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Nomi Prins, author of the FDL Book Salon feature “It Takes A Pillage“, was a first-time guest today on MSNBC’s newest offering: “Morning Meeting” (hosted by former CNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan). I first learned about Prins, a former Goldman Sachs managing partner, when FDL Book Salon featured her first book: “Other People’s Money”, and now any time I see her name, I take time to check out what she has to say.
Prins’ ability to explain complex ideas and synthesize key points is superb — one can easily see why she moved up the corporate ladder, because her ability to explain the significance of details in a sea of data is impressive.
Fortunately, she was a guest today on “Morning Meeting”, along with the equally articulate Eliot Spitzer.
Why is Spitzer’s expertise invaluable? If you check out the date on which he was ‘outed’ for his private economic transactions, you’ll discover that Spitzer was headed to testify before a Congressional committee about the extreme dangers posed to state pension funds by fraudulent insurance, sold principally by AIG. Had Spitzer been able to testify that day in March 2008, perhaps some of the destruction of Sept 2008 might have been averted.
Ratigan is asking some tough, take-no-prisoners questions about how our political process has created what is essentially a systemic fraud, enabled by taxpayers. He can be a tough questioner, but the amount of information provided in this nine minutes of video is more useful, coherent, and important than the content in several weeks of Fox programming, or other networks that are not yet digging into the difficult, critical mess of the interplay between corrupt politicians and economic disaster.
Ratigan is like a fearless oncologist when it comes to economic analysis: no matter how bad it is, he appears to have the fearlessness required to expose sordid, disgusting facts and relationships.
Spitzer might be akin to an economic radiologist, looking for economic ‘hot spots’ that signal trouble, and explaining where they are and what kinds of problems they pose.
Prins is like a superlative physician, and one who knows that measuring the temperature does not begin to correctly or accurately assess the health of an economy. She seems to have a knack for examining symptoms and analyzing what they signify, and what should be done as a result.
Enjoy!
AND THEN, call your Congtresscritter!
20 Comments
Dylan Ratigan, Elliott Spitzer, Nomi Prins, Rick Sanchez, Michael Moore,Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow . . et al. Nobody can claim that they “did’nt have enough information.”
We simply MUST keep constant pressure on this rotted system. No less than the fate of the nation is at stake.
I happen to agree with you, which is why — although I felt a bit uncomfortable ‘advertising’ for a teevee program — I wanted people to know about this segment.
But it’s nice to see an FDL Book Salon author reaching a wider audience. There are a number of very good books on the Financial Meltdown, but in so many respects the underlying problems are political…. like you, I view the stakes as absolutely huge.
LaRue — thanks and backatcha ;-))
Love the post, love the clip.
Two VERY articulate and knowledgeable folks sharing it with a host who seems to know more than ANY of the others out there, about the econ sitch.
Break up the banks!
Separate banking from investing!
Restructure The Fed!
Simple, spot on, and efficient in deed and label.
Thanks again, ROTL!
RoTL, I don’t know how you can consider this a ‘bright spot’ as what Spitzer and Prins are saying has been being said for months now.
It’s not a bright spot when the CMM reports that the House Financial Services Cmte. votes out a ‘reform’ package that allows the same sort of crap to go on that got us into this place to begin with.
“Two little-noticed amendments inserted Wednesday into legislation seeking to strengthen regulation of derivatives will allow private industry to continue to set rules and largely self-regulate, tying the hands of regulators who want more say in how these exotic financial instruments are traded.
And when Barney Franks states “A spokesman for Frank said the issues the provisions addressed should be handled by the agriculture committee, and that Biggert’s amendments “were accepted to move the debate along.”, you can see the handwriting on the wall.
To me a ‘bright spot’ is Greenspan saying “U.S. regulators should consider breaking up large financial institutions considered “too big to fail,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said.”
As said here, “You know we’ve reached code red “Outrageous” when even “hands off” Alan Greenspan believes the top banks have become too large.”
It’s a bright spot in several respects, ubetchaiam — although I wholeheartedly concur with your pessimism about the failure to fundamentally revise the way that derivatives are created and sold. However, b/c I have a little bit of familiarity with commodities in the Ag sector, I also understand why the commodities legislation is routed through the Ag committee.
IMHO, the history of commodities legislation, including derivatives, underscores structural problems within our political process: Congress is fragmented by a structure of committees and seniority that worked up to about 1970, but has become increasingly outdated since that time.
And it has provided ample ‘opportunity’ for cutthroats like Richard Cheney, Wall Street financial interests, and banksters to punk the outdated system.
