Tweet
Here’s a weird one. Obama agreed to host a "fiscal responsibility summit" because Jim Cooper was pushing for one in December, and it was a way to get Blue Dog support for the stimulus bill.
But when the list of invitees to the summit was released today, no Jim Cooper.
What happened in the meantime? Well, Cooper threatened House leadership in the WSJ by saying the Blue Dogs could join with either Republicans or Democrats to pass the legislation they wanted. Then he took a swing at Nancy Pelosi and said he was encouraged to do by the White House. He voted against the stimulus the first time around, and Pelosi’s group Americans United For Change started running ads against him for doing so in his district. Then he voted for the final conference version, and the Republicans blasted him, too. Then he said "10 or 15" House Republicans wanted to vote for the stimulus but were too afraid of their own leadership to do so.
Who nixed Cooper at the summit? Hard to say. Can’t imagine there were too many complaining, though.
97 Comments
Dugg
Anybody notice that Nancy Pelosi planned not to stay for the tedious breakout sessions?
Jimbo is running out of
friendscover.so what .. the blue dog DINO’s join with the republicans and get it through the house .. get it thrugh the senate eh ?? and if they did .. obama vetos .. the “coalition of blue dawg DINO’s + republicans won’t over-ride ..
wash ..rinse ..repeat ..
I don’t like Jim Cooper’s antics and am glad he’s been sent home. Maybe the Blue Dogs strategy of being half-assed crazy between GOP and reality isn’t as awesome as it appeared on paper.
Yep.
It sure looked like
RahmSteny triangulated her out of the LindsayThomasGraham theater with Barack.If the economy continues south, as I expect, they did Pelosi a great favor.
Cooper’s photo reminds me of a crooked pol character from the 70’s “Dukes Of Hazard” TV show.
What is a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit”? It sounds like some meaningless exercise where a bunch of politicians get to preen their “responsibility feathers”.
They’ll put out a position statement, and a set of bullet point goals. And everything will continue as previously.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Thank you from the bottom of my old Scandanavian heart, Sister Hamsher…I think we ken safely say that the Blue Dogs are destined for a spot right next ta the Dinosauer jest freed from the Brea Tar Pits. But I been tellin folks for a year now that any group that relied on Rahm Tiny Dancer Emmanuel for it’s bonifides didn’t have much of a future outside the 19th century. Rahm is a perfect Chief of Staff for Obama, he doesn’t have any leverage with the progressives but he’s a very efficient security guard for fascists in the Democratic Party…he’ll herd em up and then drive ‘em over the cliff when the boss tells ‘im to. God I love it!!
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION BUT HOLD YER FIRE UNTIL THE REST OF ‘EM JUMP OFF THE CLIFF!!
Yep.
And meanwhile it points out how incoherent Obama’s economics are. As I’ve typed on a couple of threads: either the economy stinks, the stim is necessary, and deficits don’t matter; or, deficits matter, the economy doesn’t, and the stim was a bad idea. Can’t have it both ways.
Cooper needs to be re-thinking his representation. McCain may have carried TN statewide, but 2/3’s of Cooper’s voting population falls within Nashville, which is in Davidson County, which Obama carried.
curious what the official explanations (WH & cooper’s)will be. oooops? prior engagement? was busy helping write republican response to Obama’s speech?
i have a slightly different take. imo, talking about deficits now is an effort to keep interest rates low and our ability to borrow high now and in the near term. my problem with the deficit talk is not so much that it’s happening – it’s that no one is making clear the temporal component.
I’d put my money on Rahm, and I’m reasonably sure Cooper would as well.
Can’t you just hear him: “Jim, Jim, Jim . . . you don’t $%^$ with me and my boss by saying ‘the White House said I could vote against Pelosi’ to $^%*$ Politico. Politico, Jim? You don’t ^$%& with me and my boss by trying to do the work of the %&^$%&^ %*$&^%% GOP. This big fiscal $%&%^$ responsibility conference you’ve been drooling over? You can read about it in the $^#%^$% papers, pal.”
Well, making clear the temporal component would help.
My knowledge of the literature is that it does not support the notion of large U.S. deficits raising long term int rates. Some investigators have found some influence, but even those have been small.
