The private lives of public figures, whether actors, politicians, or even hot-shot lawyers, used to by off-limits for journalists. An understanding existed between the media and those whom they reported on that what happened off the job was nobody’s business. This vow of silence protected both philanderers and homosexuals in the public eye from any fear of exposure. This vow of silence kept both JFK and Liberace free of talk show confessions and public apologies.
The picture of persistent bachelor.
However, as the public got a thirst for sexual scandal and politicians used a growing wave of “family values” sentiments to lift them into high office, this previously off-limits part of public figures lives became the amusement park of both tabloid journalists and moral pontificators. Celebrities fell under the microscope as sexual escapades and drug binges became coffee table reading for the general public. As “alternative lifestyles” became more prevalent in pop culture, social conservatives joined forces with the Republican party in the 1980s as the perceived “poverty of values” became a staple of stump speeches. These sentiments reached their pinnacle in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal as social conservatives grandstanded against this moral decline in society until their hand-picked candidate took back the White House. But even in a climate where heterosexual sexcapades of politicians were back in-bounds for journalistic inquiry, rumored homosexuality stayed off-limits.
As moral outrage became the order of the day, the notion that gay rights was the counterpoint to social conservatism grew in prominence. In Kirby Dick’s new documentary Outrage this backlash is put against the backdrop of closeted politicians who have voted consistently against any extension of gay rights. ”The lady doth protest too much” becomes the thesis of the film as it chronicles the efforts of BlogActive’s Mike Rogers’ crusade to “out” hypocritical politicians. The most enduring statement the film makes is that anti-gay agendas become the “evidence” that rumored homosexual politicians use to “prove” that they are in fact straight. In much the same way in which children struggling with their sexual identity become the loudest homophobes in the schoolyard — a topic addressed in a story by David Sedaris from an episode of This American Life entitled “The Cruelty of Children.” The depth of this self-deception is further extrapolated in this brilliant scene from HBO’s Angels in America, citied in Outrage, in which Roy Cohn, the unabashed right-hand man of McCarthyism explains why he is not a homosexual:
It can be argued that forcing anyone to confront their sexual orientation before they are mentally prepared to do so does more harm than good. But, would systematic “outings” of hypocritical politicians do more to advance the gay rights movement than anything done to this point? Kirby Dick obviously believes it would.
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”
“Listen, what I meant was these people are the scum of the earth. If they show their faces, I will take it upon myself to murder them in the most brutal fashion. I have this book in my house about the Spanish Inquisition - I plan to throw it at them very hard . . . It’s a really big book. Then whatever page it opens to - I will read it to them start to finish. This of course will result in their not being able to stay awake. Which is my opportunity to find the nearest National Science Foundation porn addict. He will have his way with these dishonorable people. Really, I’m saying the only merciful way out for these AIG executives is to kill themselves. Otherwise, I am getting my pitchfork and torch and we will have old fashioned mob rule. That’ll take me back. DIE! DIE! DIE!”
Now excuse me, I have to get to my real job as a public access TV host:
Despite his past mistakes, I was ready to give Bill Kristol a clean slate. Let him forget about the immense blunder that was the Iraq War and focus on his poignant critique of Obama Administration. My thinking being that perhaps he’s not that good at coming up with policies, but he is good at finding fault in other people’s policy (a common malidy of the right-wing press that is often helpful when the left gains control but a complete disaster when the right is in power).
But of course that was all shot to hell, because Bill Krisstol has a script and God help him he is sticking to it! Exhibit A:
Kristol, as always, starts with a back-handed compliment to the opposition. Referring White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel’s desire not to let a crisis go to waste, Kristol writes:
Emanuel deserves points for candor. But perhaps not for perspicacity.
Candor is something Kristol was never that good at. His way is better charecterized as muddle and fling poop, with a straight enough face that half the country thinks he’s a lunatic and the other half takes him at his word. The following is his take on who REALLY wanted to invade Iraq - I’ll give you a hint it’s not neo-cons.
