Author: Matt Browner Hamlin

http://holdfastblog.com

Romney holds off the white knight for now

Originally posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field

Jonathan Karl, ABC News, February 17, 2012:

A prominent Republican senator just told me that if Romney can’t win in Michigan, the Republican Party needs to go back to the drawing board and convince somebody new to get into the race.

“If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate,” said the senator, who has not endorsed anyone and requested anonymity.

George Stephanopolous, ABC News, February 28, 2012:

“What [Romney’s performance] tonight has done, I think, is kill any talk in Republican circles of finding another white knight to come into the campaign.”

At least for the moment, that is. Losing his home state of Michigan would have been devastating for Romney. But as it is, he only barely won and Rick Santorum will take home the same number of delegates as Romney. To the extent that Romney has killed the talk of a new “white knight,” it is just barely and just for the moment. He certainly hasn’t suddenly created a popular groundswell in the Republican base for his candidacy. Super Tuesday is a week away and it will be a major test that could produce wins for Romney, Gingrich and Santorum. If Romney gets his clock cleaned next Tuesday, watch for the talk of the white knight to reemerge.

What I’m Reading

Clay Johnson: Change Dot Biz

Wall Street Journal: For the Costliest Homes, Foreclosure Comes Slowly

Bloomberg: Buffett: Banks Victimized by Excesses of Ousted Homeowners (This is b.s.)

Washington Business Journal: D.C. owed $30.6M in condo conversion fees, audit says

Politico: Cuomo shuns media, gets attention

Dean Baker: Is Joe Nocera right when he says that fracking raises U.S. greenhouse has emissions by 20 percent?

Matt Stoller: Towards a Creditor State – One in Seven Americans Pursued by Debt Collectors

TPM DC: Hoyer Working Behind The Scenes On Major Deficit Reduction Bill

Glenn Greenwald: The NYPD spying controversy: a microcosm for the 9/11 era

Abigail C. Field: Dear State Attorneys General: You Failed America. Yes, You.

Greater Greater Washington: Liquor laws, lacking nightlife hurt Silver Spring bars

Rick Perlstein: Why Obama Needs to Change to Win

What I’m Reading

Think Progress: University of Virginia Football Player Goes On Hunger Strike To Get Living Wage For University Employees

Think Progress: STUDY: Ron Paul Never Attacked Romney Once During 20 Debates, But Attacked Romney’s Rivals 39 Times

Barry Ritholtz: Foreclosure settlement a failure of law, a triumph for bank attorney

Naked Capitalism: Abigail Field: Insider Says Promontory’s OCC Foreclosure Reviews for Wells are Frauds. Brought to You by HUD Sec. Donovan

The Uptake: A Tale Of Two US Bank-Occupy Foreclosures Raises Racial Questions

NY Times: Amid a Federal Education Inquiry, an Unsettling Sight

Maddow Blog: Who among us has not befriended NASCAR team owners?

 

The tragedy of our circumstances

To close out a very strong piece on the lack of honesty in public discourse around housing and the economy, Matt Stoller writes:

There is no honesty among our political elites, and by that statement, I don’t mean that they are liars. There are liars everywhere, and truthtellers as well. Most of us are concurrently both. What I mean is that the culture of the political elite is one in which a genuine conversation about the actual problems we are facing as a society simply cannot be held with any integrity. Instead, we have to chalk up problems in a very busted housing market, and a generation saddled with indentured servitude disguised as a debt, as one of “hormones”.

It sounds cute that way, I guess. Eventually, we will see integrity in our discourse. It’s unavoidable. You can’t operate a society solely on intellectual dishonesty because eventually all your bridges fall down, even the ones the rich use. For a moment, from 2008-2009, there was real discourse about what to do. We’ll see a moment like that again. Only, the environment won’t be nearly as conducive to having a prosperous democratic society as it was in 2008. There will be a lot more poverty, starvation, violence, and authoritarianism when the next chance comes around. Catastrophic climate change, devastating supply chain disruptions, political upheaval, geopolitical tensions and/or war – one more more of these will be the handmaidens of honest dialogue.

The tragedy is not that our circumstances will worsen dramatically, but that it just didn’t have to be this way.

I think that this is one of the most important aspects of what’s happening in America today. I also think the forceful, honest description of what is wrong with our society is what propelled the Occupy movement to popularity last fall. What we need now is not just accurate descriptions of the problems we face, though, but honest discourse on what we need to do to get out of this situation. Stoller’s right – it’s a tragedy that we’re in a moment where it is not happening and only by things getting worse is it likely to change.

What I’m Reading

Washington Post: Maryland Senate passes same-sex marriage bill

Baltimore Sun: Gay marriage law will likely be up to voters

Reuters: FDIC Lawsuits Yielded Big Penalties, But Bankers Haven’t Paid Up

Naked Capitalism: Fannie Putting More Dubious New Loans Back to BofA, So BofA Will Stick Them to Freddie Instead

Felix Salmon: Matter’s vision for long-form journalism

ABC News: Leaker of Stimulus Memo Uncovered?

Dealbook: Holder Defends Efforts to Fight Financial Fraud

WLS-TV: Window factory workers reach deal to stay open for now

Sally Kohn: Occupy’s Return from Hibernation

Matt Taibbi: Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost

BoingBoing: Losar: Tibetan New Year, and “mandatory celebrations”

NPR: On Tibetan Plateau, A Sense Of Constant Surveillance

NY Times: A Shift From Nursing Homes to Managed Care at Home

CNBC: Regulators Plan Safeguards to Prevent Another MF Global

CEPR: A Primer on Private Equity at Work: Management, Employment, and Sustainability

Daily Kos: Sen. John Kerry writes in support of Netroots for the Troops

DCist: Former D.C. Police Commander to Sue City Over Charlie Sheen Motorcade

David Sirota: Forgetting the Past, One Military Movie at a Time

What I’m Reading

I’m going to try doing a periodic (daily?) roundup of what I’m reading.

