Dissenting Democrats March 12: Rachel Re: There really is a huge Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Why is then now some of them are dissenting, now that they are actually in position to fix stuff?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I don't know if I have ever seen a more effective interview in my life.
JedL Stewart tells Cramer what CNBC should have been doing all along
Sometimes listening to Jon Stewart is like what you'd imagine it would be like to listen to a great journalism professor...except you're laughing so hard you've fallen out of your chair.
In tonight's interview, Stewart makes the case for what CNBC should have been doing over the past few years: actual business reporting, instead of acting like they were an entertainment channel for the stock market.
Here's part 3 of the unedited and uncensored interview (warning: there's an F-bomb or two!). You can also view part 1 and part 2 of the interview on DKTV.
- Tim F. Cramer On Stewart
My immediate reaction is that the whole experience is painful to watch. It would be great if someone could explain to me why Jim Cramer did not stay home.
Jon Stewart in brief: people like Jim Cramer sell stock trading as a clever game, knowing full well that small investors like his viewers will get creamed if they follow his manic trade-every-day advice. His network works like a cheap PR firm for the major criminals of the mortgage investment bubble and bears all the more guilt because most people in it saw through the happy bullshit they sold to the rubes.
Cramer responds: Every time I met one of my good friend CEOs he told me everything was fine! Now that a truck-squashed rattlesnake can tell who the criminals are I make useless noises of disapproval on my show. What else could I do?
Cramer must follow some obscure school of rhetoric where that even counts as a response. Want to know if a firm is in trouble? Interview the CEO! There’s no way that the down to earth guy who the board would f*cking lynch if he told the press anything other than happy nonsense would lie to you.
By the way, Cramer’s pathetic performance emphasizes an important weakness of celebrity journalism. It is not a coincidence that CNBC reporters do crappy journalism and worship access to the top names. If Jim Cramer did his job as a journalist then celebrixecutivess like Vikram Pandit would stop talking to him. Believe it or not this explains a shocking range of journalism’s symptoms. Why do reporters grant anonymity to the most inane and innocuous statements? Why does lying to reporters never seem to have a consequence? Why Judith Miller?
The answer is that reporters want important people to keep taking their calls. For a reason that escapes me, people who are paid to understand politics all seem to think that “access” to people with a PR staff will get them some special insight when the only difference between speaking to them anonymously and asking their spokesperson is that the person can lie and most people will never know. Naturally the public would know if you called him on it, but then he wouldn’t take your calls anymore. Catch 22!
Somewhere on the internets (late. lazy.) there is a passage where Seymour Hersh explains his strategy for breaking original stories. First he gets to know ordinary people who work in insteresting places. Occasionally one of them passes on something interesting. He calls other ordinary people to follow it up. After a while he has a complete story and calls the important people involved, but surprisingly they often don’t want to talk to him. In the end Hersh and people like him (off the top of my head, Murray Waas, Charlie Savage, Scott Horton and a few others) don’t get to pass on gossipy baloney directly from the source. Instead they have to settle for a real story and an on-the-record semi-non-denial from someone’s spokesman.
I can see how that would sound crazy and disingenuous to Cramer and the guys at CNBC.
- John Cole sees Business As Usual
While Citi analysts are downgrading stocks based on information from right-wing astroturf campaigns, Citi executives found a way to make a quick buck:
Four Citigroup Inc. executives who bought the bank’s stock last week generated a $2.2 million paper profit within nine days, regulatory filings show.
The executives, including director Roberto Hernandez, benefited as the company’s stock climbed 47 percent from March 10 through yesterday’s close of markets, after Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said in a memo that the bank is having the best quarter since 2007. Their buying spree was the first by bank insiders since Jan. 14, filings show.
...
I’m sure it is just a coincidence they bought a bunch of their own stock before they released a positive earnings report that caused their stock price to jump from 1.05 to 1.67.
Pure coincidence.
Dirty bomb plot thwarted March 12: A man in Maine was allegedly building a dirty bomb, that could have been used on Inauguration Day, before he was shot dead by his wife. Is the country losing sight of the threat from homegrown terrorists? Rachel Maddow is joined by Bangor Daily News bureau chief Walter Griffin, and author Joe Cirincione.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Suzie at C&L: Hospital CEO With A Heart Finds An Unusual Way to Avoid Layoffs
What a great, heartwarming story. Paul Levy, the guy who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, called a meeting of his staff to present a proposal and ask for their support:
He looked out into a sea of people and recognized faces: technicians, secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses, the people who are the heart and soul of any hospital. People who knew that Beth Israel had hired about a quarter of its 8,000 staff over the last six years and that the chances that they could all keep their jobs and benefits in an economy in freefall ranged between slim and none.
