Someone needs to help my brother out with the whole ‘appearing on film’ thing. Check out his glasses. (And, no, the skinny guy is not my brother).
On a more serious note, these Vop-eds are pretty cool.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Wow, he looks like a clean-shaven version of you.
it’s worse when I’m clean shaven, trust me.
I wish I could grow facial hair too. It covers a multitude of chins…er, sins.
I hope we never see you clean shaven. We like the facial hair.
Guess he couldn’t use the old “you’re adopted” routine on you.
Someone had a little mishap with the beard trimmer this summer. I can’t even begin to tell you how weird that was…
oooh. 🙁
Definitely!
But for some reason, I’m thinking Tim Russert..
(if you get rid of the glasses up top)
holy shit! he really does look just like you san beard.
i loved the skinny guy’s reaction shot when they revealed that the bailout money went to the big banks.
so i take it you disagree with your brother then, given your vocal support for the bailout.
“give the little guys access to money too.. play fair.” He sounds like ME.
“JP Morgan says they’re going to use the money to buy MORE banks.” I agree 100%. In fact, that’s what I’ve been saying about the bailout all along: it wasn’t done right, and has wasted billions of dollars while further enriching bank of america, jp morgan, etc etc etc etc.
I don’t think you’ve ever understood my support for the bailout. You show no signs of understanding it. You comment indicates that you have basically no clue about why I supported it.
The bailout money was needed as should be painfully obvious by now to prevent the wholesale and immediate collapse of the entire financial sector. With oversight, without oversight, direct ownership or buying shitpile…all of that was details compared to the prospect of a simultaneous collapse of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, etc.
No one wants to give these assholes any money. No one really wants to give money to the jackasses in Detroit, either. But, as I said at the time, our whole economy was coming down and we weren’t just bailing out Wall Street, we were bailing out ourselves.
Point two: banks aren’t lending at the previous rates because that kind of easy lending was precisely what ruined the economy. Yet, whole industries (like the automotive one) are dependent on the old easy-money scheme. Therefore, responsible bank lending will still lead to massive constriction of the economy and mass layoffs. You just can’t solve that problem.
Point three: as I pointed out at the time, the Paulson Plan was dead on arrival and wasn’t even really attempted. The government bought warrants and stakes.
Finally, it’s up to Obama to get us out of this mess. All we want from Paulson is for him to keep the ship afloat a little longer and to try not to lose the whole investment.
It isn’t, and never was, my position that it’s great to give money to big banks over small banks or to give money to them at all. I merely pointed out that we needed to give them the money to stave off a catastrophe and that we’d have to do the hard work later.
That’s pretty much what has happened, by the way. And nothing did more to help Obama in the election than his decision to support the bailout. People could see the difference between demagoguery and leadership on an unpopular issue.
I’d add that there is a point beyond which where bailing out ‘the whole financial system’ is a bad idea. It is a place where the ‘whole financial system’ is itself the problem.
At that point, collapse is the only way to ‘responsible banking’. If 60% of the credit out there is bad, was issued by big banks, was owned by big banks and then devalued by big banks, then hang the big banks.
Sometimes you just gotta stop doing business with folks who sold you the snake oil. There is nothing honorable in completing mutually assured destruction once you recognize it has begun.
While we still have any cash available, it should all go to infrastructure investment and relief of the social upheaval that letting the bad credit drain off will necessitate. Then at least we’ll have new stuff to play with while all hell breaks loose and maybe even a bridge to the next economy.
He seems a bit nervous. Does he have any outstanding warrants? Maybe he’s waiting for the inevitable, “Hey do you have a brother named Martin?”
In over his head?
(rimshot)
Oh, tips for that!
Those glasses! During the video, they kept shifting around on his noggin until I thought they’d drop down on his nose at the end. Distracting — couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying — but funny. I’d like to know why he put them up like that, what was his reasoning?
This is really an excellent little video. I’ll forward broadly. Please thank your brother and the skinny guy and the writers/directors/producers, etc. Nice work.
Sequel?
Suppose, after 20 January, we get some aggressive anti-Trust action from these new guys?
I am already tired of ‘too big to fail’. If you’re too big to fail, ipso facto you’re an abusive monopoly.
Definitely good to see this vid 🙂
It does however prompt me to want to write an entire diary in response concerning information theory.
The point of disagreement is “the distance between borrower and lender” being the root cause of the problem of why big banks failed/were failing/are failing.
I think the root cause of the problem is actually teleological in nature and the effect is seen in larger institutions due to their concentration.
The closest thing I can think of in approximation is imagine if there was a new sickness that affected a certain plant. If it were a few isolated plants spread amongst the “wilderness” it would be a small problem that would begin and END quickly.
But if you have a giant (cultivated) field of identical plants, the new sickness spreads rapidly and the overall problem becomes endemic in nature with multiple cascades into adjoining systems.
Just like the Irish potato blight (leading to the Irish potato famine) didn’t just affect the growth of the plants, nor solely did it affect the people of Ireland but led to mass emigration to the United States which in turn cascaded into sociological change, etc.
Pax
Talking about the Irish, here’s my take on it in the annual lecture I recently gave in Dublin to a “Green” Think Tank
Solving the Credit Crunch
The Green Party has both the Environment and Energy ministers, interestingly enough, and the Irish economy is probably the most fucked of all of the European economies….