Plenty of poor and working-class people got fleeced in housing-related scams. But you could add them all up, and they'd still be dwarfed by the biggest one of them all, Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, which disproportionately targeted the already wealthy.
The Dumb Money debacle required the active work (or passive nonwork) of hordes of really well-compensated professionals: executives at financial-services companies, hedge-fund managers, corporate board members, credit ratings agency officials, private-equity investors, CEOs. These were people who had every incentive to preserve the system and the wealth it had produced for them, their friends, and their neighbors. So if you want to find the real culprits in the war on wealth, don't look to Washington. Walk down Fifth Avenue, get on a chairlift at Aspen, turn on CNBC, or charter a jet to St. Bart's.
Park Avenue Marauding Through SoHo!
There is a war against the rich, but it's being waged by other rich people.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, March 9, 2009, at 7:57 PM ET
Last week, I wrote that the Republican claim that Obama is fighting a war against the rich was bogus. Over the weekend, I thought better of it. It turns out there is a war on the rich. Only it's not being waged by vicious overlords in Washington intent on depriving honest, hardworking stiffs of their livelihoods. Rather, it's a civil war, a war between the rich. It's Park Avenue marauding through SoHo, Buckhead rampaging through Hilton Head, Palm Beach shelling Bal Harbour with the big cannons.
Call it the War Between the Estates.
In the past two years, since the market peaked, investors have suffered some $11 trillion in stock losses. Of course, stock ownership is more widely spread today than it has been in the past. But wealth is also much more concentrated than it has been at any point since the 1920s. And so while all ships are swamped by a rising tidal wave, some of the yachts have suffered the most damage. The worst of the losses haven't been in mutual funds and college-savings programs that cater to the middle class. No, when it comes to lighting piles of money on fire, blowing up assets, and generally causing financial carnage, the rich have been going at one another ferociously.
The downfalls of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., AIG, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch all provide examples of rich people causing immense financial damage to other rich—though not quite as rich—people. Employees at these firms, even those who had nothing to do with the activities of the minority who destroyed the joints, were paid in stock over the years. At Lehman and Bear, in particular, employee stock ownership was an important component of the culture. In the last year, tens of thousands of people, many of whom earned six-figure incomes and were millionaires several times over, saw their wealth utterly destroyed because of mismanagement by their peers and superiors. Think of all the money managers and stock brokers—Merrill Lynch's thundering herd—who took seriously the mandate to preserve the wealth of their clients. Many of them put their own assets, and those of their clients and relatives, into ultrasafe investments like AAA-rated Lehman Bros. bonds or Bear Stearns preferred stock. After all, analysts, top executives, and credit rating agencies—aka the rich—told them it was perfectly safe.
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Poor folks
Poor folks also haven't walked away from their jobs, or fired themselves. They haven't all won the lottery or disappeared from the United States. It's the same wealthy folks, rubbing shoulders with the wealthy folks in congress, who give millions of dollars to the same wealthy folks in congress, to not enforce laws that were written to protect poor American folks, again, black, brown and white, from being discriminated against in the workplace. We have laws about who is legally able to work in the US, laws about wage standards, workplace protections, food, drug and product safety laws, and environmental protections, and they are being ignored by corrupt politicians in congress, including in the democratic party, who happen to be of all colors and ethnicities, to serve the interests of again, those same wealthy individuals. Lots of those poor folks are living in tents cities, all across our country, no one is bailing them out, or giving them precedence in federally funded housing for the poor programs, no, those are used for corporate welfare for the cheap foreign labor brought in to displace those poor citizens who've rights have been violated, and are living on the street with their children.
It was democrats like Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, pretty much all the CBC, the entire CHC, and many others who are in on this. They fought against implementing new regulations against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when concerns first rose about what they were doing with the mortgages they were promoting. Frank and Dodd got huge payoffs, Dodd a mansion on an island in Ireland and two cushy mortgages from Countrywide, Frank got loads of money, and so did his boyfriend, who was an executive at Freddie Mac. The rest have taken more money each year, and ignored our legitimate concerns, so they could give a wink and a nod to those who sought to create this crisis, firm in the belief they would get a bailout if their house of cards came tumbling down.
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." - Robert F. Kennedy
Let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you a question. Who are you for? So far, you're against Democrats and minorities of whatever party. In your brief visit you've said nothing positive at all...just a whole lot of negative, much of which has nothing to do with the topic of the post you're commenting on.
What is your suggestion to improve things? Put Republicans in charge again?
I never said that
I stated in my first post that I'd been a democrat, up until last summer, when I realised the leadership of the party in congress was corrupt, and became an independent. My political beliefs haven't changed, but the dem party has regressed once again to the party of slavery. I voted for Obama, though I had some doubts about him, and I wasn't the only one. Martin Luther King III stated the concerns that I'd shared. I was initially an Edwards supporter, because he had a plan to deal with unfair trade and the exploitation of the power by the corporate and globalist elites. I'm against both political extremes, the far right and far leftist wing extremes. Criticizing corruption in the dem party is not the same thing as supporting republicans, as well you know. Frankly, if you have no problem with the corruption of the dems, then you couldn't have had any problem with the repubs, because the dems are in the pockets of the same corrupt interests and are actually acting as an extension of the Bush administration.
