I eagerly anticipate every word he writes. He's right.

Im not going to dislike him because I don't like the facts he espouses. There are more people being punished for marijuana under Obama too. He's just window dressing in a lot of cases. What people fail to understand is that things in general are worsening over time and by design I might add. If Bush were President now he would also have worse stats...maybe...because our trajectory is the same regardless of what the two wings of the same bird differ on in theory. I would add that Obama's biggest accomplishment is neutering all anti-establishment opposition which flourishes under Republicans like Reagan and Bush. People assumed Obama was 100% one of us and, hence, would save the day. He sold out to the NSA, DEA, CIA, SEC and most of the powers that be a long time ago. He will fight for things like minimum wage hikes, corporate health care reforms and other safe topics but he isn't about to change anything big. He would be JFKed and he knows it. Unfortunately, we ourselves don't have a lot of support from the populus because many of them still buy into the lie that we haven't all been sold out. Obama will get his speaker fees in a few years and we will have Hillary or Jeb. Meanwhile, control will be exerted more and more as we lose more of our rights, wealth disparity increases and those at the top escape justice while everyone else fights to keep their kids out of jail.

kind of hopping.

I always think of that during swarms.

you just know how it's going to go. They can post the sky is blue and it's gonna break wide open.

It would rob DU of so much of its entertainment value.

if you had used ignore.

By the way, did you notice the very mavericky posts down thread?

lol It's so hard to tell at times.

I haven't read the book or seen Taibbi in an interview yet, but the Obama administration has a pitiful record on bank/corporation crime prosecutions.

Doesn't everybody know this?

Statistically, I am sure that the Bush administration did prosecute more of that kind of high level white collar crime.

Why would I hate Taibbi for reporting the facts?

It's an invitation to your first 5 or 6 responders to post a preemptive strike against everything your subject has ever said, aka Nadering.

He was on Daily Show and Bill Marher last week.

Besides, Dodd-Frank is a milquetoast law that has actually made things worse. We now official have by law Systematically Important Financial Institutions i.e., too big to fail banks.

Fraud is fraud and Pres. Obama and Att. Gen Holder have not prosecuted big bank fraudsters.

After letting Bush/Cheney off the hook for their war crimes, my next biggest disappointment with Obama has been his love affair with the big banks and the financialization of our economy ... then, I am really unhappy with him on continuing Bush's education policies.

I am ready for a progressive president for a change (and not just on social issues).

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 12:08 AM - Edit history (1)

World's economies. All we've seen so far are those very criminals being REWARDED. And then people wonder why the people all over the world are so angry. Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones who was not affected by their corruption, and if so, I am very happy for you, seriously, but go look at what used to be First World Countries in Europe to see the tragic results of their crimes, the installed Goldman Sachs operatives in their governments, stealing the assets of once proud nations, to pay for their gambling debts.

Anyone who in any way tries to defend the lack of accountability for these massive crimes doesn't understand the depth of the anger, worldwide against them, and justifiably so.

Personally, I know people who were directly victimized by the corruption and will never recover. I'm sure most people do the crimes were so widespread.

See Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece where their corrupt policies crashed economies, then they moved in their vultures to scavenge what they could from the wreckage, the IMF and the World Bank. Did ANYONE ever think that first world countries in Europe would become enslaved to those criminal organizations the way we KNEW had happened in Third World nations?

No amount of excuses, explanations, defenses of these massive crimes against the people of the world, is going to assuage the anger against them. It is now erupting in Europe and will continue to do so until some justice is done.

I would be ashamed to be seen with Jamie Dimon eg, we ARE judged by the company we keep.

Some simply cannot see things objectively.

I love Taibbi for being one of the only remaining truth tellers in the entire media.

We MUST criticize the President because we want him to improve. Those that believe the President doesn't need to improve on corporate crime prosecution are sadly mistaken.

To each their own.

His thoroughly revealing exposes documenting fraud and abuse is written with a certain flair without diminishing the facts. quite rare actually.

I haven't read him for quite some time as I have never found anything about what he writes to have anything to do with facts.

Care to be more specific?

I don't give writers a second chance. When they lose me, I don't go back.

