Still crowing (4.00 / 1)

These chumps are still crowing that they outdid FDR.  Did you do a real audit on the banks or just shovel money at them?  How bout closing bad banks ahead of time?  Starting and enforcing insurance for depositors, not bankers (FDIC)?

It was time for Obama to go with fresh leadership.  Obama and most of the Senate blew it.  Btw, interesting to see Specter vote against cloture.  Is he getting it?

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by: David Kowalski @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 21:33:50 PM UTC

Kabuki (4.00 / 4)

This is a pattern of kabuki we get to watch all the time. Cloture vote means nothing when the corporatists want the legislation.

Bernanke re-nomination and re-confirmation means one of the architects of the credit bubble gets to keep his job to blow the next bubble. We once again re-affirm that in the US as long as you represent the oligarchy you get to fail upwards.

I believe it was the credit bubble that played a central role in fomenting the housing bubble that drove house prices up by 3 standard deviations from the historical trend. Lax lending standards driven by securitization of mortgage debt and rent-seeking by Wall Street was what allowed income starved Americans from leveraging rising home prices into current income via the housing ATM. Like any Ponzi scheme the housing and credit bubble has collapsed.

The Obama administration does not want to get to the root of the issues that caused these twin bubbles as it would point a big fat finger on Bernanke and the Fed as well as Wall Street and homeowners that pulled out all their equity and lived high on the hog while housing values were rising.

Note that those who played a central role in fomenting these bubbles have prized positions in the Obama administration - Summers and Bernanke.

So what are these bright lights that created the biggest credit bubble in US history doing to return to the status quo of inflated home prices - blowing the next bubble in the sovereign credit of the US. Socializing the losses of Wall Street banks while allowing the privatization of Wall Street profits based on fictitious accounting like mark-to-fantasy of balance sheet assets.

Yes, change you can believe in! Watch what they do not what they say. Talk is cheap!

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by: ab initio @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 21:34:42 PM UTC

So, we failed? (0.00 / 0)

Shit.

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by: liberalmaverick @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 22:17:19 PM UTC

Cloture (0.00 / 0)

A number of opponents of Bernanke's nomination, including Boxer, Harkin and Whitehouse, "aye" in favor of cloture and "nay" on the nomination. By my count, a total of six Democrats (Begich, Cantwell, Feingold, Merkley, Sanders, Specter) voted nay on both. Pretty amazing that a number of Senators who opposed his nomination were persuaded to treat his nomination differently in terms of cloture than regular legislation when, in my view, the Fed Chairman's influence is just as wide-reaching as any piece of public legislation.

Emphasis on Republican Senators like Harkin (are there others?) who voted for cloture but against the nomination. Will he do so on health care? Will the Democrats push him to answer that question publicly?

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by: alex hill @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 22:49:32 PM UTC

Yeah (4.00 / 1)

I'm sure the fact that he got a narrow confirmation vote really constrains Justice Thomas too.  

I guess getting any significant number of Senators to vote against a plutocratic consensus pick is progress, but it's a disappointing sort of "we didn't fail as badly as usual" sort of progress.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:14:41 PM UTC

a grim outcome (4.00 / 3)

But, not unexpected, by me, anyway.  I think if our current Democratic [sic] Congress, and our current Democratic [sic] President were to be assigned an overarching theme that characterized the past 12 months, it would have to be:

Preserve the status quo at all costs.

I've seen noting which argues substantively against.  Somewhere I think someone got deeply confused between concepts transformational and stasis.  Or, they really thought that when they claimed to have made a silk purse out of a sow's ear, most of us aren't confused that the "silk purse" they point to is, in fact, still a sow's ear.

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by: bystander @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:15:14 PM UTC

No confusion (0.00 / 0)

The transformational talk was never anything but a sales pitch directed at the rubes.

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by: Steve LaBonne @ Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 23:22:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sow's Ear for Thee, But Not For Me... (0.00 / 0)

For the ruling elites, this is "Mission Accomplished." The economy will continue on it's current trajectory... and so will the crushing of the middle and lower classes and vast redistribution of collective wealth upwards into fewer and fewer hands.

The status quo is now safe from any reform.

Last night, we were entreated to the phony rhetoric of a well polished used car salesman. Today, we see what all that rhetoric really means.

If the establishment really wishes to sacrifice it's own legitimacy, this is a great way to do it.

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates

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by: Emocrat @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 02:31:49 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

What's next? (0.00 / 0)

How is the Audit the Fed bill doing?

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

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by: David Kaib @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 00:42:31 AM UTC

Dodd blocked it. (0.00 / 0)

One of his many parting gifts to his owners.

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by: nmnasrudin @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 23:22:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

it could work.... (0.00 / 0)

Again, google "Bilderberg Group". Along with Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, the membership list includes the name Ben Bernanke.

It was laughable when just a few days ago there was actually speculation on the leftwing netroot that Bernanke might not be confirmed!!

How on earth do these pundits think the world works?

Democratically?

Well, it could work more rather than less democratically if progressives are sucessful in ousting from power DLC Democrats who, when push comes to shove, embrace the Wall Street agenda of the FIRE industries.

Only 12 Democrats voted against big Ben. Most of the opposition ironically came from the "pro business" Republicans who embrace the fiercely free market libertarian outrage against crony capitalism. Again, most of the Democratric leadership in the Congress and the White House are smack dab in the middle of the socialism for the rich agenda.

Al Franken voted for him. But then the great "liberal" Al Franken took in over one million dollars from the FIRE industry.

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by: george walton @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 02:51:36 AM UTC

Will you vote for anyone who voted to confirm this bankster? (0.00 / 0)

I won't.

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by: nmnasrudin @ Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 23:24:20 PM UTC