I was rather disappointed to hear that the administration has decided that zombie banks should be saved so that the people that ran them into the ground can enjoy continuity of employment, even though there is no evidence that they will start lending anytime soon.
It hasn’t worked yet, so we need to keep throwing money at them. Sooner or later the economy will suddenly snap back where it was before the crash.
The administration is pretty gung-ho on this. Even Christine Romer said that they want banks to lend like crazy, which any sane outsider would probably say is part of what got us in this mess in the first place.
Me? I read some of these articles, shake my head, and say, “Yeah…”
Here‘s a little story for you on J.P. Morgan’s upcoming purchase of two luxury jets and construction of an $18 million state of the art hangar.
Two quotes from the article:
“It’s a remarkably boneheaded decision,” said corporate watchdog Nell Minnow, the editor and founder of The Corporate Library, a group that provides independent corporate governance research and analysis. “It’s completely tone deaf.”
Alright. We all get that one.
But this one…
But on March 11, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, said he could not understand why corporate America has such a bad image.
“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said.
Dimon, whose 2008 compensation package, according to SEC documents, was worth more than $19 million in salary, stock and options, declined to speak with ABC News about the proposed plans.
Hello? A sure sign that he thinks he is a member of the Financial Wizards class, basically different from you and me.
Finally, a Rasmussen poll has been released showing that overall 24% of Americans have a favorable opinion on how Geithner has been doing his job, and 44% have an unfavorable opinion.
What is especially telling is that of what Rasmussen deems the “Political Class” (“Financial Wizards” and wannabes, according to my terminology), 76% are favorable, while among Populists, 12% have a favorable opinion on him. The divide is not between Democrats and Republicans, it is between those who are well-connected and those who see them as out of touch with reality.
Finally, another article from Rasmussen, this one on their concept of “Political Class” and “Populist”. Very interesting. The Populists are the great majority, unrelated to party lines. A smart political strategist might be able to do something with this.
I posted this on the DailyKos, where I got a lot of snark from people who are opposed to the fact that everybody doesn’t agree with them. Hardly anybody even read the Rasmussen article, and they apparently didn’t need to do that to tell me that scientific polling means nothing if the results do not agree with your own opinion.
Disregard polling at your own risk.
Now for a little lecture on the psychology of cheating. It’s a little long, but it’s extremely engaging and very topical.