It's a lot like Greenwald losing me when he came out in support of the Iraq war.

I have to admit, Taibbi doesn't produce the visceral response in me that Greenwald does.

them?

I think that Taibbi never really graduated from the schlock sensationalist reporting he did at The eXile which is clearly intended to be much more entertainment than actual journalism.

and have probably never read any of his work, or Taibbi's.

This is the type of empty, meaningless screed that has been polluting DU for some time.

Rage into the void, my friend.

/ignore list.

Frankly, I don't give a shit what you think.

It is interesting that you cannot abide anybody having a differing opinion of writers than you. Ah well, the trash Obama hacks require people be 100% loyal to them, else they'd starve.

as evidenced greatly in the threads of this OP alone.

It was really difficult for me to get past that, almost ever since. There was an occasion after his passing, I listened or read something I can't remember what it was, but it wasn't on the topic of Iraq. I just recall that I found it on point and credible enough to give credence to his analysis (on a topic I can no longer recall).

So mixed feelings, with an extra critical eye/ear to his pieces post mortem.

His right wing philosophies always put me off.

until he didn't. of which of course I refer to his bizarre support for the Iraq war.

When the Iraq War started Greenwald was not a very political person at all, he had not started blogging yet and did not even think much about politics. He did support the war initially as a private citizen, but he was not publishing articles in support of the war or making his views publicly known.

After the war started however Greenwald figured out that it was based on lies, that is what opened his eyes and turned him political. Greenwald got his start by blogging in opposition to the Iraq War, you won't find any writings of Greenwald's supporting the Iraq War but you will find huge amounts he has written in opposition to it. He has written about his past support of the war and how he changed his mind and decided he needed to speak out, but all of his writings on the Iraq War are in opposition to the war.

Don't listen to the crap some people tell you about Greenwald and Taibbi because a lot of ot is untrue, neither of them are right-wingers as some here try to claim.

But I'll give you a chance.

Post something ca. 2003 and published by Greenwald in which he "came out in support of the Iraq war."

Because I don't believe such a column exists. Columns in which he says he was for it initially, before he figured out it was a war of aggression, do not count. In fact, they would count as the opposite of what you claim.

There is no such column, and you are therefore insinuating a naked falsehood. Prove me wrong.

The only way to take your comment is as an ad hominem.

You haven't read him in years. that's what you said. the assertion is based on the fact that you stated it earlier on. It might be a point of contention at best, imo.

I haven't called you a liar, but I did mistakenly misrepresent what you said for which I concede and apologize.

You did say:

Keep going I hope this gets better!

The reason his DOJ pursued them was because those corps fucked over rich people. Not to say Obama's admin has been better but I think there's less corps practicing it now than before the collapse, hence the collapse. Though not much less.

Eta: I like Taibbi's writing on our financial sector.

Legal mostly due to deregulation that had been ongoing for more than thirty years.

Along with lobbyists and corporations.

Joke...right?
You really should read more, especially current events before posting absurd statement like the above on DU.
People will begin to laugh at you.

Feds say JPMorgan broke securities laws in mortgage deals
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/07/feds-say-jpmorgan-broke-securities-laws-in-mortgage-deals/

The only absurdity I see in these forums is the tendency to blame Obama first.

The BOF crowd around here is a riot, I must admit.

deregulation! So what Wall Street did--speculation--is perfectly LEGAL!! The Justice Department couldn't find any wrongdoing because Congress deregulated the entire economic system--before and after Obama got elected. Some of this occurred during Bush I, Clinton I and II, and Bush I and II years. To put this all on Obama...well...as many of us have stated, it's much easier to blame the black guy in the White House and the black guy heading the Justice Department than to tell the entire story.

The problem with Matt Taibi is that is oversimplifies what happened. The problem is DEREGULATION. When we DEREUGLATED the entire market system, this is what you get. Speculation, derivatives, trading...all of that...perfectly legal. That's why Holder et al. could find no illegalities. That's what happened.

BOFfers cannot accept that explanation.

I kinda like BOF.

YOU did.
Are you obsessed?
Is EVERYTHING you see viewed through the Obama lens?
If so, you are suffering from ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome).
You hear about that a lot on this site.

