2009: The year the Democratic Party died (Ryan Cooper in The Week)
I read Ryan Cooper's article 2009: The year the Democratic Party died and I was awash in a melancholy nostalgia, not the happy kind of nostalgia of first puppies, high school proms, big promotion, etc. but the kind of reminiscence of the sort prompted by your doctor asking "when did you first notice this?"When did you get the first awful twinge that all may not be as you hoped?
Cooper does a great job of defining the opportunity lost and squandered by the Obama administration when it came into power immediately after the financial meltdown. His posits a puniness of vision in judging the resources necessary to right the economic ship when the Austerians carried the day over the Keynsians as exemplified by Paul Krugman:
In the early months of the Obama administration, when it seemed like the world was falling apart, this logic gained much purchase, leading to the passage of the Recovery Act stimulus package. But even then Krugman and company ran headlong into a problem of ideology. Centrist Democratic senators insisted, for no reason other than sticker shock, that the stimulus could only be so big — not even close to the estimated size of the economic hole left by the collapse. Krugman's arguments that it should be massively larger than that estimate — in order to hedge against an underestimation of the size of the collapse, which was prescient indeed — fell on deaf ears.
And after the first stimulus failed to restore full employment, the ideology problem got much worse. The D.C. political and media elite, including President Obama and most other Democratic big shots, became absolutely obsessed with cutting the deficit. The ensuing austerity (much of it caused by post-2010 Republican obstruction, to be fair) dramatically slowed the recovery. It is only in the last year that unemployment has declined to a reasonably good level, and the fraction of prime working-age people with a job is still worse than the bottom of the previous two recessions. What's more, the fruits of the recovery have been highly unequal, with much of the income flowing to the top 1 percent, and most rural places left out. (Sound familiar?)
Along with the failure to provide a large enough stimulus, Cooper than proceeds to one of the biggest breaks of faith with the American public, the complete and absolute failure of the Obama administration to deal with the rampant and overt law-breaking of the financial and mortgage industries during the foreclosure crisis. Cooper cites David Dayan's great investigative work Chain of Title, which documents that in order to actually execute the foreclosures, the financial firms were involved in a kind of sweeping and expansive criminality never before seen, or as Cooper describes it "whole floors of people committing crimes all day long" as they perpretrated the multiple document frauds that were a necessity in harvesting the fruits of their own crimes, the foreclosures. 9 Million people lost their homes, and the industry received some slap on the wrist regulatory fines.
Of the nine million people losing their homes, a large number of them knew that they were the victims of multiple predatory and fraudulent industries and they stood by in shock as they watched the Party and administration they had pegged their hopes for rescue on, abandon them. The President willingly placed himself between the bankers and the pitchforks.
I recall this period very very well and all the information was out there in the open - the notary frauds, the service frauds, the document frauds, the perjuries offered in bankruptcy courts, the securities frauds when titles were never transferred to the underlying trusts, etc. etc. Cooper notes something I have long commented on, how the individual state attorneys probes were swept up and co-opted by the Justice Department, to be ultimately buried in favor of the aforementioned "cost of doing business" fines in which almost no individual banker or firm which precipitated and benefitted from the crisis was punished. In fact, their bad behavior was literally rewarded with trillions of dollars.
My personal crisis of faith with the Obama administration and Democrats in general had its inception in these events. I remember actually thinking the specific thought, "Oh ho, there's a new sheriff in town (Obama), and these predators will finally be brought to justice" and driving and singing and smiling along with the Byrds singing "The Times They Are a Changing" in my car the day after Obama was elected. Honestly, I cringe at the memory. But that's because I was too naive to know that the AG put in charge of putting away boatloads of white collar criminals actually had a background in white collar defense and had authored the the very concept of "too big to jail". Huh, the joke was on me.
But the last laugh was really on the Democrats who thus threw away almost from the getgo any previous history or credibility they had created of being the protectorate of the working classes. And those last final cynical chickens came home to roost last week.
