Takethe5th Picks and Pans

The US has the problem that in a 2 party system the US is only running with 1. This NYTimes article by  Paul Krugman catches the essence of the argument made increasingly in this blog here and here:

Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses.

So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was he trying very hard to run on his business career even before people began asking hard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.

Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who “began his presidency by apologizing for America,” as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this “Four-Pinocchio Falsehood,” as the Washington Post Fact Checker puts it, is at the heart of the Romney campaign.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

Literally the wheels are coming off the GOP party and the US can ill afford that for three reasons:
1)the problems  domestically and in the World continue to fester and get worse. Just look at Europe and the Greek debt crisis for one example – then say  Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, environmental degradation and economic upheaval.
2)Moderates and compromise are necessary part of politics. But moderates have been purged from the Republican party. So much so that compromise is a dirty word. But that means the bitter partisan confrontations over deficits, Global Warming, Religious issues etc. This in turn means the US will be at a disadvanatge economically and politically as its decision-making capacity falters badly. S&P was unfortunately right on in downgrading US debt rating for exactly the reasons they cited – gridlock in national politics.
3)Just when rational and well reasoned approaches to policy are absolutely essential, one player has the distinct tendency to misfire irrationally. Just look at the Tea Party supporters. The Republicans for 30 years added mightily to the deficits under the “Starve the Beast”. Then in the past 2 years they have switched there allegiance and  are supporting No New Taxes and Draconian debt reduction – an absolute about-face contradiction. But these reports show how the Economic Downturn has put new stresses on the Social Safety Net financed by Government – the very TeaPartiers that complain about government handouts are increasingly dependent on them.

 So the US is running on only one political cylinder – the Democrats though subject to the siren song of lobbyists are at least addressing the major issues. Meanwhile the Republicans are kneejerking to the next Super Duper scheme that will generate temporay political advantage. Literally, Paul Krugman is right – the party elite has lost all control as evidenced in the bizarre Presidential Primary Race.

Is a Third Party a viable alternative – maybe for its purging effect. The Canadian scene is instructive. It took the NDP several decades to emerge just as the undisputed loyal opposition in Canada’s 4 party system. This despite the fact that the NDP had a huge influence  in policy making during its formative years.  Thus a third party movement emerging from the Republican party would have almost a nill chance of Congressional or Presidential victory. But by laying waste to the GOP in both Congressional and the Presidential election, the party would be purged of power…then it would have to re-form in both senses of the word. This might not be a bad outcome.

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If the Republicans want a bona fide issue  to tar and feather President Obama on, its his kowtowing to the banks exemplified most recently by the Housing Settlement. Once again, “for the sake of the economy”, banks get away with major white collar financial crime. Anything for a settlement. The $25Billion is peanuts in comparison to the the more than $700 billion in underwater mortgage due to the banks malfeasance that generated the Housing Crisis. The $2000 for each wrongful foreclosure and no right to sue on those deals is a pittance. The delays and stricture on prosecuting the banks for deliberate and widespread foreclosure  misdeeds allows huge amounts of wriggle time to get off Scott Free. This settlement stinks big time.

It is the same old litany. Back in 2008 under Bush the banks were not broken up or allowed to fail. And Goldman Sachs was allowed access to the Federal Reserve’s privileged credit window. None of these actions were reversed under President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner.  Could not do that the system would fail because the complex financial inter-indebtedness would cause financial markets to freeze. Under Obama, Geithner, and Attorney General Holder there have been no successful or meaningful prosecution of the banks, the rating agencies and other financial institutions complicit in the Housing and Banking Crisis.

Naked Capitalism, a blog site devoted to showing the interconnection between Washington and Wall street has a blistering 12 point summary of the “Settlement” – The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement. Here is President Obama standing up for the Banksters:

The Announcement looks upbeat and bland, the details are anything but
This is indelible proof that lobbying and campaign finance power is very real and pernicious. Look at the NYTimes coverage of a parallel situation in Greece - “proposed rescue package calls for debt payments as the first priority, whatever happens to Greece itself.” And the whatever is not pretty see here and here.

Meanwhile President Obama got in 2008 and again in 2012 tens of $millions in campaign funds from the banks and financial institutions. This is perfect material for the Republican attack ads. Will Newt “FannieMaeMan” Gingrich take on the issue? How about Mitt “Bain Capitalalized” Romney? Or Rick “Born Again” Santorum. The only Republican likely to even dare to raise the issue is Ron Paul – and he will be ignored.

