So, it seems the financial clusterfuck that made the Dow drop a dizzying 778 points in one day isn’t going away. And I for one am looking, not for a reasonable solution, but for someone to blame. Someone I can put in metaphorical shackles to pelt with rotten cabbages and elderly eggs, or rocks wrapped in my now worthless stock certificates. I’m joking, of course! Now that capitalism done broke, and I have no idea what sort of stock market exposure my 401K has had, I’ll be needing those bits of fancy paper to wipe my bum with.
After supplicating to the Google for convenient scapegoats, I found that there were several likely candidates, all with convincing allegations of culpability. However, this is America and there’s no glory for second place, thus in the Blame Game, as in “the Highlander”, there can be only one.
The McCain campaign says it’s Obama’s fault. And goes on to blame the Democrats, and of course, President Clinton! Look!
The Obama campaign says it’s the GOP’s fault! And John Cain’s for pushing deregulation!
How boring. And predictable! Surely, there’s someone else I could be blaming? Wait a minute, what about those reliable canards standbys, minorities? After all, Neil Cavuto said on his show, Fox News’ Your World, that, “Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster”. Then, there’s Michelle Malkin, whose charmingly deranged diatribes have been notably absent from Fox News of late, has declared there there is a conspiracy not to discuss the “real” cause of the crisis because, and I quote, “That’s because fault lies at the feet of the crime-enabling banking industry and the ethnic lobbyists and the illegal alien-enabling Bush administration”. [Emphasis entirely Ms Malkin's own]
A pox on those “ethnic lobbyists”!
On WorldNetDaily, a website occasionally labeled the World Nut Daily, Drew Zahn declared that “when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions.”
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure federal regulators did not “demand parity between racial groups in lending”, but the QED in Zahn’s argument is that the only way to lend people of color money is to make “intentionally bad lending decisions”. Which sounds like the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” way of saying non-Caucasians can’t make sensible monetary decisions. Unlike, you know, those masters of the universe on Wall Street!
However, even if we accept the argument that it’s all the fault of those wascally minorities, that presupposes that the mortgage playing field is entirely level. Not so, according to Cynthia Tucker and a study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group, which examined 50,000 subprime loans all over the country and found that blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged higher interest rates, even among borrowers with similar credit ratings.
Jonathan Martin on Politico.com says minorities, more specifically, black people, even more specifically, the Black Caucus, are to blame: “More members of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose heavily black districts include many of Obama’s most ardent supporters, opposed the bill than supported it. Few of these members are in, or will ever have, tough re-elections. Obama, it seems, could have helped deliver some of these votes if he had been more invested in the bill.”
Got that? Apparently, Obama should have interfered more in the bill’s passage. Because, you know, all black people agree on everything all the time.
Also potentially to blame: anyone with a mortgage! Admittedly, there were some folks out there who thought, like President Bush, that property prices would never go down, and others who made rather foolish financial decisions regarding how much they could responsibly and consistently pay back. No doubt there. I’m no economist (just ask my dad!) but you know, I’d always thought that if you were a bad risk with dodgy credit, or just didn’t have the on-paper ability to repay your loans or mortgage, that the bank would say, “err, no” and perhaps suggest a more reasonable borrowing amount, one more in line with your earnings. Right? No, apparently not. And experienced commentators George Will and Andrew Sullivan politely disagree with me. Mr Will, not unfairly, claims that, “government should budget the way households supposedly do, conforming outlays to income. But the crisis came partly because so many households decided that it would be jolly fun to budget the way government does, hitching outlays to appetites.”
CNN talking head, Lou Dobbs has broken with his traditional choice of scapegoat, China [aka the Yellow Peril aka America's Loan Officer] and has instead gone with an ever-popular choice, “the left wing”, specifically ACORN [the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now] and CRA [Community Reinvestment Act]. Dobbs has sided with the National Review Online’s claim that the legislation was the result of “racially inflammatory campaigns” that forced banks to “make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets or credit”.
Hang on a minute, I just read that “the heart of the crisis was caused by unregulated and lightly regulated mortgage brokers and independent mortgage bankers and affiliates that are not subject to the CRA,” says University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr.
You know, while it’s always fun to hate on struggling, low income families, I’m getting a feeling of “been there, done that”.
In a fresh new approach, (perhaps this is some of that much vaunted “change”?) Republican House Leaders John Boehner and Roy Blunt went with blaming Nancy Pelosi, claiming that if she had not upset House GOPers with her speech, they’d have had a 12 extra votes. That’s right, according to Boehner and Blunt, the only thing causing America to slide into the abyss was Nancy Pelosi. Here’s a link to her vote-nullifying oration. There was bi-partisanship to be found, though it was in Pelosi criticism not Congressional concensus, as the left-leaning DailyKos, in response to the bailout bill, published a short post with the headline, “Pelosi Thinks We’re Stupid”. And who are we to argue?
Rep Roy Blunt went a little old skool with his Blame Game, giving a late inning nod to everyone’s perennial Blame Game favourite, the Jews! Rep. Blunt explained: “You know, clearly needing to respect the holidays of this week, the Jewish holidays of this week, meant that we had to rush things in a way that made that job very hard.” Rep. Blunt went on to say, “Happy Rosh Hashanah!”
Phil Gramm’s my favourite to blame for a wide variety of reasons, not least because he has a weasely face and is crazy rich, at least compared to me.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted Monday, House Republicans were blamed by 44 percent of respondents, Democrats by 21 percent, and both equally by 17 percent. The survey found that 45 percent supported the bill and 47 percent opposed, however, a whopping 88 percent said they were concerned that the vote “could lead to a more severe economic decline in this country.”
It appears blame is more plentiful than i-banker pink slips these days, so what’s the answer? Whom are we taking the proverbial stick to? My answer: a lot of people. But, you know, fix the problem not the blame (yadda yadda). Everyone knows we have to have a rescue bill passed, but at a cost of $700B (and that’s only the beginning), we the people should be able to expect some kind of accountability. In an interview with the Minot Daily News, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who was one of only eight senators to vote against the legislation in 1999, suggested that Congress should, among other measures:
- Restore some of the Depression-era protections that were taken away by the 1999 Gramm Bill, which allowed the merging of banking businesses with riskier investments like insurance.
- Address high compensation of some Wall Street executives, which Dorgan says ”has incentivized reckless behavior.”
- Require accountability for the speculative investment activities of hedge funds and investment banks that create and sell complex securities.
- Allow a period of forbearance on mortgages.
- Create a task force to investigate suspect or illegal practices on Wall Street.
So where does that leave us, the people who don’t have a Congressional vote, or a numbered Swiss bank account, or tax exile status in Bermuda? In all likelihood, keeping our fingers crossed that the bill will resuscitate the stock market, strengthen confidence in the American financial system, and keep as many Americans in their homes (not their yachts) as is practicable.
Thank you for reading. I’m off to my local Coinstar…