Obama On Acid: "It wasn't the Fed where regulations broke down"
Skip to the 4:40 mark for discussion of the Federal Reserve and financial regulation.
Is this a joke? President Obama can't honestly think we're this dense. Or is the problem that he doesn't understand himself?
The Federal Reserve is responsible for regulating Wall Street, yet they can't even regulate themselves. (You need to see this.) They missed the tech bubble, the housing bubble (wtf?...they created the housing bubble), the leverage bubble (oops!), and then this morning President Obama made the audacious argument that the Fed hadn't failed in its regulatory duties. The only plausible explanation we've got, The Prez is hallucinating. (And before you flail me incorrectly as a Republican [but I'm sure as hell not a Democrat either], know that I voted for Obama.)
In an interview shown on the CBS Early Show, Obama said the administration wants an overseer that "is accountable and clear when it comes to these large systemic firms that could potentially bring down the entire financial system. The Fed has the expertise and the credibility I think to do it." Asked whether lapses by the Fed contributed to last year's crisis, Obama said, "It wasn't the Fed where regulations broke down here."
Jun 22, 2009 at 3:51 PM
Reader Comments (18)
http://www.businessinsider.com/bear-stearns-should-have-been-allowed-to-go-bankrupt-2009-6
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/ny-times-treasury-and-bill-gross.html
10 Unusual and Creative Restaurants
http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/06/20/10-unusual-and-creative-restaurants/
Benefits to end July 1
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090620/AUTO01/906200363/1148/rss25
This is worth reading if only to understand how out of touch UAW members are with the rest of the private sector.
Anybody else out there getting vision and dental 100% paid for?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afydjEJN5RJc
http://dailybail.com/home/a-federal-reserve-dictatorship-a-few-words-from-larry-kudlow.html
Impossible, you say? Then why did all the big banks short the very mortgage backed securities they had been writing? The banks sure saw this coming, and the taxpayers ended up paying for their prescience through the AIG conduit. TARP money may have been paid back by some of the banks, but to my knowledge none of the monies paid to them through AIG have been returned.
The Fed (regulatory expansion) is as done a deal as the bailouts were at this point. Sure, some republicans will hymn and haw, point out the obvious, etc., but in the end they will vote for it.
Kleptoligarchy continues unabated. They are going to own everything before it's all done at this rate.
For whatever reason (personally, I don't understand it), there's alot of good will for Obama himself as an individual. That's why many people are slow to throw him under the us just yet. In any case, the most likely explanation for his remarks is that he simply doesn't understand what he's talking about. I would be shocked if he even knew (before he got his Now-You're-President cram sessions with Summers) what the Federal Reserve even is. Obama = patsy. No question about it. He really thinks he's doing some fine and brave things as POTUS. Clinton knew he was full of it. Obama is full of it, but doesn't know it. Now, as to whether other players in this whole fiasco are not so innocent, I don't doubt that either. But the two ideas aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, it works better if Obama IS as clueless as he seems. It's amazing when you think about it, but economics and finance are for Obama what geography and geopolitics were for George W Bush. And their ignorance in these respective areas left them wide open to manipulation by "experts" with their own agendas. Unfortunately, most Americans know and understand as little about the bailouts and the Fed's role in them as Obama does. Fortunately, we don't have to educate everyone in order to produce an effective opposition. The real question is how to frame these issues so that they can be reported on and talked about. Whatever control TPTB have over the financial system at this point, and whatever control they have over "the message," discourse and rhetoric can never be controlled completely. However clueless (or complicit) one believes Chris Dodd to be, notice that Obama still had to answer questions about the Fed's failures. That in itself is significant and encouraging. More along these lines would be better, but I see no reason to give up just yet. Useful idiots like Dodd are still, nonetheless, useful.
"Then why did all the big banks short the very mortgage backed securities they had been writing? The banks sure saw this coming, and the taxpayers ended up paying for their prescience through the AIG conduit. TARP money may have been paid back by some of the banks, but to my knowledge none of the monies paid to them through AIG have been returned."
Actually Goldman is the only investment bank that shorted subprime securities.. John Paulson and other hedge fund mangers certainly did, but not other investment banks. Or at least i've not read about others.
I agree with everything else in your statement that I've quoted. I make the same points everyday.
And my use of a drug analogy is simply for my own entertainment. I run out of things to say and ways of explaining the un-explicable. It's weak writing. And I'm not a disciplined writer, so I resort to petty laziness.
Your whole post is solid. I agree with every word. It pains me to come to the conclusion that Obama doesn't get finance, but as an idea it's becoming harder to dismiss.
Don't mean to pick on you, but you're all over the place with the one.; he's a patsy, he's full of it, but doing fine and brave things. Like what? Riding in a 747 to for a night on the town? I thought he was worried about global warming. I thought that he thought a lot of things, but that's all gone to wayside. Happened to a lot of other folks, too. Then there's that other thing about not appointing the same old people from the system back into the system? How's that working out? Why, they've rolled out 'ole henry on the teevee tray i c 2nite. The obvious answer, that he (and countless others) lied and continues to do so, is somehow dissolved into the ether with all manner of diversions, platitudes and contradictory beliefs.
He is told to be an accomplished, at least academically, attorney. Whatever your view of attorneys, one generally need be intelligent, thoughtful (this does not mean kind), deliberate, disciplined, and more or less lucid to get through law school and sit for a bar exam. People who can figure out what's what, who's who, what happened/what's going on. You know, like you might need in a trial. Or maybe in the rough-and-tumble world of Illinois politics. Sometimes you gotta to do an investig8tion, unless you don't wanna... Or how about community organizer and doncha hav2b a good communicator to do that? Or are you saying that he in reality possesses none of these traits? I'm confused.
I mean the guy is either sentient, or he is not. If he is, the absolute contradiction in word and deed he embodies should be perfectly clear. Otherwise, its something else. Either way, it's not good.
That's alright. I wrote that he THINKS he's doing fine, brave things. You just misread. He's still an ambitious politician, still full of it, and still a patsy for the banks and their bondholders. (Obviously.) Don't know why you're so enamoured with the intelligence of politicians and lawyers, but otherwise there's no reason to be confused. It's not like W cooked up the Iraq invasion while he was out clearing brush down on the ranch. Just the same, Obama is an unlikely candidate for financial mastermind.
For me it was a 'wash' on the most important issue, the bailouts. Both beholden to Wall Street, but I actually had some hope that once in place, Barack would shift psotitions and support taxpayers over bondholders in the great debate.
Iraq and Sarah Palin were the deciders for me. I wanted out of the first and wanted 'no part' of the 2nd, being Miss Palin.
I've written before (and been flailed for it by some) that McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is the single greatest insult in the history of politics in my lifetime.
I am convinced that her nomination was the reason McCain lost. Obama might have still eaked it out, but it would have been a hell of a lot closer had he chosen someone like Mitt Romney, for example.
Sure, Palin got all the Republican's hot and excited but those randy folks WOULD HAVE voted for McCain no matter whom he nominated. This is an important point.
For the roughly 16-18% undecided voters, the Palin mistake turned the tide against McCain and he lost 52-48 or was it 53-47, I don't remember.
You can disagree from here to Hawaii, but I am convinced I am right. Palin cost McCain the election.
I pray the RNC understands this and does not help her in 2012.