So the ability of Congress to act in a strategic, effective way — rather than in constant paralysis interrupted by Crisis No ‘X” — is a large part of the problem.
Nevertheless, IMHO, this type of information-dense, cogent conversation about economic policies, their history, their problems, and potential solutions — along with additional resources for viewers — are long, long overdue.
(FWIW, I personally view CNBC as culpable in the shilling for Wall Street the past few years so was not familiar with Ratigan until his switch to MSNBC, other than a few background CNBC clips or Crooks&Liars. But the ‘bright spot’ in my mind is to watch this type of programming become available to a public that not traditionally been informed about root causes and relationships regarding economic topics; in the past, the focus was on buy-sell, but not on systemic problems. In that sense, this is a very, very bright spot in my view.)
If we are to make meaningful, wise changes we need better information and a period of time within which to generate comprehensive understanding. I dread the idea that we’ll make more hasty, bad decisions or people who are ‘over the edge’ will grab a gun.
I think that Prins, Spitzer, and Ratigan are performing an important public service trying to educate viewers and present ‘actionable’ options that individuals can follow through on to start fixing a very broken, corrupt system. It beats the hell out of having a nation of desperate, confused, angry people reaching for guns because they don’t understand how to fix things.
Why are the number of comments for this diary not showing up?
ROTL, I caught Spitzer and Prins this morning. I always perk up when I hear Nomi Prins’ name. I just got her book on my Kindle and like “Other People’s Money”, it is a page turner. She quotes Naomi Klein in the first chapter and that that makes me like her even more. Prins was writing about the shenanigans here in the U.S. years ago. Klein was way ahead of everybody on this subject with her scary “The Shock Doctrine” published in 2007. She connected all the dots. Our current crisis got started in the 1970s but took longer than it took in other countries. Too bad in a way. Chile got shocked in 1972, but they are finally rid of their Chicago Boy Friedman Free Market Flim Flammers. While we are in the midst of their using shock therapy on us.
Another tip. In “Other People’s Money”, Prins calls attention to the “visionary ” “Wall Street” by Doug Henwood written in 1997 and pretty much predicting all of this. Henwood is a real lefty and makes mincemeat out of the Chicago/Austrian School of pseudo economics. The more you read about these guys, the more you realize what a big charade this particular school of economics is. It’s fake. So you can see why economists from like James Galbraith and Michael Hudson are frustrated to be marginalized by what amounts to the hawking of neo feudalism.
Make sure you read Nomi Prins on Paulson’s phone calls here:
Like you, I’ve found Prins to be a superb resource. I have to admit your ”hawking of neo feudalism” is a terrific term. I may have to reuse that one…
It seems Eliot Spitzer prosecuted corporate criminals. He would have continued punishing more of these robber barons. But he also broke a law, a law which is selectively enforced. Spitzer was discovered and he was punished by losing his ability to prosecute corporate criminals.
The organization CREW and its director Melanie Sloan, wanted Eliot Spitzer in prison for 20 years. CREW protects corporate criminals.
Well, I have to hold off judging CREW, although I think they do some good work.
It’s my view that Spitzer was politically kneecapped because he was about to expose the AIG fraud. I don’t think the costs of his being sidelined have yet to play out fully. The pension problems are predicted to start becoming visible and public in 2010, from what I hear. Spitzer may be lionized within a year; his sidelining at such a critical moment was more than suspicious.
I’m wondering how the damaging information about Spitzer was acquired. Has anyone ruled out NSA datamining for political advantage?
Hey there!
I’ve wondered the very same thing.
IIRC, when Spitzer was ‘politically kneecapped’, there was some report (maybe NYT?) about Spitzer being found out b/c of wire transfers to cover the expense of the ‘services’. That transfer of funds, since this was a cross-state, ‘international’ business, was reported as having triggered an FBI alert, and hence surveillance.
It struck me as bizarre, given the fact that a fund transfer for the ‘services’ Spitzer wanted couldn’t have been in the millions. Talk about a needle in a datamining haystack…
However, given the threat Spitzer posed to huge, entrenched interests, it’s easy to suspect that some private company (or the CheneyBots) were surveilling him. And then tipped off someone in government who wanted to shut him down, partly to protect their fraud plans, but also as ‘payback’ to Spitzer.
If you haven’t seen the movie “Michael Clayton“, you may want to put it on your list; the plot twists and turns on aspects of corporate sabotage. When privatized ‘security services’ work on behalf of private interests, they don’t have to hold to the letter of the law in quite the same way that, say, the FBI would have to. Very creepy.
