That was quite a speech. Probably not all that, but, still.

Comments

[Andrew Brod]

I thought the Castellanos comment was silly, but that Video Cafe article's explanation is equally unpersuasive. If "many Republican operatives... all think Mitt Romney will lose," then one speech wasn't going to make the difference.

[Kim]

The floor fight was much more entertaining.

[David Wharton]

I really liked the part where he repudiated his signing of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and decried the lax mortagage lending standards that his administration encouraged and which contributed to the financial crisis that Obama inherited.

You don't see that kind of political courage every day.

[cheripickr (AKA worst person on the internet)]

...and the chairman has determined that the "Ayes" carry by the 2/3 majority. the motion passes.

[David Wharton]

I also liked the part where he admitted that he had lied when he said the middle class had made big gains under his administration, and pointed out that income inequality between the 1% and the rest of us, which had been getting better under George H. W. Bush, really got revved up during his tenure.

His taking credit for popping the dot-com bubble in order to fix that, however, was not really believable.

[cheripickr (AKA worst person on the internet)]

It was all a dress rehearsal for Hillary 2016. Love the graph though. The rich get richer while the poor get a little richer. Not quite the meme we've been fed is it? Bill should have plugged the success of the trickle down that occurred on his watch.

[Andrew Brod]

"The rich get richer while the poor get a little richer. Not quite the meme we've been fed is it?"

This certainly doesn't contradict the liberal "meme" on increasing income inequality. After all, real incomes are supposed to rise over time, and the 16% growth the poor saw between 1979 and 2007 isn't big at all by historical standards.

So apparently it's okay that real after-tax incomes for the poor grew 0.5% per year between 1979 and 2007, while those of the rich grew 4.9% per year (and much more than that over the last dozen or so years of that period). Good to know.

[polifrog]

For a moment I thought this might be a thread acknowledging that the RNC occurred.

I stand corrected.

It appears there was only one convention -- and apparently it was Bubba's.

[cheripickr (AKA worst person on the internet)]

Yes it is OK. Not that I would ever expect you to understand that.
"Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all. Sloth may not seem that enjoyable, nor anger either, but giving way to deep laziness has its pleasures, and the expression of anger entails a release that is not without its small delights. In recompense, envy may be the subtlest--perhaps I should say the most insidious--of the seven deadly sins. Surely it is the one that people are least likely to want to own up to, for to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, small-hearted. It may also be the most endemic." Joseph Epstein.

[Andrew Brod]

No, it's not okay, in the sense of being a true or false statement. You believe it to be okay. I should have worded my comment differently. Whether it's okay isn't an eternal truth, it's a value judgment. Your value judgment is that it's okay for our economic system to favor the very wealthy even though that beneficence hasn't generated much in the way of broader economic benefits.

Not everyone shares your values, and the reason they don't isn't as simple as your caricature claims (i.e. that it's merely envy).

[cheripickr (AKA worst person on the internet)]

Fair enough. then I will reword my comment as well: It's not inherently un-OK.

[Ed Cone]

DW, this cartoon (which ran in today's N&R) made the point about Glass Steagall well. I tried to hit on the same theme in my recent better-off-four-years-ago post.

But for all of Clinton's many flaws and errors, political and personal, people look back with some reasonable fondness on his era (I'm a big believer that presidents get undue credit and blame for much of what happens on their watch, but, there it is). And beyond that, he is quite a good speaker, and, I thought, made some very cogent points.

[Fred Gregory]

Au contraire.

Here's what Clinton failed to say about
Bubba's Bubble

" In other words, Clinton won’t mention a whole bunch of inconvenient facts — about what brought the prosperity of the 1990s, and how he himself helped put America on the path to the 2008 financial crisis.

He’ll tell us that a vote for President Obama will bring back the glory days of the 1990s — but those days weren’t so great until Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 elections. That’s when Clinton turned right, and joined the GOP to put a hold on spending and lower taxes — allowing the technology boom to sustain the US economy through the Clinton years.

It’s an absurd distortion of reality that the Bush-era tax cuts or spending on Iraq were even remotely responsible for the 2008 banking collapse and the Great Recession — though both claims are now core to the left’s talking points in defense of President Obama’s failures as president (and largely unchallenged by a sympathetic media).

Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.

The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking."

[polifrog]

Brod:

So apparently it's okay that real after-tax incomes for the poor grew 0.5% per year between 1979 and 2007...

Do you think it is honest to pick those two dates?

What if the span of time ended not in 2007 but included the current malaise?

What if it didn't begin in 1979, but rather began in 1986?

What if the span both began in 1986 and ended as of today?

What in your teasing of the data reflects that my middle-class upbringing was comparatively poorer than the lifestyle available to the poor today?

