… The only question now is whether the financial industry will pay a price for this privilege, whether Wall Street will be obliged to behave responsibly in return for government backing. And who could be against that? Well, how about John Boehner, the House minority leader? Recently Mr. Boehner gave a talk to bankers in which he encouraged them to balk efforts by Congress to impose stricter regulation. “Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you, and stand up for yourselves,” he urged — where by “taking advantage” he meant imposing some conditions on the industry in return for government backing. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, promptly had “Little Punk Staffer” buttons made up and distributed to Congressional aides…
But won’t opponents of reform fear being cast as allies of the bad guys [which they are]? Maybe not. Back in January, Frank Luntz, the G.O.P. strategist, circulated a memo on how to oppose financial reform. His key idea was that Republicans should claim that up is down — that reform legislation is a “big bank bailout bill,” rather than a set of restrictions on the banks. Sure enough, a few days ago Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, in a letter attacking the Dodd bill, claimed that an essential part of reform — tougher oversight of large, systemically important financial companies — is actually a bailout, because “The market will view these firms as being ‘too big to fail’ and implicitly backed by the government.” Um, senator, the market already views those firms as having implicit government backing, because they do: whatever people like Mr. Shelby may say now, in any future crisis those firms will be rescued, whichever party is in power.
The only question is whether we’re going to regulate bankers so that they don’t abuse the privilege of government backing. And it’s that regulation — not future bailouts — that reform opponents are trying to block. So it’s the punks versus the plutocrats — those who want to rein in runaway banks, and bankers who want the freedom to put the economy at risk, freedom enhanced by the knowledge that taxpayers will bail them out in a crisis. Whatever they say, the fact is that people like Mr. Shelby are on the side of the plutocrats; the American people should be on the side of the punks, who are trying to protect their interests.
But, maybe I was wrong about that, once again. The climate is changing some. You can kind of feel it changing. Oh, the tea party types are no less obnoxious. Glenn Beck’s creative red bashing is unabated. John Boehner hasn’t run out of iridescent ties or missed a session at the tanning salon. Those things haven’t changed. But the Republican obstructionist arguments just don’t have the same old zing. Krugman’s article is a great example. He’s not arguing with Boehner’s/Shelby’s Talking Point, he’s exposing it. They’ve bombarded us with so many logical fallacies and claims that "up is down" that we’re no longer even interested in refuting them. Like Reagan said to Jimmy Carter so effectively, "There you go again!" They’ve flooded the market with bullshit and the value of that currency seems to be waning. All Krugman does is point out the Talking Point, and dismiss it.
And Newt Gingrich is rolling out Talking Points a mile a minute [What was that Contract with America a contract for exactly?]. Yesterday, Paul Rosenberg took out Newt the same way [Newt speaks out: the Ashley Todd Party won’t take it anymore!]. Newt had described Obama’s bill as the biggest threat to the "American way of life since the 1850s" when the country was heading for civil war. Paul pointed out that "The big threat in the 1850s, was, of course, the formation of the Republican Party, opposed to the expansion of slavery. The Civil War was all their fault, you see. And nowhere near as big a threat to the ‘American way of life’ as the abolitionist sympathizers like Abraham Lincoln, who were the cause of it all. " People are beginning to openly make fun of these absurd Talking Points – finally.
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