April 17, 2009

Elizabeth Warren, TARP overseer, making sense



Finally, some competent people.

Where were they the past eight years?

Oh, yeah, I forget. We were under occupation by lobbyists, bankers, realtors, idiots and conmen then. Bunch of them still around (hello Chris Dodd), but nice to see some smart people for a change.

Too bad it's too late.

32 comments:

Mitesh Damania said...

Elizabeth is no way competent. She doesn't know critical information! She couldn't answer half on Jon's questions. She looked like Alberto Gonzales.

Mitesh Damania said...

Muhammad Yunus opens a Grameen Bank (microfinance) branch in New York:

http://www.askbutwhy.com/2009/04/professor-muhammad-yunus-new-normalcy.html

yoski said...

Well, regulation is the same as laws. Frequently they are there for a reason.
You shall not steal, kill or screw your neighbor's wife. Why? Because it cause many problems down the road and will eventually lead to a breakdown of society.
Similar for the financial world. I needs to have a set of sensible laws in place that are actually getting enforced.

1. Disolve the SEC since they're clearly incompetent & corrupt.
2. Put the FBI in charge and increase their funding.
3. Nobody that ever worked for one of the major investment banks is eligible to investigate their former colleagues. Conflict of intrests, etc. Clearly you need individuals familiar with the practices on Wall Street but most people have little incentive to ioncriminate themselves or their friends & former colleagues.
4. No naked short selling. It's the same as counterfeiting dollar bills and is punishable as such.
5. Reinstate Glass-Stegal. It's a good law and was there for a reason.
6. No more off balance sheet entities to hide billion dollar losses.
7. No more subsidies, bailouts, stimulus (or whatever else you want to call it) for private for profit industry. This is different from funding for scientific research.
8. 100% tax on bonus money over $500K since it leads to perverse incentives such as accounting fraud and excessive risk taking in order to show short term profits.
9. Anything that looks, acts and smells like insurance (like CDS) grets regulated as such.
10. Agressively investigate fraudulent behavior. Arrest people, confiscate their assets and put them on trial. Same as is done with drug dealers.
11. mark-to-market accounting (like weighted average over trades that took place during last 30 days for example, since that number would be difficult to manipulate) versus mark-to-fantasy accounting.

That's my top 11 lists of measures needed to restore order. Rewarding these criminals with trillions will encourage more fraud and will lead to even bigger problems in the future. Unfortunately our politicians are owned by the likes of GS, CITI, AIG, etc. Therefore I don't think there will be any meaningful legislation and/or enforcement efforts. The swindles and Ponzi schemes will continue until the entire country collapses.

Paul E. Math said...

Mitesh, the only information Warren has is that which has been supplied her by Geithner - if she doesn't know the answer to a question that is Geithner's fault, not hers.

Don't think for a second that she didn't know what PPIP is. That's what was great about her - she played along.

Did you watch part 2?

Anyway, she is not advocating regulation all over the place. She is only advocating a return to the some of the regulation that kept us in control for 50 years and was recently removed.

I'm not a fan of regulation in general. But I have made peace with the fact that the government and the federal reserve are already too involved to call these markets truly free.

So if you're going to have the fed dropping rates to the basement and Barney Frank pushing million-dollar mortgages on ditch-diggers then you'd better have some regulation in place to minimize the misallocation of all this free money.

REALITY said...

yeah, and too bad she doesn't have any power, authority, or money to affect change.

Anonymous said...

What about the Fed, did she mention the Fed and why we even need it?

mmm said...

she's a talking head; regulation isn't innovation. the next thing you know, she'll say: "boomers, by law, can't get any older," and we'll see how well that works!

casey said...

where has she been.Too bad the crooks in washington don't want to hear her.Keep working your shitty jobs to pay for the crooks on wall street to have caviar every night.

You work for wall street bitches!!!

Anonymous said...

"...That's my top 11 lists of measures needed to restore order. Rewarding these criminals with trillions will encourage more fraud and will lead to even bigger problems..."Nicely put; what he^^^ said.

Anonymous said...

She's Krugman with boobs, and almost as ugly.
Deport her to McGill w/ no chance of return.
Eh?

Anton Chiguhr

Anonymous said...

.



She's Hot!



.

RICO said...

yoski said...

"..Rewarding these criminals with trillions will encourage more fraud and will lead to even bigger problems in the future..."

Great post!

You nailed it!

Anonymous said...

"Too bad it's too late."

Exacty -- this is whitewash.

They're remodeling the crime scene to incriminate a scapegoat.

Anonymous said...

it looks like she's flipping someone off in the still shot

Anonymous said...

Banks feel terrible about all that bailout money"...Jamie Dimon...of J.P. Morgan Chase, said..."We've learned our lesson about that."...

...it plans to continue using a separate federal aid program through which it has borrowed more than $40 billion..."

