Financial reform

Sing along everybody "here we go down the memory hole..." we all know the tune.

The tea party folks baying for banker blood? What a joke. They don't seem to be able to connect Obama's (Bush went AWOL, again) financial bailout to the reality that they still have retirement funds.

Call me crazy, but I was always under the impression that for, oh, all of recorded history, it was thought to be a bad idea to lend money to people you knew didn't have a prayer of being able to pay it back. And, um, if you might be so stupid as to do that, it helps to actually, you know, keep records of to whom and on what property you shoveled the cash out the door.

I can't claim, either, that I have any great insight into Conservatives lately, but my pet tea partier turned up for a visit the other day and seemed to think that the financial meltdown was caused by people buying houses they couldn't afford. Dumb, sure, but for all of recorded history, until markets became infallible and it became OK, under Bush/Cheney, to hand blank checks to what-was-his-name?, it wasn't a problem.

Handworn, everybody is all for rewarding talent, but come on, if you think handing out pre-approved home loans in soup kitchens and homeless shelters is a behavior for which bankers should be rewarded, there's this $1 million 16th century Chateau down the street that I think you should give me the money to buy. You're retirement fund will be safe with me, I assure you.

I think it is more appropriate to say that Dutch voters are getting angry just about now (instead of still being angry). The bank bailouts led to a deterioration of the national debt and the principal way of dealing with it in the Eurozone is through austerity measures.

The coming years will see lay offs in the public sector, the cutting of services and subsidies, a rise in the costs of housing and transport. I expect voters to be angry with the financial sector for quite some time.

I am unfamiliar with the situation in the US. There is talk of cutting the budget, but I wonder how much of it is going to be implemented. When it will be I reckon American voters will become angry too.

What is there to back up the claim that a "substantial portion of right-wing voters who want to burn the banks to the ground" exists? I wouldn't imagine that any clear-cut demographic exists among self-identified conservatives who are anti-big bank. They are probably confused about it like (like everyone else). It is reminiscent of how in spite of their limited-government views, there are many intrusions of government into individual lives which they seem to agree are alright.

It's amazing how liberal you actually are, M.S. American banks, anyway, did not 'force' anyone to give them millions of dollars; they were mostly saying they were doing fine, thank you. The government forced recapitalization on many of them in the hopes of jarring them into lending again, and quite a bit of that money has been paid back. The government owns most of Citigroup, and when it gets rid of it again, it appears as if it will make a profit on the matter. The cause of the crisis? More than anything else, it was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 that broke down the barrier separating investment banks from everyday banks. Which Act was, I might point out, passed by large bipartisan majorities in both houses and signed by Bill Clinton. Why didn't he know what it would lead to? It's popular to blame the rich, the Republicans, the banks, et cetera, for all this, but do you genuinely believe the Republicans would have wanted to risk this crisis? If so...you might be a liberal. The most your opponents can be accused of is cluelessness.

As to things like executive compensation, The Economist has talked many times about the reality and scarcity of top talent and the need to retain it with serious compensation. I would agree that exceptional compensation should be linked to actual excellent performance, but that's often not easy to prove even without the pressure now to be placed on the metric. It's certainly impossible to prove for people like most liberals who so disdain financial matters that they don't have a prayer (so to speak) of having the slightest idea what they're talking about on any level deeper than surface appearances.

Tzimsces,
it will be interesting to see what changes from from California's adoption of open primaries. (Essentially, anybody can vote in the Republican primary, or the democratic primary, or any of the other parties' primaries. And the top two vote getters go on the general election ballot -- even if they happen to be from the same party.)

Combine that with legislative districts drawn by non-politicians, which we also have coming, which dramatically reduces the number of probable "safe" districts. My expectation is that we will have a lot fewer candidates running to the extremes in order to win a primary. And a lot more moderate legislators in office.

Will that solve all of California's problems? No. But it may at least provide an opportunity to solve some of them; the past approach clearly provides no such hope.

Cinninex,
You are confusing populism the political philosophy with populism the style.

"us salt-of-the-earth folks know better than the eggheads, so let's do things our way" That's the political philosophy. Personally I don't see any problem with it. This is a democracy. If everyone is trusted to vote, everyone is also trusted to participate in the government.

"anything in the name of vote-buying and damn the consequences" huh? that's just corruption.

"The first thing we'll do, we'll ban anything and everything the we disapprove of," Like child labor and slavery?

"We're mad as hell and we're not to take it any more" Yes, populist rhetoric gets a bad name for being mercurial.

Since the Tea Party is not a rhetorical style, it is a group of people with ideas about how the government should run that's what I meant when I said they aren't populist. The Tea Party Express
s representatives like Michelle Bachmann gives lots of inane speeches, but that's besides the point.

rewt,

As I said, regional parties remain a possibility with first past the post local district voting but they tend to play a very minor spoiler role. Having lived in Canada, most of the election coverage is presented as if it may as well be a two party system involving the Conservatives and Liberals. The NDP and the Quebec Party (whatever its proper name is) play something of a spoiler role, and are important in provincial politics but don't do much to alter the national debate except in the fairly unusual case of a minority government. I believe Britain works similarly, with the exception of the Liberal-Democrats who play a fairly minor role except in exceptional circumstances.

