All Things in Moderation

Morning Report

10 Responses

1. 

   jnc4p, on April 2, 2012 at 9:02 am said:

   Worth a read – Matt Taibbi’s take on the recent Dallas Fed Report on TBTF Banks:

   “Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream
   POSTED: March 29, 12:35 PM ET
   By Matt Taibbi”
   …
   “Moreover, he talks about an inherent perversion of the system that has led to a two-tiered regulatory environment: a top tier where the misdeeds of TBTF banks are routinely ignored and unpunished (“virtually nobody has been held accountable for their roles in the financial crisis,” he writes), and a lower tier where small regional banks are increasingly forced to swim upstream against “the law’s sheer length, breadth and complexity,” leading to a “massive increase in compliance burdens.”

   To me, the dichotomy outlined by Rosenbaum helps explain the appearance of two seemingly contradictory major protest movements: a Tea Party movement fulminating against a repressive, overweening regulatory regime, and the Occupy movement railing against an extreme laissez-faire system bordering on lawlessness.

   The situation described by Rosenbaum explains how both movements could be right. Just as Tea Party leaders argue, there really has been an enormous flowering of new regulatory burdens in recent decades. It’s just that one group of actors has been given de facto license to ignore those burdens, while everyone else has not. Thus two movements protesting lawlessness on the one hand and an excess of laws on the other – that doesn’t necessarily strain the imagination.”
   …

   “The conservative argument on TBTF is beginning to blend in with, and become indistinguishable from, the progressive argument. You can say the current system is private enterprise corrupting government, or you can call it repressive government corrupting private enterprise, but it increasingly amounts to the same thing.”

   http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/with-blistering-dallas-fed-report-ending-too-big-to-fail-goes-mainstream-20120329

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2. 

   bsimon1970, on April 2, 2012 at 10:27 am said:

   ” . You can say the current system is private enterprise corrupting government, or you can call it repressive government corrupting private enterprise, but it increasingly amounts to the same thing.”

   Whomever can sell that idea to both groups will be an unstoppable political force. People who want to protect the status quo of excessive disparity between the 1% and the rest should be very concerned about the possibility of those groups combining.

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3. 

   Mike, on April 2, 2012 at 10:49 am said:

   Thanks, jnc. That was a good read.

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4. 

   Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on April 2, 2012 at 10:59 am said:

   Is it that the crony capitalists get to ignore certain regulations so much as those regulations favor them? I tend to view it as the latter, acting essentially as a barrier to entry of the market. Also, I see no way around regulatory capture other than less regulation. How many Watchers, watching the Watchers can you reasonably have?

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5. 

   novahockey, on April 2, 2012 at 11:30 am said:

   “as those regulations favor them”

   that how I’ve always used the term

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6. 

   jnc4p, on April 2, 2012 at 11:53 am said:

   “Is it that the crony capitalists get to ignore certain regulations so much as those regulations favor them?”

   It also encompasses the ability to consistently settle various cases with the government in a predictable way without having to admit or deny guilt.

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7. 

   jnc4p, on April 2, 2012 at 11:55 am said:

   “bsimon1970, on April 2, 2012 at 10:27 am said:

   ” . You can say the current system is private enterprise corrupting government, or you can call it repressive government corrupting private enterprise, but it increasingly amounts to the same thing.”

   Whomever can sell that idea to both groups will be an unstoppable political force.”

   It could have been Sarah Palin, before she imploded.

   “Some of Sarah Palin’s Ideas Cross the Political Divide
   By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
   Published: September 9, 2011”
   …

   “She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private). ”

   “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin

   From the moment Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the Republican convention, she was seen as an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue—to which soon was added “thin-skinned” and “vindictive.” But a look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics. That Sarah Palin might have set the nation on a different course. What went wrong?

   By Joshua Green
   June 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE ”

   http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-tragedy-of-sarah-palin/8492/

   It also represents some of Elizabeth Warren’s appeal to certain people on the right:

   “Elizabeth Warren on ‘socialism for rich people’

   Rod Dreher
   October 12th, 2011”
   …
   “HINOJOSA: Okay. But—but if they’re saying, “Look this is capitalism.”

   WARREN: No, this is not capitalism. That’s the whole point. This is socialism. This is the part where they’re using taxpayer guarantees and taxpayer support in order to eek out some kind of private gain. And this is just wrong.

   HINOJOSA: So, it’s—it’s socialism for—socialism for rich people?

   WARREN: For rich people. And, you know, I just gotta say I’m tired of that one.”

   http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2011/10/12/elizabeth-warren-on-socialism-for-rich-people/
   “

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8. 

   jnc4p, on April 2, 2012 at 2:23 pm said:

   Worth a read. I still believe that most Americans define unnecessary medical care as care being given to someone else. When it’s your health and someone else is paying for it, cost is no object.

   “When more expensive medicine is better medicine
   Posted by Sarah Kliff at 11:17 AM ET, 04/02/2012

   The theory behind the health reform law is that you can deliver better care at lower cost. Support for that idea comes from a robust body of research — most prominently the Dartmouth Atlas project — which suggests that a decent amount of health care spending is unnecessary. Hospitals can get the same (if not better) outcomes, the thinking goes, if they focused on providing just the most cost-effective treatments.

   But sometimes, more expensive care is also better care. That’s what a team of health-care economists have found in a new NBER paper, which looked at Medicare patients in New York. It found that, all other things being equal, those treated in higher-spending hospitals had mortality rates 20 to 30 percent lower than those treated in low-cost facilities.

   Those findings, in some ways, contradict the Dartmouth Atlas research, which has suggested that more can be less.

   “We find that more intensive intervention is associated with better outcomes when compared with less intensive interventions,” said Joseph Doyle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and lead author of the study. “We would say that this is a cautionary tale, that we cannot necessarily cut spending and expect quality to increase.””

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/when-more-expensive-medicine-is-better-medicine/2012/04/02/gIQA51CwqS_blog.html#pagebreak

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9. 

   jnc4p, on April 2, 2012 at 4:21 pm said:

   OT, but worth a read:

   “Bruce Springsteen’s SXSW Keynote Address
   By Rolling Stone
   March 28, 2012 11:20 AM ET”

   http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-the-complete-text-of-bruce-springsteens-sxsw-keynote-address-20120328

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10. 

    bsimon1970, on April 2, 2012 at 6:52 pm said:

    Palin might have had the potential, had her national introduction gone differently. I’d guess she’s now proof of the adage that you never get a 2nd chance to make a first impression.

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