MUST SEE Dean Baker: "The Elites Have ABSOLUTE Contempt For The Public" (VIDEO)

Stop!  Watch this.  Elevated visceral outrage from Pitchfork including transcribed quotes, plus a clip of the entire House floor debate on TARP.

Video - Dean Baker speaking at the Institute for Policy Studies, just one day after the first TARP bill was voted down - September 30, 2008

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By Dr. Pitchfork

It's common these days to hear people trying to explain their support for TARP by saying that we had to do something and that everyone else was just as panicked and scared as they were.  But the bailout was never a fait accompli.  It didn't have to happen -- certainly not the way it did.  And not everyone was fooled by Bernanke and Paulson's fear-mongering.  In fact, during the debate leading up to the passage of TARP, people like Bill Isaac and Dean Baker were there in Washington, in the halls of Congress, working their asses off behind the scenes to try to stop the bailout of Wall St.  If you cheered the day that TARP was voted down, much of the thanks for that little glimmer of hope goes to Dean Baker.

• Tale Of The TARP 2 Years Later: How The Elite Media Perpetuated The Lies

Baker throws cold water on the notion that TARP is necessary to save the world from financial armageddon.  This clip, by the way, is from September 30, 2008.  In other words, this is NOT Monday-morning quarterbacking (listen up, Gresham Barrett).  This is real-time opposition to the bailout, and it nearly worked.  Obviously, Baker called this one correctly.  It's too bad more people didn't listen.

Highlights (don't miss the last one):

• "Is the bailout necessary?  I would say to all the people who say it's necessary, I'd say, For what?  And that usually shuts them up"

• "Running around talking about the Great Depression is not serious.  This is just silly scare tactics.  And it reflects the contempt that these people have for the public."

• "The public overwhelmingly is opposed to this bailout.  The elite is almost unanimously in favor of it.  The elite has absolute contempt for the public, [saying] their emotions got carried away with them, they thought this was a handout to Wall St.  Well guess what, the public is exactly right.  The elites don't know what they're talking about.  They've let their emotions get carried away with them."

• "They don't know what bad thing will happen if we don't do the bailout tomorrow or Thursday...  What will happen?  None of them can tell you.  They all know it's supposed to be really, really bad.  But none of them can tell you."

• "The people who are selling us this, the people who are talking to us like we're little kids -- President Bush, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke -- they missed it.  We're in this crisis because they missed it.  It really takes some nerve for people who totally messed up their job to come out and talk to us like we're idiots."

• "You could have taken this [bailout] and fixed it, so that it wasn't enriching the executives on Wall St., so that it wasn't enriching the shareholders.  They didn't do that.  It was a joke.  The provisions put in there are the sorts of things you give to children.  These were not serious provisions.  The executive compensation caps, what I said about those is, any executive who couldn't get around those caps, should be fired."

• "It's just an insult to the American people.  Everything about this was an insult to the American people.  There might be nothing bad that happens.  We're in a recession.  We're in a recession because we lost 4 to 5 trillion dollars in housing bubble wealth."

• "From the standpoint of the public, and from that vantage point, the standpoint of the economy, we don't need the big banks.  That's not our problem.  We can keep the financial system operating -- that's what we care about.  The fact that banks go under, that's bad news for the bank executives.  Who get paid tens of millions of dollars, by the way."

• "What's going on here is [the Wall St. banks] have a gun pointed at their head and they're trying to tell us that if we don't give them $700B, they're going to pull the trigger.  And I'm willing to live with that."

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To contrast with Dean Baker's three minutes of common sense, below is the full TARP debate.  (Those with heart conditions should watch at their own risk.)

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Comments

[Dr. Pitchfork]

In checking some dates for this post I just came across this op-ed from Baker. It was published Sept. 30, 2008, the same day the clip above is from.
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"How do you make a DC intellectual look less articulate than Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/how-do-you-make-a-dc-inte_b_130735.html

That's easy. You ask them how failure to pass the bailout will give us a Great Depression.

The odds are that your favorite DC intellectual type has uttered some dire warning like that. After all, they all heard some authority like President Bush or a highly respected news reporter make such a claim. All right-thinking people know that we just have to give $700 billion to the Wall Street crew or the economy will collapse.

While all right-thinking people might know we need the bailout, just about all right-thinking people don't have a clue as to what they are talking about.

