“I can’t support it” Brown said in his strongest statement yet on the financial legislation that Democrats contend is essential to curb the reckless trading and lending practices that contributed to the economic meltdown in 2008.
And why can’t Senator Brown support a bill to prevent a repeat of the Savings and Loan Crisis and the Great Recession of 2008?
It’s going to be an extra layer of regulation, and it’s clearly being used by the [Obama] administration to drive a wedge and use it for political fodder — and I think that’s wrong.
Pressed for specifc areas to be fixed, Mr. Brown answered a question with a question:
Well, what areas do you think should be fixed? I mean, you know, tell me. And then I’ll get a team and go fix it.
The Republicans have been making the insane claim that the bill winding its way through Congress is going to continue to allow banks to be bailed out.
This is a thoroughly specious argument. When financial crises occur, some kind of bail out is inevitable. (Think of the FDIC taking over banks.) No sane national leadership would allow his or her country’s financial system to collapse.
Bankers know that. After the Savings and Loan crisis, all too well, apparently. The best policy is to make bank bail outs unnecessary not to promise to commit financial suicide should they fail.
If I get this straight, it’s a higher priority to Mr. Brown not to have the inconvenience of more regulation than it is to prevent another recession.
Have we elected Talking Point Dispenser when we need a Senator?
he is talking about. You would think that he would be fully informed about what is going on, since the whole issue crashed our economy and we continue to feel the devastation from that crash. Perhaps he didn’t notice what happened.
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p>OMG
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What a terrible attitude. He’s not earning any points with anyone with this sort of “hands-off” attitude. Maybe he doesn’t have time to worry about it. He’s too busy looking all handsome and mavericky and all that.
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p>Unfortunatley, I could not find this reported on in Western MA. The news was all about the Tea Party and the casino bill. Guess I’ll have to send out a mass email. Thanks to our local newspaper and news stations for working hard to keep our region uninformed.
Maybe he won’t find it necessary to do any more watering down before they send this off for a vote. We don’t need to cross the aisle on this one. Hopefully this debate will finally show that the Repubs don’t represent the people, they represent the corporations and the wealthy. I can’t believe we can’t seem to put them in their proper box. They are still sitting in their happy “working class advocate” box and they just don’t belong there.
over the national Republican party. Always speak for political effect, and never give a straight response.
“of” the national Republican party, not “over”.
He may have rolled out the obstructionism too quickly. There’s already a block of GOP senators emerging to take too-big-to-fail seriously. Imagine if he’s stranded to the right of that group? How does he spin that to Mass. voters?
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p>I love how he takes this weird attitude, too, that he is on equal footing with the president in implementing policy, like it’s some kind of alpha-male showdown and the president is being arrogant by advancing his own program. “I’ll get a team and go fix it.” What? No you won’t, you’ll vote on a bill or at best you’ll propose one (fat chance).
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p>This is a guy who bought a pickup truck to take his daughter’s horse to shows, but then never did because towing a trailer looked too “scary.” But like every other suburban cowboy he kept bragging about a commuter car that has lousy handling and tiny passenger space. This is what he’s all about. Wants to look good and talk tough but has no idea how to actually do the heavy lifting.
“When financial crises occur, some kind of bail out is inevitable. (Think of the FDIC taking over banks.)”
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p>I think you got this wrong.
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p>When the FDIC takes over a bank, the depositors are made whole, but the stockholders are cleaned out.
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p>When we “bailed out” big banks in 2008, the stockholders kept their ownership of the banks.
In my opinion, the stockholders should have, at minimum, “taken a haircut” and the government should have seized control.
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p>But that’s an approach the Republicans like even less. (Sen. McConnell surely has some talking points on that for Sen. Brown to deliver.)
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p>Recapitalization (like the FDIC) is a bailout without benefits. That’s the kind of bailout a better, more chaste government would provide.
but that man is as dumb as a box of hammers.
to hammers.
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p>And boxes.
If you want this animation to stop, there’s a wonderful Firefox trick. Navigate to about:config. These are Firefox’ configuration settings. You’ll get a “Don’t do this at home warning!” Be brave.
You’ll see a huge table of settings. Scroll way, way down until you get toimage.animation_mode
Stomv has posted an animated gif. This gif repeats its animation indefinitely. Firefox lets you decide whether you want such animations to run not at all (none), just once (once), or normally (normal). By default you will see the value “normal”. Double click it and change it to once and the boxer and dancer will do their thing and stop.
Source
Combined with the flashblock add-in (now becoming available on Chrome, too), this trick can bestow a peaceful web experience.
not a serious person.
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p>May his term be short and forgettable.
Krugman today makes an analogy with fire departments and McConnell’s position:
He goes on to remind us that letting banks fail definitely did not work in the 1930s. It also turned out badly after Lehman Brothers failed: “Within days, credit markets had frozen and we were staring into the economic abyss.” Like fires, bank failures have a tendency to spread.
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p>Without a resolution authority from financial reform, bankers retain the ability to hold the economy ransom.
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p>I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out whether McConnell (along with his trained Talking Point Dispenser) is saying such things because he stupidly believes them, wants campaign contributions from Wall Street, or has decided that mindless opposition is his ticket to the office of Majority Leader.
So our young Scott, beloved by the righties, proves he has not deeply thought about this (or any) issue. He follows the Frank Luntz playbook, the belief that using the phrase “endless taxpayer bailouts” when talking about a bill that does no such thing, is the wise way to stir up the base. Scott Brown is a shill for big banking interests, and it’s pretty obvious.
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p>I only hope after he serves his two years, he can retire and go back to modeling. Here’s TPM’s discussion of how McConnell and the Republicans are now uniting to oppose the bill (and Mitch evidently chastised Scott for daring to vote with the Dems on restoring unemployment benefits… nice to see Scott back in the fold, doing the will of his right-wing masters…) sigh…
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p>http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo… )
From HuffPo
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p>Dancing in the streets! What a perfect way to start the weekend.
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…does the Tea Party crowd support him? Don’t they realize that to the extent they’re being shafted it’s by precisely these institutions and their friends in government?
for the following reasons:
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p>1. Many of the good people who identify with the Tea Party aren’t going to accept the hate message, the attacks on the President based on race and the comparison to hitler etc. To most people, it’s just too embarrassing to be associated with those radicals. They don’t agree with it and they will not attend anymore events. These people will continue to follow their own ideology of no taxes, less government etc. They will just go back to doing it quietly and in their own local circles. These people will probably be more pro-active in politics; they will vote more often than they used to.
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p>2. The Tea Party has gone corporate. Radicals, who love going to the rallies and can tolerate the hate messages, don’t like being controlled by any party, that would include the Republicans. They are cold hearted anarchist…they don’t want anyone telling them what to do. These people are sort of scary. These are the complete anti-government people. Not necessarily racists or hitler sign carriers. Probably don’t even carry a sign at all. These people are seethingly angry at the government. These people will stop attending rallies because they are now feeling controlled by the organizers and speakers. They wil go back home and may or may not quietly plan violent action of some sort. This is very scary. These are the people I’m afraid of.
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p>The rest are the sign carrying sillies. Attention seekers. Preachers of hate for the sake of hating. These are the people who love the attention, these rallies make them feel important and heard. These will be the last vestiges of current Tea Party as it is portrayed today. These will be the people that the Republican Party will never be able to get rid of. They will attend every Republican event in their area – sign carrying and all – for the rest of their natural life.
Who’s we, KB? I sure didn’t vote for this empty suit.
will be left as an exercise to the reader.
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p>It’s not difficult.