Our article, The Wheels Are Coming Off the GOP Base, has had some very interesting confirmation in the Press in the past few days. The NYTimes in an editorial says

“Don’t stop the debates. The purpose of debates is to get candidates and their ideas before voters. In the Republicans’ case, that includes exposing the failed policies and dubious values of their party.”

Ex-GOPer Andrew Sullivan sees the moment of GOP implosion here in the Daily Dish. John Batchelor at the Daily Beast describes the laments of a Republican professional who sees Republican Self Destruction -

The primary campaign nastiness between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is exhausting Republican loyalists. What in Iowa was a feisty contest between the haughty Mr. Romney and the operatic Mr. Gingrich turned hollow in New Hampshire and harsh in South Carolina. By the close of the Florida scramble, with the Herman Cain Express back from the repair yard to hitch onto the Newt baggage car, what remains of the Republican dialogue does not appear likely to be of much worth for the fall campaign.

The solution to the puzzle may be to admit that the GOP has forfeited 2012 before the general election even starts. How did this happen so suddenly?

“That’s the great mystery of 2012,” a senior Republican journalist told me while watching the brouhaha in Florida. “We have the weakest incumbent president in 32 years, running on the weakest record in 32 years… and who’s taking the stage in South Carolina and Florida? It has to be the weakest field I can remember. Each of these candidates has in his character, in his history, in his idea set—never mind disqualifying—a guarantee for self-destruction. If Newt is the candidate, he’ll lose badly. If Mitt is the candidate, he’ll lose slightly less badly … So what you have is an almost complete guarantee that if these are the candidates, Barack Obama will be reelected.”

I asked another senior GOP professional with decades of experience measuring party intrigue; he pointed to the negative campaigning as the telltale cause. “Negative advertising, why does it exist? It exists because it’s been proven to work. So Gingrich went negative on Romney on the Bain attacks and brought Romney down in South Carolina. The Romney campaign decided they’ve got to fire back in kind, calling Gingrich an influence peddler and a guy with ethics problems. The result is to create a cumulative effect of slime and dirt and muck attached not only to the two candidates but also to the party itself, as a party that fundamentally lacks seriousness about what’s centrally on people’s minds, which is the state of the economy—especially among independent voters, who keep rising; apparently they’re up to 40 percent of the electorate. This is off-putting. You know, Republicans may say we’re having an internal struggle, Newt represents something we believe in and so forth … Still, they’re running the risk of damaging the Republican brand.”

And see last Sunday’s news talkshows such as NBC’s Meet the Press or ABC’s This Week for a similar reaction among both Republican and Democratic commentators.
How Did the GOP Get Here?
Well there are 4 primary reasons for this self-destruction:
1)The GOP “Base” is fraught with contradictions and internecine emnities among the inherently conflicting groups - see our article;
2)The GOP has pledged allegiance to a policy of Super Dupers. You can fool most of the people most of the time. Take the pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist for “no new taxes” by over 200 Republican Congressman. This is the same Grover Norquist who advocated for creating the huge Deficit with his “Starve the Beast” advocacy of deliberate overspending in Congress for the last 30 of 32 years. But now the sameSuper  Duping Tactics are being used in abundance in their own Presidential Campaign;
3)GOP has resorted to a Mega-No campaign, not accomodating on almost any and all Obama legislative proposals. This has been accomplished by using the 40-vote Filibuster rule to stall administration budgets, executive appointments and key legislation. The purpose is to show that “government and Obama do not work.”  The process of Federal legislation since the Republicans took the House in January 2011 has simply not been allowed to work because that would show Obama and government as being effective;
4)The GOP has increasingly resorted to politics of fear and smear. It is a badge of honor – like the Willie Horton Attack Ads. But it has slipped from attacks against Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry with the Swift Boat campaign to George Bush’s South Carolina ‘whisper rumor mongering’ against Republican rival John McCain claiming falsely that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. If this type of “campaigning” is legit, then anything is legit even against fellow GOP-ers.

