WTF?!?!

It's been a crazy couple of days. Lots to catch up on so lets get started.

The Democrats lost the senate seat held by Ted Kennedy to a Republican. Of course, this is being touted as a referendum on health care reform. But the Democrats are running around whining that now all is lost! No, sorry Democrats. All was lost about 6 months ago when you squandered all the political capital on the bank bailouts and the tea parties for healthcare and everything else. Democrats suck. I'm not saying that they go all GOP and start passing things in reconciliation, but to continue to give in to Republican demands in the hope that Republicans will join in voting is proving to be useless. Yet Democrats keep trying.

The Supreme Court just ruled that its ok for companies to directly spend money in politics. This stikes me as a disaster for our democracy. Treating a company as an individual who has free speech rights yet not treating a company as an individual when criminality or wrongdoing has a occured doesn't make any sense. Plus, what good does someone like me have in supporting a candidate who doesn't have the backing of large corporations for donations? Our democracy is no longer 'of the people, for the people, by the people'. It's more like 'of the people, for the companies, by the companies'. This fall, TV is going to be unwatchable because the ads will be unreal. This decision makes our democracy a joke. Even the Supreme Court thinks so, if Twitter can be believed. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe thinks the ruling is bad.

Obama is proposing a raft of bank reforms ala Paul Volker. Geez, what took so long? What started all this populist anger out of Obama lately? Its nice, but a little too late. Did they see the writing on the wall in Massachusetts and realize that they should move the focus to financial reform to save face, now that health care reform is in doubt?

Obama's presidency turned on yesterday. Ezra Klein has a great summary of what his first year means to us progressives. Not very pretty.

But that's meant letting the government work. And that turns out to be an ugly thing, full of deals with pharmaceutical companies and concessions to Nebraska and delays and press releases and controversy and anger and process stories and confusion. Americans don't like Washington, and they like it less when they see it more. Obama's strategy has meant they see it constantly, and there's no one really guiding them through its thickets. The country is trapped in a sausage factory, and they want out.

This is what Obama has given us, but it is not what he was voted into office to do. We wanted someone to change how things got done. Obama has been a real pushover. I mean this isn't even the high road he is taking. He's got a ton of appointments being held up in Congress, he had a supermajority in the Senate and a 40 seat majority in the house, and yet all he has to show for that is a too small stimulus. Take the gloves off, man. Explain how stupid Congress is being. Why isn't he doing this? He keeps giving chances to Republicans. Why? Why why why? Things better change, or Obama will be a one term president with nothing to show for it.

Let's do some blogging

Texas, hold your heads high, because you regained your poise and almost pulled an upset there.

If you want a compact explanation of how we got to where we are right now in the financial world, read this. My favorite part:

Now if the aerospace lobby had told us after the 1986 Challenger disaster that the key to better performance was to turbocharge the engines and quit performing preflight inspections, everyone would have agreed that they were crazy. Yet that's essentially what the finance lobby has done over the past decade, and in some weird way we were too mesmerized to recognize it. Within months of a near catastrophe caused by one of the industry's brightest stars, the lobbyists were busily making certain that it would happen again—and that when it did happen, it would be bigger and more disastrous than ever.

Tim Geitner should be fired. This is not how we do things.

Nobody until now has really explained what is in the health care bills. Now someone has!

After the foiled Christmas plane bombing and the insanely stupid TSA rules that were implemented in response, one has to wonder who the real terrorists are. The media, perhaps?

Lulls in the news cause authors to look at subjects at a more deeper level. This lets authors look at why healthcare is so bad, why the financial crisis came about and so on. One thing that isn't getting enough attention is why wages have flattened. Here is some more attention for that vital subject.

Another reason to fire Tim Geitner.

Here's my economic dream team: Paul Krugman, Bruce Bartlett, Paul Volker, Barry Ritholtz, Robert Reich, Simon Johnson

And Finally, GO VANDALS!!!!

Happy New Year!

