Dinesh D'Souza is Clueless, Installment 273 (TARP Edition)
Those anti-colonial Kenyans -- Wall St.'s worst nightmare.
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By Dr. Pitchfork
Dinesh D'Souza's recent Forbes piece, "How Obama Thinks," has been getting a lot of attention for, among other things, inspiring Newt Gingrich's reference to Obama's "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." Apparently there's something wrong with referring to Obama's Kenyan heritage. (Michelle calls it Barack's "home country.") But doing so is hardly the worst sin committed by serial adulterer Newt Gingrich (who for now is a fervent Catholic).
But here's what inspires this installment of Dinesh D'Souza is Clueless. Writing in the Forbes piece, D'Souza describes as an "oddity" the fact that,
Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.
It's been nearly two years since TARP was passed and well over a year since the kabuki (non-)stress tests were performed. And yet, D'Souza writes as if Geithner and Obama were a couple of Marxist-Leninists running roughshod over the paragons of free-market capitalism at the TBTF banks; as if the bankers were just innocent victims of heavy-handed government regulation. The only "oddity" I see here is that D'Souza writes as if Geithner and Obama had been anything OTHER THAN Wall St.'s shameless errand boys.
Now, maybe D'Souza thinks capital requirements are just a nutty, left-wing sort of thing, or maybe he actually believes the stress tests were something other than theater. It's possible that he's never heard of FAS 157, and it's all too likely that the primary driver behind the banks' impatience to repay the TARP (restrictions on executive pay) has completely escaped him. But there is NO EXCUSE, especially for a so-called conservative, to be this clueless about Team Obama's cozy relationship with Wall St. and the nation's largest banks.
Jamie Dimon doesn't need your help, Dinesh. Timmy and Barack are already doing a heck of a job.
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BONUS CLIP:
Scott Brown says it just ain't fair to put a special new tax on those honest banks who paid back all that money we gave them (while simultaneously relying on a whole range of other taxpayer-funded subsidies that Brown probably neither knows about nor understands). Still, I'm really glad we voted for this guy so we could stop that whole Obamacare thing.
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BONUS DYLAN RATIGAN QUOTE:
"Now the only way those banksters can survive is to pretend that their corporate communism is working even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Most recently, they decided that instead of taxing complicit financial institutions the cost of their "Financial Reform-In-Name-Only," they will instead use what I call the Big Tarp Lie to pander for the vote of Senator Scott Brown and others."
Sep 18, 2010 at 5:18 PM
Reader Comments (27)
But to make the claim that geithner, summers obama have been tough on wall street is laughable and sort of blows up his entire paper...
D'Souza wrote:
"Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling.” Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling—but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama’s backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro—not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil."
CJR guy responds:
"Get that? The oil that Petrobras pumps will only go to Brazil because it’s owned by Brazil. So Hugo Chavez will sell us his Citgo gas, but Lula won’t? And even if it somehow did (it should be noted that Petrobras has an American affiliate), that would mean Brazil would need less oil from elsewhere, which means more for us. Supply and demand, dude. Oil is fungible. Gah."
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/forbes_shameful_obama_dinesh_dsouza.php?page=2
In another installment, the same guy writes:
"I pointed out the other day one reason this was one of the most moronic paragraphs ever to appear in Forbes (which is saying something!).
Oil is fungible, dude. But also, the point of the Ex-Im loans, which were approved by Bush officials, is that they finance our exports. We lend foreigners money to buy our stuff and create jobs here. We do it all the time.
Oh yeah, and 'Ex-Im Bank does not make U.S. policy. In fact, our charter prohibits us from turning down financing for either nonfinancial or noncommercial reasons, except in rare circumstances including failure to meet our environmental standards.' That’s the Ex-Im Bank president writing last year in response to the fact-twisting Wall Street Journal editorial D’Souza cites."
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/dinesh_dsouza_digs_himself_in.php
The one thing that almost all tea-party candidates mention in their ads and stump speeches -- especially Rand Paul -- is the bank bailout. D'Souza is just revealing his own irrelevance.
Scott Brown will be irrelevant soon, too, I think. I'll have to hunt up the video, but I remember him complaining, D'Souza-fashion, about banks having paid back their TARP money so stop pickin' on 'em (or something like that).
No, I'd chalk dinesh's piece up to a paid marketing gig. Articles like this and similar ones on cnbc are the cancer that's killed MSM. Good riddance.
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I think that's the problem with just about everyone on the bailouts...it's a complex issue involving multiple programs and trillions in various guarantees and subsidies and someone like d'souza doesn't really understand any of it...so he regurgitates what he has seen in other circles written by other journalists who also don't understand the complexity of the bailout...
it's a vicious circle of ignorance and apologism...(is that even a word..?)
Julius the monkey could have been president during this ear and had great deficit numbers...look deeper and you'll find the truth..both parties are owned by corporate interests...
We have the
Banking Party...
Military-Industrial Party
Agriculture Party...
The Government Party
Big Pharma Party...
and a few more...
Don't fall for the bamboozle...D's and R's mean nothing...look behind the curtain...
Colin Powell critical of President Obama...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42381.html
Does anyone respect Powell anymore or give a shit what he says about anything. He is lower than a snake. He makes me sick.
Here he is saying how wonderful Obama is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda_qiQDBfk
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Probably not. So why do you keep posting stuff about him?
(I honestly don't care, so I don't actually watch the vids -- watching them, after all, would sort of disprove your claim.)
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Did NOT!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68I1ND20100919?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who invoked his own Christian faith recently in seeking to quell anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, attended church in Washington on Sunday for the first time in about five months.
Can we believe anything this fraud tells us...
"As someone who relies heavily on my Christian faith in my job, I understand the passions that religious faith can make," Obama told a September 10 news conference.
Why is "Team Obama's cozy relationship with Wall St. and the nation's largest banks" not greeted with the same anger that was extended when the Bush regime did exactly the same thing without that same direct relationship?
Bashing both sides is exactly what goes on here, with the exception of Gobie (Z), who believes Republicans can do no wrong, even when caught doing it. I will try to make this as plain as possible, BOTH PARTIES ARE RESPONSIBLE.