So having embraced the deepend of contradictory  coalitions and the politics of smear – the current GOP Presidential wrecking-crew campaign is  natural consequence. Moderates or centerists have been effectively sidelined if not weeded out of the Republican party. This is the party of Rush Limbaugh bombacity or Murdoch Fox News manipulation. Don’t say “who knew?” now.
Bad News for the USA

The US and the World in general face numerous wicked problems- think energy shortages, climate change, worldwide job shortages, and nuclear gamesmanship from petty states. So the US can ill afford the politics of fear and smear. For example, for the US the current toxic political wrangling at the Federal level has already been a significant factor  in the downgrading of US debt from AAA to AA status by S&P. Imagine November 25th 2012. Obama wins the Presidency but the Republicans gain either the House and/or the Senate because voters do not want to give too much power to the Democrats. A Democratic majority did not work in 2008. Or vice versa –  a Republican wins the Presidency but the voters give the Democrats control of the House or Senate. In either case, political  gridlock is the outcome. Neither party is likely to embrace bipartisanship. This is Gresham’s law – the bad drive out the good. And right now very bad partisan politics drives US politics  in general. Can you imagine the political turmoil of 2013 no matter who wins?

Remember even in the past 10 years of increasingly bitter partisan infighting with  Congressional approval ratings  hovering  around 10-14%, nonetheless 90% of incumbent Congressman get re-elected. We keep rehiring those who we disapprove of. So no wonder Federal political leaders think they are impervious to any consequences for their bad  behavior – no matter what they do do they will get re-elected. And so ye Editor will have to take a big swig of a 5th, because my party, the GOP[Andrew Sullivan and I are co-diasporans], is leading the US downhill parade … and so are my fellow electors. I think Walt Kelly’s Pogo said it best – “We have met the enemy- and They is Us”.

Politics, particularly Presidential politics is risky racing like Formula 1.  Everything is taken to the limit and like Formula 1 every performance [debate,  campaign event, TV attack ad, Web presence to Tweet, and election result]is polled, monitored, and analyzed in almost excuciating detail.  And there is a surplus of political operatives suggesting how to drive the agenda, make the coalitions, and spin the campaign twist and turns to local political advantage. But the basic driving political engine is the Base. That is the core set of groups that have coalesced and come together to advance their disparate causes for mutual gain and as little as possible antagonism and  internecine warfare under the Republican party banner. But this year the wheels have come off the Base and the Grand Old Party is going to have a carreening crash that it will be hard pressed to recover from by November 2012.

The erratic performance started early with Gov. Sarah Palin in or out, Gov. Mitch Daniels in or out, Gov. Mike Huckabee in or out, Donald Trump in or out, Gov. Chris Christie in or out- all these set the GOP campaign off on a wobbly track. But the debate and polls confirmed a volatile Republican electorate as Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich again have all taken a lead in the polls and have achieved “election” victories. Those GOP tires have been drumbeating worse than a NASCAR bucket of bolts. Why so much “Cognitive Dissonance” better known as Feuding Folks in the GOP Fold?

To this one only has to take a glance at solidity of the GOP Base. Imagine the following:
- Farm  and Small Business men  dependent on illegal immigrants coming together with the GOP Immigration Lobby;
- Tea Party debt crusaders sympathizing with Wall Street Bankers and Hedge Funders who are demanding continuiing zero interest rates, huge compensation packages and other deficit creating subsidies;
- Right to Lifers and the Medicare Generation seeing eye to eye with the extreme GunsRights campaigners seeking looser regulations on concealed, automatic and silenced weapons;
- The GOP 20% unemployed in  many counties in States as disparate as Nevada, Ohio, and South Carolina  wanting to support GOP traditional Big Business many of whom have outsourced and exported vital jobs overseas;
- The Evangelicals and Christian Prayer in Schools defenders admiring and supporting the Neocons wanting to strike out on another war heedless of unintended consequences – perhaps  in Iran, North Korea, Somalia or other enemies of the US as in Lebanon[Reagan] or Iraq[Bush];
- Adopt an anti-science, anti-measurement approach inimical to most engineering and business interests but welcomed by GOP special interests in their campaigns to elude responsibility for the true costs of  their  gains;
- Resist gay rights and stigmatize them so they can be controlled by federal and  state measures in society;
- Be among  43% of Mortgage holders who are GOP  and have been foreclosed on or are underwater yet have to see their GOP side with Wall Street against foreclosure limits, against reducing underwater loan levels, and actively resisting the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would prevent suc h excesses in the future;
- Be a  GOP Middle Class watching the traitorous lobbying elitist Grover Norquist whose 30 year “Starve the Beast” policy created the bulk of the US Deficits under Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2. Now Norquist is rushing to lead the charge against deficits with his mindless “no new taxes” pledge that hobbles 200+ GOP Senators and Congressmen who have pledged allegiance to Norquist for some trickles of campaign support. Meanwhile., Norquist is protecting his own kind, essentially the richest of the rich, whose taxes paid as a % of income have reached historical lows compared to that same GOP Middle Class.
And these are just a few of the wonderful  things binding Republicans together.