Comments
The Democrats have become part of the problem and it's
not our place to help them fix their pro-war, pro-MIC, anti-worker stances.
They should be offering the voters attractive candidates who are committed to solving the existential problems facing the nation and the world. Instead we got Obama and Clinton and now Shumer will be the face of the Democrats most people see on the tv.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Thanks for the essay and the link. Very informative.
Personally, I am ready for pitchforks myself after reading that.
After my injury I was forced to accept a medical retirement from my department.
3 months after that my wife got laid off from the small rural community hospital she worked at.
We lived in a tiny town of under 2200 people about 97 or so miles from the next closest city.
There were really only 3 sources of employment for the most part. The mines, the prison, or the ranches/feed lot.
None of which I could do and were not appropriate for my wife's skills or abilities either.
So we relocated across the country to stay with family, used our savings to cover the mortgage until we could get tenants in place (took 3 months) in an effort to maintain our financial obligations and not lose our home as it was our only significant investment/asset.
Long story short (well shorter at least) we got tenants in and stayed current with our mortgage. Right up until they broke lease and suddenly moved out after not paying for the previous 3 months rent.
Our savings were virtually exhausted, as shortly after we had tenants in place we rented one near my family until we could decide where we were gonna relocate while waiting for my wife to finish her degree and just had placed a large security deposit plus first and last months rent on a small place in New Jersey.
We managed to find additional renters, but by the time we got them in place we were 4 months behind on the mortgage.
I contacted the bank immediately upon the tenants breaking lease, tried to work with them through the whole process, etc...
Initially they were pretty responsive, I was only about $6k behind and was working on a deal with them where I was going to pay them $4k of it immediately and then just asked that they let me pay the rest off over a 3 month period on top of my regular mortgage payment. (Would have left us incredibly strapped, but what can you do?)
I didn't here a response back for several days, so I called and left a couple messages.
Then I got a call from one of my tenants, saying that they had come home for lunch that day (Both were teachers at a nearby school.) and found a vehicle with an property appraisal company advertisement on it parked in front of the house and a guy walking around taking photos and measurements of the property with one of those wheeled counters.
They wanted to know if I was getting it appraised to sell because if I was considering putting it on the market they would possibly be interested in purchasing it because they really loved it and the view it had.
Well, since I hadn't hired them I called the company to see who did. They wouldn't answer and just stonewalled me even though they had been on MY property without permission.
Then a couple days later I get a call from the bank saying that they had rejected my offer to get current, that I had to send the whole thing at once or they would return the check, and if I didn't do so they were going to repossess the home.
Then two days later I get another call from my tenants saying that they came home and found a little printout on the door saying that the home was potentially subject to foreclosure, but no other info on it, no contact info or anything, and my tenants were very concerned.
Their lease was going to be up in another 6 weeks, (Which the bank knew because I was keeping them in the loop the entire time.) they hadn't resigned it yet, and were now concerned about doing so because they didn't want to get evicted if the bank foreclosed on the property.
They eventually decided not to, because of those fears.
In a panic to try to get this dealt with in a manner that at least wouldn't be a total loss lead me to call a real estate broker that I knew in the area and asked him to do a BPO for me. (Estimate of value.)
Much to my surprise I learned that my home not only wasn't under water, but was worth about 24k more than I owed on it.
Then the real stone walling began, and everything clicked.
They went from trying to work with me when it looked like my home was under water but when it came out that it wasn't (due to the rural location, virtually no new building occurred during the boom, so we had no real "Bust" either.) they transformed to completely obstructionist.
Despite all my efforts I lost my home, all because they wouldn't work with me over a lousy 2 fucking grand...
Oh, and because of greed too.
I later learned that the banks "Asset Managers" get paid bonuses based on the amount of value they recover for the month from properties that they were liquidating and the fact that mine was so far from under water probably bought some asshole a nice vacation somewhere.
Honestly, If we had half the balls of our nations founders, we would have tossed those bankers in the Harbor like they were tea in Boston...