How much government assistance to the poor, which has increased markedly since the 70's, is not reflected in your "data"?

[Bill Yaner]

Great to see so many coming from the right on this thread as firm advocates of increased regulation of the banking industry and reinstalling the seperation of commercial banks from securities investment. They must have LOVED Elizabeth Warren's speech.

Sarcasm alert: there's no doubt in my mind that the Tea Party driven GOP is the one to get that job done.

[Andrew Brod]

Frog, my "data" came from a study cited by DW. Bitch at him.

In any case, as the graph shows, if we start the clock ticking later than 1979, the difference between gains by the rich and gains by the poor would have been greater.

[polifrog]

Brod:

In any case, as the graph shows, if we start the clock ticking later than 1979, the difference between gains by the rich and gains by the poor would have been greater.

In 79 under high personal income tax rates many incorporated to lower taxes overall. After the changes in tax rates in which personal taxes were reduced the wealthy shifted back to personal income taxes.

Measuring income via income taxes from 1979 captures that shift in book keeping as an increase in income that didn't really occur.

But such are lies and your statistics...

[Andrew Brod]

The graph didn't measure income via income taxes.

[Roch]

lol

[Spag]

"So apparently it's okay that real after-tax incomes for the poor grew 0.5% per year between 1979 and 2007, while those of the rich grew 4.9% per year (and much more than that over the last dozen or so years of that period)."

I didn't realize there was a scale or government rule in place. Should we decrease the rate of growth of the rich to bring it down to the rate of growth for the poor, or increase the rate of growth for the poor to raise it to the level of the rich? Is that how we should design tax policy? What happens if after-tax incomes of the poor increases more than the rich, do the poor have to give some of it back?

I suppose the incomes of people in the tech industry grew more rapidly than everyone else back in the 90's. I guess that was inherently unfair, too. How dare they decide to go into a growth industry like that!

And how dare Andrew Brod go and get his Phd knowing it could result in him making more money over the long run than the guy who works at the counter at Autozone.

Freedom entails the right to make choices that have consequences. The fairness is in the equal right to make that choice.

You have no idea how nutty and out of touch with reality and common-sense this whole Left wing economic inequality argument truly is. It is foreign to the founding principles of this country.

[polifrog]

Brod

The graph didn't measure income via income taxes.

Except for the fact that according to the CBO the graph being based on CBO data it does.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Statistics of Income (SOI) are the primary sources of data for CBOs estimates of population and household income. The SOI, produced by the Internal Revenue Service, reports much of the information that taxpayers provide on their individual income tax returns.

[polifrog]

Link fixed and statement clarified:

Except for the fact that according to the CBO, the graph being based on CBO data, it is derived from income information.

[Andrew Brod]

Yes, the income data are derived from income information.

[Tony Wilkins]

Quite a communicator but the finger wagging reminded me of...well, him getting a lewinski.
He isn't the only person who has mistakenly said President O Biden.

[Dan]

It doesn't matter. Breaded circuses and wall-to-wall disingenuous BS. We've been had.

"Ultimately, we’re seeing that both parties are rotten. This rot is rooted in economics. Despite the bitter rhetoric, Obama and Romney are basically in agreement about how the country should be governed. Both Romney and Obama want to see the same core economic trends continue. These are, most significantly, a transition to an energy system based on hydro-fracking of natural gas and oil deposits (and some renewable energy), a large national security state, the sale of public assets to private interests, globalized financial flows, a preservation of the capital structure of the large banks, free rein of white-collar behavior and austerity in public budgets."

[polifrog]

Brod:

Yes, the income data are derived from income information.

Actually we are not talking about income data, we are talking about "the graph" linked up thread. In the fine print CBO data is referenced as a source.

The CBO is clear as to where it got that data:

The Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Statistics of Income (SOI) are the primary sources of data for CBOs estimates of population and household income. The SOI, produced by the Internal Revenue Service, reports much of the information that taxpayers provide on their individual income tax returns.

I note that using income taxes as a date source imparts error due to changes in the income tax code over time. One such introduction of error could give the appearance that high income individuals are suddenly making more when their incomes had not changed at all.

You disagree with the CBO, though:

The graph didn't measure income via income taxes.

Why do you disagree with the CBO?

[Andrew Brod]

It's time for Roch to LOL again.

[polifrog]

Agreed.

[Fred Gregory]

Another take on inconvenient facts omitted from the speech for the ages that has the MSM swooning and gushing.

He helped build it

"... let's recall: the key decisions that inflated the housing bubble of the 2000s - and that laid waste to the US economy in 2008 -- were taken under Bill Clinton's administration: the decision to leave derivative trading unregulated, the decision to allow deposit-taking institutions to engage in proprietary trading, the pressure on banks to relax mortgage lending standards, the decision to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow enormously large thanks to the implicit subsidy of the government guarantee of their bonds and borrowing.

