Monday: Obama says blogs don’t count

Obama gave an interview to the NYTimes recently.  Nice!  As I understand it, the NYTimes has been working on that “get” for awhile now.  He’s been avoiding them for some reason.  He says the stimulus package is what it is and we shouldn’t expect any more, even though the bankers can get as much money as they like.  He also recommends that we don’t stuff our money under our mattresses and that we spend money but that we should also be prudent because, heck!, you might get laid off.  I love this part:

“Look, I wish I had the luxury of just dealing with a modest recession or just dealing with health care or just dealing with energy or just dealing with Iraq or just dealing with Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t have that luxury, and I don’t think the American people do, either.”

Yes, we wish that too but a proclivity towards wish fulfillment isn’t generally a characteristic we look for in a president.  However, we did have the luxury  of dealing with a modest recession last year when we could have picked a different candidate who might have been more up to the task of dealing with the *major recession* that we, the losers, saw coming from a mile away. Fortunately for Mr. Obama, the bankers came to his financial rescue and did away with all that messy choice thingy in the primaries.  With enough money greasing the hands of the superdelegates, and the right kind of Change!™ propaganda, not to mention the governor of NJ who is a former CEO of Goldman-Sachs who can be counted on to invalidate the results from his own state, you can do away with all that luxury of choice that primaries afford.  Mr. Obama is only reminding us that elections have consequences.  Or not, if the money men are behind you.

And he had this to say about blogs:

NYT: [Obama] said he did not find blogs to be reliable, citing the economy as one example. “Part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs,” he said, “is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully, then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another — well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine.”

Anyone here surprised by that?  Raise your hand, don’t be shy.  You in the back?

Naive and silly Conflucians.  You, in particular, are the LAST people that Obama will listen to.  You never supported him in the first place.  But those other bloggers, like Baseline Scenario, Naked Capitalism, Conscience of a Liberal and even election year obsequious toady Josh Marshall, he doesn’t have to read them either because they only see one part of the big picture.  There is no clean answer, says Obama.

Yes, we know, Barack.  There is no clean answer because the bankers set it up that way.  They all have their hands out saying, “gimme, gimme, gimme, NOW!, NOW!, NOW!”.  And they appear to be too big to fail and they have rigged the bankruptcy laws in their favor and, HOLY HEMIOLA!, if we pull the plug on them, all Hell will break loose!  It is a very intractable problem.

But here’s the problem, Barack, you are listening to the guys who are feeding you Armageddon stories because it is in their best interest to make it sound like nationalizing the banks is the worst thing you can do.  I’m betting you even agree with them that if it hadn’t been the stupid American consumer, just living for today and not taking personal responsibility, for which sins they shall now be required to “sacrifice”, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.  Then the bankers wouldn’t have had to lend all that money and aggregate all those mortgages and slice them up into tranches.  They wouldn’t have had to offer subprime loans except that the damn consumers were demanding them when their lack of wage increases wouldn’t produce the requisite 20% downpayment on a hyperinflated house.  The investors wouldn’t have had to insure each other against losses, again and again…and again.  It’s all their fault, those thoughtless consumers. Our skin just slid into their mouths and they had no choice but to bite.

Of course, the head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair, has been trying to cut some deals with the investor class on their mortgage tranches but every time she makes a move in that direction, they investors threaten to sue.  And your Timmy Geithner and Larry Summers won’t play nice with her because she’s a smelly girl.  What’s a president to do?  He can’t serve EVERYONE and if he listens to the blogs and nationalizes, er, actually, takes the insolvent banks into receivership, the banks, the bankers might not lend him a billion for his re-election.  Besides, it would interfere with their lifestyles and bankers are people too- sort of, in a neo-feudalistic sense of the word.  I mean, it would upset the natural food chain if we got rid of all of the predators at the top.

I understand.  I’m a working girl, faced with my own imminent layoff caused by the insularity of the new CEO who for some reason listens only to the executives and marketing people, who are trained in the ways of propaganda, who point to the hapless scientists who wear denim to work and not business suits and say, “It’s all R&D’s fault for being too bureaucratic and not getting things done!  Let’s throw away half of our seed corn.  They’re consuming too much money!”  Nevermind the endless mergers that bring research to a screeching halt for several years at a time while the managers fight over the turf.  Nevermind the empty labs that are never filled by chemists and biologists because there is a hiring freeze caused by the endless mergers that suck up financial resources required to pay off the shareholders.  Never mind the fricking lab animals who never seem to cooperate and produce blips in the data that may freak out the bureaucrats at the FDA and send us all back to the drawing board again and again. Nevermind the class action lawyers who are scanning adverse drug reaction reports in anticipation of some unforseen blip in the data that will lead to a goldrush.  It’s all R&D’s fault for getting investors into this mess, the corporate guys say.  Life would be so much easier if we didn’t have those damn scientists trying to make drugs.  Besides, they are so much cheaper in China.  Not smarter.  Just cheaper.

Then again, maybe laying me off would have unexpected side effects.  For instance, I would have a lot of time on my hands to organize –  the blogs.

In other news:

Elizabeth Warren has been tasked by Congress to follow the bailout money.  In her most recent report to Congress, she is still waiting to hear from the new team at Treasury.

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