Instead, we trusted in and waited for our government to do the right thing.
Then the Democratic leadership fucked us too, but I stayed a good Democrat and took the betrayal as being from just one or two people at the top of the party that would either eventually be gone or replaced.
Then the party really exposed itself this year and I finally woke up to the fact that the entire party is so full of corruption as to be completely un-salvageable.
So when I hear these fucking Clintonites try to claim that my disgust with the party is, "just because your guy lost." I want to spit in their faces while choking the bastards out.
But I don't.
Because it's not their fault they are gullible rubes.
After all, as my sig shows, I was right there with them once.
But I also like to think I was no where near being such a dickhead about it as they are.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
I am really sorry you were screwed over so badly and this
should never happen in our country. Yours is a very rough story - Best of luck to you & your wife.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Thanks. But at the end of the day I guess everything sorta works
out in the end.
My wife's schooling got delayed, but we did finally get her first degree done, we ended up in a beautiful place that's warm and sunny so I try to look on the upside of it and not dwell on the downsides, but sometimes they do surface.
The whole experience really sucked, but in some ways it probably made me a better person in the long run. For example I know I am now a LOT more connected with the people that have had their lives ruined by corporate greed, those that suffered huge financial losses due to unavoidable circumstances that they couldn't possibly prevent and it has made me much more motivated to fight corruption and engage in politics which I had previously only really paid a little more than superficial attention to, other than in areas directly related to labor/unions during the lead in to an election cycle.
Sure, it made me a bit tougher, but I also feel it made me a bit harder.
The first I can deal with and welcome, the second? Well I don't like that one at all...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
I congratulate you on your being able to roll with the
punches and bounce back. Good for you both.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
That's a whole lot of resilience
I'm not sure I could've done that, I'm glad you and yours were able to.
Good luck to you both.
No state is in a position to define moral values. Unless it is a totalitarian one. The third reich and Stalin's regime dictated principles, truths and opinions, no state, unless it has fascist tendencies dictates principles, ways of thinking, beliefs or proper values.
Prof. Liebowitz
I believe we are there.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Alphalop I am so sorry to hear your story
one that was repeated all over the country in every single town and village and city and country. At one point it was estimated that 1 out of every 12 homes in the nation was underwater and/or behind in payments. Some mortgage servicers actually forced people who wouldn't have defaulted into defaults. And like I always point out, what happened was no mystery - local newspapers were doing some good reporting, TV shows, websites, Congressional hearings etc. So to see my President tell people that nothing illegal ever happened was to watch some guy who I thought was supposed to be the most brilliant guy in the world, full of Hope and Change, tell me that up was down.
As the Ryan Cooper article also points out, the money set aside to help homeowners was never deployed for that purpose, mostly because their programs were so poorly designed and there was no good integration between the mortgage holders (who often couldn't even be determined accurately because of the chicanery in the bonds and the chain of title) the servicers, and the government and the homeowner. If you want to send your blood pressure through the ceiling, read what the mortgage and financial industries did to the integrity of the American title system, once considered to be the best in the world in the Dayan book.
I have often wondered how many people may have killed themselves over the stress of losing their home in the Kafka nightmare in which they found themselves when the good guys just looked away.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
I too have wondered this...
Check out this article and the date that the trend started.
Then look at when Bill Clinton's policies started taking their full impact.
Yep, I think you are absolutely right to ponder that question, because the numbers are likely very high...
Yet more blood on the hands of the Neo's from both parties and their corrupt, self serving ways...
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Probably many
I know when I was on the Olympic Peninsula and a volunteer medic back in the 90s when the lumber industry collapsed after Bill Clinton signed a deal to ship raw logs to Japan the suicide rate was 3 a month. They didn't start doing that until they realized we would get no help trying to figure out a new economic plan. They really really wanted everyone to move and sell there houses for pennies on the dollar, no mortgages here. Not to be all CT but being rural it often feels like they are trying to force everybody into the cities.