The Wall Street Banks BROKE LAWS (with or without Obama), even the NEW deregulated LAWS.
They have NOT yet been held accountable.
THAT is undeniable.

Good Luck dealing with your ODS.
That can be a tough one.

I pointed out the largest absurdity on these forums.

You took offense.

I wonder why?

YOU made the claim that everything Wall Street did was LEGAL.
I corrected your absurd claim,
and and provided references and cited proving that YOUR claim was bullshit.
EVERYONE reading this thread now KNOWS that you can NOT support that claims you made,
and are just tossing shit against the wall.


I rest my case.
YOU can dabble in inferences and innuendo,
but that will NOT change the fact that LAWS were broken,
and the criminals are escaping.

Do what to whom - where????

He was the Senate Democrats' point man in getting it through the Senate. He interrupted his own campaign schedule just to make sure it got passed. He even made a joint appearance with McCain during the presidential campaign to advocate that TARP get passed.

It's not an exaggeration to say that if Bush was President TARP, then Obama was Senator TARP.

Sadly, the too big to fail huge assed conglomerates held the economy hostage. Either we bailed them out or it all came tumbling down in a disaster that would make the Great Depression seem like a blip by comparison.

The biggest issue since is that there was no way to reign in those huge assed conglomerates due to how many politicians were owned by them after the crash.

Too big to fail is too big to exist.

with the possible exception of "We need to invade Iraq because Saddam has WMD".

It was absolutely necessary. Had we let it all come down, unemployment would be somewhere around 50% with no end in sight right now.

Maybe you're not capable of comprehending it.

You and I have nothing to say to one another.

Ever.

I'll have no truck with somebody who calls me a liar.

was a fraud, a lie, a hoax perpetrated on the American people.

No necessary, except to prop up the assets of the Mi$$ RobMe crowd, after they foreclosed on 7 million families, and after unemployment has only just reached this past month the levels of jobs we had in 2008 (but with 14 million more people) while we pay 1.2 billion to thieving bankers to profit from and continue to hide bad real estate deals.

The idea that we are better off probably comes as strange to the 50 million people (increase over the past 5 years) who live in now perpetual poverty, and the other 200 million or so who brush up against it in their lives.

We not only didn't have to, there are at least a couple million jobs that haven't been created because of those actions. Banksters, also known as donors to the Democratic and Republican parties, are getting richer.

Using lies to strengthen your argument is just stupid.
Yes, stupid, and getting huffy and not reading the truth is just
plain childish.

Nice RW reaction.

... misinformed? What's the difference? Almost every post you make on this subject is factually incorrect. Bye also.

Lame.

Your posts are laughable.

lie. Another lie is on the table right now, but I'll not bring it up.

Have you?

How about all the millions of American who have lost their jobs and savings and homes because of the very same banks and entities who profited handsomely from their tax dollars, via TARP? Has the nation gotten their jobs and retirement accounts and homes back?

Maybe it didn't have to specifically be TARP, but it had to be something.

...that would have done some good:

1 - objective analysis of bank assets
2 - force them to use mark-to-market not "what we want the assets to be worth"
3 - disband or nationalize those banks that do not have enough assets
4 - give relief to the little guys not the banks
5 - prosecute those who engaged in fraud, including:
- fake signatures on documents
- not complying with state real estate laws
- lying to customers who were attempting to renegotiate, and then foreclosing anyway

Anyway, the big picture is this: the banks got their $700B and the banksters got their bonuses, while the Little People got diddly squat.

It is patently ridiculous for anyone to try and defend this shit IMO. In our supposedly representative government, the sentiment was AT LEAST 9 to 1 against the bailouts, whether the representative / senator was D or R -- and yet we see what happened.

Personally I'd be happy to take my chances on a society that was willing to put the screws right back at the people who put the screws to us. Iceland did, and their economy recovered quickly.

Also with your assessment on why these institutions weren't reigned it, because the pols were/are owned by them. and Yes, Frank-Dodd is so weak as to be as laughable as it is useless, imo.

Oh man, you have it BAD.

