Almost Classical

Yesterday (June 22, 2011) on MSNBC's "Dylan Ratigan Show" David Stockman stood up to the nonsense of the left, in the person of Jonathan Alter. Read beyond my discussion of yesterday's debate for additional perspective on the debate participants. Alter's biases, in particular, were on fine display on MSNBC as he completely ignored facts and instead embraced the mythology of an Obama Miracle. (see http://vodpod.com/watch/11561241-david-stockman-on-the-dylan-ratigan-show ) My favorite moment was when Alter asked Stockman if he knew GE's business better than Jeffrey R. Immelt, friend and advisor to President Obama. "Yes," Stockman replied and proceeded to explain precisely how GE Capital was a financial mess, bailed out by the administration. Alter quoted Immelt as saying GE was near collapse. Well, duh? It was. But it was near collapse because of stupid choices made by Immelt and others within the company. GE was invested heavily in credit default swap...

There were 200,000 "financial industry" layoffs during fiscal 2007-08 and nearly another 150,000 since this previous summer. Bank of America and Citi announced more than 70K layoffs in 2008, alone. In fact, CNN has reported that layoffs in finance outpace the layoffs in manufacturing this year. That's no small accomplishment. Most people in "finance" are not millionaires. I know. I worked at both a mortgage bank and a title insurance company in the past. The majority of workers were women, inputing data and making low wages. Many of the employees had only high school diplomas and they worked very hard, long hours. (The disparity between the workers and the executives was extremely unbalanced.) I'm sick of hearing people celebrate "Wall Street" layoffs. Sure, there are fat, greedy pigs at some companies. There are scum in most industries -- it's just easier to hate bankers and lawyers. But when a bank closes or an investment firm fails, it...