But even if my memory is wrong, they could wait to see if the deficit is having an influence and THEN do the FRS (Fiscal Responsibility Summit). Absolutely no excuse for doing it within days of the stim.
as I’ve said before, economics is greek to me but for what little it’s worth, i was thionking the same thing as Ecahn. Because I remebered what Krugman said in respons eto te loonies who were saying the New EDeal prolonged the depression — it was working when they were spending money but got screwed up when FDR stared fousing on defits in ’37 (I think). that’s roughly what i think he said. of course, Krugman isn’t infallible, but he’s got some Nobel bling, so i’m duly impressed.
You don’t ^$%& with me and my boss by trying to do the work of the %&^$%&^ %*$&^%% GOP. …..
…. that’s my %%%$$^^in’ job.
Hey Jimmy: Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?
The guy seems to have made everyone an enemy and lied about being friends with the GOP? Is he a GOP mole perhaps is that why he is out of the meeting?
Is the GOP attacking him for his vote a ruse?
Good addition to the conversation. Yes, you got Krugman right, and that is a strong argument for forgetting about the deficit. (While noting that one historic example does not make an iron clad rule.)
There is a political problem, with Blue Dogs and Rs focussing on the deficit. I’m no political analyst, but there’s gotta be a better way of difusing them without kowtowing to them.
In fact, kowtowing to deficit hawks makes them continue to be a problem longer. My instinct would be to bully them. There’s this thing about winning elections. You get to do what you want until the next election. W taught us this. And if you think it’s right, then F the other guy.
Jim seems like someone we should target in the Primary. Is Blue America drawing up lists?
Yes, Obama needs to commit to spending what it takes for as long as it takes. By bringing up deficit reduction on the heels of his stimulus he’s saying that he really isn’t committed to doing what he takes. It also communicates that he thinks the crisis is less serious than it is.
When Kuchinic asked Baker in the retirement security hearing a few minutes ago, if Baker thought boomers are facing a life of poverty when they retire, Baker answered “Yes”.
Shelby asks Bernanke whether some large banks are dead.
I’m telling you, until he grows a beard to cover that pointee chin, he’s going nowhere.
Bernanke sez FRB has enough regulatory power to work with banks to brind them back to profitability.
Heh. That would be the same regulatory power they exerted before the crisis.
A pointee beard on a pointee chin? Doesn’t work for me.
Shelby asks Bernanke if the FRB had adequately supervised the banks. Bernanke sez nobody could have known how big the problem was.
Bernanke just said that the stress tests are not about taking over banks but giving them money.
He says that he doesn’t have the power to close down banks. However the authority is out there because there have been a lot of banks which have been closed and in the bigger deals (Bear Stearns) Bernanke was deeply involved. Seems like he doesn’t have authority when he doesn’t want it and has it when he does.
Maybe a beard like the ZZ Top boys have.
That’s exactly right. Selective power. And nobody’s pointing that out.
I wonder if any of these fools can foresee the sun coming up every day.
I liked the line quoted from Gretchen Morgenstern that before you run a stress test you should look for a pulse.
That might work in Nashville.
Bernanke is assiduously averting use of any language that adequately describes the real situation with the big banks.
Corker’s trying to pin Bernanke down. Bernanke sez provision of capital will be supervised. Bwahahahahahaha.
Adequately describing the situation with the big banks would not shine a very positive light on either Bernanke or Greenalgae.
Oh, like this?
Which is why the sensible economists say that you can’t get out of the problem while those who are in charge were responsible for the problem to begin with. That includes Bernanke, Obama’s economics team, and the management of the 20 dead banks.
You DFHs just can’t give up on your fashion statements, can you? *g*
The operative word being “sensible.”
That’s pretty, um, what’s the word I’m looking for.
Right. But I wanted to point out how deep the rot is. It’s not just Bernanke.
Bernanke continues to dance on bank insolvency. You see they aren’t insolvent and if we give them enough money they will be well capitalized. Of course, if you give any insolvent institution enough money, it will cease being insolvent.
The subject of transparency has been brought up here (not at the committee) but Bernanke is saying day is night. He is saying that there is a problem except there isn’t a problem. That banks are broke but they’re not. That he is evaluating their crap assets unless they call them something else. That he can’t act unless he feels like it. That somehow giving the banks enough money will make them want to lend. That the price of crap assets (which apparently could be evaluated above but not now) would be found out by selling them to hedge funds with government subsidies.
It’s all circles within circles. Like watching a cat chase its tail only not as cute. Bernanke is a total incompetent.
The idea is to impress our foreign investors that our bonds are reliable.
“Bernanke sez FRB has enough regulatory power to work with banks to brind them back to profitability.”
So Bernanke is doing stand-up comedy now? Oh. That wasn’t a joke? I stand corrected.
