If you read just one more thing about this POS bailout, make it Greenwald's latest.

[mhatrw]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/01/pearlstein/index.html

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein has spent the week insisting that only gross ignorance could account for opposition to the Paulson bailout. After the House rejected the bailout plan on Monday, he wrote a column -- entitled "They Just Don't Get It" -- arguing that bailout opponents simply "don't understand the seriousness of the situation." He scoffed at the idea that any well-informed person could question -- let alone oppose -- the specific Paulson bailout plan Steve Pearlstein favors. ...

Just today, in Pearlstein's own paper, Jonathan G.S. Koppell and William N. Goetzmann of the Yale School of Management argued that a far preferable solution is to have the government pay off all delinquent mortgages -- which would transform the toxic waste into solid instruments and would prevent people from having their homes foreclosed -- the very plan Pearlstein's reader advocated which provoked such snotty scorn. Many other ignorant, ill-informed morons have had the temerity to argue that other proposals were superior to the bailout, including George Soros (recapitalize the banking system) and Actual Economist Brad De Long (nationalize under-capitalized institutions). One of the leading blogger opponents of the bailout has been Duncan Black, an Actual Economist with a Ph.D. in Economics from Brown. And Actual Economist Dean Baker wrote earlier this week:

How do we go about getting the banks in order? Almost every economist I know rejects the Paulson approach and argues instead for directly injecting capital into the banks. The taxpayers give them the money and then we own some, or all, of the bank. (That's what Warren Buffet did with Goldman Sachs.)

Pearlstein -- and so many other bailout cheerleaders -- scorns those same concerns as grounded in stupidity and ignorance when they come from the ugly, loudmouth, teeming, insubordinate masses who refuse to obediently bear the massive debt being tossed on their backs.

Third, just today I interviewed former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston -- who, unlike Pearlstein, didn't beat his chest and boast that he "won a certain prize" for his journalism, though he did -- and Johnston condemned what he called the "atrocious" journalism on the financial crisis, and said "there's an enormous amount of just wrong reporting going on." In particular, Johnston documented the fear-mongering taking place among TV journalists that has plainly put the public into the state of submissive panic that Pearlstein wants them to be in, whereby -- exactly as was true for Iraq, eavesdropping, the Patriot Act and a whole host of other measures -- they come to be convinced that they better unquestioningly and immediately submit to the dictates of the political and media establishment, they better relinquish any belief that they should question what they're being told, lest they suffer imminent, inevitable, catastrophic doom. ...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/01/pearlstein/index.html">much, much more ...

[girl gone mad]

1. Recapitalization (the Soros plan) is a proven success.

Bank bailouts are a proven failure.

Paulson is an idiot who said subprime was "contained". The media and the Government believed him. Bloggers derided him.

[mhatrw]

31. The Scandinavian bank rescue plan is the proven gold standard.

So why, other than so Paulson/Bush cronies can cash in on hundreds of billions, aren't we using it?

[Waiting For Everyman]

2. Pearlstein didn't address any of the points made.

That tells ya something.

[Gin]

20. But..but.. >he did win an award

story.

[mhatrw]

3. Lifted from Sparkatus in the Greenwald comments section

"Yup, I'm with stoopid 2

I'm no economist but I do work on wall st, have an mba and a degree in public policy.

This plan has everything you don't want:

Privatized benefits and socialized costs.

Bailout of the bad actors, not the worst affected.

Asymmetric info in which banks and which loans get sold to the Treasury.

Appearance of impropriety and self-dealing in Paulson's actions.

Consideration of only a single option.

Snap decision in the immediate aftermath of a crisis.

No change to the fundamental mode of operations

Good money after bad right back into a malfunctioning system.

A recipe for moral hazard, and thus stage is set for Act II

I guess its one big positive attribute is that it's currently on the table. That's not much.

I don't understand why the people who were at the wheel when we hit the iceberg haven't been thrown out yet. That's executive decision-making 101: get rid of the guys with an interest in retrospective CYA."

