1 Boring Old Man

Bartlett Eviscerates Zuckerman on Obama’s Spending
Daily KOS
by MeteorBlades
10/26/2009

Actually, Bruce Bartlett – a Reagan Treasury official and supply sider who remains conservative but has acidly critiqued Reaganomics and Bushanomics – took on not just Zuckerman but deficit hawks in general at his blog:

Yesterday [Friday], Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News, exercised his prerogative by publishing an essay in that publication complaining that "Obama’s spending and borrowing leaves U.S. gasping for air." …

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2009 estimate for fiscal year 2009, outlays were projected to be $3,543 billion and revenues were projected to be $2,357 billion, leaving a deficit of $1,186 billion. Keep in mind that these estimates were made before Obama took office, based on existing law and policy, and did not take into account any actions that Obama might implement. …

Now let’s fast forward to the end of fiscal year 2009, which ended on September 30. According to CBO, it ended with spending at $3,515 billion and revenues of $2,106 billion for a deficit of $1,409 billion.

To recap, the deficit came in $223 billion higher than projected, but spending was $28 billion and revenues were $251 billion less than expected. Thus we can conclude that more than 100 percent of the increase in the deficit since January is accounted for by lower revenues. Not one penny is due to higher spending.

It should be further noted that revenues are lower to a large extent because of tax cuts included in the February stimulus. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, these tax cuts reduced revenues in FY2009 by $98 billion over what would otherwise have been the case. This is important because the Republican position has consistently been that tax cuts and only tax cuts are an appropriate response to the economic crisis. …

I think there are grounds on which to criticize the Obama administration’s anti-recession actions. But spending too much is not one of them. Indeed, based on this analysis, it is pretty obvious that spending – real spending on things like public works – has been grossly inadequate. The idea that Reagan-style tax cuts would have done anything is just nuts.

If Bartlett ever plans to work for Republicans again, it will surely be a different crew than has grasped the party reins for the past 30 years.

I’ve bludgeoned anyone reading this blog with graphs that show the record DEFICIT SPENDING of the Reagan and both Bush Administrations contrasted with Clinton’s paying down the debt. Now, Obama has been painted into the corner to take the hit for DEFICIT SPENDING that he couldn’t possibly control. Suffice it to say that he hasn’t increased spending period. This is a Republican Talking Point that never varies. Fiscal responsibility is, in fact, the public rationale for the current Republican Bloc "NO" voting. It’s the daily refrain from Congressional Republicans, the Right Wing Think Tanks, Fox News, and Talk Radio – underlying the cries of "Communism and Socialism." Yet it’s simply not true.

Fiscal Year 2009
A Congressional Budget Office Analysis

 

^{… Individual income taxes, the largest source of tax receipts, account for more than half of the total drop in receipts, declining by $230 billion (or 20 percent). Receipts of social insurance taxes, the second largest tax source, fell by about $9 billion (or 1 percent).}

^{Withholding of individual income and payroll taxes in each month of fiscal year 2009 was lower than in the same month in the prior year, decreasing by about $117 billion (or 7 percent) for the year. Withholding began to fall markedly in December, with the weakening economy and low year-end bonuses, and fell further as a result of tax reductions in ARRA. Nonwithheld receipts declined by $142 billion (or 28 percent). About two-thirds of that decline resulted from lower payments of 2008 taxes, and the remainder represented lower estimated payments of 2009 taxes—reflecting sharp declines in nonwage income stemming from the recession. Refunds in 2009 were also lower, by $22 billion, partly offsetting the decreases in payments of individual income taxes.}

^{Corporate tax receipts declined for the second consecutive year, falling by about $166 billion (or 54 percent). That decline continues a pattern that began in the middle of 2007 and stems from (1) weakness in corporate profits, (2) recently enacted legislation, most notably provisions that allow for more rapid depreciation of assets, and (3) the ability of firms to use current-year losses to reduce tax liabilities from previous years. Corporate receipts rose by nearly 40 percent annually, on average, from 2003 to 2006 but are now almost back to the 2003 level…}

