Category: White House

I May Be Wrong About Eric Holder

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Because it does appear that he is actually investigating allegations of police brutality, with investigations being described as having, “mushroomed to unprecedented levels,” involving investigations of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department  (Joe Arpaio), Seattle’s police department,  Newark, East Haven, Miami, and Puerto Rico.

The cynic in me notes that Obama’s closest move toward action on this matter was his now-disavowed comments on the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates, which, when juxtaposed with his history is one of studiously avoiding involvement in any issue that might remind people that he’s black, would lead me to conclude that he is studiously uninvolved with this issue.

Compare this to clear White House directives on torture and the banksters, where it is clear that the word went out that there would be no prosecutions.

I’m assuming that the fact that actual law enforcement is occurring here because the Obama administration is largely uninvolved with this.

Happy Hanukkah to You Too, Dad

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So, I got this from my Dad for Hanukkah.  Yep, it’s a real Richard Nixon campaign button.

Have I mentioned that my family is just a wee bit bent?

Nixon is an interesting character:  The worst president from 1933 through 1973 1974, and the best president from 1969 through the present.

If he were running these days, he’d be the smartest, most pragmatic, most ethical,* and most liberal† person in the White House since his own inauguration.

America is in decline, QED.

*Really, seriously.  Just on the issue of supporting civil rights, he’s light years ahead of the competition.
†Really. Opened the door to the People’s Republic of China, created OSHA and the EPA, etc.‡
‡We are living in Bizarro World, seriously.

Just When I Thought that I Could Not Get Any More Cynical………

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I read this analysis, which makes the very convincing case that Barack Obama does not object to the detention provisions of the defense authorization bill because he supports the rule of law, but because it classifies these detainees as prisoners of war, and so subject to the strictures of the Geneva Conventions:

However, on further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens.  The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it:  Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”

Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights.  These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas.  This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”

The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.

By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.
A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion.(See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)

The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”

In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.

Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.

(emphasis original)

Read the White House PDF.  They flat out  say that the reason that they object is because they want more “flexibility” (to torture, etc).

It’s not for nothing that I call Obama the “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever”.

H/t Washington’s Blog.

Bill Daley Being Shuffled Out the Door

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Well, it looks like Obama’s more prominent efforts to completely capitulate to the Washington, DC insider consensus, his appointment of William Daley, political insider and bankster, as his chief of staff, is now inoperative:

President Obama’s chief of staff, William M. Daley, has turned over some of his day-to-day management responsibilities to another senior aide, Pete Rouse, according to several officials with knowledge of the change. The shift comes after a turbulent period in which the White House has struggled with a weak economy and a hostile Congress.

Mr. Daley made the announcement in a staff meeting on Monday, these officials said, though it was unclear exactly what his new role would look like. He told a Chicago television station recently that he planned to return to his home there after the 2012 election.

The news of the management changes was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

A banker with deep connections on Wall Street and in Democratic politics, Mr. Daley was recruited by Mr. Obama last fall to smooth relations with the business world. But after the administration’s failure to strike a deficit-reduction deal with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Mr. Daley found that his deal-making skills were of less use.

Yeah, that whole “Kissing Republican and bankster ass,” post partisan unity schtick strategy worked so well, didn’t it.

Don’t worry though, you can be sure that a year from now, we’ll see it back, just as soon as the polls close.

You Know, Occupy Wall Street Is Beginning to Look More and More Like Tunisia or Egypt…

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And not just because Tunisians are drawing satirical comparisons with the Arab spring, making comments about “recognizing the American Transitional National Council,” on Barack Obama’s Facebook page.

It appears that law enforcement has been directed to crack down on the Occupy Wall Street movement, with the recent crack downs in Oakland, Portland, and Tulsa, with what was clearly brutality in the cases of Oakland and Tulsa.

Additionally, it appears that the NYPD, realizing that their previous thuggery has served to help the movement to go viral, has become more sophisticated in its tactics by herding drug addicts and the homeless to Zuccotti Park in an attempt to  disrupt the New York protests.

When this is juxtaposed with the general strike in Oakland today,  it really is beginning to seem a lot more like the Arab Spring, though whether it is Tunisia or Bahrain remains to be seen.