Given these constituents it is no surprise that  only one policy  can unite these diverging desires and political interests – that  is to make President Obama be  perceived as worse than the worst US President in history, George W. Bush [see Republican Andrew Sullivan's brilliant essay on this topic here]. Do this by refusing to co-operate with President at all, Use the 40 vote Filibuster rule in the Senate not just to block judicial appointments but also Obama department budgets plus dozens of Obama executive Cabinett appointments [“see, the agencies arent working because their managers aren’t there”.  Key adminstrators , especially in financial administration and regulatory control AWOL because  key appointmentsre have not been approved 3 years into the term and their budgets cut. The nihilism is deliberate such that one can easily find the GOP spurning Republican policies offered. As Andrew Sullivan has shown, this is a dangerous strategy because to date President Obama has occupied the center-right over the past 3 years in office to hiw own party’s chagrin.

So now in a party of elites and 1%-ers ruling the roost, South Carolina Republicans said enough already. They rejected the overwhelming favorite of two weeks ago, Mitt Romney, and elected Newt Gingrich, based on his populist leanings. True there were coded racial overtones by Newt. True Newt played to the evangelicals and half a dozen other Base special interests. But the bulk of the campaign was  apopulist one against the ruling elites as represented by the Bain capitalized Mitt Romney. Newt neatly skirted the issue of “attacking capitalism”, but rather asked how did Mitt accrue his super 1% wealth by asking did he pay his fair share of taxes and did the Bain years under Mitt Romney truly net 100,000 jobs for the US and what indeed is the Romney Jobs plan.

So now the wheels have flown off the GOP Base. Recriminations and attack ads will redouble in ferocity. US Supreme Court-approved Super Pacs will be unleashing internecine attack ads of gigantic proportions in Florida and the upcoming GOP primaries. The GOP Base is now crashing out of control – and the Republican Establishment trying to tamp down the populist cataclysm is itself discredited as being one of the elites manipulating events to their own advanatge. GOP – welcome to Occupy WallStreet.

Mitt Romney now appears to be the leader to beat in the polls for the next 3 primary votes – New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. In the Saturday ABC Debate debates the consensus is that Romney escaped unscathed as none of his rivals attacked him even with comparison statements. The result is that the Sunday debate on NBC was more pugnacious and there is more to come. TheDaily Beast is reporting that  the Huntsman Pac was outbid by the Gingrich PAC for the rights to the following video, King of Bain.  This 30 minute expose shows how “Mitt Romney knows business” as head of Wall Street-imitating LBO-Leveraged Buy Out firm Bain Capital.

Now Mitt Romney will have to stand up to scrutiny for being a very rich  1 percenter taking advantage of the other 99% by eliminating  jobs and funneling money to his Wall Street investors and partners. Vanity Fair also writes about this issue:

For 15 years, Romney had been in the business of creative destruction and wealth creation. But what about his claims of job creation? Though Bain Capital surely helped expand some companies that had created jobs, the layoffs and closures at other firms would lead Romney’s political opponents to say that he had amassed a fortune in part by putting people out of work. The lucrative deals that made Romney wealthy could exact a cost. Maximizing financial return to investors could mean slashing jobs, closing plants, and moving production overseas. It could also mean clashing with union workers, serving on the board of a company that ran afoul of federal laws, and loading up already struggling companies with debt.

There is a difference between companies run by buyout firms and those rooted in their communities, according to Ross Gittell, a professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics. When it comes to buyout firms, he said, “the objective is: Make money for investors. It’s not to maximize jobs.” Romney, in fact, had a fiduciary duty to investors to make as much money as possible. Sometimes everything worked out perfectly; a change in strategy might lead to cost savings and higher profits, and Bain cashed in. Sometimes jobs were lost, and Bain cashed in or lost part or all of its investment. In the end, Romney’s winners outweighed his losers on the Bain balance sheet. Marc Wolpow, a former Bain partner who worked with Romney on many deals, said the discussion at buyout companies typically does not focus on whether jobs will be created. “It’s the opposite—what jobs we can cut.”