---

^{… Nearly 60 percent of the growth in spending for programs and activities other than net interest on the public debt resulted from three sources: outlays recorded for the TARP ($154 billion), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($91 billion), and ARRA (over $100 billion). Other federal spending was up by about 9 percent, compared with the 7 percent average growth in outlays over the past five years. Payments for net interest on the public debt decreased by $60 billion in 2009, somewhat mitigating other increases in spending. That decline resulted mainly from lower short-term interest rates and lower costs for inflation-indexed securities.}

^{Excluding the effects of ARRA, spending for unemployment compensation more than doubled in 2009, because of rising unemployment and increased benefits. Spending for Medicare rose by 10 percent, and outlays for Medicaid (excluding ARRA) and Social Security benefits grew by 9 percent. Defense spending increased by 7 percent in 2009, CBO estimates, lower than the average growth rate of over 9 percent during the past decade…}

What If Trials Prove Torture Wasn’t Necessary?
By: emptywheel
October 26, 2009

Cynthia Kouril and Adam Serwer and both have really good smackdowns of Mukasey’s op-ed against civilian trials. Cynthia writes,

The thing that bothers me most about this article though, comes near the end:

Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

This twisted notion that we would only observe our own laws, our own Constitution, our own Enlightenment Age ideals—if there was something in it for us, if we could somehow profit by it— appalls me. NO, No, no, no, no. We observe our own laws, we follow our own constitution, we hew to our own Founding Father’s ideals, because it is the RIGHT THING TO DO.

And Adam, responding as well to Michael Isikoff’s report that 25 detainees will soon be shipped to the US for trial, speculates,

I’m skeptical that the Classified Information Procedures Act, the statute governing the disclosure of classified information in federal court, is inadequate to prevent whatever national security information might be disclosed in any of these trials. But remember, if you look at the more declassified version of the 2006 CIA Inspector General’s report that was recently released, there are 24 straight pages of redacted information describing what was done to KSM. If you’re wondering what Mukasey and the others are worried about a civilian trial disclosing, it’s a good bet that some of it is probably in there.

Perhaps, Adam argues, Mukasey [and Lindsey Graham and John McCain] don’t want civilian trials because they would provide Khalid Sheikh Mohammed opportunity to detail the torture done to him.

There’s one other possibility, though. If DOJ decides KSM can get a civilian trial, that means there’s enough information to try him and his alleged co-conspirators independent of any evidence tainted by torture. It means the government learned sufficient information about the 9/11 plot via people they did not torture, pocket litter, or in sessions that they believe they can segregate off from the torture they did to KSM.

And that–along with what will surely be extensive litigation about what is admissible–will make it clear how much information was available via means other than torture. Granted, they’ll be trying KSM just for 9/11 and not, presumably, for the Liberty Tower Plot [though they have information about that, too, via other sources than KSM]. But a civilian trial will expose some of what was available without using torture.

And that may be why the apologists are afraid of civilian trials.

Instead, they’ve chosen a different path entirely – giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they’ll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe.

On the political left, it will still be asserted that tough interrogations did no good, because this is an article of faith for them, and actual evidence is unwelcome and disregarded. President Obama himself has ruled these methods out, and when he last addressed the subject he filled the air with vague and useless platitudes. His preferred device is to suggest that we could have gotten the same information by other means. We’re invited to think so. But this ignores the hard, inconvenient truth that we did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other al-Qaeda operatives, only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding. In fact, our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives.

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

But it’s only been nine months and a lot has happened, a lot accomplished. The Stimulus passed. The pressure is on for Wall Street. Regulations are being debated. The whole War thing is being re-evaluated. There’s going to be a Health Care Bill of some kind. And there’s plenty enough transparency to know what happened with the Torture Program. It’s moving slower than we hoped, but it’s moving nonetheless.

As emptywheel‘s post implies, the torture thing is going to come out. Whether it’s from a trial, or a hearing, or an investigation – it’s going to see the light of day. And the people involved are going to get beyond the fog of secrecy and subterfuge and begin to talk about it. And comments like "… to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards" are going to sound pretty lame. We forget that this same man originally denied the program existed. Then Abu Ghraib came along, and it became "bad apples." Now it has become "enhanced interrogation" by "dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well" under "legal underpinnings and safeguards." Well, the term "enhanced interrogation" fools no one any more, the DoJ has renounced those "legal underpinnings," there’s ample evidence that there were no "safeguards," and the "dedicated professionals" turned out to be misguided contractors – "moral bearings?" not so much. This stone is rolling downhill, slowly picking up speed. I’d bet it’s beyond stopping already, and a lot of the frantic resistance may well be buried by a coming avalanche. The Reign of Error was too loud to be forgotten…

Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ
October 24, 2009

No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his “band of brothers,” as Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin’s Day, Oct. 25, 1415. They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the region’s sucking mud, riddled by thousands of arrows from English longbowmen and outmaneuvered by common soldiers with much lighter gear. It would become known as the Battle of Agincourt.