We're supposed to demand that they honor their oaths to uphold the constitution, protect and defend our civil rights, not sell them out to the highest bidder. Or perhaps you believe that because it's Obama acting like Bush, and from the few concerns on that score I've seen written here, you can't deny being aware that there is a problem, that it shouldn't be a problem, or it won't impact you? If you have any grandparents, or great grandparents who lived through the great depression, or any aquaintances who did, I'd suggest you talk to them to learn what it was like. If you think the problems will only impact those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, think again. What is being done is the imposition of fascism, a complete denial of citizens rights, their ability to work and survive. It will impact you, no matter your race, or your economic status or education.
I'd like to ask you, to elaborate on what your concerns are politically, because I've posted at length my own beliefs, and legit concerns regarding the threat to our constitution and bill of rights.
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." - Robert F. Kennedy
"They fought against
"They fought against implementing new regulations against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when concerns first rose about what they were doing with the mortgages they were promoting."
The issue with Freddie and Fannie was their accounting, not the mortgages. What did our economy in is all the moneys in the hedgefund/mortgage insuring unregulated sector of our economy. The banks knew they could make money on the loan, regardless of it being paid off or not, and figured, rather stupidly if you ask me, they could make money on the homes, whether or not the loans were paid. And when you really think about it, the whole system is based on people swapping the same moneys back and forth and back and forth. And if at any point the swing stops, the whole thing collapses. When the housing bubble burst, the swinging stopped.
And I don't know about P6, but my concern about your politics is a need to know if you're friend or foe. I come to P6 to discuss issues with people who, for the most part, I agree with. For example, here, I don't have to engage in discussion with someone who thinks Holder is racist against whites - and for the record, I can't remember where or who, but Holder doesn't just represent black people. It's a bit discouraging/disturbing/insulting that a good many people seem to think that black people don't have the same concerns as everybody else and/or don't look to work to benefit everybody else. Right? See here, I don't have to worry about that. We discuss the fact that and why everyone got caught up in "coward" and not the real issue. Here, there are some things I just don't have to worry about explaining to some ignoramus. Here are black people who range from the far left to center-left, and I don't have to defend my pov as a black woman.
So, what I'm interested in knowing is whether or not you're an ignoramus or if you're really interested in discussing and possibly learning what and why is relevant to black people. Cause if you're really interested, I'll take the time to explain. If you're just an ignoramus, I'll give you some short, tart response if any. Your posts heretofar give me the impression that either you're really concerned about making sure your position is clearly understood and so you overwrite - I do that myself sometimes. Or, you think you already know what's up and are explaining things to the rest of us - which would put you closer to the ignoramus side.
Oh! I should add that part of being an "ignoramus" is the desire to hold on to your beliefs even after they're proven factually wrong.
I blocked her account. She
I blocked her account. She provided well over the number of words I needed to judge her in a single day.
<blockquote>I blocked her
1 - Did you read all that?
2 - What took you so long?
1 - Not that... 2 - Her
1 - Not that...
2 - Her grand entrance made it obvious. I wait for a while in case I made a mistake.
Oh. Cool.
Oh. Cool.
Awe, how come you just didn't de-vowel>
that's funnier than blocking.
I can still do that... I
I can still do that...
I actually improved the devowel filter so I can do it selectively within posts if I choose, but it's for version 6 of Drupal. I was actually supposed to be posting at Intrapolitics.org, with P6 in archive mode by now...
Oh, yeah...the pattern
It's like Republican policy suggestions: during flush times, they want to cut taxes, during lean times they want to cut taxes. When the problem isn't economic, they claim the solution is a secondary effect of cutting taxes. But they never explain the mechanism by which tax cuts work these miracles.
The rest is typical trollery.
They fought against
They fought against implementing new regulations against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when concerns first rose about what they were doing with the mortgages they were promoting.
If you believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a substantive role in causing the current default mortgage problem you really don't know anything about housing or why this crisis occurred. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was not a factor in this debacle.
A major reason she had to go
A major reason she had to go was she wanted to drag us back through months of already-done analysis...done not just by us but the whole country and every reputable Type 1 economist in the world. Even engaging the sock puppet would get 10 of my IQ points revoked.
What is your suggestion to
What is your suggestion to improve things? Put Republicans in charge again?
Good question P6!
This may seem a bit simplistic to some but I think the best way for citizens to improve things in this regard is to take full advantage of the vote. I agree with the compaints against the politicans m232 has named, though the republicans are right there with them. I think far too many politicans have been in Washington for far too long. But it is "We the People" who keep re-electing them. If you don't like the Franks, Dodd's, Clinton's, Pelosi's, and others, become more vigilant about your elected officials and don't vote them in.