A Mea Culpa From One Titan Of Finance; Who's Next?

Wow Scherer, I didn't know you had it in you. But this is good stuff. Not a chance in hell that the rest of them come clean though. They are too wedded to their ideologies for that.

Watch what you suggest, MS. It would be just as easy to require a reflective essay on objective campaign coverage as a precondition to being called on during the press conference tomorrow evening.

MS - This is the first of what I hope will be several good posts on why the big banks nearly brought our country to its knees, and why we should not be listening to the repubs

"Maybe as a condition of further TARP funds, President Obama should issue a similar writing assignment to key officials from the banks and investment houses that failed to anticipate this catastrophe"
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Sounds a little Klein-ian. How about we investigate the banks, investment houses and the SEC and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law where it can be shown that laws were broken? And believe me, prosecutable offenses have occurred, certainly within the SEC.
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I'm part of the populist rage out there that Frank Rich wrote about:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html?_r=1

Failures taxing me for more failures...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090208/ap_on_go_co/stimulus_higher_education

The percentage of Pell Grant recips that NEVER GRADUATE is freaking SKY HIGH.

This is monstrously stupid, wasteful spending, not based on merit, but the perceived needs of coddled academic staffers that are significantly anti-military, anti-business (source of all tax revenue), anti-reality, and of course anti-American.

We're getting to the point where the IRS will have to open a new Service Center just to handle the influx of tax protest cases that refuse to pay for this and most of the other BS in the Obama 5 Minute Bankruptcy Assurance Plan (which will assure the nation's fiscal frigidity for 10 years, at least, if put into play).

There's no sense on these massive projects -- as the economy will soon enough recover even without guvment meddling.

Absolutely abhorrent behavior, by the same flaming elites that brought you Fannie, Freddie, ACORN, SDS, and Bill Ayers.

Hula
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Please link to something anything that says Pell grant recipients has a low graduation rates when compared to all college students.

You can preach like TD Jakes to a wall, in the end its still going to be a wall.
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Don't feed the troll please.

cdrwayne
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"For every 100 ninth graders, only 18 will enter college and finish within six years."

PELL GRANT = FREE MONEY FOR TENURED SLACKERS

Proof THIS:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1128/p02s01-legn.html

"There are also wide disparities in college attendance and completion rates between ethnic and racial groups, with Hispanics and blacks lagging behind whites and Asians.

The costs of higher education, as well as poor preparation for college, are holding back many minority students, experts say."

Or THIS:

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/u-gets-low-marks-accessibility-poor-students

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Money does not equal success, just access, to be sure -- but the problem remains the primary school derelicts that can't find their own state on a map of America attempting to keep up with the Obamas based on funding alone instead of actual grades.

Any dillweed can gain entrance to Junior College U. and call him/her/itself a "college student" under the liberal fantasy of total diploma millage for all.

We've absolutely chucked EXCELLENCE but for the sake of socialist late term day care.

I would advocate vocational training where it is indicated, not this loose change attempt to appease the hot-headed professorships before they take Obama to the woodshed for helping to bomb Pakistan into oblivion.

"Such self-reflection is a neccesary early step in restoring public confidence"
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Um, doubtful--whether it be the lords of finance, of gov't or of the media, I have this nagging suspicion that confidence is a thing of the past.
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Frank Rich needs an f'ing editor, even worse than Dowd. A typical meandering, blowhardy walk through his stream of consciousness. With the occasional statement of merit thrown in.
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Though she's channeling P-luk, Joan Walsh's piece the other day, in particular the Reich quote, a much better read.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/02/04/obama/index.html

CEO pay IS chump change compared to what Aunt Samantha is about to shell out to subsidize more dumb kids going to even dumber colleges -- or don't any of you guys watch Leno's street interviews with "college students" that can't name the last 3 presidents (in any order), their state seat of government, or three signatories to the Declaration?

We are indeed becoming the Daycare Nation.

Yes, the Wall Street crooks and professorial slackers should be frog marched to Mexico for the duration.