But Agincourt’s status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history — and a keystone of the English self-image — has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers.

The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry may well have faced something closer to an even fight, said Anne Curry, a professor at the University of Southampton who is leading the study.

Those cold figures threaten an image of the battle that even professional researchers and academics have been reluctant to challenge in the face of Shakespearean verse and centuries of English pride, Ms. Curry said.

“It’s just a myth, but it’s a myth that’s part of the British psyche,” Ms. Curry said…

While Henry V led his troops into battle and actually participated in hand to hand fighting, the French king of the time, Charles VI, did not command the French army himself as he suffered from mental illness and delusions which rendered him incapacitated. Instead the French were commanded by Constable Charles d’Albret and various prominent French noblemen… [link]

… The king [Charles VI of France] continued to suffer from periods of mental illness throughout his life. During one attack in 1393, Charles could not remember his name and did not know he was king. When his wife came to visit, he asked his servants who she was and ordered them to take care of what she required so that she would leave him alone. During an episode of 1395-1396, he claimed that his name was George and that his coat of arms was a lion with a sword thrust through it. At this time, he recognized all the officers of his household but did not know his wife or his children. Sometimes he ran wildly through the corridors of his Parisian residence, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, and to keep him inside, the entrances were walled up. In 1405, he refused to bathe or change his clothes for five months… [link]

I’m over caring about Fox News too. I can understand why the White House is tired of messing with them.  They’ve become something of a study in vaudevillian kibitzing, but little else. How do you argue with the point of throwing a frog in boiling water, then claiming it wasn’t really a frog? I posted the segment because it was absurd, but all I can recall is Beck saying, "Forget the frog." I couldn’t forget the frog, but I forgot Beck’s point [actually, I’m still wondering about the frog]. Then there was the claim that Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, is a Maoist because of a truncated quote in her speech to graduating high school students. It was followed, I heard, by some mystery parent complaining about the effect on his child. I saw one where Beck was swinging a baseball bat recently, but didn’t linger to watch. Oh yeah, there was one where he did art therapy with the statues on the facade of Rockefeller Plaza – Nazi and Commie themes – ergo MSNBC is Nazi/Communist. And Chris Wallace is joining in the fun too. In a discussion of the war of words between Fox News and the White House, Chris Wallace played a clip from the 1987 gangster movie The Untouchables to illustrate how the Obama administration operates. The movie is about gangsters in old Chicago. Obama is from Chicago. Get it? Therefore, Obama is a gangster.

At some point in a life, you have to just say "no" about certain things, and I’m saying "no" to Fox News. I had developed an idea during the Bush Administration that I should keep up with the Republican Talking Points. That conviction was based on the observation that George W. Bush  almost  won the election in 2000 using a rapidly changing set of Talking Points that endeared him to the Religious Right as well as the Conservative Right. What he ran on and what he did had little similarity. But come 2004, they added the Swift Boat tactic and did it again. So I decided that I, we should keep up with the Talking Points and refute them as soon as they raised their heads. But I can’t keep it up. It’s just too absurd these days. Even Rush Limbaugh is too off the wall to keep up with. It’s like a shotgun at close range, pellets flying in all directions. Too much. So I prefer to leave that front to its own devices. Anyone wanting to base a political opinion on such things can be my guest.

There are other things to consider. Many Progressives [heavily represented in the blogs I read] are portraying Obama as something of a turn-coat. In the Healthcare fight, they say he’s waffling on the Public Option – giving in to big insurance and big pharmacy. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there’s a lot of frustration about bonuses, about regulation [particularly of derivatives], and about the megabanks – that Obama isn’t pushing hard enough for financial reform. And in the area of the Bu$hCo sins [torture, surveillance, wars], he’s not given us all the data we need. I think these are the more important questions to think about. The Republican criticisms are mostly generic nay-saying [and frankly, they seem to be slightly waning] – though I doubt the bloc voting will change no matter what.