Kristol goes on to write that the opening stumbles of the Obama administration has left their image a bit scuffed up . . . but those Republicans are looking PRETTY good right about now:
Meanwhile, the GOP recovery program is going pretty well. Republicans have progressed from shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition. The GOP has shown itself able to stand up and counter Obama’s arguments. The Bush hangover seems to be proving less burdensome than expected, and some of the GOP’s members of Congress are turning out to be more presentable than suspected.
I believe this is the sort of shape-your-own-reality thinking that was the hallmark of the GOP going into the Iraq war. The neo-con argument used to go: “we are mother-fucking American and we can mother-fucking do whatever we want. AND more importantly whatever we want to happen will happen. Mother-fucking America creates whatever reality it wants. Mother-fucking America does not get bogged down in geo-political tensions, or local rivalries, or even cultural sensitivities. We come in, we blow the place up, we rebuild it the way is should have been built the first time around.”
I bielive that argument has been boiled down to: “we didn’t have the troops to pull it off, but if had - OH BROTHER!”
What’s unsettling here is that Bill Kristol is not being optomistic about a Republican future, instead he’s cramming all the negative GOP press into, “shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition.”
The election brought into office a candidate that ran on idea that EVERYTHING that was done the last 8 years needs to be completely overturned. Whether or not that’s happening is another story, but he ran on that notion. To not ask existential questions about the GOP feeds into the notion that the GOP has completely lost touch with what the people of America are asking for.
First, Obama is, for PR reasons and PR reasons only (and not very good PR reasons at that), committed to closing Guantánamo. GOP members of Congress can make clear just how dangerous the remaining Guantánamo detainees are, and how irresponsible are some of the proposals for sending them abroad or trying them in the criminal justice system. The GOP should seek the release of the Defense Department report on terrorist acts by some of the less dangerous detainees released from Guantánamo under the Bush administration. Republicans can seek to slow or reverse Obama’s decision, requiring that he certify that closing Guantánamo will not endanger American lives, providing funding for Guantánamo in the budget whether or not Obama wants it, and so forth. Lots of Democrats would have trouble opposing such efforts.
Polls will be helpful here, again. Forty-four percent of Americans agree that Gitmo should be closed. Not a deal breaker. In fact, only 35 percent of American’s believe that the governement should fund family planning over seas, but that won’t stop Democrats from removing the “gag-rule.”
Moreover, the PR reasons Kristol scoffs at, are part and parcel of why terrorists have grown stronger under Bush. The Islamic world doesn’t hate us because we like freedom and democracy and nearly-naked women in our magazines. This is of course distasteful to them, but you will not find many Muslims joining the terrorist cause because of our life-style. Instead the Islamic world hates us because of the ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT. Including the BAD PR OVER GITMO. Gallup illustrates this point. In most of the nations of the Middle East surveyed the top three things the U.S. could do to improve their image are, 1) Pull out of Iraq, 2)Remove military bases from Saudi Arabia, 3) Close Gitmo
The top three U.S. actions to improve our PR in the middle-east and Kristol scoffs at it. No amount of extra-judicial killings, imprisonment without trial, or invasions of sovereign nations will stop terrorism. But good PR can and does cut the legs out from under terrorist recruitment. And Kristol’s against it. Is he wrong on every issue? No it just seems that way, because he’s wrong on all the important ones.
Second, what’s now the rationale for discriminating against ROTC on elite college campuses? The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? Well, Obama is president and the Democrats control Congress. They can change that policy if they want to.
Absolutely! But I’m sure Kristol will come against a change in the policy when Obama decides to tackle it in his second term.
The ordeal of fixing the current financial crisis has fallen on President Obama. He asked for it, he got it, and he will be judged by the results of his solution.
For those no longer in power (Bush, the Republican Congress, laissez-faire economics, conservative ideas in general, and Alan Greenspan) it has become a matter of survival to avoid blame. Solutions are not their problem. Dodging blame splatter is their first and most important concern. Those that make it through to 2010 without much of a blame stain on their shirts will be well situated to point at the other side of the aisle with disgust at their inability to fix this mess (if it is not fixed by then). If it is fixed, then at the very least they can claim to have been a part of the correction process.
