http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Yes, but what KIND of diapers?
I'm catching up on the New Yorker profile on Naomi Klein, whom I have an enormous commie-crush on. The description of her father used the term "red diaper babies" which I had never heard before. I think it raises an interesting question for us.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar
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11 comments:
My thought is that it would be difficult to say what kind of diapers we use since there are so many different kinds of babies among us. Some of us, for example, are pee babies. Others are sleep babies. There are probably other kinds of babies in the group that are as yet undetermined.
I'm pretty sure I'm a "whiny baby".
Well, the "baby" definition Carl is talking about relates to the most common reason the baby in question uses to puss out of a good time. For Carl it's urination; for me it's snoozing. Kuru's a fucking save-a-life baby.
I can't think of any specific MO that Shawn uses for pussing out. In fact, I'm guessing Shawn's family & friends refer to him as a GAME baby.
Rick is some kind of "project" baby; Lubars is a family baby.
Also, I always get Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf mixed up. Wolf is the crackpot; I don't know much about Klein.
ahhh! That helps. Save-a-Life Baby indeed. aka "waah! I can't be falling asleep in OR."
Rick wears many baby hats. There's Sleep Baby for sleep's sake, Sleep Baby because he has to do crew in the morning, and the venerable old "whp-TSSSH!" Wifey Needs More Quality Time Baby.
btw urination sounds so clinical ('nless it's a Kool + Gang version). I prefer Pee Baby.
Lubars is definitely a WhpTSH Baby. Which is ironic because he levels the charge of "whipped" so frequently at others -- I suspect it is a case of the guilty-feeling accuser. aka Jimmy Swaggert Syndrome.
Using sheer brain power I have deduced what kind of baby Fists is: He is a Solo Gamer baby! Meaning - he cannot resist the siren song of single-player gaming! (And most likely of the age- and/or gender-inappropriate variety).
Note how neatly this solves the mystery of why Fists sometimes appears online for 5 seconds on a Tuesday night, never to be seen again: He settles down for a night of Xbox Carcasson, his Xbox automatically signs him into Xbox Live, he says "oh shit it's gonna blow my cover!", and immediately signs out.
I think Naomi Klein dissed my brother in her book "No Logo".
Thems serious charges. Could Fists diapers really say "Fallout3" on them?
You're almost there Mumps. Actually what happens, he appears for a few seconds online, but then quickly sets his account to "don't appear online", then continues on his merry way.
JERK!
Bizarre that 'victories' isn't in quotes in lines like this:
Neighborhoods organized, and when their evicted neighbors’ furniture was put on the streets they moved it back into their homes. It was that kind of direct action that won victories like rent control, public housing, and the creation of Fannie Mae.
And isn't Fannie Mae a major contributor to the financial crisis? And isn't the bailout the opposite of hands-off government? The article dismisses this (and with it Klein's entire argument) with the following aside:
(Another difference, of course, was that the government wanted to enact not Friedman-style reforms but the opposite: enormous interference in the market. Still, since the point of this interference was to bail out banks, this difference did not strike Klein as of much importance.)
Making loans based on credit history and ability to repay was deemed 'racist lending' because of the demographic most often denied these loans; of course the resulting lending spree was then labeled 'predatory lending' because, again, of the demographic most affected. It's racist to be prudent with the lending, and then it's racist to lend too freely? You have to pick one.
I can (and do!) believe that government uses (or foments!) shocks, crises, disasters (both natural and man-made) to restrict freedoms - but hard to swallow the opposite, that they use this as an opportunity to pare down their size and limit their own powers.
Having trouble reading past page 3 - this article is making my head spin - the words are english, but the sentences are Gordian knots of of Orwellian double-speak: "Regulation is freedom! Free markets are slavery!"
Dear Mr. Lubars
This letter is to inform you that you are an insane bloodthirsty butcher with an insatiable appetite for blood!
I haven't heard any serious suggestions that the EXISTENCE of Fanny Mae & Freddy Mac caused the crisis, but rather the fact that they were dipping into the same toxic assets that the non-governmental investors were drawn to. It was their recklessness, not their very being, that required their bailing out. I mean, wtf that was a bush league argument!