Pleasing Progressives wouldn’t be high on my list were I the President either. Progressives are going to vote. Progressives may well push Progressives in the Primaries, but come November, they are guaranteed Democrat votes – no matter how disappointed they are in Obama. Pleasing the current Republicans in office is almost a non-issue. They have a clear strategy – vote the Party Line. In this case, the Party Line is against anything Obama is proposing. So who is his audience? It seems to me that there are at least two – the sort of Republicans who appreciate his reasonableness and the not terribly liberal Democrats who appreciate his reasonableness. I’m not as mad as most about the stalled Progressive Agenda except for the financial arena. It’s vital!

^{Obama Approval – June 2009
The last Gallup Poll by States
[area = # voters]}

Obama and the Constitution; He Has His Doubts

by Michael Ledeen

Update: Please read The Obama “thesis” hoax.)

I missed this first time around.  Brian Lancaster at Jumping in Pools reported on Obama’s college thesis, written when he was at Columbia.  The paper was called “Aristocracy Reborn,” and in the first ten pages (which were all that reporter Joe Klein–who wrote about it for Time–was permitted to see), the young Obama wrote:

“… the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

That’s quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate.  I wonder if the prof–and I’d like to know who the prof was–made an appropriate marginal comment, something about historical context, about the Constitution’s revolutionary status in the history of freedom, and about the separation of powers in order to make the creation of any “shackles” as difficult as possible. Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.  Maybe he’d like to parse “the so-called Founders,” for example.  I’d like to know what he thinks of those words today.  And what about the rest of the thesis?

BUT WAIT: In the middle of Limbaugh’s rant, some Limbaugh staffer discovers that Ledeen has reported that this post about the Obama Thesis is a HOAX. See that Update: up there? So, Limbaugh announces this on the air, but says it doesn’t matter.

BUT WAIT: Michael Ledeen. Does that name sound familiar? He was the long-time "Freedom Fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute. He brokered the Iran/Contra deal in the Reagan Era. He was involved in shady dealings in the lead up to the Iraq War, the Niger thing? He wrote books about Machiavelli in Modern Times. He was a megaHawk for War with Iran. He was a columnist in the National Review. He’s not just some blogger. He’s an arch-neocon.

Now, I got a note from a researcher who has been scouring the Internet, and the note says this: "Rush Limbaugh: Mini-warning on these quotes."  Because the paper that Obama wrote, "Aristocracy Reborn," the first ten pages were all that reporter Joe Klein was permitted to see; and it says here that Klein did write about it for TIME Magazine.  A researcher has been scouring the Internet and can’t find any sources for the quote.  "The blog that Ledeen cites doesn’t have supporting info," supposedly.  The source post that was from August, says it’s going to be in an upcoming report from Joe Klein, but the researcher can’t find anything that has come out since, and nothing in Klein’s blog.  There have been no matches found on the Internet for any of the info or quotes other than the source posting.  So I now say that the blog from which this came has no sourcing data other than Joe Klein upcoming report and Joe Klein hasn’t written his upcoming report.

So we have to hold out the possibility that this is not accurate.  However, I have had this happen to me recently.  I have had quotes attributed to me that were made up, and when it was pointed out to the media that the quotes were made up, they said, "It doesn’t matter! We know Limbaugh thinks it anyway."  Sort of like Dan Rather said, "I don’t care if these documents are forged. I know that Bush did what he did at the National Guard.  I don’t care if the documents are forged."  I don’t care if the Limbaugh quotes are made up.  So, I can say, "I don’t care if these quotes are made up. I know Obama thinks it.  You know why I know Obama thinks it?  Because I’ve heard him say it."  Not about the Constitution, but about the Supreme Court.

• Obama is wrong. Volcker is right…
• who is Alan Greenspan?
• the wisdom of the past – Senator Bryan Dorgon…
• the Glass-Steagall Timeline…
• Paul Volcker’s Congressional Testimony…

"The Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector. It is the largest component of the government’s measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis."

