Phil Gramm, still bullshitting on America

What else can you call it?

Gramm writes about the Depression and how it was so bad for America. Talk about the blind opining for the blind:

There are 4.6% fewer people employed in the U.S. today than at the start of the recession. Euro zone countries have lost 1.7% of their jobs. Total employment in the U.K. is down 0.6%, G-7 average employment is down 2.4%, and OECD employment has fallen 1.9%.

Gramm conveniently ignores that other G-7 all have a better social safety net than the U.S., as well as less income inequality, and have done less to export jobs out of country than us.

Beyond that, he confuses cause and effect in general. (Surprise.)

And lies about there being no recovery at all from the Depression until WWII, when, FDR's turn to fiscal conservativism stunted growth he had started.

Worst of all, as Andrew Leonard notes, is Gramm's claim that the New Deal has "no broad appeal in the 21st" century.

Rather, if Gramm told the unvarnished truth about his late-1990s economic wrecking ball, we'd see what had "no broad appeal."

And, speaking of lack of appeal, Leonard finishes by scoring Obama for not acting more like FDR.

Miss Molly warned us about the AIGs of the world

Molly Ivins gave us the heads-up at the same time she sounded the alarm about Gramm-Leach-Bliley in particular and Phil ramm in general.

“Too Big to Fail” will be the new order of the day. And guess who gets left holding the bag when they're too big to fail? One of these monsters goes down, and it will cost as much as the whole S&L debacle.

Yep, a full decade ago, some non-economists had more brains than Phil Gramm (not hard), Alan Greenspan and others.

‘Paulsonism’ is the $10 trillion word of the day

And, not a damn thing to legally do…

Well, one of several words and phrases of the day from Matt Taibbi, who explain how former Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson joined with former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, Phil Gramm and many others royally screwed over the country either directly or indirectly, by commission or omission.

Basically, the thrust of Taibbi’s story, in depth and snarky, is that Wall Street has become like former GM CEO Charlie Wilson, and essentially saying, “What’s good for Wall Street is good for the nation.” And, since these financial instruments are a bit more complex than a 1955 Bel-Air, Wall Street and its government enablers can flip the public the bird:

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren’t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

And, speaking of those government enablers …

Forget TARP or TARP 2.0; direct Federal Reserve money-pushing has already shuffled off $3 trillion or so to these monoliths of megalomania, via loans, and perhaps as much as $6 trillion more through guarantees.

That’s nearly $10 trillion to the likes of AIG. And it’s current CEO, Edward Liddy, wonders why we’re so pissed off?

So, who puts the reins on the Fed? According to Taibbi, on page 7, The Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950 – relevant section, 31 USC 714(b) – says NOBODY. That’s right, Ben Bernanke can flip you and me off, too, allegedly.

And, of course, he has, with the full connivance of Geithner, who knows the Fed flip-off ropes from his former position running the NY Fed.

Meanwhile, while cronies of Paulson get the money with no questions asked, after five months of the TARP program, Joe Blow banks, in some cases, not only haven’t gotten any money, they haven’t even gotten a phone call.

Oh, don’t look for Team Obama to change this, either. It, too, gets a full blast of Taibbi’s scorched-earth writing:

The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly complex. It might not bode well that Geithner, Obama's Treasury secretary, is one of the architects of the Paulson bailouts; as chief of the New York Fed, he helped orchestrate the Goldman-friendly AIG bailout and the secretive Maiden Lane facilities used to funnel funds to the dying company. Neither did it look good when Geithner — himself a protégé of notorious Goldman alum John Thain, the Merrill Lynch chief who paid out billions in bonuses after the state spent billions bailing out his firm — picked a former Goldman lobbyist named Mark Patterson to be his top aide.

But, Obama will never fire Geithner. Per the start of Taibbi’s report, Democrats have been in the tank for Wall Street for a decade, and, although Taibbi doesn’t come out and say it, Obama is Poster Child No. 1 for that, worse than the Slickster ever was.

Is that Rev. Jeremiah Wright I hear?

God DAMN Barack Obama; God DAMN Barack Obama …

Warm up the pipes, Rev.; you can substitute for the fat lady

Porn King Phil leaves McCain campaign — at least partially

I’m sure the pushing was hard as Phil Gramm dug his fingernails into McCain campaign headquarters doorjambs, but he is gone as campaign co-chair.

And, Phil, don’t be a whiner about it.

That said, remember, he’s also been a Schmuck Talk “advisor” in the past. This could be a deal like Mark Penn “leaving” one role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign and keeping others.

Phil Gramm down with porn

Or, I should say, “down low” with porn, right?

Via TPM, at The Nation Max Blumenthal has an expose about Gramm’s porn-bankrolling past.

Thank doorknob his head-swelling ego didn’t lead him to think about actually taking a part in a couple of his bottom-dwelling soft porn flicks, or we would all be tearing our eyes out at a YouTube vid.

Oh, the story even has a photo of the cover of the DVD version. Somebody re-released a cheesy 1970s soft-core B movie (B movie within soft-core porn of that era) on DVD?

McCain advisor Phil Gramm: Americans are ‘whiners’

Once again proving you can lead Phil Gramm to knowledge, but you can’t make him learn a damn thing, the poster boy for GOP hog-trough feeding insults Americans unfortunate enough not to be feeding at Phil and Wendy Gramm’s hog trough.

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy.

Of course, Phil Gramm is the penultimate whiner, every time he’s called to account for idiotic statements he makes.

Umemployment and housing news not good

Unemployment jumps half a percent, another good sign we’re in a recession, as is five straight months of job cuts.

First-quarter foreclosures hit a full 1 percent; delinquencies crossed the 6 percent mark. And, more than 6 percent of subprimes have started the foreclosure process.

Texans, once again, don’t forget to thank Phil Gramm for y our difficulties.

Texas homeowners in default? Blame Phil Gramm

Former Sen. Phil Gramm, looking as smarmy as ever in this picture, bears chief responsibility for the deregulation of CDOs, CDSs, SIVs and related subprime mortgage-driven investment “vehicles,” says David Corn.

The story of how this same bit of 2000 legislative legerdemain benefited Enron has already been told. But, unknown to anybody else in Congress at the time, it would also benefit the Bear Sterns of the world, as well as Gramm’s current employer, Swiss über-bank UBS.

Can you really imagine the idea of economics wingnut as the next Secretary of the Treasury?

Read the whole story for more on his shenanigans and a thumbnail sketch of how the process worked for investment banks.

Barack Obama should directly ask Gramm if he feels any guilt over Enron’s actions and his abetting of them.

Then, ask if Gramm feels any guilt over the subprime bubble.

Texas Observer has more on this issue.

University of Texas economist James Galbraith says Gramm is “not against government at all. His career has been finding ways to make money for his friends. It’s a predator relationship. (Government) is his food supply.”

And Hilzoy has a good roundup of the life and times of Phil Gramm.

That said, let me once again state one other thing.

For Democrats to pile on Gramm about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 is hypocritical. A majority of Democrats in both House and Senate voted for the bill. President Clinton was behind it from the start.

And, as the Observer story notes, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was a strong supporter of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act’s provisions.

That said, for loyal Texas GOP voters in default, there is a bit of schadenfreude in all this, if not more than a bit.