If President Obama inherited a mess not of his own making, it should be remembered of whose making the mess was."

[justcorbly]

Didn't watch it, but I hear Clinton used actual facts and numbers and such.

I assume he was going for the tiny sliver of voters who claim they are still undecided. He doesn't have to persuade very many of those to make a big difference.

(Meanwhile, if the "key decisions" that prompted the housing buble were taken "under" -- whatever that means -- the Clinton administration, then was not the succeeding administration obligated to reverse those bad decisions?)

[polifrog]

The Doc. uses numbers, justcorbly, but they are not actual facts, even though they look all sciency and stuff.

[justcorbly]

Frog, you are a believer, not someone interested in facts.

Meanwhile, a personal illustration of the mania that infected almost everyone during the housing bubble:

I'd just returned from overseas to D.C., and planned on going back out as soon as possible.I didn't own a house at the time.

I had no idea what was going on with housing. But, I soon learned. More than one otherwise rational person came into my office trying to convince me that I was crazy if I didn't buy a houose before going back out. I asked why I should buy a house that I wouldn't live in, and then need to pay a management firm to look after the house, try to lease it, and try to keep tenants in hand.

None of that mattered, they said, because I could borrow on the house, and borrow again every year or so as the thing appreciated. Free money, so to speak.

I ignored their advice, happily. Some of them are not so happy.

[polifrog]

justcorbly

Frog, you are a believer, not someone interested in facts.

That you make that claim without a logical preamble, logical closing or any supporting facts is an indication of your belief.

In the thread above I point to the CBO as proof that Brod is a stuffed shirt who cites others without questioning their results. Hell Brod even refers me to those he quotes when I question what he parrots.

And you call me the believer??

Like Roach you're a Brodian lackey and believers all in that which looks sciency.

[justcorbly]

Yes, I should rephrase that, Frog. It was unnecessarily harsh. I don't know, for a fact, that you aren't interested in facts. I do judge from your posts that you have a firm and fixed world view that I have to admit I sometimes can't figure out.

I usually skip over all the to'ing and fro'ing between you and Brod, et al. I may, though, get myself a teeshirt emblazoned with "Brodian Lackey!" People will think I'm in an obscure Scottish cricket club or something.

That said, I don't think citing economic data that's mapped to any particular administration is especially useful. Certainly not if the intent is to damn one administration for messing everything up or laud another for bringing in utopia.

For one thing, the timespan is too short. For another thing, a new president's first term is half over before his policies have even begun to have an impact.

The trend this thread appears to be more or less about -- the wealthy getting richer while most everyone else's income more or less stagnates, i.e., inequality -- is a trend that began almost 40 years ago. Comparisons made over that timespan would be more useful. And they would show that both parties have worked at screwing the pooch.

[bubba]

"Like Roach you're a Brodian lackey and believers all in that which looks sciency."

Actually, corbs is more like the Howard Zinn-inspired historical revisionist.

[cheripickr (AKA worst person on the internet)]

At the risk of attracting finger-gag-pukes and "get a room"s, while I hardly ever agree with you Corbs, I have come to respect the sincerity of your own world view and how you express it. Poli, FWIW, I see little similarity between Corbs and Brod other than a fair amount of shared views, and none whatsoever with Roch.

[Fred Gregory]

Corbs, there is an answer why repeated efforts of Bush and the GOP to rein in the excesses of the CRA, Fannie and Freddie went nowhere during his administration – fierce opposition and demagoguery from Democrats supported by big lobbying dollars from the GSE’s. It’s easy to read up on the details if you have an interest.
Remember who was in control of Congress after 2006

BTW, McCain also made many attempts at preventing the loose lending standards at Fannie/Freddie, but was also stymied by Frank and his cohorts.

He really did anticipate the problems with GSEs and saw them as a systemic financial problem. He even sponsored legislation to deal with it:

"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."

McCain later

“Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. “The influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside the Beltway, old boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable and I warned about it a couple of years ago.”

McCain deserves credit for being on the right side of this. Meanwhile, Obama in just four years in the Senate raked more contributions from Fannie and Freddie than any other Senator in the last 19 years — save Dodd, who’s pretty demonstrably in the pocket of Big Mortgage.

[polifrog]

Doc Worst:

Poli, FWIW, I see little similarity between Corbs and Brod other than a fair amount of shared views, and none whatsoever with Roch.

Really? If not for Brod's patina of science, Corb's reliance on artiness, and Roch's flakery I wouldn't be able to tell one from another. Well, that and the "signatures".