[DailyBail]

great find on the editorial from huffpo...i've stuck it away in a file for later linking...

[DailyBail]

Dollar Gains as Euro Concerns Resurface

http://www.activistpost.com/2010/11/dollar-gains-as-euro-concerns-resurface.html

[DailyBail]

Is There a Secret Operation by the Fed to Limit the Amount of Cash Americans Can Hold?

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/secret-battle-against-holding-currency.html

[josie]

Actually, Dean Baker has been a great advocate against the banksters (particularly GS) and bailouts. Unfortunately, he only gets time on CSPAN and not the major buz networks...Think Becky Quick will invite Dean Baker onto Squawk?

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/16/news/economy/populist_hype.fortune/index.htm

[Dave]

Illegal bailouts, yet another violation of our rights. Add it to the list of gov’t violations of our right:
They violate the 1st Amendment by placing protesters in cages, banning books like “America Deceived II” and censoring the internet.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by molesting airline passengers.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars for foreign countries.
Impeach Obama and sweep out the Congress, except Ron Paul.
(Last link of Banned Book):
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526

[paul krugman's raging ulcer]

And yet Dean Baker has a blog post at the Huffington Post right now in which he concludes that QE2 is just what the doctor ordered for an ailing economy. I wonder if these two Dean Bakers have met.

[Maryline Parker]

He is clearly wrong in one aspect and that is simply that this mess was NOT just a big mistake no one caught or corrected. This whole mess was planned to be exactly the way it is. You cannot tell me that all those bankers and finanical wizards that live their whole life with finance and housing etc...did not see this coming.
In all of the other things he says however...he is absolutly correct.
I do have one question for Americans however and that is:
What in the world are we going to do about these crooks and this mess?

[Joseph Conrad]

If Amerians think the TARP/Bank Bailout Program was such a 'scam', wait until they get a taste of Blythe Masters' and JP Morgan's Life Insurance CDS she's created and JPM is preparing to market on Wall Street. These new CDS's she's created are to take advantage of the Obama Healthacare Plan's marketpalce impact as a TARP/Bailout of the Health/Life Insurance Industry.

These 'LI CDS' prodcuts are derived from a securatization of Taxpayers' health/life insurance policies and their premium streams over time and driven by life expectancy and health status. Ain't life just grand when your part of a nation of COWARDS driven solely by RACISM, ARROGANCE, GREED, EGOTISM & SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT instead of by Respet for FREEDOM & JUSTICE?

The real and only question NOW is "What will it take for the 75% of Americans to decide they've had enough of Paulson, Geithner, Summers, Freidman, Rubin, Bernanke, Greenspan, Volkers and the 16 CEOs and C-Level execs running the 16 Biggest US Banks and the Federal Reserves on the BACKS and WALLETS of Taxpayers?! A Religious Epiphany?!

[DailyBail]

"And yet Dean Baker has a blog post at the Huffington Post right now in which he concludes that QE2 is just what the doctor ordered for an ailing economy. I wonder if these two Dean Bakers have met."

@Krugman's ulcer...

that's the problem with baker, galbraith,delong, krugman, romer and the rest of the keynesians...they are right about the bailouts but they have no concern about wasting triliions and destroying the dollar thru stupid monetary AND fiscal stimulus...

[NflJerseyOnline]

The best place to find sports jerseys online is that you will find a large selection available when it comes to sizing. You’re likely to save money and be able to pick up a replica jerseys to share the cost of those sold in stores Stadium.Site:
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[squirrel jammer]

Rothschild Bankers funded WW II Germans and Allied Bankers via B.I.S. in Basel Switzerland transferring funds the entire war between Nazi Deutch Bank and UK Bank of England extending it.

War could have ended 1-2 years but Germans Printed Debt Free Currency and Tossed Rothschild Bankers out of Germany so they firebombed all Germans and never bombed factories to extend war 5 years to kill all Germans so no more "Banking Problem Children" left living.

Read Old book With The New Financial Way to rid parasite Interest Banking here:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b422gc9/n/ndcic.pdf

Oh and they invented Interest banking 800 years ago in Italy and Arab Sharia Law forbids Interest Banking so we been shooting Arabs last 800 years too.

Oh and don't count on the Police or Homeland Security to help with this Mafia, as they are paid to protect the government from you after you see this next video showing CIA and Police bring Coke into the USA Cities:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b42304b/n/crackthecia.wmv