An appraisal from Jan 2010
How to Squander the Presidency in One Year by David Michael Green:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2010/01/22/how-squander-presidency-one...
More on the banksters
and the Obama administration in this article from the Atlantic.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Marcy Wheeler’s short post on Lanny Breuer is also illuminating
https://www.emptywheel.net/2012/09/14/lanny-breuer-admits-that-economist...
Here's something that'll give you a chuckle....
I still laugh at this video and blog post on Breuer (due to my somewhat perverse sense of humor):
And, here's a link that's a bit more serious about Breuer.
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
Obama/Holder treated DOJ as mob protection racket.
They went to the banks and offered them protection for a fee (the penalties). it was no different than some crooked cops extorting money from street drug dealers in exchange for not to arresting them.
I have to assume that the Mexican drug cartels went back into money laundering bidness with HSBC or other banks after seeing how Holder let HSBC off the hook.
Thanks for that link gulfgal.
The good news is that we know how we were screwed and by whom and the historical record is forming. Articles like that will form part of the sourcing and narrative for future historians just like movies like The Big Short. A lot of people get that what happened was not some spontaneously created financial brushfire without human agency with matches and kerosene accompanied by malice and forethought despite what we are told by our leaders.
Everytime people feel like reading, writing and communicating on blogs doesn't matter, remember that even little cogs like us are creating a historical record for contemporaneous views and reactions to what is happening in the world around us.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
I was JUST going to post that article
For me it was particularly poignant since it tracked nearly exactly in both date and issue my own transformation from Democrat to Independent and Green voter.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Me too.
Lots of people traveled that same road at the same time. What put us on the track was the early and sudden disillusionment with the Obama administration.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
Just look at 75% of my DKos posts from 2009-2011...
...there were about 500-600 of them (during those three years, alone), in fact, complete with scores of reprints from Naked Capitalism. 75%+ of those posts covered the topics discussed in this post and in the comment threads of it. (Does anyone remember the Bonddad wars? If you don't recall 'em, just ask gjohnsit, who was involved in them, as well! LOL! And now, after many years on hiatus from the place, Bonddad's returned to DKos, albeit only occasionally posting his cheerleading pieces for the Federal Reserve, once again! I wonder how many folks at DKos realize he's a lawyer who quite specifically specializes in offshore banking and tax law for wealthy folks? Loophole City!) Contrary to the sentiments of some, there was a lengthy period (actually, 5-6 years), when I invested a great deal of time there writing my OWN, original posts; but, over the past couple of years, I've learned to curb that time investment, while still getting my licks in, so to speak.
Long story short--before Obama was even inaugurated--the writing was on the wall when, in early January 2009, it was obvious that, with the appointment of Robert Rubin clones Timmy Geithner and Larry Summers, all things economic were not going to be filled with "hope" nor "change," whatsoever.
Or, as someone once joked in a comment at DKos, years ago as it related to Obama's management of the economy: "If someone told the President to jump off the roof of a 20-story building, he'd say "No," then walk down 10 flights of stairs, stop for a second, then jump out of a 10th-floor window."
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
I remember well
You did yeoman's work back then.
Here is one of mine:
A comment in your diary: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/3/14/846276/-
You closed with this caveat:
Lucky for you didn't hold your breath.
I will never forget the faces on the Republicans
when they realized that Obama was too weak and too stupid to take advantage of his mandate and majority. They were laughing and elbowing each other as he spouted asked for their cooperation on everything he did. Obama was a liar, and it showed. Bernie peeled back and exposed the entire Democratic Party for the lying, cheaters, and crooks they are.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I KNEW that the O'Bummer administration would be
built on lies when Timothy Geithner (Wall-Street protector extraordinaire) was named as the administration Treasury Secretary in December 2008. After that, it was clear to me that economic reform and criminal prosecutions would be non-starters --
The corruptocrats deserve exactly what they are getting. "Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind --"
When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.
From March 2010...
Republicans sowed the Reaganomic Winds, Obama allowed us to reap the whirlwinds.