"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Apr 20, 2010

SEC Covering Its Ass, Gaming for Imperial Barack?

Interesting speculation:

"Henry Blodget (yes, that Henry of the you’re-so-fired-for-a-tech-bubble-scam) is now a cited blogger on business matters. He speculates that the SEC surprise, unannounced suit against Goldman was timed and framed to obscure a scathing internal SEC review of its failure to act or investigate documented ponzi schemes going back to 1997. Speculative. But such craven, self-serving actions are a commonplace in D.C.
Reuters doesn’t go that far but also declares the SEC is using Goldman. They note clumsy efforts to scramble after the meltdown and pursue firms have been swatted down by courts and judges. Some judicial dismissals of SEC’s after-the-act ham fisted enforcement are scathing.

Pundits intone that SEC’s Goldman suit will bolster significantly Dodd’s the toothless and greatly watered down ‘financial reform’ bill. Republicans didn’t get the memo and have better focus group research. There’s always a tension in cynical D.C. between doing something or doing just enough to keep an issue alive for the next campaign. In our current meme environment, it’s even more stark. Actual achievement in any legislation is irrelevant to the perception in hyper-real twit-like consumptions. Thus, the astoundingly weak Dodd bill is already being amped up like a HiWatt stack as radical, massive ‘reform.’

Of all the people forced to chow down on that thin gruel, how bitter it must taste to the Left [sic], Progressives and Others Who Know Better. Again."

http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/?p=3324

As an unrepentant cynic, that makes sense to me. Republicans panther stalked a health care reform bill mandatory transfer of wealth to insurance companies that they would've supported under the War Hero. The Dems, thankful for the GOP's Circus of Intentional Stupid, passed it with "historic game changey hopeyness."

(To idgits with the Palin brigade, none dare call it "socialism." But, that mayhap another day...)

So, I guess I cannot feign surprise at the above surmise. Let's wager that the SEC scapegoats a fund manager and a few veeps, now that Obama's vaunted moral man has come to save the Gold-Sach's day. (Gitmo still has its doors open, so what's a moral man to do? Help keep the torturers at G-S in fancies?)

And what's a Nobel Laureate to do? Sign on to Dodd's house of cards and wait for the Circus of Intentional Stupid to ratchet up the rhetoric again?

Hmmm....

4 comments:

druff said...

good stuff here. hadn't heard these angles before.

Jack Crow said...

It's all pretty speculative, but as best as I can tell, Dodd's bill is toothless.

Jack Crow said...

Druff,

See:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/04/21/goldman-takes-a-page-from-ahip-to-game-regulation-reform/

druff said...

awesome. sounds like we have some more "historic" legislation on the way.

to paraphrase IOZ regarding the inevitable Dem reaction: is it a turd or is it a cake? well it's on a plate isn't it? are we gonna split hairs?