallucinating. Then I realize that I am in America in the “Obama Era”.
It is the spiritual equivalent of a phantom limb.
I most fervently pray that we are wise enough to cast these people off now. If we do not there will be little difference between the USA and the old USSR in a decade or so. People like this destroy whole societies and civilization when they long wield power.
The question is what will President Obama do if the House and Senate are both lost to the Republicans. Barring impeachment, will he stay and fight it out – a delaying action until the 2012 election or will he declare victory and go home?
My guess he will resign the office leaving Old Joe in charge to take the blame while he writes his memoirs from his Presidential library.
This young lady in Australia wrote an article in a newspaper only a few days ago explaining how she was motivated by President Obama.
Now I just can’t understand this and sometimes asked myself whether something was wrong with me. Why did I not feel a thrill running down my leg like this young lady did? How come I wasn’t jumping up and down singing songs?
I think I may have cried on the day Obama won, but not for the reasons given above. During the campaign I had old friends write to me and say that he was a smart man, an inspiring person, etc. Some of the guys who thought so were intelligent, scientific men of apparently high moral character. So I asked myself why can’t some ‘see’ what others can see? Is it bias, is it prejudice, or was it something else? Why the variance in cognition given the same facts?
The difference didn’t seem to be intelligence. Later, as events began to unfold, it became clear the things I saw weren’t imaginary. After a while, people like Peggy Noonan seemed to feel the scales falling from their eyes. “Oh my,” they said. “How come I never saw that before?” So we’re back to the old question of the differential cognition. Well I don’t know, but here are a couple of theories.
1. a posteriori information. There was some information the leg thrillers missed which came to hand in 2009 and 2010.
2. a shift in perspective. No new information really came to light, but observers realized a simpler narrative covered the same facts.
Wretchard @12 said:
“I think the President is slightly better than most politicians in that he’s actually an ideologue. And while one may not agree with his ideology or belief system, it seems plain that he has one, although one of the characteristics of that belief system is never to admit to what it is. But in his innermost self, there appear to be beliefs and loyalties that he cherishes, though they are kept from the world.”
But @6 Wretchard said:
“If Obama is throwing people under the bus, either he isn’t planning on sticking around to see what happens or he figures they’re done for. Of course, he might not be thinking at all. And that is often the case. Never ascribe to malice what you can put down to sheer fecklessness.”
So which one is it? Are Obama’s actions the result of mere fecklessness or are they the result of the confirmed belief system of an ideologue?
In 2008 I thought he was feckless. By mid-2009 I had changed my mind and ever since I have thought of him as an ideologue. Thus I believe that everything he has done has been in the service of his ideology and therefore full of intention and malice.
For example, when he referred to the way in which Iraq consumed resources that could be redirected to our domestic economy, including a host of referred to “reforms,” I knew that the purpose of building up our deficits was to provide the excuse to cut the military.
I think it is much safer and more accurate to assume that practically everything Obama does is done on purpose, with malice aforethought, to the advancement of his ideology.
Well have you considered the idea that Obama is mad as a hatter and some other actor or actors are handling him?
#41. Wretchard.
People who are “intelligent’ in one dimension (science, finance, computers) often over-estimate their analytical abilities in settings other than their specialties. It is that combination of traits that makes it very easy to scam them. BO had been scamming white liberal intellectuals that way for years. The 2008 campaign was just another game that he ran on those people.
See my #32 above.
“Those who spotted the President for what he was sooner than the general population relied not on their moral superiority but rather on that innate Spider Sense that comes from knowing the wrong sort of people.”
I’ve wondered for some time why he disgusted me so much from right from the start and yet so many people, including people close to me whose judgment is usually sound, saw nothing wrong with him.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Wretchard. Yes, for a variety of reasons I’ve known quite a few of the wrong sorts of people at various times in my life, and once you’ve got that experience you can spot them coming a mile off. There’s at least one common denominator between all of them – deep down, they don’t give a damn about no one but themselves. And as much as they try to hide it, that attitude always slips out if you watch for it.