[font size=3] Paulson with Co-Conspirators

Now THIS is Bi-Partisanship
Hahahahahahahahaha[/font]

It took our Bi-Partisan Congress less than a week to hand over a TRILLION DOLLARS of OUR money to the Wall Street Banks after receiving a 3 page extortion Note from Paulson threatening to wreck the economy.

The Senators and Congressmen "bravely" handed over OUR money.
They claimed to have "Saved the Economy",
and congratulated each other for their courage in front of the TV Cameras.

Did they "Save the Economy"?
THAT is debatable,
but what is NOT debatable is that they saved THEIR Portfolios.
Wall Street Banks were a HOT stock prior to 2008.
You can be assured that everyone voting on saving Wall Street
KNEW they were saving their "investments" from taking a hit.
This class of people do NOT believe that they should have to cover their own Gambling Losses.
THAT is what the Peasant Class is for.

and I still do. What is it about truth that makes people hate journalists when they speak it?

I just learned that last month when I returned to DU after a long hiatus.

There was no choice in that situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen#Enron_scandal the internal audit that Enron performed showed that Andersen basically allowed the firm to go bankrupt under their watch by performing a shoddy audit that looked the other way when presented with gross abuses producing one of the biggest bankruptcies in the world at the time. The Bush admin had to do something.

Even there, the Bush justice department screwed up resulting in a SCOTUS reversal of the conviction of Arthur Andersen.

That is closing the barn door after the horses have already left and when there is absolutely no choice. To give the Bush admin credit for going after corporations there? WTF?

That is part of the issue I have with things that Taibbi says. When you stop and look at the details, too often they look like this.

Is there no depth to which you won't go to make everything ok in your head? Jesus.

If you have an issue with what I pointed out, make it. If you cant find fault with what I wrote, go bother someone else.

The actual proof, one way or another, for what Taibbi is alleging would take a huge paper with a lot of analysis.

It's not just numbers of prosecutions or convictions. As I noted with Enron/Arthur Andersen, you dont get the same kind of credit, IMNSHO, for issues that were so big you had no choice but to act against them, or where massive damage was already done.

As an example, one prosecution that would, for arguments sake, have prevented the mortgage meltdown, would have been worth 100 prosecutions of folks after the crisis happened.

And going beyond a theoretical example to the real, giving credit to Bush for "Having a justice department tougher on corporations than Obama" when the mortgage bubble and all of its surrounding chicanery took place under their watch without any efforts at prosecution or prevention is the stuff of slapstick comedy.

The problem is, like you say, he's short on facts. Sometimes he brings important issues to the forefront -- inequality in access to justice is a good example.

The problem is, finance is complicated, and too often he just muddles a bunch of factoids together, and caps it off with a witty diatribe, leaving the reader with no idea what is actually going on, but a vague sense that a bunch of Wall Streeters are stealing money. And, as much as this may be true, it would be much more of a service to explain clearly what is going on, how exactly are they stealing the money, and what exactly can be done to stop them.

I've read some Taibbi pieces where I'm wondering if he actually understands some of what he writes about, or whether he sometimes doesn't even bother to get the full picture himself, just enough of it to write a compelling narrative.

I think he can best be compared to Ann Coulter who describes herself as a polemicist. Both of their goals is to whip up their supporters outrage at something or someone and both don't bother to get into the nitty gritty details of what is going on. They put just enough information to make their supporters mad and to point those now mad people in a certain direction.

The problem, as you aptly point out, is that many issues, like finance, aren't adequately described by the minimal attention to detail these two put into their work. Derivatives alone probably require someone who has passed at least their second year (if not third year) of a math major to really understand well. I usually point people who ask at these two wiki pages and tell people that if they are not completely comfortable with all of the math on these two pages, they are not ready to understand derivatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_differential_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_process

That math, by the way, is above me. I went to Calc 3 and no further. I'm sure that is at least 2-3 semesters beyond me. About 5-10% of that makes sense to me.

Getting back to the point. Taibbi's work is too often just plain insufficient. And if you are going to attack someone I support with insufficient details, particularly when those details when examined change things completely, I am going to call you out on it.