Did TARP Increase Lending?
New York Times
By Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago.
October 7, 2009

^{Economic theory casts significant doubt on the claim that public purchases of bank equity would cause banks to lend more. Now the government’s own watchdog confirms the theory. During last year’s financial crisis, regulators and market participants grew alarmed at the low levels of bank capital. This motivated the bank bailout, and promises to the public that the bailouts would get the banks — especially nine “healthy banks” targeted by Treasury officials — lending again.}

^{Bank capital refers to the excess value of banks’ assets over their liabilities. Bank capital belongs to the bank shareholders, but provides a degree of insurance to the bank’s creditors — its depositors and bond holders — because their claims on bank assets are senior to those of bank shareholders. Some claim that adequate bank capital is also essential for lending.}

^{The Federal Reserve and the Bush administration let some banks fail last year, but ultimately desired to do something to replenish bank capital. They convinced Congress that they could do so, and had $700 billion [almost $7,000 for every United States household] earmarked for that purpose. Almost $300 billion of that amount had been awarded to banks between late October 2008 and Inauguration Day, in the form of Treasury purchases of newly issued bank stock.}

^{Officials never admitted to the taxpayers [whose money they requested] that the marketplace might largely, if not entirely, thwart their recapitalization efforts. The market might well react to Treasury share purchases by reducing private holdings of bank capital. Nor did officials admit that, even if the bailout helped replenish bank capital, banks might not want to use their newfound capital for lending. This was also a relevant consideration, because it is possible that lending opportunities determine bank capital, rather than the reverse.}

^{Part of the bank bailout law established an Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program [a k a “SIGTARP”] “to conduct, supervise and coordinate audits and investigations of the purchase, management and sale of assets under the TARP.” The inspector general was appointed by President George W. Bush and approved by the Senate. With the better part of a year to examine the evidence, SIGTARP released an audit report on Monday. It concluded [p. 30] that “…lending at [the nine targeted banks] did not in fact increase….”}

^{The report goes on to lament that this episode could “damage the trust that the American people have in their government.” I would put it stronger: This episode is an expensive example of public policy promises that were doomed to failure because they were known at the outset to defy economic theory.}

^{In the spring of 1987, the Federal Reserve Board votes 3-2 in favor of easing regulations under Glass-Steagall Act, overriding the opposition of Chairman Paul Volcker. The vote comes after the Fed Board hears proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions to allow banks to handle several underwriting businesses, including commercial paper, municipal revenue bonds, and mortgage-backed securities. Thomas Theobald, then vice chairman of Citicorp, argues that three "outside checks" on corporate misbehavior had emerged since 1933: "a very effective" SEC; knowledgeable investors, and "very sophisticated" rating agencies. Volcker is unconvinced, and expresses his fear that lenders will recklessly lower loan standards in pursuit of lucrative securities offerings and market bad loans to the public. For many critics, it boiled down to the issue of two different cultures – a culture of risk which was the securities business, and a culture of protection of deposits which was the culture of banking.}

^{The aging Mr. Volcker has some advice, deeply felt. He has been offering it in speeches and Congressional testimony, and repeating it to those around the president, most of them young enough to be his children. He wants the nation’s banks to be prohibited from owning and trading risky securities, the very practice that got the biggest ones into deep trouble in 2008. And the administration is saying no, it will not separate commercial banking from investment operations. “I am not pounding the desk all the time, but I am making my point,” Mr. Volcker said in one of his infrequent on-the-record interviews. “I have talked to some senators who asked me to talk to them, and if people want to talk to me, I talk to them. But I am not going around knocking on doors.”}

^{GLASS-STEAGALL}

^{GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY}

Alan was a New Yorker, born in the twenties, who wanted to be a musician – a jazz musician. He played with Stan Getz in high school, so he went Juilliard, but dropped out to play professionally during the War years. In 1945, he went to college at NYU where he got a BS and an MA in Economics. He married an artist, Joan Mitchell, in 1952, She introduced him to author Ayn Rand. While his marriage only lasted a year, he remained a part of Ms. Rand’s circle until her death in 1982. This was not a casual relationship [timeline]. He wrote articles for her Objectivist newsletters, contributed essays for her book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, and was in the inner circle of her followers who read and discussed her book, Atlas Shrugged, as it was being written. She was at his side when he was sworn in as Chairman of Economic Advisers in 1974. And here she is telling us what she thinks in 1959:

It’s not my intention to blame either Ayn Rand or Alan Greenspan for our recent financial meltdown. The entrepreneurs of Wall Street did that all by themselves. But Ayn Rand’s ideas [or should I say, ideals] were a mammoth influence on Alan Greenspan. And Alan Greenspan was a central player in the run up to our current nightmare. He facilitated the creation of the financial playground where the dirty deed could be done. So it’s worth a look.