Mark my words, if this is not fixed they’ll rail against the Democrats (obviously), if it is fixed they will claim to have “helped.”
This is true of politicians, but not Alan Greenspan. He is covering his ass because he has a memoir to pimp and he doesn’t want “global financial meltdown” on his resume. So what follows is a genuine attempt to cleanse his name and his conscious. The following is from his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed and a translation:
We are in the midst of a global crisis that will unquestionably rank as the most virulent since the 1930s. It will eventually subside and pass into history. But how the interacting and reinforcing causes and effects of this severe contraction are interpreted will shape the reconfiguration of our currently disabled global financial system.
And my book sales.
There are at least two broad and competing explanations of the origins of this crisis. The first is that the “easy money” policies of the Federal Reserve produced the U.S. housing bubble that is at the core of today’s financial mess.
Also know as the “it was Alan’s fault” explanation.
The second, and far more credible, explanation agrees that it was indeed lower interest rates that spawned the speculative euphoria. However, the interest rate that mattered was not the federal-funds rate, but the rate on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages.
That’s right “easy money,” lead to people speculating on mortgages using debt. And by people I mean huge financial institutions. But that speculation lead to a bubble in the housing market not the fed funds rate. The fed funds rate led to people speculating. See?
Between 2002 and 2005, home mortgage rates led U.S. home price change by 11 months. This correlation between home prices and mortgage rates was highly significant, and a far better indicator of rising home prices than the fed-funds rate.
See. Speculation was the cause, not the fed funds rate, which caused speculation.
This should not come as a surprise. After all, the prices of long-lived assets have always been determined by discounting the flow of income (or imputed services) by interest rates of the same maturities as the life of the asset. No one, to my knowledge, employs overnight interest rates — such as the fed-funds rate — to determine the capitalization rate of real estate, whether it be an office building or a single-family residence.
Plus holding the fed funds rate low in a growing economy lead to banks being flush with “easy money” and therefore itching to invest it on something. It just so happened that this time the thing they wanted to invest in was real estate.
The Federal Reserve became acutely aware of the disconnect between monetary policy and mortgage rates when the latter failed to respond as expected to the Fed tightening in mid-2004. Moreover, the data show that home mortgage rates had become gradually decoupled from monetary policy even earlier — in the wake of the emergence, beginning around the turn of this century, of a well arbitraged global market for long-term debt instruments.
I didn’t create the securitization of mortgages, but I did put in place the mise-en-scène that made it look like the right thing to do.
U.S. mortgage rates’ linkage to short-term U.S. rates had been close for decades. Between 1971 and 2002, the fed-funds rate and the mortgage rate moved in lockstep. The correlation between them was a tight 0.85. Between 2002 and 2005, however, the correlation diminished to insignificance.
I didn’t realize the dramatic change in the mortgage market and just let this thing ballon out of control.
As I noted on this page in December 2007, the presumptive cause of the world-wide decline in long-term rates was the tectonic shift in the early 1990s by much of the developing world from heavy emphasis on central planning to increasingly dynamic, export-led market competition. The result was a surge in growth in China and a large number of other emerging market economies that led to an excess of global intended savings relative to intended capital investment. That ex ante excess of savings propelled global long-term interest rates progressively lower between early 2000 and 2005.
That decline in long-term interest rates across a wide spectrum of countries statistically explains, and is the most likely major cause of, real-estate capitalization rates that declined and converged across the globe, resulting in the global housing price bubble. (The U.S. price bubble was at, or below, the median according to the International Monetary Fund.) By 2006, long-term interest rates and the home mortgage rates driven by them, for all developed and the main developing economies, had declined to single digits — I believe for the first time ever. I would have thought that the weight of such evidence would lead to wide support for this as a global explanation of the current crisis.
You idiots! It’s just not my fault! I’m surrounded by idiots!
