Another not-so-respectful note, from Tim Heffernan at Esquire, to our Galtian masters of the financial universe:
Just a brief observation: as I write, the Dow is up one hundred fifty-plus points on the day, to something over 11,100. It is up more than 4,500 points since its recessional low point — 6626.94 on March 9, 2009 — or nearly 70 percent in less than two years. I am just guessing here, but I would bet that it has never achieved that much growth in that short a time in its history.
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In any other climate, investment banks would be crowing over their profits, and politicians would be stampeding to the microphones to claim their share of credit. But this is a recession (okay, officially it no longer is one, but as with obscenity…), and there is no advantage to bankers or politicians in pointing out the blindingly obvious: that the economic health of this country can no longer be gauged by the height of the Dow. Bragging about massive profits and fat returns at this point would be vulgar, if not outright suicidal.
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Still, it bears pointing out that Wall Street has figured out how to make money — megatons of it — in the midst of an economic disaster, and that the method does not involve job creation. Remember, too, that the Dow measures expected future value, and it is signaling that the future value of American corporations is skyrocketing at a time when 17.1 percent of eligible Americans are out of work or working reduced hours. The unemployed who are pinning their hopes to the GOP and its corporatist platform might want to ponder that for minute or two, and ask whether — to update the old saw — what’s good for Goldman is good for America.
Cris
Hey, that’s not a Beatles lyric.
Mark S.
As someone was saying the other day, at least with GM you knew what they made. I don’t know what the fuck Goldman does, and I’m not sure if our lives would be any poorer if Goldman all of the sudden disappeared from the face of the earth.
arguingwithsignposts
Note: it never could be measured by the height of the Dow, except by lazy stenographers in the business press.
Davis X. Machina
On the on hand, my 403(b) is considerably healthier than it was.
On the other hand, there’s no conceivable way in hell I can leave it untouched till I’m 59 1/2, if I’m laid off in the spring and have to draw it down to, oh, I don’t know, eat and stuff.
Which seems likely.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark S.:
I think we all know what Goldman does, actually. It’s just that we don’t think it has anything to do with productivity or real work.
Daddy-O
Goldman is in the kleptocracy biz. And business is GOOD.
What’s good for America is good for Goldman, but not necessarily the other way around. And what’s bad for America is even BETTER for Goldman…
The 1% of the super-rich who own 34% of all wealth in this country will be with us always, Republican Jesus says…
Brachiator
I stopped paying attention to the DOW around the time that I noticed that market rallies often were seen as a reaction to companies becoming “more efficient” by merging and laying off workers.
BR
As I mentioned in another thread a few days back, a large part of this is due to The Fed.
They’ve been pouring electronic money into the financial system on a weekly basis – on the order of tens of billions per week. They are buying US treasuries and preannounce which they’ll be buying. The big banks borrow from the Fed at 0% interest, buy treasuries that yield 3.5% and then sell those back to the Fed and pocket the profit. Then then either give these out as bonuses or use that profit to borrow more money from the Fed to then buy up stocks (some of which are derivatives). But the money isn’t real.
MikeJ
@arguingwithsignposts: This goes back to a discussion last week, “why I hate APR’s Marketplace.” When a company lays off 50,000 workers causing the stock market to go up and then they play “We’re in the Money” I want to kick everybody associated with the show in the nuts, or other genitalia they may have.
Odie Hugh Manatee
We have been detached from reality for too long to return to it without some major disaster, and I mean major. Extreme suffering, death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. For too long the measure of our economic well-being has been how well the top earners are doing, all the while everyone else just quietly suffers to make ends meet. We have now arrived at the point where the rich are angry because they view themselves as the real people who are suffering, that they alone matter and everything else pales beside them.
All the rich have left is to stir up hate and discontent against the ‘Other’, and this ‘other’ gets the blame for all that ails the ones they riled up. All the while the rich are quietly (and not so quietly) doing everything they can to put themselves back in power so they can finish wiping the country out. Right now, Republican supporters are little more than useful idiots, many working hard to to be as useful as they can so they can get in on some of that rich-guy-shoveling-out-the-cash- action out there before it dries up.
Too many in our government believe that if the rich are doing well then everyone else will do well. They have lost touch with the country they sought to represent, all they want to do is profit. One way or another, that is all they are looking for. They have sold out to the highest bidder and the voters have lost. Problem is that too many voters are too damned stupid to see this for what it is.
...now I try to be amused
The financial economy is the tail that wags the dog of the real economy.
Sly
Chris Coons is a fucking kung fu master.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Our Lords and Masters will create jobs* as soon as every person in America personally thanks them for being rich and not a minute before.
Or something.
Someone go ask Rich Person Expert A. Sullivan what the hell we’re supposed to do.
kommrade reproductive vigor
*Which they’ll immediately outsource, just to teach the proles some manners.
Jamie
well this is what happens when you uncouple profits from actually making anything.
MikeJ
@Jamie: The stock market going up has nothing to do with profits, merely with the expectation that you’ll be able to find a sucker who will pay more per share than you did.
Jewish Steel
@Sly:
I saw this earlier. Pretty sweet.
Some commenter mentioned that he had mastered the keeping of a straight face while O’Crazy flounders and spews. So Kung Fu Master is a pretty good characterization but maybe Zen Master is better.
Jamie
@MikeJ:
Fair enough. We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole
jrg
I’m convinced that a lot of people who vote for the GOP do so simply because it’s a form of affirmation that makes them feel better about themselves… Kind of like going to church, or attending a white power rally. It brings a feeling of superiority without them having to do anything to achieve it. Economics has very little to do with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly: But he is fighting a post (well, someone dumb as one).
burnspbesq
Not everything bad in the Universe can be laid at the feet of Goldman Sachs. Rahm is responsible for some of it.
