Excuse Me While I Stay Confused

My friend, Ron, said to me yesterday, “I read Mr. XX, and then Mr. XXX, and then Mr. XXXX, and then I read the NYT and then I read the WSJ: who am I supposed to believe? Who can I trust?”You’re asking ME?

Bill Maher asks, “Why can’t we just admit that we just don’t f@#*king know?”

Barbara and I watched a talented lawyer explain, on television, about the legality or potential illegality of AIG bonus contracts, then turned and looked at me, and asked, “Can you explain that to me?”

To which I said, “Huh?”

It is very apparent that we are all consumed by AIG and the economy, right now. (Some people are so consumed that they are sending death threats to AIG executives: ouch). Ron (see the guy above) said yesterday that he thinks we are all looking for the “next big bubble” to make everything OK, again. I think most of us are looking for a nice, simple, single answer to both a simple explanation and solution to a very complex mess.

Here is what Paul Krugman had to say this morning:
March 20, 2009, 9:05 am
AIG
Preliminary thoughts on the tax bill:
1. It’s not the way you should make policy — it’s clumsy, and it will punish some innocent parties while letting the most guilty off scot-free
2. But — there wasn’t much alternative at this point. And for that I blame the Obama people.
I’ll leave to others the question of who knew or should have known that the bonus firestorm was coming; but its part of a pattern. At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.
This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.

Then there is this, from James Galbraith, who is NOT a populist economist:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Economy--No-Return-to-by-the-web-090319-85.html
I think we should listen more closely to him and less to many others???
Or try this one:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-I-G--A-National-Embarr-by-James-Raider-090318-537.html
I keep searching for a better word than embarrassment, but I cannot find one. Obscene, maybe?

Or maybe this observation:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_the_geithner_problem/
This article raises the question, “What did he know and when did he know it?” Last night, on CNN, Geithner said he knew about some “things”, a few days before the bonuses became public knowledge. These “things” sound very much like the “strings” the Governor of Texas says are attached to the unemployment funds for his state in the stimulus bill. He says these strings prevent him from accepting them, but he can’t seem to say what the ‘string things” are, exactly.
Meanwhile, Governor Palin (AK…remember her?) is declining funds as well. But in her case, she is threatening to decline those ‘earmarked” only for education: she says those “strings” in the legislation that require Alaska to “grow its’ government”. I would suppose that not educating the populace is one good way to guarantee that Alaska will not grow. And Governor Sanford (SC) has asked to use the education portion of that states’ share of the stimulus to pay down debt, thereby neglecting education and laying off 7000 teachers. I think he and Gov. Palin are just stringing us along. Or perhaps they knew “things” before Geithner did? (I just heard three political pundits call for Geithner’s head and two more explain the actions of Palin and Sanford as preparatory actions for elections in 2012. I fail to see the connections, but I’m confused.
Eric Cantor (OH) has been very resolute about being the voice of “no” about almost everything having to do with TARP, TALP and AIG, but when actually pressed on MSNBC about how he would vote about the bonus legislation, would not say. Later, in order to stay center stage but ideologically impure, he went Republican-Lite and voted for the anti-bonus actions. This is something like Senator Chris Dodd saying he did not put language into the AIG-related legislation right before he said he did. This is also something like John Kerry saying he was for something before he was against it, or Mrs. Clinton being against Barack Obama for President before she was for it as soon as she was named to be the SOS.

Are you confused yet? Are you feeling just a little like an Orwellian pig? Did you bring your lipstick? Are you tempted to fly? Or at least fly off the handle? Well, add this to your plate of imponderables:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html?wpisrc=newsletter
The headline here is: “Fed to pump $1.2 trillion Into Markets”. This is, of course, another mind-boggling amount of money, coming right after a grandfatherly Bernanke told 60 Minutes that “we will not let the banks fail”. The next day the market rallied (Barbara said it was the Bernanke factor; I think it was because it was Monday and stocks [Geithnerian things] were cheap). Steven Pearlstein (WaPo) on MSNBC is just now telling me that it is obvious that “the depression is much worse than they thought” (they being the government?) and that we should be braced for much higher deficits. And the other “thing” I liked about the morning stories was this:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090319_a_government_of_men_not_laws/, wherein David Sirota sounds somewhat like Galbraith.

But this should make you uneasy as well:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/cnbc-rich-wall-street/. I really like this one. We are still some of us, anyway) hanging onto the notion that only the rich and greedy can manage money. But given the give-aways and short-sightedness that allowed us to give away billions of TARP funds (and now TALP…rhymes with SCALP) funds without accountability, I don’t think letting the government manage our money is such a hot idea, either. Would you give your money to Barney Frank? My father would call all of this rationalization of the rich being in charge “bass-ackwards thinking”. For once, I agree with him.