"I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I'd like to get your reaction to it," Levy began. "I'd like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.
"Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice," he continued. "It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."
He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.
Paul Levy stood there and felt the sheer power of it all rush over him, like a wave. His eyes welled and his throat tightened so much that he didn't think he could go on.
When the applause subsided, he did go on, telling the workers at Beth Israel, the people who make a hospital go, that he wanted their ideas.
The lump had barely left his throat when Paul Levy started getting e-mails.
The consensus was that the workers don't want anyone to get laid off and are willing to give up pay and benefits to make sure no one does. A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse said she was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.
"I'm getting about a hundred messages per hour," Levy said yesterday, shaking his head.
Paul Levy is onto something. People are worried about the next paycheck, because they're only a few paychecks away from not being able to pay the mortgage or the rent.
But a lot of them realize that everybody's in the same boat and that their boat doesn't rise because someone else's sinks.
Paul Levy is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible: He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEO can sometimes stand for empathy.
New York Times Headlines
Investors See a Glimmer and Shares Soar Worldwide
By STEVE LOHR and JACKNYTs HEALY
Investors found financial news not as bad as feared, galvanizing worldwide stock exchanges, but few experts are willing to call an end to the bear market.
China ‘Worried’ About Safety of U.S. Treasuries
By MICHAEL WINES and BETTINA WASSENER
China, the biggest holder of U.S. government debt, expressed concern about the safety of those assets.
New York Times Editorial: While Everyone Fiddles
Cole: The Business RoundtableThe world economy has plunged into what is likely to be the most brutal recession since the 1930s, yet policy makers in Europe and Japan seem to believe there are more important things for them to do than to try to dig the world, including themselves, out.
When Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, urged countries to increase public spending to boost global demand, Luxembourg’s finance minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, representing the European Union, responded that the prescription was “not to our liking.”
At a meeting this week ahead of an April summit of the world’s largest economies, finance ministers from the European Union declared that they have already done enough to add to domestic demand. In Frankfurt, Axel Weber, the chief of the German central bank added, “We have reached our limits.” Japan’s government is quieter but nearly as resistant.
The United States, which has approved two stimulus packages, plans to spend about 4.8 percent of its gross domestic product by 2010. China is planning to spend nearly 6 percent of its G.D.P. on stimulus programs over the next two years, according to the International Monetary Fund. These numbers are still too small. Yet Europe and Japan are lagging further behind. Germany ’s fiscal boost will amount to just 3.5 percent of its G.D.P. France plans to spend 1.4 percent spread over the next two years, and Britain 1.3 percent. Japan expects to spend 2.2 percent of its G.D.P.
Japan, which struggled with a recession throughout the 1990s, is constrained by a weak government and an enormous pile of debt. Europe, by contrast, has room to spend. But the bigger European countries that share the euro as their currency worry that running big budget deficits will undermine investors’ faith in their economies over the long term and weaken the currency.
Given the current calamity, these concerns seem woefully misguided.
With consumer spending and business investment collapsing around the world, wealthy countries are pretty much the only ones left with the capacity to increase demand to mitigate the economic slump. The price of inaction is getting higher by the day. The World Bank is now forecasting that the global economy will contract this year for the first time since World War II.
What makes this especially puzzling is that the economic data out of Europe and Japan are horrendous. ...
... ...
Not sure if any of you caught it, but ... President Obama was speaking to the Business Rountable. The prepared speech was stuff I had heard before, including some from his speech to Congress a couple weeks ago, with some reiteration of certain points (no one will have their taxes increased in the short term, etc.). Afterwards, there was a Q and A session, and it seemed to be a very cordial meeting. I have no idea of the political leanings of the Business Roundtable, whether they are considered conservative or arch-conservative (I’m going to rule out liberal right off the bat), but they seemed to be very eager to work with the President’s team and seemed to suggest they have already been working closely with the team.*** Update ***
Video here. (1 hour)
Kurtz: Got To Do What We Got to Do Obama directly confronts the "Obama-too-busy" meme (as chronicled by our Matt Cooper) in his speech this afternoon to the Business Roundtable:
Krugman on Practical Pelosi While the House minority leader is living in an alternative universe, the Speaker is making sense. Maybe this country can be saved after all.