This is the crux of what has been killing middle class incomes in the US for the past 30 years. Too many US businesses like Bain Capital have been raiding the Income Commons by making concerted attacks on US working jobs with stagnant wages, relentless benefit reductions, work cutbacks and job outsourcing overseas. And the facts are indisputable, the beneficiaries of this Romney “I Know Business” policy is that the 1% like Mitt Romney have been the major winners over the past 30 years:

So before you buy Romney, know just how Romney Knows Business.

The five major problems facing not just the US but almost all developed countries are the following:
1)Jobs are going to the developing countries with very favorable rates of exchange and wage level relative  to prosperous developed countries. Wages in China, India, Vietnam, Brazil and others  across the board are a fraction of the developed country wages. How can Canadian, Spanish or US lawyers and legal experts  compete with their  Vietnamese, Peruvian, or Indian counterparts when the skills are roughly comparable but the wages and telepresence both are distinctly better than their home country.
2)Jobs are becoming ever scarcer commodity for all nations as smart machines take over ever more sophisticated tasks. In order to earn  even a median wage, a college degree if not graduate level and an ever longer period of  ”free  or open source” volunteering or low wage  apprenticeship is required  for almost all jobs. Pay equity is shot to hell given top executives pay at 9 sigma levels of expected effectivenes  but performance a) not even approaching 4 sigma levels and b)very much dependent on much less adequately compensated staff and workers.
3)Action on Climate Change and 5 other impending  environmental disasters: 1)energy independence from monopoly sources, 2)ever more expensive  water supplies worldwide, 3) countermeasures to instantly spread communicable disease, 4)species eradication including fish, bees, and biodiversity, 5)air pollution across a broad spectrum of airborne is tripping of ever-increasing allergies, asthma, cancers and other debilitating diseases is at a standstill. Ame  is subject rabid and calculatedly self-serving  anti-science denials. Only overwhelming catastrophes putting vast regions at the edge of disater can  elicit concerted emergency  action.
4)The rate of change across societies both rich and poor is accelerating. There is constant multitasking, rushed decision-making, and action in situations where the  slack in time and resources is at a minimum. Yet asymmetric terrorism, nuclear ambition, and despotic tyrants rule the roost across the world.
5)There is a breakdown in problem solving due to  a)the wicked nature of many problems, b)the anti-rational denials, and  c)the preying on fear, confusion, and short-term memory and often limited understanding  for ulterior ends that dominates the scene. Clearly, the 1% want to retain their privileges and basically unfair equations of income and wealth at everybody else’s expense [see the 2007-2009 Financial Meltdown].

Into the this Wicked Problem Space now place a no longer functioning legislative government. The 1%  of US”Job Creators” have managed to construct and buy over 30 years a mass of political controls  of a profoundly  unfair nature:
1)A Senate in which 40 votes can overturn any bill, action, or appointment. The Senate is one of the deadly  sources of  venomous political partisanship.
2)A House of  which nearly  40% percent  of the members have taken a pledge of no new taxes at a time when the overall taxes as % of GDP are the lowest in 40 years and the 1-percenters  tax paymentsas a % of income  are the lowest in 30 years. This pledge is to a traitor, Grover Norquist,  who advocated the Starve the Beast policies which spend grossly more than you paid for in taxes and thus created the huge deficits that he wants to manage with no new taxes. Norquist has been instrumental in a)sabotaging any Pay As You Go policies that might reduce the debt and b)encouraging massive deficit spending up until 2 years ago.
3)A Us Supreme Court that has allowed corporations and any organization to spend unlimited funds for lobbying and campaign financing but with limited disclosure of who is funding those groups.
4)A system of  too-big-to fail financial rescue that bails out the financial community to the tune $3.3 trillion at tax payers expense. Efforts to limit that exposure in the Dood-Frank and other legislation have been watered down such that they are inoperable in preventing another bank bailout by taxpayers.
5)A system of white collar financial prosecution that with the lone exception of Ponzi Schems [think Madoff and Stafford] and Insider Trading, constantly uses token “biggest fines ever” with no admission of guilt, no prison time or restrictions on the  perpetrators.This is in stark contrast to the Graham Oxley on accounting fraud – which cut off some  gross accounting misconduct during the financial crisis – but left major exceptions.