Perhaps you confuse Intelligence with a particular talent or facility, in this case symbol manipulation. Happens all the time in the sciences. In any event, intelligence is not wisdom. I would attribute the phenomena you mention mostly to bias, socialization, indoctrination, a narrow :education” and and rather shallow notion of self (not to mention an naive understanding of politics in general and American politics im particular).
I cannot say that anyone i met that loved obama was particularly Intelligent in the full sense of the word, just reasonable facile in the acquired knowledge of their field. First rate mediocrities, and we say.
This is common of so-called “educates” liberals who work around the fringes of the Leftists Nomenklatura, often not even realizing that such a thing exists. Curiously, they often have a flare for the worst sort of professional and office politics. If in fact they do not see through the charade then this is indeed puzzling, but my guess is that they are being less than honest with you.
Now I just can’t understand this and sometimes asked myself whether something was wrong with me. Why did I not feel a thrill running down my leg like this young lady did? How come I wasn’t jumping up and down singing songs?
What’s the fellow’s line?
Never worries ’bout his line
Never worries ’bout his line?!?
Or a doggone thing
He’s just a bang beat, bell ringing,
Big hole, great go, neck-or-nothing
Rip roarin’, every time a bull’s eye
Salesman.
That’s Professor Harold Hill
Harold Hill
What’s the fellow’s line?
What’s his line?
He’s a fake
And he doesn’t know the territory!
Look, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk,
Whaddaya talk, Whaddaya talk?
He’s a music man
He’s a what?
He’s a what?
He’s a music man
And he sells clarinets
To the kids in the town
With the big trombones
And the rat-a-tat drums
Big brass bass
Big brass bass
And the piccolo, the piccolo
With uniforms, too
With a shiny gold braid
On the coat
And a big red stripe runnin’
Well, I don’t know much
About bands
But I do know
You can’t make a living
Selling big trombones, no sir.
Mandolin picks, perhaps
And here and there a Jew’s harp
No, the fellow sells bands
Boys’ bands.
I don’t know how he does it
But he lives like a king
And he dallies
And he gathers
And he plucks
And he shines
And when the man dances
Certainly, boys
What else?
The piper pays him!
Yes sir, yes sir
Yes sir, yes sir
When the man dances
Certainly, boys
What else?
The piper pays him!
Yessssir, Yessssir
But he doesn’t know the territory!
#45. wws
Yes, for a variety of reasons I’ve known quite a few of the wrong sorts of people at various times in my life, and once you’ve got that experience you can spot them coming a mile off. There’s at least one common denominator between all of them – deep down, they don’t give a damn about no one but themselves. And as much as they try to hide it, that attitude always slips out if you watch for it.
I don’t think that is entirely true. Most such people (not all of them) care very, very deeply about how their peers perceive them. To them that is 95% of what life is all about. To them politics and morals are merely fashion statements, things which can be discarded and replaced upon a minute’s notice.
They are the chameleon component. Its actually rather large. The Progressives have fared well because they sold their positions as being the height of fashion. But fashion does have its limits. Once the outfit of the month has a habit of rubbing painfully into the nether regions it will be rejected.
That is what the current Guardians of the Narrative fear. Once the Narrative ceases to be fashionable it can collapse in a very short period of time, and then what will happen to them when no one wants to buy their Che Guevara T-shirts anymore?
@6 Wretchard:
“If Obama is throwing people under the bus, either he isn’t planning on sticking around to see what happens or he figures they’re done for. Of course, he might not be thinking at all. And that is often the case. Never ascribe to malice what you can put down to sheer fecklessness.”
If you mix his ideology with Chicago style, thug politics and its advisers, which let’s not forget has worked brilliantly for him in the recent past, it makes sense.
Wretchard @41
I, too, never understood what people saw in him, except the huge fact that he’s black, to which I assigned a lot of value (but not nearly enough to vote for him). I was puzzled! I thought, isn’t it obvious that, for whatever reason, he’s a BS artist? I thought, the reason might be nothing more than emotional insecurity over being a black who was likely to become president, but even if that was it, I couldn’t go more then 20 percent of the distance to forgiving it sufficiently to vote for him, and I thought, it very well might not be it. So I was puzzled.