It will raise the per capita IQ in both countries.

MS, I wonder if we will ever receive a mea culpa from your BFF McCain. Here he is today, rising to the occasion at a moment of national threat: But most of all, because I think this can only be described as generational theft. What we are doing is amassing multi-trillions of dollars -- if you look at what's going to be announced Monday or Tuesday, a new TARP -- we've already spent $700 billion, another how many have you trillion --
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Shieffer responded with "This is aid to the banks --" but McCain was off to the races.

MS-
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Belated. I thought the marijuana headline was really funny.

I have this nagging suspicion that confidence is a thing of the past.
... ... ...

We've replaced merit with cultish mantras, Mall parties, military bashing, and festering isolationism gaily daily paraded by the sycophantic press as the proper populism.

They used to call it class warfare, when there was more than one class.

David Ignatius has an interesting op-ed column on the subject in today's Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020602742.html

wvng
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Did you see where Rush Limbaugh invented the GOP talking point term for the stimulus bill "porkulus"? They aren't even trying anymore. Seriously. And yet the media still are keeping their heads in the sand.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/08/limbaugh-gop-reins/

sgw, watching this "debate" unfold, I am in a state of near total disbelief. The GOP is going places I never would have imagined they could go. Ensign out there accusing Obama of fearmongering and saying the states need to cut back on services - at this moment when his own state is in desperate straits. Kyl saying It's ‘dangerous' and ‘careless' to describe a potential depression as a ‘catastrophe.' McCain completely off the rails, obviously with his little Gramm doll whispering in his ear that we are all whiners. The Chamber of Commerce endorsing the plan and most Repugs ignoring them. DougJ at Balloon Juice says: I've always thought, though, that some day the Republican party would become so insane that it would begin to frighten big business. That day may have arrived.
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Ionescu could not have written anything more absurd than the repuglicans today. And yet the media continues to enable them.

wvng
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Notice that if he Chamber of Commerce of the US had come out AGAINST the plan then it would have been the headline of every MSM source and talking head show. But because the COC ENDORSED the bill all you get is crickets. I know Scherer would have been flogging the story had the COC come out against it. It would have "proved" that it wouldn't be good for businesses. But since they didn't he has blinders on now.

sgw, that sounds like a challenge to MS. A good one. MS, what say you?
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The media has generally been astonishingly one-sided.
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Did you see the cover of this week's Newsweek? "We're all socialists now."
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Last week's was "Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam."
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And Benen's post this morning on THE NETWORKS' 'GOODWILL' regarding the networks carping about the prime time address coming Monday.

SG.

You are right. I don't know what I was thinking, especially in light of the fact that neither of the items that he/she/it linked to had anything to do the comparing Pell grant recipients graduation rates to the general population of college students graduation rates.

wvng
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Sadly No evicerated Newsweek for thta cover.
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http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16988.html
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But really all the Time writers should read it as well!

cdrwayne
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Trust me, I have been pulled in many times but after awhile it just is a waste of time even pretending like you will ever make a difference to a troll. And it just makes people have to waste their time reading through the troll's responses which are usually inordinately long and ridiculous.

Great alertness in highlighting this article, young Michael Scherer. Perhaps you will reach middle age wisdom at some point.

I am glad to see one of the major CEOs fessing up to his role in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
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So...how much of his millions upon millions of bonus money did he enclose with that essay?
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Oh...he's not quite THAT sorry, I guess.

Totally OT, but kinda fun. As proof that MS isn't the only msm blogger who says foolish things slanted by a RW perspective (not this post), here's Marc Ambinder Explaining The Cable TV Booking Dispartiy. The comments shred his transparently wrong argument almost immediately.

Reason for hope:
“I give people the benefit of the doubt and try to understand their point of view,” he said. “If I perceive that they're trying to take advantage of that, then I'll crush them”
-B. Obama to the Keene (NH) Sentinel, Nov. 2007
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As he's taking to the soapbox this week, it's time to deliver up some "crush"