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. That looks a very smart "take" on it, doesn't it?

[mhatrw]

4. Kick n/t

If this doesn't deserve greatest page status, what does?

[mhatrw]

5. Come on. One more vote for GG? n/t

[pberq]

6. So why did Obama and Biden vote for this thing?

It's clear this bailout is poison. There are plenty of better alternatives.

Obama claims to be for change, but instead gives us business as usual.

[mhatrw]

14. Why did Biden sponsor the bunkruptcy bill?

Why did Obama cave on domestic spying and offshore drilling?

[girl gone mad]

29. I don't know what the hell they're thinking.

If thing goes down, it almost guarantees Obama will be a one-term President. We'll end up in a depression and we'll be all out of arrows, wooden or otherwise.

[riverdeep]

33. It really makes you question his judgement.

My guess is that he has advisers who are telling him this is the only way. He claims that better plans exist, but that we don't have time to explore them. I'd rather take the chance of taking an extra two or three weeks to get this right. Of course, that's also when the election is coming up. Staying in the Senate and working, means not campaigning.

It's almost as if the timing was by design...

[bbgrunt]

7. yep. k and r

[EFerrari]

8. Greenwald misses the central issue: the credit freeze/strike will continue

until the bailout is effected and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

I guess he has no small business to lose or something, because he seems to be oblivious to what is happening right now to small business people. Must be nice, Glenn.

[chill_wind]

11. He argues that there were other proposals - apart from Paulson's Bailout

that were not listened to. (And not given any decent share of exposure in the media, either)

"From the beginning, Congress considered only one framework -- the Paulson framework -- and systematically ignored all others. "

"Many other ignorant, ill-informed morons have had the temerity to argue that other proposals were superior to the bailout, including George Soros (recapitalize the banking system) and Actual Economist Brad DeLong (nationalize under-capitalized institutions). One of the leading blogger-opponents of the bailout has been Duncan Black, an Actual Economist with a Ph.D. in Economics from Brown. "


"Contrary to Pearlstein's simplistic bullying, opposition to the bailout isn't tantamount to denial that there is a financial crisis. It's perfectly possible simultaneously to recognize that we have a serious crisis in the credit market and still oppose the bailout. It's also possible to acknowledge a crisis in the credit market while questioning whether a rejection of this specific plan would spawn a global meltdown and catapult us into the Second Great Depression."

[EFerrari]

12. Glenn over uses insults. And he also overlooks, as only someone

who is not directly affected can, that our small business people don't have much time. Seriously, my regard for him has dropped about 25 floors over this.

We are negotiating with terrorists, plain and simple. That IS what is happening. This is the ticking bomb scenario we all envisioned as waterboarding.

It's easy to sit behind a computer and criticize a fix that must be put in place immediately in order to avoid harm to so many people.

Maybe the thing that gets to me most is the blustering. There is a gun to the head of small business right now. We don't have all the time in the world to chew on that. We don't have a month. Even another week of delay really will reap casualties that none of us want to see. We don't have the leadership or the infrastructure to do better than this bill. Why doesn't Glenn hit on that?

Maybe that's why the "morons" Glenn so easily insults went for the fastest fix. Maybe those "morons" would seem smarter to him if it was his check in danger.

[mhatrw]

16. This fix is just that: a fix, as in "the fix is in."

Is it really your take that we should always immediately pay whatever ransom any terrorists demand of us?

[EFerrari]

18. Do you not get it? There is nothing we can do about this

as the system is now.

That's the bottom line. And anyone urging the House not to pass this bill is clueless about the consequences.

You have a choice, in other words. You can stand your ground and bury the dead when this over OR, you can recognize that we need this fix to save more businesses and work to restructure and re-regulate.

But, thanks for calling me a coward. I needed that!