I thought, probably his support is from the fact that people are politically ignorant and ignorant of the real nature of the disputes over important issues, but then I learned that my wife, who is ignorant, thought he was a BS artist and a menace.
So it’s hard for me not to think that the difference is moral, sort of along the lines of “You can’t fool an honest man,” but not quite like that, since we’re all sinners.
maz2 #32 How did 17. Salt Lick know?/read O like a book?
Salt Lick: “My prediction is that he will make an effort to change his tone and course soon, but his pride will cause him to founder.”
Obama: Time to turn the page in Iraq
Tue Aug 31, 2010 8:13pm EDT
Thanks for the hat tip, maz, but I don’t know Obama like a book I’ve already read — I’m sure there are plot twists that will still surprise me. Nevertheless, personalities of his type infest today’s academia, and I was around them, working “undercover,” for 20 years.
Unfortunately, I’m not as articulate as many of BC’s other commenters, so I can’t paint Obama’s portrait vividly. But I’m sure that he cannot betray his sacred, secret self by triangulating like Bill Clinton. Bill’s secret self just wants to be loved and laid, and he will follow both his big and little head to get there, regardless.
wws
“There’s at least one common denominator between all of them – deep down, they don’t give a damn about no one but themselves. And as much as they try to hide it, that attitude always slips out if you watch for it.”
It always slips out but most of us recognize it only in hindsight.
As a small business owner I have a pretty good recollection of the sociopaths who have tried to pick my pocket over the years. But many of them I did not spot until they bounced a check, signed a lease or whatever. One sign I did not recognize until just a few years ago is the “pathetic” approach where your help is urgently sought by somebody who appears helpless and at his or her wits end. The funny thing is when you say no and suddenly the aura of helplessness disappears.
Mongoose
“wretchard’s strange and recurring notion that to understand people like Obama one has to somehow be morally tainted or comprised oneself”
I don’t think that’s W’s point at all. You can get to know the wrong sort of people for perfectly good reasons, like you are running a business, or you are trying to get by in a place like the Phillipines.
I sense that what’s occurring now also has the flavor of Wall Street making a pact with the devil – once you’ve thrown in your lot and reaped the benefits of untold wealth, you are stuck. After gorging themselves on TARP and the stimulus, Wall Street is recognizing that “TANSTAAFL”; in exchange for access to the public treasury, Wall Street is expected to pay higher taxes, suffer more state interference in its affairs, and occasionally offer up one of its own to do serious prison time in order to appease the masses. After all the unbelievable and sometimes criminal shenanigans they’ve pulled, the guys who made billions in backroom deals while saddling the public with their companies’ losses do not make sympathetic figures.
I can just see Obama sneering at a room full of powerful men in suits, “Shut up and sit down – did you really think you get to just walk away?”
I’m sorry the tears Wall Street is crying are crocodile tears. This is just the most recent Kabuki dance routine, cooked up by Obama/Benny and Timmy to take us down the road to Stalinism/ Wall Street State Corporatism. Okay, so some guys on Wall Street will pay some more taxes. This is small potatoes to what is happening .
Let’s look at what the recent “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” (Dodd/Frank FinReg) did not do:
• Control the insane level of exposure of our financial system due to derivatives by the TBTF banks
• Return the reserve ratios of the TBTF banks to sane levels
• Put any restrictions or wall between the selling of securities and banking by same TBTF banks
• Stop the manipulation and front-running of markets through program trading
• Give any hope that our financial system will return to sound banking principles that would return us to reasonable banking and lending.
But what did it do?
According to http://dailycapitalist.com/downloads/doddfrank.pdf, it :
“gives the government a relatively free hand to set prices and wages, to make business decisions, to promote and eliminate businesses and to break up businesses, It establishes a large new bureaucracy to enable to dictate its wishes to industry.”
A long read, but a must read.
In short, this is the big enchilada, Buraq and company have been dreaming of: Controlling Capitalism.