Regarding the derivatives, you don't actually have to know about Stochastic Calculus to understand them. You need to know that stuff if you want to be able to price derivatives -- and, yes, it's highly technical -- but not to just understand what they are and how they work. For example, a stock option is a pretty simple thing, but pricing a stock option is not so simple. If you're interested, here's a book I recommend about the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/Traders-Guns-Money-Derivatives-Financial/dp/0273776762

(lack of) prosecutions.

For instance the Bush administration could have gone against just a few individuals in
Arthur Anderson instead of the firm as a whole.

to point this out as some kind of feather in the Bush DOJ's cap.

There are two other OPs now that have the evidence and the actual evidence refutes your points and Taibbis.

Once again, every article by Taibbi's I have read has these similar issues. There are these grand proclamations made and then you read through the details to see if the facts provided back up his points, and it doesnt come close to getting there.

He depends on the shock of the contention/accusation appealing to a certain audience who become so enthralled with that contention/accusation that they will forgo worrying about whether his suggestions stand up. Obviously, it works.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4828575

and

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4828126

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compared to this, Taibbi has nothing.

citations. Your attempting to discredit them means nothing.

You linked to fact-free propaganda and an irrelevant story about Bush.

Do you want to try floating the idea nothing in the book is backed by citations?

Silly, silly, silly.

citations are citations.

You cited partisan drivel and an irrelvant article. Taibbi's been doing some of the best reporting on the mortgage crisis and the aftermath anywhere.

Some citations are not citations, and some statements stand on their own.

How soon some folks forget!



Matt Taibbi has a POV, but it's not a lefty one, not by a long shot.

in the case of a company like HSBC, which admitted to laundering $850 million for a pair of Central and South American drug cartels, somebody has to go to jail in that case. If you’re going to put people in jail for having a joint in their pocket or for slinging dime bags on the corner in a city street, you cannot let people who laundered $800 million for the worst drug offenders in the world walk. Even Bushes flunkies would have nailed these crooks

We would've pressured Bush's justice dept to go after HSBC. Republicans aren't going to do that in this case because the support banksters in general. It was up to us and there are just too many apologists for this admin because we knew Bush was worse and we are afraid to admit that our leadership practically works for the same bosses. They still ate raiding medical marijuana state legal facilities that ate abiding by state laws but they allowed murder and massive cocaine dealing in the hundreds of tons by funneling their cash for them. When a low level dry dealer isn't caught with drugs the go after them for money laundering and structuring which are both 10 year mandatory minimums. Our Justice Dept and Lanny Breuer are just captains of the Mafia-like Cocaine and Heroin cartels.

Last edited Wed Apr 16, 2014, 09:58 AM - Edit history (1)

To say that the Obama justice department has put "zero" corporate criminals in jail is simply not true. To name one example, hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam got the longest sentence ever for insider trading.

Beyond that, if you look at policy, it's obvious that Obama has been much tougher on corporate America and Wall Street in particular, for example, by passing Dodd-Frank. I share Taibbi's frustrations with the fact that wealthy people get away with a lot of things they shouldn't, but to say that Obama is worse than Bush on this just isn't true.

Prosecutions are not the entire story. There is also policy, where Obama is clearly tougher, passing some of the most significant reforms since WW2.

I'm not sure what the reasons are behind that chart, but it looks like prosecutions dropped dramatically under W and declined slightly from there under Obama. I too would like to see more prosecutions in the wake of the financial crisis. But to say "zero" people have been put in prison (direct quote from Taibbi) is simply not true. And obviously not true. Rajnaratnam is just one example. There's also Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford, etc.

It's fine to say that Obama should have been tougher, but it's silly to say that Bush was tougher than Obama.

If Bush gets credit for prosecuting "all these high-profile cases", surely Obama gets credit for "high-profile cases" such as Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford, Rajaratnam, SAC, etc.

Of course, simply looking at headlines isn't a good way of measuring how tough either administration is on Wall Street or corporate malfeasance in general. After all, the Bush administration was in power for eight years, allowing conditions that led to the near-collapse of the world economy. Conversely, Obama passed Dodd-Frank, widely considered some of the most significant regulations since WW2.

