My friend, Jake, made the following comment on a post I wrote a while back called Baracktile Dysfunction 2:
I have been impressed with the measures taken to see that private capital replaces public capital in these industries as soon as possible, although time will tell whether this ends up to be the case.
I don’t know how much time Jake thought it would take to tell us whether the “impressive measures” being taken to see that private capital replaces public capital are working, but things aren’t looking good. You can read the latest installment of Just Politics to find that certain banks are trying to give back their bailout money that they were forced to take, but the Obama administration won’t have any of that. I will borrow the quote that Harrison cited from the WSJ:
Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.
Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.
Of course the disturbing nature of these developments are only amplified as we dig into how cap n’ trade is going to work. Enron, was the company that first came up with the brilliant idea of carbon offset derivatives. Unfortunately they are no longer around to live the dream. Now our friendly government owned financial institution, AIG, (how lucky we taxpayers are to have acquired this fine firm at a time when we need someone with demonstrable genius in trading complex financial instruments) is wanting to be a player in the cap and trade regulatory regime. How else, other than through back-door taxation, is this company ever going to get the money to pay us back. If imposing new taxes on us through cap and trade financial instruments is AIG’s plan for paying back the tax dollars that it took, then I guess all I can do is lament that people like Jake got suckered into voting for Obama.
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The trouble is when you vote for vague ideas such as “hope” and “change” when those things are never spelled out you don’t know what you’re going to get. The Democrats can play populist anger against the banks so they’ll probably be able to gain a fair amount of control over them because it’s the “greedy bankers” even though people forget about the “greedy homeowners” who tried to flip houses and helped create a housing bubble to begin with.
I think it will just be a question of how deep into these private companies the government can sink their tentacles until the music stops.
Ben,
Forgive me for taking a while, but I will use this to comment to a few different posts, and hopefully my thoughts don’t end up too scattered.
I am also sorry to hear that I was “suckered” in to voting for Obama, for I never knew that I was indeed being duped. In fact, I must admit that I am still not aware that I was duped, or that there was some great sleight of hand to which I have succumbed. Perhaps Harrison is right, maybe when it comes down to it, all of the research I did and past experience watching Obama in my own state prior to his election was for naught and, in the end, I was ultimately seduced by the campaign logo and his hip little buzz words. Perhaps I would have been better off had I gone back to my roots and voted for Sarah Pahlin because she is a hockey mom and I love Alaska. But, alas, as you all would have it, my most superficial impulses gave way and “hope” and “change” got the best of me.
Sorry for the immense sarcasm, but the tone of most of these posts has gotten to me (don’t get me wrong, Ben, I laugh quite a bit when I read your posts, you are certainly eloquent and have a way with words). I do think it is a bit presumptuous of both this posting and Harrison’s comment to make the assumption that I was somehow misled into voting for Obama as opposed to simply adhering to a different political philosophy. It would certainly be audacious to make the a priori assumption that one’s political opponent’s philosophy is somehow irrational, or perhaps even boil it down to “a bag of tricks.” Even if this were the case, to what end? Okay, so what if Obama IS the biggest electoral joke or fraud (the mere thought begs one to honestly consider the process through which his predecessor was elected…), okay, to what end? Let’s say I have been duped – by whom and to what end? Is Obama simply power-hungry and his political philosophy and grass-roots movement merely mass electoral brainwashing? Is he really just a closet communist who wants nothing more than to usurp all control of the means of production and turn it over to the spirit of Chairman Mao or Uncle Ho? Do you really believe that? If so, please give me some proof that this is the case. And no, a Keynsian economic approach to recession does NOT prove this.
So, sarcasm aside, what would I really say to the accusation that I was “duped” by Obama and his cronies to vote for him? I would respond by saying that unless the majority of his stated political philosophy is a fraud, particular his stances on international policy, then I think that all we have here is a difference of opinion, and you were no less duped not to vote for him than I was to vote for him. However, if you do perceive some great fallacy that is so apparent and yet I can’t see it, please let me know.