- The comments under this Krugman blog are a hoot and informative to boot. Here's one:
Another good indication is the OMB is giving budget guidance to the Air Force to put the air refueling tanker boondoggle off for 5 years and forget about a new heavy bomber.
Chris in Paris: Afghanistan sends student journalist to prison for 20 years
Now that Bush is gone and the US is getting deeper into Afghanistan, Obama needs to intervene with this disgraceful decision. By ignoring this case, the US is condoning this decision. The Independent:Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country's highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence.
The 23-year-old, brought to worldwide attention after an Independent campaign, was praying that Afghanistan's top judges would quash his conviction for lack of evidence, or because he was tried in secret and convicted without a defence lawyer. Instead, almost 18 months after he was arrested for allegedly circulating an article about women's rights, any hope of justice and due process evaporated amid gross irregularities, allegations of corruption and coercion at the Supreme Court. Justices issued their decision in secret, without letting Mr Kambaksh's lawyer submit so much as a word in his defence.
Cheney's Assassins
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
It's not uncommon for companies, from time to time, to reposition a product. Occasionally, a company might even change direction, completely reorienting its focus and line of brands. Such a marked shift might indicate that the market for a given product has aged, that the long-term prospects for that segment look unfavorable, or perhaps that a more profitable market has been identified. Usually, these attempted transformations are conscious and very deliberate.
All of this background brings us, of course, to a consideration of the Republican Party's badly damaged brand. Over the past decade, or perhaps generation, the GOP has repositioned its product. However, the results of the last two elections -- the loss of more than a dozen U.S. Senate seats and more than 50 House seats, seven governorships, and several hundred state legislative seats -- suggest that the repositioning was ill-conceived.
Twenty years ago, the foundation of the Republican Party firmly supported several pillars. The GOP was steadfastly anti-communist and stood for a strong national defense. It was for keeping budgets balanced, the size of government under control, and taxes low. It staunchly favored law and order, and took more-conservative positions than the Democrats on social and cultural issues. Although the Republican Party represented all of these things, none was so singly important as to crowd out the others. When in power, the Republicans weren't extremely effective in pursuing all of their goals, but these were their principles.
Time altered that agenda somewhat. The Iron Curtain fell, and the threat of communism diminished. Democrats learned that siding with the American Civil Liberties Union on issue after issue paid few political dividends, and they repositioned themselves to be less susceptible to charges of coddling criminals.
Over time, Republicans became a party of only two pillars. The GOP didn't simply adopt a more conservative agenda on social and cultural issues. Rather, it took fiercely conservative stands on them and strongly emphasized religious values. Second, it became the party that demands tax cuts, come hell or high water, with little regard for the size of deficits. The Holy Grail became cutting taxes, which became the end goal, not just part of a broader fiscal policy. The impact of cutting taxes no longer mattered.
The consequences of this new direction have been stark for the Republican Party. Vehement GOP opposition to many forms of embryonic-stem-cell research and the party's handling of the Terri Schiavo case appeared so extreme to so many moderates that it was no longer Democrats who seemed radical. It was Republicans.
During the past eight years of a Republican presidency, with the GOP controlling at least one chamber of Congress for three-quarters of that time, the federal debt doubled to $10 trillion and the deficit, which basically had been wiped out under President Clinton, soared.
Meanwhile, the number of voters identifying themselves as centrists and conservatives did not drop. But the Republican Party became viewed as extreme. Token Republican efforts to reach out to the African-American community were seen as just that. And many in the GOP seemed to go out of their way to demagogue on immigration and alienate Latino voters, the fastest-growing part of the electorate. And finally, although President Reagan essentially pulled an entire generation of young voters into the GOP, George W. Bush and rest of the party's current leadership have chased the present generation of young Americans into the open arms of President-elect Obama and his Democratic Party.
One might think that with all of the extra time on their hands Republicans would spend some of it thinking about what their inadvertent or misguided repositioning has reaped. Certainly, there are brilliant Republican strategists who are painfully aware of what has happened -- and predicted it. But from most Republican leaders we are hearing shopworn shibboleths like, "We lost because we weren't conservative enough." If that mind-set prevails, the only way for Republicans to regain real power will be to wait until Democrats completely implode and to hope that Republicans can win at that point simply because they aren't Democrats.
Is there rational thinking going on in the office of the president? Seems so.
— ilsm