[mhatrw]

23. Read my sigline and substitute "investment bankers" for "defense." n/t

[chill_wind]

24. We must not be reading the same piece.

It is those very bullying tactics and condescending insults to which he is objecting in his sarcasm. He feels very angry at how Paulson Plan critics, many of them very knowledgable in their field, have been portrayed as "ignorant, ill-informed..." And yes, morons, if you were to believe some of the loudest at DU.

"Many other ignorant, ill-informed morons have had the temerity to argue that other proposals were superior to the bailout..."

in many cases absurdly so:

"Another drooling know-nothing being misled by left-wing bloggers is John Allison -- CEO of BB&T, one of America's largest commercial banks."

Pearlstein snidely dismisses concerns that the Treasury Secretary about to be vested with vast discretion can't be trusted with such power ("in the list of villains, 's pretty low on the list," and "I think you may want to think again before questioning his motives or his competence").

Don't question his motives or his competence? Are you fucking kidding me!??


I'm with GG. Screw that kind of demagoguery. Congress should have demanded the books, insisted on Paulson's instant resignation, set about getting a panel of the country's best experts in there looking for all options/solutions on DAY ONE.

It's too late now.

[girl gone mad]

30. Local and regional banks have money.

Why not try that option?

[mhatrw]

15. Greenwald is not saying to do nothing. What is is saying is to look

at better options.

[EFerrari]

19. Greenwald did not invent the art of the deal. n/t

[chill_wind]

9. Yes. "much, much more." K & R.

eom

[Winterblues]

10. Why do Democrats oppose Bottom up lending?

Why do they insist upon Top down and hope it somehow filters down to the lowly one's that want to buy a car or pay Credit Card Debts. It would cost less and have a larger impact if the Government Loaned @ 1% interest to any American that needed financing for what-ever. Why give it to the Big Wigs (Bankers) to charge Usurious Interest rates and act important? Why?

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. There's a terror that "robber baron" capitalism is finished, and I suppose the aspiring

leaders fear the power of the Beltway Quislings, which the Republicans have graciously bestowed on them - at election times, for instance.

It looks as if the lurch to the right will be corrected, and civilisation re-introduced via a Socialist mixed economy, whether they like it or not. But they don't give up easily. Just look at the scratch-marks from Blair's finger nails on the door of no 10.

[BrklynLiberal]

21. K&R

[Canuckistanian]

22. Duncan Black? That's Atrios.

I haven't looked at Eschaton for while. I'll have to go over there.

[mhatrw]

26. Thanks for the heads up.

I didn't know Atrios was an economist.

[Blue_Tires]

25. k+r

[barbtries]

27. couple more paragraphs:

Contrary to Pearlstein's simplistic bullying, opposition to the bailout isn't tantamount to denial that there is a financial crisis. It's perfectly possible simultaneously to recognize that we have a serious crisis in the credit market and still oppose the bailout. It's also possible to acknowledge a crisis in the credit market while questioning whether a rejection of this specific plan would spawn a global meltdown and catapult us into the Second Great Depression.

From the beginning, Congress considered only one framework -- the Paulson framework -- and systematically ignored all others. Professor Roubini called that decision "pathetic" precisely because it resulted in consideration of one plainly inferior plan. Professor Roubini is right, and it's equally pathetic to watch people like Pearlstein try to shove this bailout down the public's throat based on patronizing claims that these matters are much too complex for regular people to have an opinion (even if the opinion is based on familiarity with what actual experts have been arguing) and that, instead, the only rational thing to do is cede one's critical faculties to those with regular columns at The Washington Post (ones who have won "certain prizes" for that). That sort of blind following of our Nation's Wise Men is what the country has been doing for the last eight years. The only thing that's "ignorant" would be continuing to do it.

i'm beginning to love this guy. and learned even more about why i'm so opposed to any plan that includes henry paulson. this is big money extortion and cannot end well.

[Hannah Bell]

28. k&r

[moodforaday]

32. K&R and

we have yet to see a reasoned response, rather than childish blabber such as "my regard for him has dropped about 25 floors over this".