Okay, perhaps too much on a relatively small point, so let me address a weightier one (so I think). I like your post on multiculturalism. However, I found myself wondering when I was done reading it, it is obvious that you don’t like multiculturalism, but you seem to assume it is bad as opposed to posting a substantive argument as to why this should be the case. Surely for conservative readers of your blog this is not a large assumption to make and will likely go unnoticed, but as an anthropologist (and one who claims to know a few things about culture), I still found myself scratching my head and thinking, why is this message to Iranian citizens such a bad thing, and more so why is multiculturalism such a bad thing? And why is it such a bad thing particularly in a country as diverse as ours, where just about everyone who claims to have a culture disagrees fundamentally with at least someone else’s view from their “culture”, Mormons certainly not being the most popular of these groups. Many southerners still talk about “the war of northern aggression,” for example. Is this not cultural difference? If you don’t think so, many of them certainly tend to think so. When we look to such a rich history of immigration from diverse places of the world that populated this country, it seems difficult for me to even begin to imagine whose monocultural stance we are going to adopt as “American.” I am going to take a wild guess that, if this is ever going to happen, it is most likely not to be that of the average person in Utah valley. So, again, I ask, why not multiculturalism? What is so bad about it? What parts of multiculturalism (as vague of a concept as it may be so framed) don’t you care for? And why is it so bad that our president should be considerate of the diversity of religious and cultural perspectives not only in our country but among the nations with whom we hope to engage diplomatically? Really, honestly, I can’t seem to figure out why you think multiculturalism is such a bad thing, except perhaps form a perspective of some type of massive group identity threat, which I don’t think to be the case.
So, moving on to a third point, and this is more of a question. It is apparent that you think that human action has done little to effectively change global warming trends. So, I guess this is another clarification, since I can’t engage in a debate unless I know where you stand. Do you believe that warming trends are temporary, or completely natural, and human action has little or no to do with them? It seems that you regard the widespread concern over global warming that may be attributable to human action to little more than a widespread liberal conspiracy. So do you believe that the wealth of researchers who do believe (or at least purport to believe) that human action has had a significant impact is literally nothing more than a conspiracy and the studies and models are contrived? I can certainly respect taking such an unpopular stance, and arguing it aggressively, but I am trying to figure out just what stance you are taking, so as to discuss it further. As for me, I believe that there is a natural warming trend that would occur regardless of human presence, but I also believe that the effects of masses of greenhouse gasses is multiplying the natural trend in ways that are noticeably affecting our climate. For example, I don’t think that miles of disappearing glaciers in places like Alaska have nothing to do with human presence and the emission of greenhouse gasses, and I do think it is sensible to invest in ways to minimize such emissions. So, all jokes aside, tell me what you actually believe and we can debate the evidence.
A fourth point, it is probably not necessary to point out that I have a different read on what happened with Obama’s at the Americas Summit. First of all, I agree with his change in stance towards Cuba (not to mention Iran). I think it is more productive to take diplomatic action before demands are made as opposed to require them beforehand. Second, what evidence is there that Obama simply wanted to be liked by them. Homer Simpson may be right (okay, he is DEFINITELY right), but I am not so sure that this was Obama’s philosophy during the summit, or during what conservative critics have dubbed Obama’s “American Apology Tour.” It seems to me that people who make this type of critique can’t seem to admit any international political pitfalls in this country’s past decade of international policy, except perhaps a more cooperative stance toward other countries.
Last, I feel compelled to respond to an economic point, mainly because the posting title had my name on it, my (admittedly limited) understanding of the terms through which payback were refused, is that leaders of companies who received bailouts didn’t like the strings attached, and were willing to put their companies in a more precarious situation than the government would permit to escape those obligations (perhaps even for reasons not in the best interests of those companies, from the government’s perspective), and that is why their paybacks were rejected. Now, this does assume that these companies fall under the “too big to fail” category, and I recognize that this is an assumption that we disagree on, but I actually agree with Chuckles in that I think that a great wealth if not majority of prominent economists’ opinions are on my side on this assumption. Further, I still consider it quite soon (but a few months) since these payments were made in the first place, and thus I consider it too soon to say that it has been a “long time” for the taxpayers to get paid back. Thus, I stand by my original comment that you quote in this post.
That is probably enough for me to comment on for now, since I have covered international policy, multiculturalism, the economy, global warming, and political fraud. If, by the way, Obama really is a power-hungry socialist, I am going to start a lobby to have the government take over the media industry and have a state-mandated re-airing of Arrested Development. Perhaps this is a policy on which we can agree. Feel free to post any of this on a new posting and respond (I dare you to post all of it, Triple Dog Dare!). It is funny to think back, growing up, that we would have such disparate political opinions, don’t you think? I always thought of your parents as conservative, but always thought you, like me would follow a more liberal vein. Isn’t that what Eddie Vedder would have wanted? Then again, perhaps I am only living out the end of my adolescent identity crisis that started with writing on stretched rubber bands and quickly proceeded to long hair, flannel shirts, and torn jeans. Perhaps I should get myself analyzed…
Triple dog dare accepted. Give me some time.
Sounds good, just don’t get your tongue stuck on the pole!