ONE BIG INSIDE JOKE on us all...

Kash karried away; tax receipts Madeoff with...

Anonymous said...

"Mitesh Damania said...
Elizabeth is no way competent. She doesn't know critical information! She couldn't answer half on Jon's questions. She looked like Alberto Gonzales."

You, Sir, have clearly demonstrated again and again that you are an asshole, and frankly, I don't know who you look like except possibly Groucho Marx...

This may not be Dr. Warrens Best Interview, but I invite everyone else but the prescient Mr. Nosejob poster here to go to www.cop.senate.gov and take a look for yourself and decide if Dr. Warren is 'no way competent'.

OR you can continue to listen to dipshit H1B's like this poster for your news or better yet, go to Fox.

Fuck You, Nosejob. Get a Life (preferrably out-of-the USA.).

Dickhead.

Anonymous said...

how is she competent? she couldnt even remember the name of one of the acronyms that she DID know about (no geithner didnt keep that from her) ..

and then she makes this face like its cute or something. everytime she was like "oh im so cute i dont know this or that" i felt like hurling.

lololol america has become a joke lololol its so cute!!

Anonymous said...

Sure, here's your "competent people":

NYT -- The man leading the Obama administration’s efforts to restructure the auto industry has been described in Securities and Exchange Commission documents as having arranged for his investment firm to pay more than $1 million to obtain New York State pension business.

The investment executive is Steven Rattner, co-founder of the Quadrangle Group, the prominent private equity firm.

The S.E.C. complaint, filed as part of an expansive state and federal investigation into corruption at the state pension fund, details the efforts of Quadrangle to gain business from the pension fund beginning in 2004.

The person who received most of the $1 million-plus payment has been indicted, accused of selling access to the fund.

Mr. Rattner did not respond to messages seeking comment. A Treasury Department spokeswoman did not address the allegations, but said in a statement, “During the transition, Mr. Rattner made us aware of the pending investigation.”
http://tinyurl.com/dbgk3e

ApleAnee said...

She's ugly.
She's hot (sarcasm).
Krugman with boobs.
She looked like Alberto Gonzales.
"oh im so cute i dont know this or that"

The woman has the balls to go up against Goldman, Citi, WF & WB, and all you losers can do is make cracks about her looks?

S&A always makes fun of the Idol retards. Apparently, they are all reading S&A between Idol episodes.

You people belong in the upcoming soup lines. You can make cracks about the hotties that are dishing up your gruel.

Anonymous said...

Number of Paying and Non-Paying Tax Returns for 2005 (latest, Source IRS):

Paying Returns = 90,593,079

Non-Paying Returns = 43,779,599
http://tinyurl.com/dywhyd

Gimme Cheeeese, Obamy & Barney Frank!!! More illiterate breeders for the productive class to support, please!!!

Ohhh yeah, we're so radical...look look, we're foaming through the mouth while working at our cubicles, wearing suit and tie, after a 15% pay cut. Someone hold us down with a straight jacket, because we're crazyyyyy!!! Watch out for my dangerous Nerf arrows and lava lamp...I'm soooo radical!!! Danger!!! Someone put me on Olbermann's worser person of the world list. I'm ripping my financial reports and rubbing on my wool suit before opening my PC...that's some radical sh!t!!! Call the black ops, I'm going bazerk!

Watch out Warren, this is how radical we are:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtD4mn9CeH4

Anonymous said...

She is from Harvard! Training grounds of the Illuminati. However her books are fairly good.

seattleMoose said...

Yoski nailed it...nuf said.

Anonymous said...

"JaneZ said...
The woman has the balls to go up against Goldman, Citi, WF & WB, and all you losers can do is make cracks about her looks?

You people belong in the upcoming soup lines. You can make cracks about the hotties that are dishing up your gruel."

Amen.

The people posting here have consistently proven that someone with an internet connection and a mouse do not make a smart commentator. It's getting worse daily.

I would LOVE to watch someone as stupid and ignorant as poster Mr. Nose here debate Professor Warren, 1 on 1 om any topic except camels and roadside bombs, Winner takes all, loser gets immediately deported back to shitstan where they crawled out from on a bannana truck to sneak into the US and baned permanently from re-enter.

THINK about it, Geniuses.

Mitesh Damania said...

It's amazing that the coward dumbass anonymous posters keep critizing me for pointing out the obvious. SHEMP DIDN'T HAVE THE ANSWERS. Whether it's her or the system, who cares? Just look at Jon cover cup his forehead with both hands.

You know if you keep this up, the shitty hellhole you talk about will happen exactly where you live. And don't believe that you've done anything amazing in your life to improve the country. You're just a breeder and consumer of products other people produce with their sweat and tears. You're not even a footnote in history and you won't be missed. So shut up with your racist rants.