Given this as a setting, the US Presidential election seems to be heading for a debate betweenMitt  Romney accusing President Obama as being the worst President since George W. Bush and President Obama attacking the Republican Congress for being the perpetrators of  the demise of his Promises of Change.

Oh my goodness gracious – such a disappointment.

In the last two years, more article are appearing from Wall Streeters who are questioning the budding financial myths on  what  caused the Financial Meltdown of 2007-2008.  Here is a telling one by a Wall Street analyst, Barry Ritholtz that  appeared in the Washington Post and has been picked up by a number of Share websites like Reddit, Stumble On , Tumblr, etc. Barry minces no word in this posting on the Wall Street espoused Big Lie:

One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.

Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.

Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.

A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.

Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.

Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them.

Now The Big Lie really depends on 3 enablers:
1)the policy issue is either complex or subsject to confusion or uncertainty as to what cause and effect applies;
2)the explanation of events is shrouded in critical  omissions or plausible falsehoods or smears and hominem attacks discrediting fact checkers;
3)the press coverage on the issue is disjointed or minimal for any number of reasons.
In the case of the Financial Meltdown , The Financial Big Lies  has relied on plausible distortions by figures in power along with a Press that has been delinquent - particularly the national TV networks whose coverage has been sporadic at best.

The science magazine  New Scientist raises the issue  in its  in a story on A New View of Human Evolution – On Selfless Behaviour starting on page 28 of the August 6-12 2011 issue.

Our ability to cooperate closely with other group members and to suppress cheats means that selection at the group level rather than the individual level has been an exceptionally strong force during human evolution. It may have played a crucial role in shaping both our genes and our culture…Vigilant egalitarianism probably arose early in human evolution and was a precondition for other attributes that make us so distinct as a species…. Punishing cheats is a key part of maintaining co-operation and keeping groups competitive.

In sum, Wall Streeters like Barry Ritholtz or Nomi Prins are just applying the missing self-discipline and control for a professional group that at its executive top has lost all touch with its own ethical oaths of fiduciary trust: Put client above self gain as  one acts in their stead and seeks to do no financial harm of their entrusted assets. This is simply  a lost moral commitment at the highest and the currently most prospering levels of Wall Street and the Global Financial Community. Need we say more about a similar disregard for the Congressional Oath of Office.

Over and over again, the world is seeing an anguishing and paradoxical debate over the Deficit Conundrum . Simply stated, nation after nation has  allowed bubbles of inflated values to occur, accumulate and eventually topple their economies. The classic bubbly  case is the overinflated housing markets in the US and parts of Europe that burst into pernicious unemployment in the developed world. A classic bubble – a limited supply of a commodity[housing] is allowed through ever more hazardous financing to grow in value such that owning a home regardless of the amount and  nature of the debt on it became the only form of savings for many American “households”. But the financiers were themselves engaged in dubious and overleveraged and false ‘secutitized debt insurance.

Boom – in September 2008 it all collapsed with the bankruptcy of  Lehman Brothers bank.Suddenly all those debt tranches and complex derivative instruments had to be unwound- and nobody could put that Humpty Dumpty of Debt back together again.  So Wall Street and the City got John Q Public to do the deed on pain of another Great Depression. And to prove that they were grateful , the Walled  Street 1% created a Robosigning foreclosure crisis  2years later to prove  that they could fubar the dupes that are John Q….. again.

The paradox is that an apparently contradictory policy is required to correct the worst of  bubble bursts. Overspending  economies such as in North America and now Europe must overspend even more to get their economy’s engines restarted and  growing again. And governments, the spenders of last resort, often have large deficits making such spending potentially self destructive if not carefully controlled in amount , target groups, and duration[Do not choose Door No1 with a bunch of gladhanding, "Job Creators" trickling down on it]. Likewise taxes have to be controlled very carefully. Too quickly raised  and broadly applied they might snuff out any recovery. Not applied and they will create inflationary and soverreign debt bubbles.