The idea that the financial crisis was largely caused by regulatory insistence that banks lend to minorities -- and people the banks KNEW would not be able to repay, but were powerless not to make the loans -- is something that I have only heard from Rush and people who listen to Rush. There were all sorts of bad loans being made, but the wingnut argument is that the anti-discrimination regulations FORCED them to. Wingnuts gotta have someone to blame, and my god it CAN'T be The Hallowed Market...
predation:
Again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that merely lending to minorities is by itself predatory. The deliberate lending to people who had no evidence of being able to repay the loans, and the selection of high-interest loans when they might have qualified for better products, and the obfuscation of the terms of the loan they were signing -- THAT is what I believe is meant by predatory.
I'm confused -- who is suggesting that they use crisis as an opportunity to pare down or limit their powers?
> This letter is to inform you that you are an insane bloodthirsty butcher with an insatiable appetite for blood!
I accept your condemnation!
> It was their recklessness, not their very being, that required their bailing out. I mean, wtf that was a bush league argument!
Fannie Mae's only purpose is to expand lending to the poor. The only reason the government would need to charter such an organization would be if such loans did not make any sense from a business perspective. It was the government's guarantee to back the loans should the shit hit the fan that made securitization of such mortgages possible. It is both predictable and inevitable that such an entity would distort the market, and that investment vehicles would evolve to take into account not only the value of the security (or lack thereof), but the government's pledge as well.
It didn't help things that Clinton (and the banks and FNME shareholders) sought to remove some of even the most basic checks on lending.
One of the only admirable things the Bush administration did was try to reintroduce some restrictions on FNME lending, but they did not succeed.
Barney Frank in the 9/11/2003 New York Times on why FNME must be left alone:
"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
(article is at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?pagewanted=all&res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63)
> The idea that the financial crisis was largely caused by regulatory insistence that banks lend to minorities -- and people the banks KNEW would not be able to repay, but were powerless not to make the loans -- is something that I have only heard from Rush and people who listen to Rush.
The closest I've come to listening to Rush is hearing Howard Stern's impersonation of him (he's not on in the Boston market). In any case it's pretty weak to use guilt by association (though I do get a kick out of exclaiming "but Hitler was a vegetarian!!!" whenever someone tells me they're a vegetarian).
> There were all sorts of bad loans being made, but the wingnut argument is that the anti-discrimination regulations FORCED them to. Wingnuts gotta have someone to blame, and my god it CAN'T be The Hallowed Market...
It is my understanding that after the preeding Savings & Loan crisis, that a significant proportion of that 'bailout' was earmarked for high-risk loans...
Without mortgage securitization, a bank would a) lend you the money, b) collect the interest for years and years. With securitization, they a) lend you the money, b) get paid right away (more than the principal but less than the final amount), c) go to step (a). It's the same with interest savings accounts (with their 5% reserve requirement or whatever). Without FNME securitizing mortgages, or the Fed lending money overnight, or all of that stuff - none of which I see as the appropriate role of government (in the financial arena, I don't think they should be doing much besides minting gold coin) - risk would be real, and people would modify their behavior accordingly.
You -could- say that public housing, welfare, and other such noble programs -created- the class of people that required the kinds of loans that would not have been made by for-profit entities without the backing of a government-chartered, government-backed securitization program such as FNME - all of which were created in response to things like the Great Depression which itself was the result of yet other government intereference in and distortion of the markets.
> predation: Again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that merely lending to minorities is by itself predatory. The deliberate lending to people who had no evidence of being able to repay the loans, and the selection of high-interest loans when they might have qualified for better products, and the obfuscation of the terms of the loan they were signing -- THAT is what I believe is meant by predatory.
As long as you're not calling it 'racist' I'm fine with whatever adjectives you ascribe to it -
> I'm confused -- who is suggesting that they use crisis as an opportunity to pare down or limit their powers?