“does stick a fork in ‘em answer the question, Senator?”
Ah, but you forget the franchise value. /s
Amish-y
So Bernanke is doing stand-up and tap dancing? Like a one-man show? Oh. This isn’t supposed to be Schtick? You mean he’s serious? How do I keep missing that?
This jestimony is surreal.
Bernanke: There are no zombie banks. They have franchise value. No money. Tons of crap assets, but nope, not zombie. If you look real hard they almost look alive.
It goes way back. The shift from a manufacturing to a financial services economy brought us the geniuses like Friedman.
I remember the day when PPP meant purchasing power parity, not public private partnership. The intellectual content is identical for both.
“Bernanke sez nobody could have known how big the problem was.”
He misspoke. What he meant to say was: “…No dead person could have known how big the problem was. People with a pulse, however…”
A pointy beard would require two horns on his head for balance. Existing eyebrows would enhance the look.
Hate to say it, but Corker’s questions were effective except for the “I’m not critisizing but just observin” Rethug whine.
It’s fun to watch Dodd step in and say there’s an elephant named Nationalization in the room and we shouldn’t talk toooooo muuucchh about it.
Franchise value? You mean like McDonald’s? In that case, I would like fries with that…
Yep.
On a bright note, have I recently remarked that Dodd looks so much better now that he’s stopped dying his eyebrows black?
Franchise value is apparently the new pixie dust. Sprinkle it on an insolvent zombie bank and it goes all pink and perky.
Rs are an opposition party, completely unlike the Ds who always try to sing kumbayah. These days, much of the Rs opposition is completely ridiculus. But when they do it right, they are very good at it.
Only his undertaker knows for sure…
Love it.
ZZ Top??? hmmph. that’s a Texas band … Charlie Daniels lives in Rep Cooper’s district.
It isn’t that easy to get them moving after rigormortis has set in
I want to see Bernanke’s armpits during the Corker/Shelby Qs.
That is what we need to do is franchise them cause they are not big enough
Let’s start a “franchise value” counter. Two in this A so far.
Shelby asks if FRB is doing the Japan thing. Bernanke sez transparency is the diff. Will have to do a transparency counter too.
Met Daniels once when he was thinking of buying a little beach bar on St Pete Beach. Dude was hammered and a world class asshole to boot.
If we get too many counters going, we probably ought to think about setting up some spreadsheets.
Why am I not surprised?
Did I miss somebody changing the definition of transparency?
Yeah, but that shit is soooo expennnsivvve…how much is “blue sky” going for these days?
Transparency as used in the Bernanke context is approximately equivalent to “fuzzy math”, plus or minus.
Well, spreadsheets would create the clarity that Dodd thinks will stabilize the financial markets. *g*
It’s been riviting. Now I need to get some lunch.
There seems to be a real disconnect and failure to see that the situation has evolved, or in this case, devolved. Early on banks might have been reluctant to lend to each other because they knew that they were all insolvent and this led them to hold on to money to cover their own positions. But as the economy has deteriorated, in part because the banks weren’t lending to consumers and to businesses in the real economy, deflation has become a force. In a deflating environment, it makes no sense for banks to lend because any money lent will be for things that are losing value. I don’t know how to describe this because it is kind of penny wise but pound foolish, but the wise move here is to hold on to the money since it is appreciating relative to everything else.
All of these guys seemed mired in the first set of circumstances and haven’t noticed that the situation has moved on.
Three bags of pixie dust = One parcel of blue sky. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In either case, I’d go for the volume discounts…
he lives here in Mt Juliet … i walk my pup at “his” park. he’s as wingnutty as they come.
Mixing stupidity with denial is a powerful combination.
beguiner: And meanwhile it points out how incoherent Obama’s economics are. As I’ve typed on a couple of threads: either the economy stinks, the stim is necessary, and deficits don’t matter; or, deficits matter, the economy doesn’t, and the stim was a bad idea. Can’t have it both ways.
Rather than typing on threads, you may want to spend more time familiarizing yourself with an Economics 101 textbook. Obama is following textbook Keynesian economics which says to build up surpluses in good times (read: Clinton) and that it’s OK to build up deficits to jumpstart an ailing economy during bad times. The mistake is to build up deficits when times are good because then you’re SOL when the rainy days come (read: George Bush).
Obama himself has repeatedly said deficits DO matter, but as outlined above, that issue is going to take a backseat to cleaning up the mess(es) we’re in which take priority because of the potential damage than can do if unaddressed.