However, starting in mid-2007, history began to be rewritten, in large part by my good friend and former colleague, Stanford University Professor John Taylor, with whom I have rarely disagreed. Yet writing in these pages last month, Mr. Taylor unequivocally claimed that had the Federal Reserve from 2003-2005 kept short-term interest rates at the levels implied by his “Taylor Rule,” “it would have prevented this housing boom and bust. “This notion has been cited and repeated so often that it has taken on the aura of conventional wisdom.
Alan can name a rule after himself too. That doesn’t make it true.
[Skipping ahead]
Given the decoupling of monetary policy from long-term mortgage rates, accelerating the path of monetary tightening that the Fed pursued in 2004-2005 could not have “prevented” the housing bubble. All things considered, I personally prefer Milton Friedman’s performance appraisal of the Federal Reserve. In evaluating the period of 1987 to 2005, he wrote on this page in early 2006: “There is no other period of comparable length in which the Federal Reserve System has performed so well. It is more than a difference of degree; it approaches a difference of kind.”
John Taylor is also officially off the invite list for my next water park birthday and Milton Friedman can now bring a friend.
How much does it matter whether the bubble was caused by inappropriate monetary policy, over which policy makers have control, or broader global forces over which their control is limited? A great deal.
The difference between a Nobel Prize and 5 billion kicks in the ass.
If it is monetary policy that is at fault, then that can be corrected in the future, at least in principle. If, however, we are dealing with global forces beyond the control of domestic monetary policy makers, as I strongly suspect is the case, then we are facing a broader issue.
It case you were wondering if I thought this was my fault . . . I don’t.
[Skipping a little more.]
It is now very clear that the levels of complexity to which market practitioners at the height of their euphoria tried to push risk-management techniques and products were too much for even the most sophisticated market players to handle properly and prudently.
I don’t think God himself knows what the fuck these guys were selling.
However, the appropriate policy response is not to bridle financial intermediation with heavy regulation. That would stifle important advances in finance that enhance standards of living. Remember, prior to the crisis, the U.S. economy exhibited an impressive degree of productivity advance. To achieve that with a modest level of combined domestic and borrowed foreign savings (our current account deficit) was a measure of our financial system’s precrisis success.
Yeah. Remember just how BIG that bubble got. That was all me.
[Skip some more.]
If we are to retain a dynamic world economy capable of producing prosperity and future sustainable growth, we cannot rely on governments to intermediate saving and investment flows. Our challenge in the months ahead will be to install a regulatory regime that will ensure responsible risk management on the part of financial institutions, while encouraging them to continue taking the risks necessary and inherent in any successful market economy.
Regulation is still evil. Especially regulation of derivatives. Although we do need to put this one regulation back in place that I took down.
Getting the wake n' bake in before morning services
At least that’s what I gathered from his remarks at CPAC today:
If you have a law so dumb that we are teaching 13 year-olds to break it, you probably oughtta change the law.
If we’re taking cues from 13 year-olds then the drinking and smoking age need to be repealed and this kid gets to be ambassador to Great Britain and the sentimental favorite ambassador.
Also, these were too fun so I did a couple:
Newt letting his fans know that Arnold is Numero Uno
Relaxing with a toke during Congressional committee meetings
Give me a minute . . . I'm thinking of ways this is wasteful spending . . .
To the delight of confirmed marxists and the dismay of “real” Americans, Obama issued his ambitious, proletarian-revolution-leading budget today. Dropping all pretense that he is not a Soviet spy from the past sent here as a manchurian candidate to destroy America’s capitalist paradise, Obama included in his budget billions for the renovation of statue park and the restoration and modernization of Comintern headquarters to include larger Comintern posters and a swiffer sweeper for Lenin (it cost billions because its globe-sized). This will inevitable lead to a middle-American revolution with a Bobby Jindal inspired rallying cry: “Chemical Castration for all!” The system simply was not built to handle thismuchchange.
Fox finds itself in another epic struggle with the facts
Fact checking has quickly become a media favorite, but some news outlets with a passing familiarity with facts have struggled with this concept. Fox News put together this admirable effort that uses both hands and a professional train packer to shove words in Obama’s mouth instead of you know, checking the facts. Here’s a taste:
OBAMA: “We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.”
THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don’t mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House.
Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won’t be 10 years from now.
What fact did you check exactly? The fact that presidential terms last 4 years. The “fact” that Obama is putting off huge tax increases and painful steps? What about the $2 trillion? Is he pulling it out of his ass? Or has Obama pointed to spending decreases and Fox doesn’t believe him?
OBAMA: “Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.”
THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn’t only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.
Yes, this is entirely true. It was under the Clinton Administration that the financial regulations and markets were liberalized. It was with a Republican Congress. There’s blame on both sides. So where did Obama say that only Republicans were to blame. To me the overreaction here is more telling than the fact checking. The Republicans were in power for so long that their mantra is well know by all and is clearly being tested today. Therefore, Obama doesn’t even need to accuse them of anything. It’s the old detective trick. Tell the suspect that the victim was brutaly bludgeoned and wait for them to deny vehemently that they even own any bludgeoning tools. ”I don’t even know how to properly throw my wait behind a 10 lb sledgehammer.” To which the detective coyly responds, “I didn’t say anything about Republicans profiting from an economic meltdown.”
Here’s what a real fact check looks like. What do you think? Are you planning on enjoying the right squirm for at least the next 2 years? Hoping that Bobby Jindal makes it to a debate with Obama?
I have here in my hand a speech delivered before Congress, and on the campaign trail, and in Europe, on prime-time TV several times before the election. . .
President Obama’s speech to Congress last night has elicited praise from unlikely sources. Dick Morris heaped plaudits on the speech by the dump truck full - by which I mean he refrained from calling Obama a socialist.
WITH a speech to match the most eloquent os [sic] State of the Union Addresses, with strains of FDR and JFK and a touch of Winston Churchill thrown in, President Obama has clearly staked his presidency on the outcome of the economic crisis.
Really? I was pretty sure his presidency was about socialism - you know the big brother, no freedom, socialism we were scared up to believe was his hidden agenda? The “European Socialist” conspiracy that implicated Gordon Brown? (starts around the 0:50 mark)
Oh wait here it is:
Halfway through the speech, the president got to the minefields of Social Security and health-care reform. He avoided any specifics, but it’s clear that he plans to salvage the former with increases in the payroll tax and implement the latter by government rationing of health care. If you like your HMO, you’ll love Obama’s health plan.
That’s the same clues I picked up on. Like when Obama said “Thank You Madame Speaker,” it was clear that he plans to raise capital gains taxes, while trampling a bible.
But really Dick, in that stimulus bill you hate so much - the major tax cut was a PAYROLL TAX CUT - so the little birdie that told you they are going up was just trying to make you look stupid.
More importantly, Dick’s pissed that his taxes may be on the way up:
And then Obama affirmed that he’ll support big tax increases on the richest 2 percent of American families. Disregarding the fact that these households already pay upward of half of all income taxes, while earning only a quarter of the national income, he has singled out the entrepreneurs, professionals, innovators and businesspeople of America for taxation.
Although I don’t see how he fits into those categories that Obama is singling out (I think professional wind bag needs to be added), Morris is seriously pissed that the top 2 percent ONLY earn 25 percent of the income. Maybe this will cheer him up (Share of Net Worth, 2004, halfway down on the right).
Oh, but he won’t raise taxes until he’s had a few years to stimulate the economy. How many in that 2 percent feel like one of those huge hogs in the Chicago stockyards, being fattened up to slaughter the next year?
It’s the French Revolution all over again! They did eat the aristocracy in the French Revolution, right?
So all this is so scary to Dick because people voted for it, they expect Obama to follow through on his promises and he reaffirmed his commitment to those promises. Right?
This speech will be viewed as his high-water mark - the time before we came to realize how flawed is his understanding of economics and how supreme is his commitment to expanded spending. It will be seen as a sort of age of innocence before we realized what he had in mind.
No, it is a secret socialist conspiracy after all! Whew, I thought for a moment that this “center-right” country voted for an out-and-proud communist. Good to hear that we were simply duped.
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