Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Unthinkably Stupid.

Look, I know a little something about doing stupid things. I had Clemson taking out Kansas and then losing to Georgetown in my NCAA tournament bracket. I spent a solid amount of time with dcjonesy, Lsouth and others this past week rating 80s songs from one to ten based on how well you can pump your first and stomp your foot to them. Several weekends ago when I went out into Adams Morgan wearing a DC United flag as a cape. I bet 25 dollars on the redskins winning the super bowl last year at 50-1 odds. All of that stuff happened within the last couple months, and I haven't even started with the stories that involve my lime blazer. So I think we've established that I know stupid when I see it.

And so I mean it when I say that this is possibly one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard. (Or a least to emerge in this election cycle):
[Hillary] Clinton also called on President Bush to appoint "an emergency working group on foreclosures" to recommend new ways to confront housing finance troubles. She said the panel should be led by financial experts such as Robert Rubin, who was treasury secretary in her husband's administration, and former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.
It's hard fight through the rage enough to form complete sentences after you reads something like that, but Economist Dean Baker does a pretty good job in his post titled "Senator Clinton Calls for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons to Head Commission on Steroid Abuse":
Actually Senator Clinton's proposal was far more ridiculous. She suggested having former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary and current Citigroup honcho Robert Rubin lead a commission (along with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker) to analyze the country's current economic crisis.

There is certainly no one more directly responsible for the current crisis than Alan Greenspan, who allowed the housing bubble to grow unchecked for almost a decade. Also, as the country's preeminent bank regulator, he looked the other as the predatory mortgage market exploded.

While Greenspan is undoubtedly villain #1 in the housing bubble story, Robert Rubin has claim to #2 status in his post near the helm of Citigroup. Citigroup provided the secondary market for many of these predatory mortgages with its creative financial engineering and structured investment vehicles.

It's also nice because it makes a good parallel for her vote on the Iran resolution. There is clear evidence that on either foreign policy or the economy, she does not learn from her mistakes, and she goes out of her way to repeat them.


(Unrelated Rant)

I also wanted to apologize if it seems like every time you click over to this site, all I've done is write something new slamming Hillary Clinton. I know it's been like that for most of the primary season, but it really isn't my goal and I definitely don't go out of my way to write too many posts on an issue that has already been covered at length. I will say this in my defense though: Every day there is essentially a constant stream of infuriating news from/about her campaign. Stories like this, this, this and this for come to mind. And all of those happened today happened today, mind you. Writing about all of them would take too much time, as well as drive you (and me) completely insane. And let's face it, Hillary Clinton doing something stupid or damaging to the progressive movement is no longer really a surprising news story.

So why bring her up at all?

Because, by in large I think it's different than what you read or see elsewhere. I find it truly mind boggling the lack of mainstream media scrutiny she gets on issues that matter (the war, economy and willingness to destroy the democratic party) and (until recently) the abundance of "well there isn't that much of a difference if she wins the nomination" talk from the online left. One of the tasks of the progressive movement in our political system is to pressure our party's leaders to do the right thing, and when you see someone with a D attached to their name behaving this disgracefully, they should probably be called out.

Well, in 2 months either Barack Obama will be our nominee, or Hillary Clinton cementing her place in history as the person destroyed the loose coalition once known as the Democratic party. I guess only time will tell, huh?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this link, but unfortunately it seems to be offline... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my post if you do!

    I would appreciate if a staff member here at www.thetrainofthought.com could post it.

    Thanks,
    William

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  2. Hi,

    I have a message for the webmaster/admin here at www.thetrainofthought.com.

    May I use part of the information from this blog post above if I give a link back to your site?

    Thanks,
    Alex

    ReplyDelete