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..Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Cunning Sleight of Hand
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 13, 2010

That Republican leaders can pass off deceptive faux-populism as “pitch-perfect populism” is in part a testament to the blinding intensity of the economic anger and anxiety roiling the country. It also shows the power of an incessant bumper-sticker fiction to take root when ineffectually challenged — and, most crucially, the inability of Democrats to make a persuasive case that they offer anything better.

The Obama White House remains its own worst enemy. No sooner did Palin’s Tea Party speech end than we learned of the president’s tone-deaf interview expressing admiration for “very savvy businessmen” like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. With that single remark, Obama ingeniously identified himself with the most despised aspects of both Washington and Wall Street — the bailout and the bonuses. He still doesn’t understand that to most Americans, Blankfein is a savvy businessman only in the outrageous sense that he managed to grab his bonus some 17 months after the taxpayers had the good grace to save him from going out of business altogether.

Instead of praising bailed-out bankers, the president might have more profitably instructed his press secretary to drop the lame Palin jokes and dismantle the disinformation campaign her speech delivered to a national audience. Palin, unlike Obama, put herself on the side of the angels, railing against Wall Street’s bonuses and bailout, even though she and John McCain had supported TARP during the campaign. Palin also bragged that she had “joined with other conservative governors” in “rejecting some” stimulus dollars when in reality she rejected only a symbolic 3 percent of those dollars — soon to be overruled by the Alaskan Legislature, which took every last buck.

This disingenuousness is old hat for Palin, who hired lobbyists to pursue $27 million in earmarks while serving as mayor of the town of Wasilla (pop. 6,700) and loudly defended her state’s “bridge to nowhere” until her politically opportunistic flip-flop. What’s new is the extent to which her test-marketed dishonesty has now become the template for her peers in the G.O.P. “populist” putsch. Adopting her example — while unencumbered by her political baggage — the party is exploiting the Tea Party movement to rebrand itself as un-Washington while quietly conducting business as usual in the capital.

Ivytalk wrote:Sounds like old Frank is jealous because his fellow Harvardian Blankfein makes more money than he does. Actually, I knew Lloyd slightly in college, and his is a true rags-to-riches story.

That said, I am troubled by Palin's flip-flop on earmarks. Few states have benefited more than Alaska from federal largesse. I continue to believe that she'll flame out before 2012.

The Greatest Non-Apology of All Time

“While we regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice, we are proud of the way our firm managed the risk it assumed on behalf of our client before and during the financial crisis,” he said.

via Goldman Regrets ‘Market Euphoria’ That Led to Crisis – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.

Anyone else out there find himself doubled over laughing after reading Goldman, Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein’s “apology” for his bank’s behavior leading up to the financial crisis? Has an act of contrition ever in history been more worthless and insincere? Even Gary Ridgway did a better job of sounding genuinely sorry at his sentencing hearing — and he was a guy who had sex with dead prostitutes because it was cheaper than paying live ones.

Looking at Blankfein’s one-sentence apology, I’m struck in particular by a couple of phrases:

While we regret that we participated in the market euphoria…

Really, Lloyd? You “participated” in the market euphoria? You didn’t, I don’t know, cause the market euphoria? By almost any measurement, Goldman was a central, leading player in the subprime housing bubble story. Just yesterday I was talking to Guy Cecala at Inside Mortgage Finance, the trade publication that tracks statistics in the mortgage lending industry. He said that at the height of the boom, in 2006, Goldman Sachs underwrote $76.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities, or 7% of the entire market. Of that $76.5 billion, $29.3 billion was subprime, which is bad enough — but another $29.8 billion was what’s called “Alt-A” paper. Alt-A mortgages are characterized, mainly, by crappy documentation and lack of equity: no income verification, no asset verification, little-to-no cash down. So while “only” 38% of the mortgage-backed securities Goldman underwrote were subprime, more than three-fourths of their securities were what is called “non-prime,” ie either subprime or Alt-A. “There’s a lot of crap in there too,” says Cecala.

Let’s be clear about what that meant. These crap/sham mortgages, a lot of them adjustable-rate deals with teaser rates that featured sudden rate hikes two or three years after closing, they would never have been possible had not someone devised a method for selling them off to secondary buyers. No local bank is going to keep millions of dollars worth of Alt-A mortgages on its books, because no sensible company lends out money to very risky customers and actually keeps those loans on its balance sheet.

So this system depended almost entirely on banks like Goldman finding ways to securitize these instruments, ie chop the mortgages up into little bits, repackage them as mortgage-backed securities like CDOs and CMOs, and sell them to unsuspecting customers on the secondary market, most of them large institutional buyers like pensions and insurance companies and workers’ unions, many of them foreigners. Most of those customers were snookered into buying this stuff because they had no idea what it was: in the case of pensions and unions particularly, a lot of these customers only bought this crap because the peculiar alchemy banks like Goldman used in devising their mortgage-backed securities made radioactive mortgages look like AAA-rated investments. (Or at least they were given these ratings by Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, ratings agencies that were financially dependent upon the very banks they were supposed to be rating — but that’s another story).


So some Dutch teachers’ union that a year before was buying ultra-safe U.S. Treasury bonds in 2006 runs into a Goldman salesman who offers them a different, “just as safe” AAA-rated investment that, at the moment anyway, just happens to be earning a much higher return than treasuries. Next thing you know, a bunch of teachers in Holland are betting their retirement nest eggs on a bunch of meth addicted “homeowners” in Texas and Arizona.