However, both of these are parliamentary systems which push more strongly towards multiple parties than presidential systems. It's notable that both Canada and Britain have far less parties than parliamentary systems that have voting systems such as proportional representation.

So here in the US we have two strong structural factors that prevent the rise of a third party, a presidential system and first past the post local district voting. While third parties have arisen in times of extreme stress, they either eliminate one of the other two parties or collapse within a couple of electoral cycles. The incentives within the current system are such to prevent any stable formation of a third party, since even with a regional base that third party would be unable to convincingly contest the presidency so can never get the kind of loyal base support that the two parties enjoy. If we want a third party, we have to change the Constitution. I believe the least invasive way of doing this is adding nationally elected legislators, though we could also eliminate the presidency in favor of a parliamentary system.

Democrats may loathe Republicans and vise-versa, but there is one thing both parties can agree on.
They abhor the idea of giving up power.

Combined, they control 60%+ of the votes.
District wise, they have gerrymandered safe seats for both parties.

Basically, I have more choices for a cellphone providers and a cable TV provider.

We independents need someone who can get on the ballot of all the states, because of the Electoral College. We need someone who can act like and adult and point out the kids who have put this country in debt and allowedthe Defense industry, Wall Street, and corporate America to run amok.

Someone who understands "We the people" not "We the special interests".

I heard O'bomb-a wants his guys to raise $1Billion for re-election.
Sheeze!

Then again, thanks to the Supreme Court we can always say that we have the best politicians money can buy.

Wait until Tunisia, Egypt, and maybe Libya get thier "democracy".

Regards

Wellington:

In my experience, "Populism" means the following:
-anything in the name of vote-buying and damn the consequences,
-We're mad as hell and we're not to take it any more,
-us salt-of-the-earth folks know better than the eggheads, so let's do things our way!
-The first thing we'll do, we'll ban anything and everything the we disapprove of,
-and, historically, money backed by metals.

So I conclude 2 things:
1) "Populist" is a pejorative term, and
2) the tea party deserves it.

Aaarrrggghhh. Sorry for the double post.

RestrainedRadical:

Yeah, actually, I do.

It would force the Democrats and the Republicans to find common ground they can agree on, and work together to pass that. They could no longer get by just by defeating the one other position out there.

This means that ideas that are good enough to persuade at least some of your opponents are the only ones you can pass (or else ideas that you can cut enough deals for - but that's no worse than at present).

"reining in", not "reigning".

So you want third parties to bring more extreme views to the table? You want Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan to have seats? You want legislatures to include explicitly racist parties as they have in other countries with strong third parties? No thank you.

Tzimisces:

But does Canada, say, or Britain have these nationally elected legislative leaders? They aren't stuck in a two-party system.

I wish I could be a history student in high school fifty years from now.

Actually, strike that. The thought of being in high school again just gave me agita.

Why do people persist in asking why the craziest people in politics (Tea Party) aren't bringing sanity to the system? Are we that short on hope?

MS:
"The closest current candidate we have for a Third Force is the tea-party folks, and while it seems like they ought to have a natural affinity for campaigning against high levels of profit in the government-guaranteed financial industry, that's not the way their politics seem to wind up playing out."

No, because they aren't actually populists. That's the answer. They are Reagonites with paranoia who want a gold standard so the Fed can't inflate away their savings.

They don't believe the rich, including themselves or the banks should have to pay for any of the mess. So they blame college student loans, school lunches and dental appointments for poor kids, non elderly disabled, mentally ill and intellectually challenged people (but not their SS disability or Medicare, bc they earned it!), lower middle class people buying homes (but not their home mortgage deduction or low interest rate also bought by Fannie and Freddie), unemployed people who need their unemployment insurance or food stamps (but not SS recipients-they earned it!... by working??).

Sorry for the ramble, but populist means for the people. The Tea Party is a special interest group to protect the wealthy and elderly when its apparent taxes need to raised and things cut. They are as "populist" as the Sierra Club.

I wouldn't count of the Tea Party taking this up. They appear to believe that the 2008 financial meltdown was caused by high taxes and excessive government spending.

That's at least twice in a rolling 30-day period that we have a mention of PVV by MS on DiA.

Careful: three times and it's officially a hobby-horse. Five and it's a fetish.

The problem with the Tea Party is that it's trying to take over the Republican Party. It would be better if they really were a third party, and the Republicans could become the center party.

This is another reason that I keep saying we need reforms to allow nationally elected legislative leaders. Too many of our problems are national, and we need to split from the simple two party system. First past the post local voting systems always converge on a two party model, with the appearance of the odd regional party such as the NDP and whatever the proper name of the Quebec party is in Canada, but more regionalism is hardly what the US needs (and wouldn't work in a sustained manner anyway because of the unitary executive which also pushes the system in the direction of a two party system quite strongly) so it is basically impossible to have more than two parties on any long term basis without the addition of some number of nationally elected legislators.

Not that anyone but internet cranks like me is advocating for this. I'll continue to say with some certainty though that fixing many of our systemic problems requires national level elections of legislators, preferably with additional memebers in both houses, and that our systemic problems will continue, perhaps indefinitely, if these reforms are not made. There's simply no other way, whether this reform is possible within the current system or not.