Yes, Wall Street has been conned, but they as part of the Ruling Elite they always thought they would be in on the con. Only time will tell who among the Ruling Elite will end up on top. All totalitarian regimes have bloody internal battles among the top dogs for real control at some point.
Islam did. The Soviet Union did. Why not our new overlords?
regarding the girl from adelaide, your friends, etc. these people were experiencing something very different than you — they were experiencing fantasy fulfilment.
obama and his worshippers accidentally created a mass movement, as described by heller (True Believer). this movement appears to be foundering now, as it as provoked a severe immune response from the society at large.
the evidence of who obama really was, and how he would behave in office, was clear as day. he said what he would do and he’s doing it. he hasn’t surprised me once, and i would guess many people here can say the same. it shows the mental monoculture of the left, that so many of them (all of them?) had the same fantasy. the ride down for these people is going to leave scars and is as clear a demonstration of kharma as you will ever see.
here’s how david bowie wrote about it;
Don’t talk of dust and roses
Or should we powder our noses?
Don’t live for last year’s capers
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulses unreal
He’ll build a glass asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He’ll build a better whirlpool
We’ll be living from sin, then we can really begin
Please saviour, save your shores
Hear me, I’m graphically yours
Someone to claim us, someone to follow
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo
Someone to rule us, someone like you
We want you Big Brother, Big Brother
Bill Clinton just wants to be loved; Barack Obama just wants to wield the whip.
Well Stephan you are wrong. He keeps bring up this point every once in a while in contexts such as this. You should go back and read some of the other thread where this issue has come up.
This is a (very small) ongoing moral subtext, as is my grousing about it.
He often remarks that to understand these people one has to be somewhat like them oneself, or in the company of them and thus somehow tainted or compromised by this very fact.
Your meaning makes little sense. Then we are merely talking about experience, and as eloquent and economical of a writer as W would have used that word. It is true that his response here slightly here point words such a conclusion, but in other thread, he goes the other way. It is some notion that he has that seems for some reason to be problematic for him to completely articulate.
We keep coming back to it.
W/41: So I asked myself why can’t some ’see’ what others can see? Is it bias, is it prejudice, or was it something else? Why the variance in cognition given the same facts?
I think it often comes down to a matter of personal will. Some are more willing to believe the truth while others are more willing to believe a lie. So what would make someone be more willing to believe a lie? Don’t we all want the truth? Well, the short answer to that is no, we don’t all want the truth. The truth can get in the way of something you want more. An extreme example would be the O.J. Simpson jurors who had no use whatsoever for the truth.
Often it is a case of, as Mongoose said, bias or socialization or indoctrination but often enough it’s due to some facet of egotism, just as the NYT article pointed out: Obama was one of the elite, an Ivy Leaguer, the intelligent choice; he was all these cool things that they prided themselves on as well.
This was not a case of a posteriori information. They knew the truth when they voted for him that he would raise taxes and increase regulation, but that didn’t matter as much as the ego thing. Now that they’ve been stung as “villains” (decidedly NOT good for their ego), they’re willing to broadcast the truth they knew all along; e.g., hedge fund manager Loeb circulates his letter quoting Jefferson and Reagan and lecturing, “As every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination…” Only now are Mr. Loeb and his fellow Wall Street elitists willing to assert the truth. Only now are they willing to remind everyone of the country’s core founding principles. Only now are they crying about non-punitive taxation and self-determination. Back in 2008, when they were fundraising and donating and pulling the lever for Obama, these principles weren’t so important.
Wretchard, of the two, your second theory is the correct one. No new information came to light and there’s been a shift in perspective all right. The old perspective was, “We’re in like Flynn, we don’t need the truth.” The new perspective is, “We’re painted as villains, time to drag out the truth.”
It’s pathetic and venal, but there it is.
They knew the truth all along but were willing to ignore it in favor of something more flattering. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.
That counter-betrayal is already haunting the administration. As Donny Baseball (http://crossmolina.blogspot.com) has noted for over a year now, the lack of private sector job creation which will unseat the Democrats in 2 months and Obama in 2 years, is a direct result of his former “supporters” unwillingness to bail out those who’ve betrayed them.