As you can see, Ayn Rand is facile with words. In her exchanges with Mike Wallace, she makes rapid fire come-backs to his questions. Her philosophy is at first hard to follow. She decries the Christian theme of self-sacrifice, becoming a prophet for self-interest as the only valuable human motivation. On the other hand, she is surprisingly idealistic about how people will behave  in her world of absolute freedom. Her characters are all heroic, rugged individualists [with angular features], frustrated by the pull to mediocrity from the collective masses. Hers is a philosophy for giants, creators, movers and shakers. And through it all, she has an undying faith in the power of the free market to work things out. She was a Russian Immigrant who came to America only 8 years after the fall of the Czar and the advent of communism, but she had an intense hatred for collectivism of any kind, and a Romantic way of thinking about the giants of capitalism.

Alan Greenspan is hardly the paradigm for an Ayn Rand hero. A failed jazz musician turned economist, he wore thick glasses, dark suits, and he is decidedly unangular.

Greenspan worked as an economic analyst at The Conference Board, a business and industry oriented think-tank in New York City from 1948 to 1953, Then he was chairman and president of Townsend-Greenspan & Co. Inc., an economic consulting firm in New York City, until he took over the Federal Reserve in 1987. He was on a number of Corporate Boards as well as serving on several advisory committees in Government before going to the Fed. He dated Barbara Walters [who didn’t?] and married Andrea Mitchell in 1997 [after a 13 year courtship].

I guess we saw him as a wizard, playing around with interest rates at the Fed to stabilize the economy. And while he’s been blamed and defended for our current crisis, seen as brilliant and alternatively as a political hack, there are several ways in which his Objectivist [Ayn Rand] roots are very apparent and didn’t serve us well.

In December 1996, with the support of Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board issues a precedent-shattering decision permitting bank holding companies to own investment bank affiliates with up to 25 percent of their business in securities underwriting [up from 10 percent]. This expansion of the loophole created by the Fed’s 1987 reinterpretation of Section 20 of Glass-Steagall effectively render[ed] Glass-Steagall obsolete.

But going back in time, during the Administration of George H.W. Bush, Wendy Gramm, a Ph.D. Economist and wife of Senator Phil Gramm was Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The not-yet-notorious Enron Corporation was lobbying to be exempted from regulation in its trading of Energy Derivatives. In 1993 as her last act before leaving, she granted the exception. She left the CFTC, and [went on the Board of Enron]. She was followed at the CFTC in 1994 by Mary Schapiro who moved on to become President of NASD. So Brooksley Born became Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a couple of years after Wendy Gramm’s exception. By 1998, that exception had grown into a gajillion dollar, unregulated Derivatives Market. In May of 1998, Born published a "concept release" asking for input about whether and how to regulate this expanding Derivatives Market [the "dark" Market]. This idea was immediately opposed by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. Then when Long Term Capital Management, a Hedge Fund heavily into Derivative Trading collapsed, she escalated her concerns about this unregulated Market in Derivatives. Her opponents responded by getting Congress to declare a 6 month moratorium on regulating Derivatives. After multiple meetings and some seventeen Congressional appearances, she gave up and left her post in June 1999. In November, the President’s Working Group on the Economy [Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr., and the new Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission William J. Rainer] issued a report, Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets and the Commodity Exchange Act, unanimously recommending that these Derivative Markets continue unregulated.

If deregulating the Banks [by repealing Glass-Stegall] was bad, this Derivative business was very bad. It essentially created the Casino that allowed the financial bubbles that lead us to ruin.

But it was Greenspan’s idealization of the free-market that may well have been the biggest hit from his tenure. He was optimistic about derivatives. He was dismissive of the growing bubbles, particularly the housing bubble. And he was loose with capital, stimulating a speculative economy that became increasingly dangerous and finally imploded. He had Rand’s idealized set of ideas that was blind to the cancer of greed he unleashed on Wall Street and in the halls of the mega-financial institutions deregulation created.