Personally, I’ve never ruled out NSA datamining for political advantage. But if that is what occurred, then it is all even more sinister, in the sense that NSA was being used to protect AIG profits. For that scenario, I recommend “Syriana“.
Sure would be nice to see Ratigan replace “Morning Ho”…thanks for this post, roTL.
You sure do hate ‘Ho, doncha?
;-))
I can only say, diplomatically, that Morning Ho reminds me of quite a few people that I know. On a good night’s sleep and a full stomach, I’m able to see the goodness in them.
On a bad day, I just tune them out ;-))
“While we are in the midst of their using shock therapy on us.”
A few years ago the World Bank (or IMF, forget which) produced a list of recommendations to Canada, which were the same kind of “reforms” being demanded in the third world. Everything sold off to private enterprise, no government subsidy/control/ operation of/assistance for anything, including health care and water.
It was ignored, but it seemed to me, that if such measure can be imposed on countries in Africa, at some point, they would try to do the same here. Just waiting for the right moment.
Re: Spitzer: My first thought when he resigned was that getting rid of Spitzer, and people like him, and controlling others, was one of the main uses of American domestic surveillance.
Remember before Bush invaded Iraq?
There was a slew of Enron, and other very large corporate messes, that had resulted in a demand for change in “the way business is done” blah blah.
Bush even went to the office of the stock exchange, and made a speech about how things had to change. Everyone was so, so sorry.
Remember? It’s hard cause so much garbage has happened since.
Then Bush invaded Iraq.
Thus ended the idea of reform.
I think Amy Goodman had on somebody, who said something like “there is no appetite in Congress now, for reform of the business community”
For some people a big side benefit from the Invasion of Iraq.
Well, given the failure of BushCheney and the GOP Congress to fund investigative positions (like FBI mortgage fraud, just for very simple starters), it’s hard to believe any of their claims.
Complicated; I could go on for hours.
Bottom line: people need to be in jail, but unfortunately too many of them seem to think that it’s all just some kind of ‘personal vendetta’ and ‘just politics’.
They don’t seem to connect the impacts of their own personal beliefs and actions upon the larger society. It appears that some of them actually aren’t bothered at all by their actions (and the Safavians, Roves, and Abramoffs seem rather proud of their actions).
Meanwhile, the more you can scare people, the more willing they are to accept ‘strong’ leadership rather than recognize that they have to stand up for themselves and create communities that can function.
But health communities would be a neoFeudalist nightmare, wouldn’t they?
What I find most disturbing in Spitzer’s case is that if you pair it up with the absolute ‘rape’ of DoJ under BushCheney, using the law as a tool of ‘war’ rather than to balance competing social claims, it’s really ominous. Spitzer personifies a sense of keeping dysfunction under some kind of control, and they went after him Big Time. It reveals a lot about their views of the US; we’re just the biggest cookie jar on the planet for them to loot.
Dylan Ratigan lost his job at CNBC because during an interview with three financial types on the floor of the NYSE he asked them about the deals the banks who received TARP funds had with AIG and how they stood to lose no money because of those deals.
He mentioned that what had just occurred amounted to insurance fraud. That was sometime around 4 p.m. on a Thursday. That night he was fired after seven years with CNBC. He was fired because he spoke the truth and gave a hint to viewers quick enough to hear it, that the system had been gamed and we had been robbed.
Wow, if what you claim is true that is extremely interesting and would also help explain some of Ratigan’s persistence.
But he’s really, in a larger sense, ‘speaking to the choir’; the ‘choir’ being Americans all over the nation.
What I don’t understand, then, is how ThePowersThatRuleCNBC thought that Ratigan had done something so unspeakable. That’s just bizarre; there were reports on blogs and rumors that AIG-FP was totally out of control and that due to scale of the problem, and the way that TARP was implemented — with Paulson’s 3 page edict to Congress — that there had to be a criminal component to this all.
It’s not as if Ratigan said something that wasn’t already burbling under the front pages.
Well, if he’s turned those lemons into lemonade, so much the better.
I think anyone who tried to tell the US public that there wasn’t any fraud would be about as relevant and respected as say… ummm…. Chuck Grassley and his ‘death panel’ claims.
Thanks for the info; intriguing.
And by ‘intriguing’, I mostly mean ‘intriguing that CNBC could be that collassally stupid.’
I have a friend who’s a former Army Ranger and yikies, you’d get flattened if you tried to persuade him there isn’t a ton of criminal fraud involved in all of this mess. I think he’s fairly typical.
Recommended!
Thanks RoTL!