To believe that Obama is tougher on Wall Street also requires believing that Wall Street doesn't know what's good for it, because it's no secret that they generally hate him, and heavily supported the GOP and Mitt Romney in 2012, much more "partisanly" than in previous elections.

It's true that there haven't been any high-profile criminal prosecutions related to the financial crisis, and this is disappointing. But this is at least partly due to the fact that the crisis is more systemic, as opposed to Enron, where there was glaring fraud engineered by top executives. Some of the practices that led to the collapse were not actually illegal, owing in part to financial deregulation.

No one could be more Wall-Street friendly than Bush. But there's never been a more "target-rich environment" for rampant corporate criminality than in the wake of the mortgage / housing bubble.

Sure, it was systemic, But pull the carpet back an inch and there were mountains of fraud and illegality. Taibbi wrote about a lot of it. Now we're supposed to think it's all a lefty plot to be mean to Obama?

Really?

Wall Street does not hate Obama. They mealy mouth the standard We Hate Democrats line, but they sure poured money into his campaigns, and Obama welcomed people like Larry "Housing Prices Never Go Down and Regulating Mortgage-Backed Securities is Stupid" Summers into the fold.

Dodd-Frank is a feeble mess that has struck fear into the hearts of exactly no one.

And getting back to prosecutions -- look what we actually got. Some seriousness only where large scale investors were burned by fraudulently overvalued packages of subprimes.

What have we gotten on predatory lending practices? NINJA loans? Banks throwing out underwriting practices and pumping up the whole bubble, only to demand REPAYMENT from taxpayers when the bubble burst and 40% of middle class wealth evaporated?

It's an absurd point that Bush somehow caught more corporate wrongoing. But the fact that sends people obsessed with defending any perceived critique of Obama into a tailspin is no more grounds for dismissing Taibbi than it was for Greenwald and The Guardian.

And we know how that turned out.

First of all, yes, Wall Street hates Obama. They didn't used to, but that changed drastically between 2008 and 2012, because of the regulations that Obama put in place. So again, thinking that Obama has been lenient on Wall Street means believing that Wall Street doesn't know what is good for itself.


Larry Summers -- there you have a point. I am disappointed that Obama put so much trust in him.

Dodd-Frank. Here you are overstating your case. It's hard to argue that creating the CFPB is just a cosmetic change. Also, regulating OTC derivatives is definitely a good thing, as is the Volcker rule against proprietary trading, and forcing hedge funds to register with the SEC, etc. As with Obamacare, Dodd-Frank barely made it through congress, so while it's easy to talk about how much more you would like done, you can't argue that Obama didn't do as much or nearly as much as was politically feasible.

Predatory lending -- yes, this is directly addressed in Dodd-Frank, and enforced by the CFPB. The CFPB, by the way, was Elizabeth Warren's initial idea, and the director Cordray is no friend of Wall Street, and was so opposed by Republicans that Obama needed to use a recess appointment. Here's some of what Warren had to say about the regulations:

He made teeny weeny, mildly provocative comment, that has resulted in the very silly attempts to dismiss his entire career that surround us in this thread.

All of the lack of "level heads" would be originating from the We Hate Anyone Whose Work Reflects Badly, No Matter How Little or How Tangetially, on the Obama Administration brigade, who began this discussion with observations on Taibbi's teeth, his father, and his likely rightwing motivations. Bullshit upon bullshit, poorly conceived and executed.

No one has gone to jail. Observing the fact that more crime got less punishment is not an outlandish attack on Obama, or wildly irresponsible overstatement. It's editorializing, for sure, but it's not off the reservation in any way.

You seem to agree with that, which is great. I'm simply pointing out that the pattern of (attempted) savage attacks on left-friendly journalism whenever it veers into a less-than-completely-flattering-to-the-Obama-administration territory is a tired tune, that last left us with a Pulitzer Prize going to the people we were told were wildly unfair Obama-hating crypto-rightwingers. It failed spectacularly with Greenwald and the Guardian, and Here We Go Again.

It's still fair to point out that a blatantly corporate-friendly administration stumbled into more justice for corporate crooks than an administration many believed were coming in to clean house.

to pay for his drug habit and fix his bad teeth.

Did I miss anything?