So taxes must be a)made more equitable and b)raised to keep deficits in line when governments become the economic spender of last resort . Now here comes the  wrenching malfeasance. Most political systems, have like the US , become seriously dysfunctional because lobbying and special access to decision makers by financial payments has not only gotten  out of control, but also become officially sanctioned. See the US Supreme Court on campaign and lobbying spending as Free Speech. In sum, our Representatives are now financial captives- hence getting things fixed is at the moment an even more serious Second Conundrum. In programming, these self perpetuating Conundrums are known as a infinite loop. Just in case you are of the TeaPartying persuasion, that means you and the economy gets tea bagged over and over again.

The best lines at the ABCTV-sponsored debate this past weekend was Michelle Bachmann’s ”Newt Romney”, AKA Newt Gingerich and Mitt Romney. Michelle could show the two not only flip flopping together but also abandoning conservative principles at the drop of a hat. The Daily Beast has been following the two since the debate and the marriage couldn’t last.

Provoked by Mitt Romney, who said that Gingrich should return the $1.6 million he was paid for consulting work by Freddie Mac, Gingrich could not resist retaliation. He said he’d be happy to heed Romney’s advice, provided Romney first “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain”—the venture capital firm Romney once ran.
The counter-attack was a serious blunder, as Gingrich himself seemed to recognize, issuing a directive Tuesday to his supporters and staff reminding them (and himself) to follow Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment—“Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of any Fellow Republican.” …. But the biggest danger of Gingrich’s dig at Romney was that it risked angering conservatives. He didn’t go after Romney for his past embrace of man-caused climate change or some other Romney deviation from conservative orthodoxy, but for being an effective capitalist while running Bain.

As Charles Krauthhammer, the conservative Washington Post columnist observed on Fox News, “This kind of attack is what you’d expect from a socialist.”

TheDailyBeast considers this a major blunder by Newly minted Newt as Republican front runner. See all the details here.

Nicholas Kristoff at the NYTimes, has a very telling piece about the Bankers who brought about the 2007-2008 Financial meltdown. Recent disclosures by Bloomberg and others have made it clear that the $0.70 Trillion TARP bailout was just the tip of the iceberg as 10 time the TARP, or $7.0trillion has been spent to bailout the banks, hedge funds, and other “financial institutions”. And that bailout continue to be funneled to the banks. And the banks quid-pro has been declines in small business loans, increased fees for services, and stonewalling on foreclosures and prime mortgage [only homeowner accommodation]. So Kristoff’s arguments carry impact:

In 2007, his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages, he says. Sometimes those were “no documentation” mortgages…
Theckston says that borrowers made harebrained decisions and exaggerated their resources but that bankers were far more culpable — and that all this was driven by pressure from the top.Especially when mortgages were securitized and sold off to investors, he said, senior bankers turned a blind eye to shortcuts.One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.
These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately blacks and Latinos, he said, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch, he recalled, and frantically tried to cover it up.Theckston, who has a shelf full of awards that he won from Chase, such as “sales manager of the year,” showed me his 2006 performance review. It indicates that 60 percent of his evaluation depended on him increasing high-risk loans.In late 2008, when the mortgage market collapsed, Theckston and most of his colleagues were laid off….
Still, 28 percent of all American mortgages are “underwater,” according to Zillow, a real estate Web site. That means that more is owed than the home is worth, and the figure is up from 23 percent a year ago. That overhang stifles the economy, for it’s difficult to nurture a broad recovery unless real estate and construction revive.All this came into sharper focus this week as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.

The article estimated that banks earned up to $13 billion in profits by relending that money to businesses and consumers at higher rates.The Federal Reserve action isn’t a scandal, and arguably it’s a triumph. The Fed did everything imaginable to avert a financial catastrophe — and succeeded. The money was repaid.Yet what is scandalous is the basic unfairness of what has transpired. The federal government rescued highly paid bankers from their reckless decisions. It protected bank shareholders and creditors. But it mostly turned a cold shoulder to some of the most vulnerable and least sophisticated people in America. Last year alone, banks seized more than one million homes.

Sure, some programs exist to help borrowers in trouble, but not nearly enough. We still haven’t taken such basic steps as allowing bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of a mortgage on a primary home. Legislation to address that has gotten nowhere.My daughter and I are reading Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” aloud to each other, and those Depression-era injustices seem so familiar today.

This is the enduring Occupy Wall Street message – people will not forget what was done by ruthless bankers and their paid agents in government.