NPR: With Banks As Landlords, Some Tenants Neglected (h/t Lynn Syzmoniak)

Dealbook: Responding to Critics, S.E.C. Defends ‘No Wrongdoing’ Settlements

Bloomberg: Bank Lobby Widened Volcker Rule Before Inciting Foreign Outrage (via Neil Barofsky on Twitter)

NY Times: Mutated Trout Raise Concerns Near Mine Sites

Amanda Marcotte: The radical anti-insurance plan the right has concocted

Mercury News: San Francisco: Clergy rally at Wells Fargo to protest foreclosure abuse

David Dayen: New Study From Consumer Advocates Shows Mass Servicer Abuse

David Dayen: HUD Continues Defense of Allowing HAMP Modifications as Part of the Foreclosure Fraud Settlement

Mike Konczal: Cochrane Sees Moral Hazard Only in One Direction

PC Mag: White House Proposes Privacy Bill of Rights With ‘Do Not Track’

NY Times: Deadly Car Bombings Strike Across Iraq

CNN: Tibetans cancel New Year celebrations

SEC hope – or missing the point – on Wall Street prosecutions

It’s being reported that the SEC and the mortgage fraud task force co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman that “[f]urther legal action is likely before the end of the year against firms involved in the origins of the housing bubble.” Obviously seeing criminal prosecutions of banksters would be a good outcome, as would much larger civil suits than anything we’ve seen so far.

But what stands out to me is this line from the SEC chair about what she thinks they’ve already done when it comes to holding bank executives accountable.

Schapiro noted that her agency already has “named over 100 individuals in financial crisis cases, many of them CEOs and CFOs and other senior executives.”

But to date, what has actually been done when it comes to prosecution is the pursuit of insider trading which hurt banks’ bottom lines, not accountability for hurting homeowners or defrauding pensions and 401ks. It reminds me of the absurd Time Magazine cover which holds up Preet Bharara as a feared Wall Street cop.

The simple reality is that the SEC’s toothless and ineffective no-fault settlements with banks and people like Bharara going after the people which cost banks money (not the other way around), law enforcement and regulators have continually taken accountability in the opposite direction of what the public wants. The state of holding bankers accountable in America actually reminds me of this brilliant I see a happy face panel:

Things Rick Santorum Used to Say

It’s debate day – today the remaining major candidates will debate in Arizona, days before the Arizona and Michigan primaries. There hasn’t been a debate in a while, something that one could rarely write before this month, and the landscape has shifted dramatically since Santorum swept Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota. He is now the front-runner and the cash is flowing into his coffers, while Romney is spending down his reserves at a fast rate which should scare both his supporters now and hurt his ability to run a strong campaign if he is the nominee.

But with a new debate and his new status as front runner, the research books are opening up on Rick Santorum. Huffington Post reported yesterday that Santorum was pro-choice before he entered politics.

In a December 1995 Philadelphia Magazine article — which the Huffington Post pulled from Temple University archives — Santorum conceded that he “was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress… But it had never been something I thought about.” Asked why he changed his mind, he said that he “sat down and read the literature. Scientific literature,” only to correct himself and note that religion was a part of it too.

Huffington Post also reported on campaign statements from 1990 which showed Santorum as what would today amount to being a moderate Republican on abortion. This is fairly surprising given Santorum’s culture warrior bonafides. As a result, we can expect this line of attack to be raised in tonight’s debate.

In a slightly more bizarre edition of “Thinks Rick Santorum Used to Say,” the Drudge Report is quoting Santorum more recently at the far other end of the culture war. The quote allegedly comes from a 2008 speech at a college in Florida:

“Satan has his sights on the United States of America!” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has declared.

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

This sounds a lot more like the Santorum that we now know, so I don’t know that it would do much to turn off the Republican voters who are trending his way. But this sort of rhetoric is exactly the type of thing that would likely ensure that nominee Santorum would lose in historic fashion, which is, incidentally, the elite Republican critique of him.

The Iceland Example

Bloomberg has an article about Iceland’s remarkable recovery since the economic collapse of 2008. The tiny island was the victim of a massive, bank-driven bubble that produces massive debt levels. Unlike every other country facing the economic crisis, Iceland chose to prioritize the needs and well-being of their citizenry over their creditors. This included writing down all debts where mortgages were worth over 110% of the value of the house, essentially eliminating all seriously underwater properties and freeing up homeowners to have mobility.

After Iceland defaulted on their debt, their economy briefly contracted, but has grown at a substantially greater rate than the rest of Europe since. Additionally, Iceland has actually prosecuted bank executives who criminally inflated the housing bubble.

Iceland’s approach to dealing with the meltdown has put the needs of its population ahead of the markets at every turn.

Once it became clear back in October 2008 that the island’s banks were beyond saving, the government stepped in, ring-fenced the domestic accounts, and left international creditors in the lurch. The central bank imposed capital controls to halt the ensuing sell-off of the krona and new state-controlled banks were created from the remnants of the lenders that failed.

It’s shocking and sad that Iceland’s response – to prioritize the needs of its population! – is unique. Only in a truly broken and corruption economic system are the needs of banks considered more important than the needs of people.

The help Iceland provided to their citizens, the prosecutions of banksters, the changing of the rules of the economic road to protect the country from further damage at the hands of reckless banks, and the resulting strong economic growth stemming from a stabilized housing and banking system should be a blue print that could be deployed not only in Europe, but here in the US. Instead, austerity and the perpetual bailout of the banks who caused this crisis is the norm and Iceland is functionally ignored by elite policy makers.