Get back to work, ya lazy scum! ;)

Saw a great movie about blogging over the break: Julie and Julia. Fantastic film. You can view the blog that started all this here.

I also highly recommend going to Kellog, Idaho and staying at the Silver Mountain Resort. Aside from good skiing (when there is snow) the resort added a most awesome water park. I haven't had that much fun in a long time. Thanks to my Dad for arranging a free stay at the resort!

Onto business...

2 weeks ago, Paul Volker testified to Congress about what should be done with financial reform. You can read what he said here and here, but the best quote is this: "The only useful financial innovation in the last 20 years is the ATM."

David Frum explains why the GOP lost the Healthcare battle.

The New Republic talks about Republican nihilism.

Brad DeLong finally likes something that the AP has posted about Republicans and the deficit.

The Huffington Post explains, in great detail how Wall Street owns congress.

David Frum is pushing an idea of his that I linked to a long time ago as to why American health care costs so much: We are lazy fatties, and we like it!

Glenn Greenwald explains the healthcare debate. It's what Obama wanted. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Kevin Drum nails the income inequality argument over at Mother Jones. This is the best bit:

Ask an economist what's responsible for increased productivity, and the most likely answer you'll get is: new technology. So if we really wanted to reward the people who are responsible for productivity growth, we'd shower riches on engineers and scientists. But we don't. We shower riches on the CEOs who buy their products and make use of them.

But buying a new inventory control system is hardly a sign of managerial brilliance. It's just something that every company eventually does once a better one is invented, and the CEO who signs the purchase order to buy it is no more responsible for productivity growth than the workers who use it. They're both piggybacking off of someone else's invention, and there's no special reason why either one should be thought more deserving of sharing in the rewards. They both should.

Politics as usual = a busy, busy day

Our Congress is disgusting. Very few people in either the House or Senate deserve our respect or support. I must admit that both Senators from Washington state have been doing ok, but any Republican Senator currently serving is disgraceful.

Republicans don't care about your health, just winning.

Joe Lieberman is a hypocrite of the highest order.

Republicans won't take responsibility for their fiscal follies.

Obama is all show when it comes to dealing with bankers. Today Obama met with the 6 heads of the big banks and scolded them and urged them to do more, including more lending. So that results in a statement from the banks that makes Obama look stupid: "He can say what he wants, but we're not going to go back to the kind of lending that put us in this mess." Brilliant.

A conservative magazine wants to reenact post-depression regulations in a modern light. Marvelous idea!

The fellers over at Minyanville are seeing double-dip recession possibilities.

New Majority examines how the Republicans can't support the status quo on health care. Good read.

Andrew Ross Sorkin in tomorrow's NYT confirming that Wall St. owns Washington.

Bonus:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

VAT

Today in the NYT, Catherine Rampell discusses how it works. Then she says that it will never happen because both sides of the isle have promised no new taxes. It's a great read but her conclusion about it never happening is frustrating. Taxes have been treated as a hot potato. Nobody likes hearing about tax increases, but lots of people like hearing about entitlement increases. For a country that spent the last 30 years aquiring stuff on credit, this disconnect about where the money for entitlements comes from isn't surprising. Both the American people and the government have been spending and spending and not worrying about where the money comes from (except when it's politically damaging to the other party) and this is going to come to a head at some point in the future when the baby boomers cash in on social security and medicare. Baby Boomers day of reckoning is coming, and it won't be pretty for any of us.

Matt Tiabbi's latest from Rolling Stone is now online: Obama's Big Sellout

Mother Jones has a great follow-up to Tiabbi's piece.

Bonuses, Taxes, and Goldman Sachs

So Goldman Sachs is giving bonuses in the form of stock. Seems like they were just caving to the populist outcry against Wall Street bonuses. Then yesterday in the WSJ the British made the case for doing a one time 50% bonus tax on bank bonuses. Today France is joining the tax bandwagon. So now it seems to me like Goldman is hedging against a possible tax on bonuses by hiding the bonuses in the stock awards. We'll see.