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Attention Steve Katz. Your help is needed
Dear Steve Katz:
I loved your snarky post a few days ago mocking Obama-hater and sore-loser Paul Krugman.
I need you to please come up with something similar against this other know-nothing expert-wanna be who said in this op-ed already online and due in print tomorrow (April 1st) that "What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization" and other nonsense.
Some Americans are afraid that the government might temporarily "nationalize" the banks, but that option would be preferable to the Geithner plan. After all, the F.D.I.C. has taken control of failing banks before, and done it well. It has even nationalized large institutions like Continental Illinois (taken over in 1984, back in private hands a few years later), and Washington Mutual (seized last September, and immediately resold).
What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a "partnership" in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships -- with the private sector in control -- have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
Just what we needed. A Krugman clone! Give him hell, Stevey. Nobody messes with our Cult.
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you have chosen the right guy TS. And your post is not that half bad either.
April 1, 2009 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I fear this is more pointed than you are giving it credit for. Never seen Truthseeker go meta without dissing someone. Seems another in a long line of TS "if you challenge an Obama critic you are a cultist" posts.
The basic formulation seems to be: criticism of Obama is always borne of honest intent, while support of Obama is always the result of brain-dead cultism.
Could be wrong ... but that's how I read this.
April 1, 2009 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was not thinking that deep KGB. I really was not. You could read this one way or the other. I just thought I would give TS the benefit of the doubt. I love it when people give me that benefit
My problem, quandry if you will, is that you are usually a voice to inner thoughts I have. I tend to agree with you, what? 9 out of 10. Besides I like your writing.
Have a good April Fools Day.
April 1, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
New game: Cult-calling. Replaces Kool-Aid drinking, I guess.
Excessively meta, really, to have one guy, Krugman, complaining about Obama being not as effective as he'd like (hey, he's not McCain, Paul), another (SK) complaining about Krugman's complaints, and another indirectly mocking SK's "cult" behavior.
April 1, 2009 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was fun seeing him on Stepahpoopalopitus. You know like Wills makes a comment and Krugman is like, well that is irrelevant of course. hahahahahaha.
People are making this look like Paul the Nobel has signed up for the repubs or something.
This is the left fighting the left. which is the way it is supposed to be.
April 1, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's cultism and cult-calling or kool-aid drinking thoughtless following of a personality, and then there's folks always looking for a hero, or someone who can answer all life's current questions for them, which I see as slightly different. I remember a comment on another forum I frequented back during the run-up to the 2004 election, because it really struck me. The commenter, a very strong 60-something lefty in the left-of-FDR tradition, but also a cynic, said she had just gone to a lecture by Paul Krugman, and described a large contingent of worshippers there who thought Krugman was god.
I guess I am more sympathetic (but definitely not empathetic) to someone who gets that way about a writer, than someone who gets that way about a politician. Because with a writer, I can see some rhyme or reason in thinking "this guy thinks just like me" after reading a body of work, while with a politician, it is more often just falling for marketing.
April 1, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
It made me laugh.
The battle of the op-eds.
April 1, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry I couldn't read TMP sooner. I'm flattered, I guess.
Saw the Stiglitz NYT piece and considered a blog. Now that you mention it...
I have no vendetta with anyone who writes any intellectually sound op-ed, blog, etc. criticizing President Obama. But, when they write/speak word, after after word of how wrong he is, and never right, I become intellectually concerned. One, they, I think are progressives. Two, they know as coming from the left their criticisms will be 10-times more damaging, and be picked up by the major media. Three, they know the train has left the station, the plan has been in the works for months, it's now Obama's to get right or not.
That is what has led me to surmise that they do it for the attention. They also know that if they can diminish Obama in the publics eye, on this issue they can hurt him on other issues he is tackling (like health care) while pushing up their own media stock.
If someone can point me to a Stiglitz or Krugman, "Obama got it right" piece I would be forever grateful.
If you feel I wrong in my analysis of what Krugman and Stiglitz are up to please explain what their end game is. "Rahm, tell Geithner he's history, get me Krugman, have I got a job for him." But, make sure he's paid all his taxes."
April 1, 2009 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
One More Thing
Sam Stein at HP reports Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek's Evan Thomas
Murry says, "We report." "You decide."
April 1, 2009 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just fine Steve. Just fine.
April 2, 2009 12:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some points vis a vis the Swedish Model:
CDS: I've heard that Bush II's bankruptcy law made it so that credit default swaps can't just be cleared away in bankruptcy. They have to be paid back. We're on the hook for all that AIG garbage, even in nationalization.
Bondholders: If the US defaults on these, many people will be angry, and there could be an international crisis. Russia did it in the late 90s and panicked foreign investors who fled.
Domionoes: Wiping out bonds and CDS obligations of a nationalized bank will make other banks who these are owed to go under like dominoes. The old Lehman hypothesis.
LegalStill no legal authorization for receivership of non-banks (investment conglomerates and insurance companies, like Frankstein monsters AIG and Citigroup), at least according to Bernanke etc.
Political Potentional price tag for paying off creditors and bondholders too much for Congress and public to accept. I have yet to hear an estimated price tag for the Swedish model for Citibank and it's $1 Trillion in longterm debt.
Maybe these are all mistaken , but I'd love for people to argue why and how we get around these problems, instead of just opinionating.
April 2, 2009 1:03 AM | Reply | Permalink