And I bet your neighbors love to live next to assholes like you. Nice try with the swiftboating btw.

Reality said...

This person shows the reason why we are in so much trouble: The presumption of perfect knowledge.

Anyone who suggests "smart regulation" is the answer should be shipped to Cuba or North Korea, and try out their "smart regulation" for a few decades and prove that their "smart regulation" is indeed smart at all. After all, the all-mighty regulatory framework is already in place, so they don't even have to hire new bureacrats to enforce their "smart" regulations. It's ludicrous to think that Cuba, North Korea, and the former soviet union became economic basket cases because their central planners were not "smart" enough.

People make mistakes . . . often not even entirely the fault of their own. For example: borrowing money to start a horse cab company was a decent business idea in 1905 . . . but the decision became a huge mistake by 1907, when automobile became available and becoming cheaper every year! No "smart" regulators could put in place a regulation to ban lending to horse cab companies in 1905!

When banks started failing because the horse cab companies couldn't make payments, a central bank regulator's "smart" solution would be making money cheaper, so it would be easier for horse cab businesses to service their debt. What happens simultaneously is that automobile businesses also expand faster under the cheaper money! taking more market share from horse cab businesses even faster! Eventually, market reality catches up, the bubble burst. The horse cab companies and banks lent money to them is in even worse shape than they had been before the monetary expansion.

Companies do go bust, just like new companies are born every day, as their product and service mix change, the desire of the population change, and the technology for delivering up goods and services change. There can even be simultaneous failures in regions. However, widespread economy-wide drastic booms and busts are the result of regulators mismanaging money supply.

What Elizabeth fails to understand is that, prolonged period of no bank failure is a very dangerous thing: it make people forget counter party risks! That's the very reason behind the current bust. The public and regulators thought the Maestro Greenspan finally banished boom-and-bust, just like people in the late 1920's thought the new spangled FED banished boom-and-bust forever. That kind of mentality takes plae usually right before the really big bust takes place!

Paul E. Math said...

I have to agree with Mitesh and JaneZ and disagree with Mitesh.

Not to be the 'politically correct police' but the racist rants on Mitesh are, in my book, out of order. Mitesh is dead wrong about Elizabeth Warren but the racist ad hominem is pointless and diminishes this blog.

Per JaneZ comments, please, this is important, can people listen to what Warren is trying to communicate without thinking about what it would be like to nail her? If we were talking about Kendra Todd or Connie Degroot then, by all means, let's play 'f, marry, kill'. But not Elizabeth Warren.

Back to Mitesh - Warren was on a comedy show and she was playing to the crowd. Google her and you will see that she is as serious as a heart attack. Having studied contract law and corporate law I can tell you that the subjects she taught at harvard involve far greater complexity than the questions she received from John Stewart. Warren had to massively dumb down her answers to even be partially comprehensible to John Stewart and his audience.

I'm making an issue out of this because Warren is a principled person with answers and you are passing up a prime opportunity for enlightenment if you dismiss her this quickly.

Anonymous said...

Lesson learned from the financial crisis

The truth of this world is that those, who, through stupidity, greed, and fraud, dig themselves into a hole, will keep digging deeper until they hit bedrock and run out of options. This is what happened with Bernard Madoff: he must have known for years his ponzi scheme was doomed to collapse, but he kept it going until he was down to his last 140 million. The United States, like Bernard Madoff, has for years been digging itself into a hole, and the fed's use of currency swaps to boost the dollar is the final part of this process. Unfortunately, the US, like Madoff, is about to hit bedrock.



http://tinyurl.com/d22m24

I have said it once and I will say it again. All of this financial destruction is being done on purpose and is a plan.

Mitesh Damania said...

A better Elizabeth Warren interview. She won't say it was fraud or corruption though.

These banks needs to stay alive. They are the tools of empire.

http://www.askbutwhy.com/2009/04/elizabeth-warren-come-out-and-say-it.html

Anonymous said...

People: memorize this persons wise comment:


"I have said it once and I will say it again. All of this financial destruction is being done on purpose and is a plan."

Paul E. Math said...

Good video, Mitesh.

"There is no justification for not being straight with the American people" - Elizabeth Warren

"We can't let a group of really smart people go off in a room and lock the door and make all the decisions about what happens to our economy and then come back and tell us how big a check to write. It can't work that way." - Elizabeth Warren.

Anonymous said...

HA HA
Listen to the sheeple coo about Lizzie.
Ah yes. If you lend money to the needy, you're a predator. If you refuse to lend money to the needy, you discriminate.
Lizzie has all the answers.
Maxed Out, Credit Slips, et al...Karl would be proud.

Anton Chiguhr

Anonymous said...

Lizzie suffers from the disease oft called lawyeritis. She thinks she's an economist... and is convinced she knows everything about everything.

hahaha - I'm having fun.

Anton Chiguhr

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