Seriously, he has said this several times, nearly every time I’ve seen him address this matter.
Why are you going around writing things on threads that have been discussed and debunked for weeks, playing like no one has addressed this?
old
I think this statement is uncalled for. Disagree with someone all you like but personal attacks are unacceptable here.
There are no surpluses. We are only talking about deficits. Obama has pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. He has also said that any further stimulus would be paygo. Obama’s stimulus package is about half the size it needed to be and will create only about a third of the jobs it needs to. So he isn’t being very Keynesian at all.
Also the idea is not to jumpstart anything. Deficit spending during a depression needs to go on as long as it takes. This was the mistake often alluded to in FDR’s attempt to cut back on deficits in 1937 which extended the depression to the beginning of WWII.
The simple truth is that Obama has done too little and he is even signaling a desire to pull back from that. It shows a complete failure to understand the magnitude of the problem.
Is that a personal attack on the previous attacker?
two quick points, or maybe three:
1) i have a similar problem with the multiplier numbers – as far as i can tell, that is all based on post ww2 data. we are operating in a different state. that’s not to say that we should ignore the data that is available, just that we take it for what it is.
2) there is also the issue of the magnitude of a parameter. if treasury were to announce an auction next week for $2T, i don’t see how that would have no effect on interest rates – especially if nothing was said about how these were extraordinary times, and that we don’t plan on continuing the irresponsible policies of the bush adminstration once the current crisis is past.
3) obviously this is just my opinion, but the global capital markets look very unstable to me. basically a manipulated system that is decoupled in some ways from economic fundamentals and based significantly on speculative forces. i think the central bankers are at risk of losing control in a major way.
if that happens, it’s not little changes that will ensue – the kind of thing that a little talk of fiscal responsibility could affect. its the difference between discontinuous state changes and normal fluctuations around a semi-stable equilibrium. i’m all for thinking ahead before taking a step off the edge of cliff – because if we do that, a step back after the fact will not be able to save us.
…..
that said however, i don’t think this conference or talk of SS reform has anything to do with fiscal responsibility.
as you and hugh keep saying, and i agree with, the most important thing to do now is spend wisely, but spend a lot – as much as it takes..
I think you are confusing two distinct economic issues. The short-run saving surplus (i.e. spending shortfall) requires a huge infusion of net government spending to keep the economy from falling further into the shitter. Long-run steady-state balance requires increasing steady-state national saving at full employment, and the most efficient way to do that is to increase the federal surplus. One comes out of the Keynesian short-run model, the other comes out of Solow/Tobin and the sustainability conditions for government debt. I don’t see anything inconsistent in Obama’s policies, other than the kind of inconsistency one expects to find in any political programme that requires political trade-offs to get passed.
You should also note that a paygo stimulus — i.e. extra expenditures financed by extra taxes actually has a theoretical multiplier of 1 –you get a buck’s worth of extra spending for every buck you spend. Since the deficit financed multiplier is probably only about 1.5, it’s not such a bad play, not to mention that we get things we really need out of the spending, and not just a second flat-screen teevee.
so if deficits matter and the stim doesn’t work what’s the alternative to stim? your logic is incomplete.
Nope. Don’t forget there is a powerful political component to any plan or course of action Obama takes that has nothing to do with his understanding or intellectual grasp. An obstructionist conservative opposition that ultimately seeks the destruction of government at whatever cost is still in a position to hamstring his best efforts and will do so until they are marginalized completely. Obama has no choice but to proceed by half measures to assure his political success in the short term. This is the tragedy of the situation he has to work with. He can’t politically manage to get 2 or 3 trillion all at once because there are too many in his own party, aka blue dogs, who truly do NOT understand the gravity.
You guys are a $*%$#in’ riot! Heh.
If they did do you think they’d let you see it? Nope? Didn’t think so.
Bayesian probably.
A spreadsheet is used most of the time to give you a snapshot and it doesn’t capture the dynamic over time. There’s magic in watching bread rise and in watching a child grow.
Don’t you mean “THE REPUBLICANS aren’t being very Keynsian at all”?
There was some talk during the Senate handling of the stimulus bill that it might reach $900B and the Republicans choked it to death.
Let’s see…
He votes against the stimulus at first, brags about voting against it and standing with the GOP, says the White House told him to do it, then recants, votes for the 2nd bill, claims some GOPers wanted to vote for it, and now wants nothing to do with the GOP, or nothing until this blows over.
Is Cooper trying to be the next Zell Miller?