This next story is both confusing and transparent:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/19/financial-roundtable-lobbyists/. Having failed to engineer profits from attempting the defeat the stimulus bill, the lobby folks are trying to carve money out of the budget for special interests. We have no shame. Or integrity. Or logic.
All of which brings me to the congressional antics and how they all contribute to my confusion…and yours.

Over the last decade, the lasting effects of the great “uniter” have only added to our great “division” and bifurcation. The chasm between right and left, conservative and liberal, has just been growing. Beginning most recently (and openly) with the complete and total rejection of any Republican votes for the stimulus bill, and moving on from there, the most important issue being kept alive in Congress right now is NOT the welfare of the country, but whether or not you are a Democrat or a Republican and how loudly you can proclaim your allegiance.
Last week, the Republicans stated flatly, that their goal was to “bring down Democratic numbers”. Ideological purity has completely superseded the national economic welfare as the rule of the day.
Except when such ideological purity runs counter to your personal agenda (Google Maxine Waters and the President “keeping his facts straight”), your wallet or your political ambitions. Take, for example, the small group of “blue dog” democrats, deciding this week to establish a “secret” society, having joined forces to form a small sub-group in the Congress that would work closer with Republicans to thwart the economic policies of their own President and party. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Do they understand the nature of “splinter groups”? Do they understand that splinters can get infected? This dedication to obstructive obstinacy seems endemic to, and symptomatic of, our nationally confused awareness of misplaced priorities.

(Former staffers of the Bush administration, perhaps 70% of them, have either abandoned ideological purity to write profitable tell-all books or have been unable to find jobs because of their prior devotion to that former Rovian moral ”high ground”. I can’t help but wonder if they are re-thinking their allegiances)

And then we have Sen. John McCain and other Republicans are opposing the appointment of Chris Hill to represent the U.S. in Afghanistan. General Petraeus thinks this is a good choice. Despite continued Republican calls to listen to the “generals on the ground”, because Hill is not “their boy” and not a staunch Republican, this group is opposing the appointment. This is silly and counter-productive, to say nothing of being hypocritical and not of much help in advancing the cause of peace in the region. But is all stubbornly ideologically pure. And no one in Congress seemed to care about the AIG and bank bonuses until the public got wind of it. Then, suddenly each side said it was the fault of the other (or of Bush and Paulson, or of Obama and Geithner), making a national economic crisis a political football. Then the House passed a bill (with sudden Republican participation) to eliminate, prevent or tax the bonuses. I will give them this: they finally displayed real transparency: were able to see right through their phony concern. Now that bill is off to the Senate, and I am hearing that the bill is potentially illegal, to the point of being unconstitutional. This means it may be scrapped, altogether. What a waste of time. I have called the recent behavior of Congress to be theater; Mr. Raider (in the earlier article) calls it “circus grandstanding”. In either case it has all been duplicitous or perhaps much ado about much of nothing. Except for the damn crisis.

Let’s confuse the issue, a little more:

The Congress is thinking about giving the corpse of Chryslers several more billions of dollars. Why?

Gordon E. Liddy, the AIG boss guy, is working for one dollar a year (really?) and is volunteering to sit before congress and be grilled, saying that the bonuses are distasteful but obligatory. He also says Bernanke and the Federal Reserve approved the bonus package long ago. (Geithner’s staff says the same thing).

Venerable General Electric Corp. is in trouble, having just lowered their annual dividend to pennies, to raise cash. They have also disclosed that their biggest portfolio item is the GE Capital group. And that that group has invested heavily in questionable real estate. Why? (And most of what they manufacture, they do so off-shore…except for the missile guidance systems for the DOD)

Crown Books is advancing $7M to George W Bush for a book of memoirs we don’t need or want to read. Why? (Maybe the folks in Calgary know “things” we don’t.)

J.P. Morgan and other banks, along with General Motors, is either declining further bail out monies or returning them, citing too many “strings”. After the last cash infusion, they are suddenly profitable (it makes you wonder whence came the crisis?), with Citibank claiming profits in the billions (and remodeling their executive offices).

And Michael Steele is, well…Michael Steele. Explain that one. He has even Rush stumped.

Oh, yes: Mr. Cheney, is that an assassination squad in your pocket or are you just happy to kill people?

I know full well that I have co-mingled TARP, TALP, stimulus funds, education, unemployment, economic advisors, political expediency and poor domestic policy, but I am confused. In the time it has taken to write this, I have found five or six more articles that I could have cited or quoted or referenced. But they have all been muddled and contradictory of each other. I had to turn off MSNBC. I was just getting more confused. If you think you can say all of this better, please do. I no longer know whether I should change my hopes or change my mind. I do know that a few more words of wisdom from the wise and I may lose my mind. I need a nap.