Sentient Puddle
If there was any justice in the world, this realization would be the final stake in the heart of trickle-down theory.
ETA: @Cris: Could always go with “You Never Give Me Your Money”
Mike in NC
The GOP has a fix for this: 25-30% unemployment in 2011, and no benefits for the lazy, greedy proles.
freelancer
Wow, I was rooting for the Phillies, but that was a Helluva game.
Davis X. Machina
Watch the Tories in the UK.
It’s Thatcher in ’79, Reagan in ’81 all over again — ‘You guys jump first…’
Jewish Steel
Juan Uribe!
This series is a White Sox jamboree.
TooManyJens
@Sly: Can he be my Senator? That was awesome.
burnspbesq
Feeling much better now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK9Vzdjtxtg
Violet
@Sentient Puddle:
Or Beatles-era Spinal Tap: Gimme Some Money.
freelancer
@Jewish Steel:
Given his hitting this game, I could have sworn the Phillies were going to walk him.
mclaren
Dennis SGMM
You have to look at things the right way: I for one get a lot of satisfaction from knowing that if my income is averaged with that of, say, Lloyd Blankfein, then our average income is billions. That’s why we should be so very, very grateful to the rich.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Hang on to your wigs and keys, folks, a major media outlet has done something unstupid:
long fucking overdue. Get ready for some epic pity-partying that is gonna make Ginny Thomas look like Gary Fuckin’ Cooper, as Tony Soprano called him. The whole Fox line-up will come together as one to condemn this violation of the First Amendment.
ETA, from the NYT article”Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, said at the time that Mr. Williams was a “lightning rod” for the public radio organization in part because he “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox.”
Ms. Shepard said she had received 378 listener e-mails in 2008 listing complaints and frustrations about Mr. Williams.”
Is that all? Barely more than one a day? Half of those were mine.
Sly
@Omnes Omnibus:
Chris Coons, like any kung fu master, does not fight a post. He makes the post fight itself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know what he said, but it does not surprise me that requirements of working for Fox and NPR eventually conflicted.
Dennis SGMM
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
the late Bruce Lee, at the height of his powers, couldn’t have turned a radio off faster than I did when Wan Williams was introduced.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: Shockingly enough, he agreed with everything Bill O’Reilly said. IN this case about Muslims being terrorists, and he took it a step further and pretty much declared us to be at war with all Muslims.
SO that hump who forgot his keys and tried to blow up Times Square with some Coleman propane? He declared us at war with several billion people from Indonesia to Senegal to Keith Ellison
Davis X. Machina
I’m so old I remember when Juan Williams was black, and a liberal.
Now get off my lawn.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sly: Then he is indeed a master for O’D beat the living shit out of herself.
Dennis SGMM
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
As if good ol’ American racism and nativism ever needed a more substantial excuse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dennis SGMM: Fox Pup Juan Williams and smarmy PUMA Scott Simon, a Saturday morning combination that makes me hope for some Journey on the Geezer Rock station
freelancer
@Davis X. Machina:
But I haven’t lit the bag of poop on fire yet! No fair!
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s an almost galactically stupid thing to say.
burnspbesq
@Davis X. Machina:
No one is that old.
El Cid
It’s actually quite sad that capital is still restrained by the presence of consumers. Perhaps someday the owners of capital will finally be free of the burden of such a large population of people who get in their way of shifting capital back and forth in profitable transactions, transactions which in no way need to be tied to some sort of old-fashioned ‘commodity’ or ‘property’ or identifiable ‘service’.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina:
Fixed for believability.
Martin
@MikeJ: Yeah. Corporate profits really aren’t suffering here, as evidenced by the market performance.
Government isn’t the entity that needs to bail out the economy, business is.
I have some Apple stock. I’ve done alright by them, but they’re bringing in $20B in profits per year. I can’t see that number and not see 300,000 jobs that could have been made (at the US median income, including benefits). That would be enough to reduce the California jobless rate by 15%. The largest state in the country. The 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country (12.5%). Just one company. Toss in Intel’s $12B and Google’s $10B, and California’s 3 biggest companies could reduce the state’s unemployment rate from 12.5% to 9%. 700,000 really good jobs, and the only people that would be impacted would be investors. For crappy jobs ($12/hr + benefits!), they could reduce the unemployment rate in California by 50%. Minimum wage, no benefits, they could wipe it out completely. 3 companies!
Sure, those investors are a lot of retirement funds and such, but still. US businesses are sitting on a LOT of cash to fix the economy.
Davis X. Machina
@Omnes Omnibus: On radio, it’s hard to see….
Odie Hugh Manatee
I think it would be cool if some multimedia genius on the left would put together a video compilation of corruption with the backing tune being Action, by The Sweet. The sounds of “Liar! Liar!, Liar!’, the cash register cha-ching and the “you bled me dry, with your insatiable greed” all seem a good fit.
Elizabelle
Juan Williams gone from NPR. Progress.
How long until they 86 Mara Liasson?
One can only hope …
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/business/media/21npr.html?hp
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Almost there.
With a very special FYWP for telling me it is a duplicate despite the fact that it has not appeared and an apology to everyone else if it is now a multiple post.
morzer
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/20/beck-koch-chamber-meeting/
Worth reading in full, if rather horrifying to contemplate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: Inside radio, it is impossible to see. Too dark.
El Cid
@morzer: Oh, you fringe lefties with your crazy conspiracy theories!
Mark S.
Well, Juan, now you know how your Fox News colleagues feel when you walk in a room. They get worried. They get nervous.
oliver's Neck
Corpse looting has always been a profitable business – at least for a while.
Waynorth
Pump and dump, pump and dump. It’s what they do. It’s like being on a roller coaster, and as sure as you’re alive and reading this, the belly-dropping downslope is coming.