This isn’t really commerce, but much more like organized crime: it was a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the economy that wouldn’t have been possible without accomplices in the ratings agencies and regulators willing to turn a blind eye. Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald’s and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We’re eating it, they’re counting the money.

Ivytalk wrote:Sounds like old Frank is jealous because his fellow Harvardian Blankfein makes more money than he does. Actually, I knew Lloyd slightly in college, and his is a true rags-to-riches story.

That said, I am troubled by Palin's flip-flop on earmarks. Few states have benefited more than Alaska from federal largesse. I continue to believe that she'll flame out before 2012.

CID1990 wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:Sounds like old Frank is jealous because his fellow Harvardian Blankfein makes more money than he does. Actually, I knew Lloyd slightly in college, and his is a true rags-to-riches story.

That said, I am troubled by Palin's flip-flop on earmarks. Few states have benefited more than Alaska from federal largesse. I continue to believe that she'll flame out before 2012.

I agree. I see no way that someone with as many political missteps and changes in direction like her can win a party nomination unless they have the full backing of the media (at the expense of truth). Obama can slide by on questionable experience and political background, but no way Palin can.

AZGrizFan wrote:

CID1990 wrote:
I agree. I see no way that someone with as many political missteps and changes in direction like her can win a party nomination unless they have the full backing of the media (at the expense of truth). Obama can slide by on questionable experience and political background, but no way Palin can.

What's even scarier is not that we're wondering whether she'll "flame out" by 2012, but that she's still in the discussion at all.

Wedgebuster wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
What's even scarier is not that we're wondering whether she'll "flame out" by 2012, but that she's still in the discussion at all.

Because she has tits and ass smeared with what every redneck bible thumper wants to hear. She's as popular as Bud Light, appeals to the same crowd that drinks it, has about the same taste, but is easier on the eye than Rush Limbaugh.

She's a shoo in.

AZGrizFan wrote:

Wedgebuster wrote:
Because she has tits and ass smeared with what every redneck bible thumper wants to hear. She's as popular as Bud Light, appeals to the same crowd that drinks it, has about the same taste, but is easier on the eye than Rush Limbaugh.

She's a shoo in.

I drink Bud Light and she doesn't appeal to me. My brother drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. My friend drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. According to my sample set, your synopsis is incorrect.

ALPHAGRIZ1 wrote:You guys are fu*ked if you think Palin is any worse than any of the other candidates we will see in the next few years.

They are all corporate handpuppets, you gotta be pretty low on the IQ #s if you think any of them really care about our country, the fact you get into politics just means your in it for yourself to improve your own portfolio at any cost and no matter what it looks like to your constituency.

ALPHAGRIZ1 wrote:You guys are fu*ked if you think Palin is any worse than any of the other candidates we will see in the next few years.

They are all corporate handpuppets, you gotta be pretty low on the IQ #s if you think any of them really care about our country, the fact you get into politics just means your in it for yourself to improve your own portfolio at any cost and no matter what it looks like to your constituency.

CID1990 wrote:

ALPHAGRIZ1 wrote:You guys are fu*ked if you think Palin is any worse than any of the other candidates we will see in the next few years.

They are all corporate handpuppets, you gotta be pretty low on the IQ #s if you think any of them really care about our country, the fact you get into politics just means your in it for yourself to improve your own portfolio at any cost and no matter what it looks like to your constituency.

I don't question her patriotism and her supposed distance from corporate America.

That being said, I think Mitt Romney would be much better for the country than her or anyone the Democrats could put forward.

AZGrizFan wrote:

Wedgebuster wrote:
Because she has tits and ass smeared with what every redneck bible thumper wants to hear. She's as popular as Bud Light, appeals to the same crowd that drinks it, has about the same taste, but is easier on the eye than Rush Limbaugh.

She's a shoo in.

I drink Bud Light and she doesn't appeal to me. My brother drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. My friend drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. According to my sample set, your synopsis is incorrect.

BigSkyBears wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
I drink Bud Light and she doesn't appeal to me. My brother drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. My friend drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. According to my sample set, your synopsis is incorrect.

Dork!!!

I drink Bud Light and she doesn't appeal to me. My brother drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. My friend drinks Bud Light, she doesn't appeal to him. According to my sample set, your synopsis is incorrect.

That being said, I think Mitt Romney would be much better for the country than her or anyone the Democrats could put forward.

AZGrizFan wrote:

BigSkyBears wrote:
Dork!!!

Don't even go there, junior.

ALPHAGRIZ1 wrote:You guys are fu*ked if you think Palin is any worse than any of the other candidates we will see in the next few years.

They are all corporate handpuppets, you gotta be pretty low on the IQ #s if you think any of them really care about our country, the fact you get into politics just means your in it for yourself to improve your own portfolio at any cost and no matter what it looks like to your constituency.

Ivytalk wrote:Sounds like old Frank is jealous because his fellow Harvardian Blankfein makes more money than he does. Actually, I knew Lloyd slightly in college, and his is a true rags-to-riches story.

That said, I am troubled by Palin's flip-flop on earmarks. Few states have benefited more than Alaska from federal largesse. I continue to believe that she'll flame out before 2012.