Greenspan Shrugged? Did Ayn Rand Cause Our Financial Crisis?
Huffington Post
By Deborah Jones Barrow
10/24/2008

"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief."

So said former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in his dramatic testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as he was grilled by committee members on the causes of the nation’s financial crisis. Greenspan, whose laissez-faire capitalist leanings led him to reject decades of calls for more robust government oversight of financial markets, was repeatedly interrupted by the lawmakers in a contentious exchange that clearly shows the gloves are off in regard to the former chairman’s legacy.

In his startling admission, the former head of the Federal Reserve reveals that his long-held and controversial notion that enlightened self-interest alone would prevent bankers, mortgage brokers, investment bankers and others from gaming the system for their own personal financial benefit has, as the English say, come a cropper…

Today, 40 years after the heyday of those gatherings, Greenspan surprised many with his "Yes, I found a flaw" response to a grilling from the Committee. Responding to the clear failure of the notion of "enlightened self-interest" to stop the cascade of financial catastrophies that have roiled world markets, he said, "That is precisely the reason I was shocked, because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Greenspan’s critics have long charged that his refusal as Fed Chairman to impose greater government regulations on mortgage lenders is one of the causes of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. 

Committee Chairman Harry Waxman (D-CA), in a heated exchange told the former Fed Chairman that he had "the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others, and now our whole economy is paying the price.”  

The Curse of Dick Cheney
The veep’s career has been marred by one disaster after another
Rolling Stone
by T.D. ALLMAN
Aug 25, 2004

^{… In an overwhelmingly Republican state, Cheney now had a safe seat in Congress for as long as he wanted. On Capitol Hill, he combined a moderate demeanor with a radical agenda. People who find Cheney’s extremism as vice president surprising have not looked at his congressional voting record. In 1986, he was one of only twenty-one members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act. He fought efforts to clean up hazardous waste and backed tax breaks for energy corporations. He repeatedly voted against funding for the Veterans Administration. He opposed extending the Civil Rights Act. He opposed the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in South Africa. He even voted for cop-killer bullets.}

^{"I don’t believe he is an ideologue," says former Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado. "But he is the most partisan politician I’ve ever met." Many weekends, while Congress was in session, Wirth and Cheney would take the same flight to Chicago, where they’d change planes for Colorado and Wyoming. "I spent a lot of time waiting for planes with Dick Cheney," Wirth, a Democrat, says. "He never talked about ideology. He talked about how the Republicans were going to take over the House of Representatives." Wirth adds, "It seemed impossible, but that’s exactly what happened."}

^{Cheney knew precisely who should lead the GOP takeover. "Dick and Lynne had their eyes on the speakership," says Professor Fred Holborn of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "He and Lynne wrote a book on the speakership." As the subtitle of Kings of the Hill indicates, it is about how "powerful men changed the course of American history" through control of the House.}

^{Cheney’s strategy for gaining power was the same one he and Rumsfeld had foisted on Ford: making sure no one in the Republican Party outflanked him to the right. This was a deeply divisive approach, because it involved pandering to racial and religious extremists and using complex matters of national security as flag-waving wedge issues. "Dick’s votes against civil rights and the environment were parts of complex deals aimed at enhancing his own power," says Barlow, his former supporter.}

^{In 1988, Cheney was named House minority whip, the second-ranking post in his party’s hierarchy. Had he stayed in the House, it is possible that he would have become speaker. But the following year, another powerful person decided to confer great nonelective power on Cheney. When President George H.W. Bush named him to head the Defense Department, the Senate unanimously confirmed the choice. Not a single senator seems to have considered it anomalous that control of the strongest armed forces on earth was being conferred on a person who had gone to notable lengths to avoid service in those same armed forces.}

^{Appointed to another powerful position, Cheney promptly went about screwing it up. He pushed to turn many military duties over to private companies and began moving "defense intellectuals" with no military experience into key posts at the Pentagon. Most notable among them was Paul Wolfowitz, who later masterminded much of the disastrous strategy that George W. Bush has pursued in Iraq. In 1992, as undersecretary of defense, Wolfowitz turned out a forty-page report titled "Defense Planning Guidance," arguing that historic allies should be demoted to the status of U.S. satellites, and that the modernization of India and China should be treated as a threat, as should the democratization of Russia. "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role," the report declared. It was nothing less than a blueprint for worldwide domination, and Cheney loved it. He maneuvered to have the president adopt it as doctrine, but the elder Bush, recognizing that the proposals were not only foolish but dangerous, immediately rejected them.}

