And it’s a beautiful thing to see.
Today Joe once again goes after the Big Lie — the claim that Fannie and Freddie caused the crisis — and drives home the point that the people advancing this story aren’t just wrong but are acting with intent, engaged in deliberate deception:
In Wallison’s article, he claimed that the charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against six former Fannie and Freddie executives last week prove him right. This is another favorite tactic: He takes a victory lap whenever events cast Fannie and Freddie in a bad light. Rarely, however, has his intellectual dishonesty been on such vivid display. In fact, what the S.E.C.’s allegations show is that the Big Lie is, well, a lie.
Read the whole thing.
Saying this, of course, gets you declared “shrill”, denounced as partisan; you’re supposed to pretend that we’re having a civilized discussion between people with good intentions. And you’re supposed to match each attack on Republicans with an attack on Democrats, as if the mendacity were equal on both sides. Sorry, but it isn’t. Democrats aren’t angels; they’re human and sometimes corrupt — but they don’t operate a lie machine 24/7 the way modern Republicans do.
Welcome to my world, Joe.
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"...Democrats are in the wrong when they attack the plan for its effects on seniors, because current seniors won’t be impacted. They show ads with elderly people, but no current elderly people will fact the Ryan plan.
If anything was to show how much certain elite media go along with the Republican thought that the social safety net is only for people born in 1956 or earlier, while everyone else is on their own, this is it. Because I’m a senior-in-waiting, and this plan will affect me. Someday I’ll be elderly, and then I’ll have to deal with taking a worthless coupon to the notoriously ugly healthcare market if this plan passes. This is not semantics – it’s the basis of the inter-generational social contract. But in the worldview of Politifact, as long as the Great Society’s social insurance plan is there for people born in 1956 or earlier, it exists for everyone."http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/a-note-on-politifacts-lie-of-t...
And, yeah, Republicans since Reagan are scary. It's not just that they're out to succeed, it seems to me that they're out to destroy anything or anyone that isn't them. Yikes.
When the financial crisis was still young, many books (such as Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail) came out describing the role of the large investment banks. What came out of this was the realization among many Americans that insider trading (a crime which had presumably tripped up Martha Stewart) was only prosecuted when it involved ordinary stocks and bonds, not the complicated proprietary derivatives that had been designed by the big banks.
When Obama came to power, I foolishly expected that there would be some calling to account of the big banks. After all, trillions of dollars of American wealth in housing equity and retirement accounts had been wiped out by insider trading run amok. The stewards of retirement funds had been bamboozled by new financial instruments, designed by the big banks who then betted against their own creations.
But Obama and Holder had other priorities. Unlike the former CEO's of Enron, the heads of the big banks were never even prosecuted! So why should we be surprised that history is now rewritten to protect the guilty?
Along with the FHA
But Goldie grew fat and ghoulish
While Congri looked the other way
They sat 'round the bargaining table
Sweeping crumbs onto the floor
We need to construct a new fable
Before citizens break down our door
We need a fall guy so we can go free
They stared at Fannie and Freddie
We need a story to repeat on TV
So they won't suspect Goldie or Citi
Let's blame it all on socialism
Tell them that's where they went off track
We'll use big lies and hypnotism
To finally get them off our back
Yes, the fire was burning, but Fannie Mae threw gasoline on it. Don't have steady job? No problem. Just state your income and we'll give you 90% financing. It was called the "Alt A" mortgage, and it was Fannie's specialty.
Stop calling everyone who disagrees with you a liar.
In 1998 I left that industry to concentrate on commercial real estate loans. In 2005 a life-long friend of mine asked me to do some consulting work for him on a residential mortgage company that he started in 2004. One of the first actions I took was to review some loan files to check the "quality" of the loans that they were making. After reviewing a half-dozen files I went into his office and said he had a huge problem. The loans that his company was processing were of very poor quality and either he was wasting allot of time and effort on deals that were not going to fly, or his "buyers" of these loans were going to pull his right to sell them anymore loans. More:http://bit.ly/smaOmI
If the answer is yes, the statement possesses *revolutionary* truth, far superior to the merely bourgeois sort of truth Mr. Nocera is concerned with.
All correctly-oriented cadres know this. All power to the soviets of preachers and hedge-fund managers!
The GOP is the last major Leninist party in the parliamentary West.
Dr. Krugman, I am so glad you made this clear statement of our current political mis-dialogue! Let the media incorporate this truth into their reporting! Let Obama incorporate this fact of political life into his "bipartisanship" thinking! Let the people watching Faux News incorporate this into their listening to the propaganda masquerading as news!
Hear! Hear! I am so happy you have put this clear statement of truth into print! Thank you!
And thanks for being there where we need you!
Wallison probably does in fact believe what he is saying. And because he does, his bills are being paid and he is being provided access to the forums he appears in by someone or ones who stand to make (or at least not lose) a lot of money because Peter is saying what he is saying. ... And even Peter's sponsors do not have to be lying for "The Big Lie" to be in operation. They have to simply not care about what is true.
You have been addressing the issue of lying with some regularity lately and I urge you to continue doing so. The lies regularly issuing from the right and the cowardice of the left in its lack of response to them are symptoms of something even more troubling: the intellectual and moral bankruptcy that has poisoned the well of our democracy. There is good reason the Devil is known as "The Prince of Lies."
> — but they don’t operate a lie machine 24/7 the way modern
> Republicans do.
Tell it like it T I S, Professor!
Over the years, similar situations were the rule. Economists would argue one thing and the recommend another. It was nuts. After a while, I concluded that the reason that I couldn't understand economics was that it truly did not make sense.
Professor Krugman asked in one of his posts upstream, "What ever happened to the economics profession?" He speaks as if the present mendacity is new. It isn't. Professor Krugman and a few others actually inhabit a profession, but most so-called economists live in a different world. Economists need to be licensed, and they must be subject to regulation. If they give the patient the wrong pills they should suffer penalties.
You should not be able to yell "fire" in a crowded room nor report "news" via "memos of the day".
Happy Holiday!
bk