From page 1 of the article:
The central thesis of the book is that capitalism and democracy, free markets and free people, do not, as we’ve been told, go hand in hand. On the contrary, capitalism [...] is so unpopular, and so obviously harmful to everyone except the richest of the rich, that its establishment requires, at best, trickery and, at worst, terror and torture. [...] Klein argues that the only circumstance in which a population would accept Friedman-style reforms is when it is in a state of shock, following a crisis of some sort—a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a war. A person in shock regresses to a childlike state in which he longs for a parental figure to take control; similarly, a population in a state of shock will hand exceptional powers to its leaders, permitting them to destroy the regulatory functions of government.
So my reading of her theory goes something like this:
1) Shock
2) Population hands exceptional powers to its leaders
3) Leaders destroy regulatory functions of government
4) Profit!
The Battle Continues!
- after a few hard-to-put-down-the-baby nights & Christmas cards, etc.
Steve is a good person who resists my attempts to "cheapen" this dialogue with ad-hominem attacks. (This is actually a common trait among date-rapists...) I kid!! Come on, I kid because I love.
> Fannie Mae's only purpose is to expand lending to the poor. The only reason the government would need to charter such an organization would be if such loans did not make any sense from a business perspective. It was the government's guarantee to back the loans should the shit hit the fan that made securitization of such mortgages possible. It is both predictable and inevitable that such an entity would distort the market, and that investment vehicles would evolve to take into account not only the value of the security (or lack thereof), but the government's pledge as well.
With respect, I think you have the roles reversed. I don't think it's accurate to suggest that the market was distorted wildly by Fanny & Freddy, but rather that they succumbed to the mania that the market was in the throes of, against their own guidelines and internal warnings. The lending industry was running ripshit wild with high-risk mortages. Fanny & Freddy were drawn in, they didn't move the center. The entire risk paradigm had changed.
> It didn't help things that Clinton (and the banks and FNME shareholders) sought to remove some of even the most basic checks on lending.
Right, Glass-Steagall. The conservatives that I've spoken with have alternately (correctly IMO) railed against Clinton for this, or (oddly) downplayed its importance.
>One of the only admirable things the Bush administration did was try to reintroduce some restrictions on FNME lending, but they did not succeed.
It's almost like they were playing against type!
> Barney Frank in the 9/11/2003 New York Times...
Just because I have a mad-on for Republican prostitution does not mean I'm unwilling to see it when the Dems do it. I like to say that the Republican party is a wholly-pwned subsidiary of Wall St, and the Democrats are a partially-pwned subsidiary of same. It cuts right across the top of both parties. Frank is a ¢unt.
>The closest I've come to listening to Rush is hearing Howard Stern's impersonation of him (he's not on in the Boston market). In any case it's pretty weak to use guilt by association (though I do get a kick out of exclaiming "but Hitler was a vegetarian!!!" whenever someone tells me they're a vegetarian).
Nah, it's perfectly suitable to be tainted by Rush. Let's face it, anytime you're saying the same thing he is, it's because he's accidentally right or you are momentarily insane.
Vegetarianism was not a cause that Hitler publicly championed, nor is it a bad idea on it's own merits. Whereas this (afformentioned) notion is myopic, insane, and disingenuous.
>You -could- say that public housing, welfare, and other such noble programs -created- the class of people that required the kinds of loans that would not have been made by for-profit entities without the backing of a government-chartered, government-backed securitization program such as FNME
So, that class of people didn't exist before these noble programs? Please explain how this is not a bug-eyed, screw-head, skitter-brain crazy-person idea. (no offense!) But do it in a way that does not overestimate my financial ken pls thx.
> ...all of which were created in response to things like the Great Depression which itself was the result of yet other government intereference in and distortion of the markets.
[knowing look]
ahh! Well, there we are: the cause of the Great Depression is an argument between worldviews. I would counter that it was a failure of the free market, and that the government didn't interfere so much as it failed to intervene. But we know where we stand -- I'm not trying to move/rename the constellations on you. ("BLACK IS WHITE! NIGHT IS DAY! JEFFERSON WAS THE ANTICHRIST!!")
> The central thesis of the book...
So my reading of her theory goes something like this:
1) Shock
2) Population hands exceptional powers to its leaders
3) Leaders destroy regulatory functions of government
4) Profit!
I think that's a fair summary, and I restate my original confusion as to what you objected to (maybe there was a typo?):
Who was suggesting that they use crisis as an opportunity to pare down or limit their powers?
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