^{By the end of the first Bush administration, others had come to the conclusion that Cheney and his followers were dangerous. "They were referred to collectively as the crazies," recalls Ray McGovern, a CIA professional who interpreted intelligence for presidents going back to Kennedy. Around the same time, McGovern remembers, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft counseled the elder President Bush, "Keep these guys at arm’s length"…}

^{… Nixon’s resignation opened the way for Cheney’s first truly astonishing inside move up. When Gerald Ford succeeded to the presidency, he needed experienced loyalists by his side who were untainted by the Nixon scandal, so he named Rumsfeld his chief of staff. Rumsfeld brought Cheney right along with him into the Oval Office.}

^{The period between August 1974 and November 1976, when Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter, is essential to understanding George W. Bush’s disastrous misjudgments — and Dick Cheney’s role in them. In both cases, Cheney and Rumsfeld played the key role in turning opportunity into chaos. Ford, like Bush later, hadn’t been elected president. As he entered office, he was overshadowed by a secretary of state (Kissinger then, Powell later) who was considered incontestably his better. Ford was caught as flat-footed by the fall of Saigon in April 1975 as Bush was by the September 2001 attacks. A better president, with more astute advisers, might have arranged a more orderly ending to the long and divisive war. But instead of heeding the country’s desire for honesty and reconciliation, Rumsfeld and Cheney convinced Ford that the way to turn himself into a real president was to stir up crises in international relations while lurching to the right in domestic politics.}

^{Having turned Ford into their instrument, Rumsfeld and Cheney staged a palace coup. They pushed Ford to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, tell Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to look for another job and remove Henry Kissinger from his post as national security adviser. Rumsfeld was named secretary of defense, and Cheney became chief of staff to the president. The Yale dropout and draft dodger was, at the age of thirty-four, the second-most-powerful man in the White House.}

^{As the 1976 election approached, Rumsfeld and Cheney used the immense powers they had arrogated to themselves to persuade Ford to scuttle the Salt II treaty on nuclear-arms control. The move helped Ford turn back Reagan’s challenge for the party’s nomination — but at the cost of ceding the heart of the GOP to the New Right. Then, in the presidential election, Jimmy Carter defeated Ford by 2 million votes.}

^{In his first test-drive at the wheels of power, Cheney had played a central role in the undoing of a president. Wrote right-wing columnist Robert Novak, "White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney . . . is blamed by Ford insiders for a succession of campaign blunders." Those in the old elitist wing of the party thought the decision to dump Rockefeller was both stupid and wrong: "I think Ford lost the election because of it," one of Kissinger’s former aides says now. Ford agreed, calling it "the biggest political mistake of my life"…}

Cheney bashes top Democrats
Politico
By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris
Dec 5, 2007

^{Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell [MI] and John P. Murtha [PA]. In a 40-minute interview with Politico, he scoffed at the idea of two men who spent years accruing power showing so much deference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [CA] … Murtha “and the other senior leaders … march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous speaker,” Cheney said. “I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion, but [in] the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened.” But his implication was clear: When asked if these men had lost their spines, he responded, “They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected”…}

What is he fighting for now? Why is he the first VP in history whose hobby is attacking a sitting President week after week, decision after decision? Sometimes we think he’s defending his less than stellar record. Some say he’s deflecting prosecution, keeping adversaries from tearing out his throat. His fans see him as the keeper of the flame. Is he "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger … role?"

Like his comment about Murtha, he "spent years accruing power." He just can’t let it go. For people like Dick Cheney, "carrying the big sticks" is the only thing that really matters – his raison d’etre. He was partially successful [except for the "Vice" in front of his title]. No one has amassed that much power in America in a very long time, if ever. And I don’t believe that the fact that he exercised it so poorly all throughout his entire career has much impact on him. People with his kind of personality structure can immediately brush away any criticism as envy or hatred from the other side. He will play Poppa Dick-tator for life.