I will say that one protest, the occupation of Obama’s chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s front lawn brings back memories of the protests on chancellor’s Joe Duffy’s front lawn at UMass over the maze.*

I also came across an interesting take on the whole movement, that it is a proxy for a primary challenge to Obama:

Like a major national primary against a sitting-though-unpopular president, this movement is sending a signal to the existing elites. Change and deliver on a new social contract, or else. It isn’t clear what “or else” means. Perhaps this is signifying a collapse of older institutional arrangements, or a breakdown in belief in existing authority structures. Perhaps this is the first of many large-scale civil disturbances, and a spark that will lead the establishment to solidify its authoritarian impulses. Maybe the training of tens of thousands of people around the world in nonviolent non-electoral means of challenging power, the legitimization of protest, the introduction of new areas of contention like the role of the Federal Reserve, and the re-mainstreaming of figures like Noam Chomsky and the promotion of people like Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges are signifying a larger shift in our political culture. It’s too early to know.

One of the bitter ironies about the Obama administration is that they have successfully seized control of the Democratic Party apparatus to a degree that I’ve never seen, which makes primarying him, even as a symbolic gesture, is off the table, and, much like water finding a path of least resistance, Occupy Wall Street seems to an alternate path.

If this is the case, then what appears to be the strangely incoherent decision making process of Occupy Wall Street makes sense, because the Obama administration’s apparatus is best defined as very bright control freaks, and this sort of decentralized decision making is something that is calculated to make their little hardwired politico brains explode.

The alternative to this unwieldy process would be the almost certain co-opting of the movement.

*There was a chain link fence erected as a sculpture at UMass in the 1970s, and a frequent activity of students until the late 1980s was to get drunk and wander through the maze. After a decade of drunks bumping into the walls, it was falling apart, and the administration wanted to demolish it. This resulted in a storm of protests, culminating in protests on the Chancellor’s lawn, and the administration agreed to replace the sculpture, rather than demolishing it.

The Question is Not Whether, but How Obama’s HARP Will F%$# Homeowners

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So, Obama has announced a new assistance program for homeowners with underwater mortgages, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which is to succeed the thoroughly corrupt HAMP program, which was geared toward helping the banksters to defraud homeowners, to allow for that cash flow to paper over some of the evidence of their insolvency.

A quick perusal of the proposal gives us the the following bullet points:

  • The homeowner can be at a higher level of negative equity than previously allowed.
  • An appraisal is not necessarily.
  • Some fees are being waived, particularly for those who take shorter term loans.
  • Underwriting standards for the banks are relaxed, making it less likely for them to have to buy back bad loans. ⇐ This is the stealth bank bailout. Another f%$#ing get out of jail free card.
  • An agreement from the major banks to not block refinancing on the basis of a 2nd mortgage.
  • It only applies to loans held by Fannie and Freddie .

I’m dubious because I believe that the Obama administration has been completely captured by the banksters, and so will not live up to its expectation, but Felix Salmon calls the program pathetic based on its basic features:

  • If you’re a homeowner whose mortgage isn’t owned or guaranteed by Frannie, you’re out of luck.
  • If your mortgage was sold to Frannie after May 31, 2009, you’re out of luck.
  • If you want to get out of negative-equity hell by doing a principal reduction, you’re out of luck.
  • If your bank doesn’t feel like participating, for whatever reason, you’re out of luck.

Salmon also notes that even by the FHFA, the agency that is managing this program, does not forecast a significant uptick in refinancing, and the initial program has refinanced less than ⅕ of the the anticipated activities.

So, it probably fails on both the specifics of the plan, and the fact that Timmy “The Bankster’s Bitch” Geithner will be supervising the implementation, which is a recipe for another blow job for big banks.

Well Knock Me Over With a Sledge Hammer!

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Barack Obama revealed his deficit plan, and for once, I’m pleasantly surprised:

President Obama will unveil a plan on Monday that uses entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, administration officials said.

The plan, which Mr. Obama will lay out Monday morning at the White House, is the administration’s opening move in sweeping negotiations on deficit reduction to be taken up by a joint House-Senate committee over the next two months. If a deal is not enacted by Dec. 23, cuts could take effect automatically across government agencies.

Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire, closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.

I’m stunned.

His plan doesn’t suck (much), and it doesn’t cede major points to the Republicans as a starting point.

I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop (with all of his caving, I’m still going long on spelunking gear) .

Someone must have made it clear to him that while “the left” would vote for him in 2012, regardless of how much he flamed them, they made the point that if they do so reluctantly, then the low information independent voters won’t feel the enthusiasm, and they’ll not take the time to pull the lever for him.

The House Passed the Debt Deal

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And about half the Democratic caucus voted for it.

Looking at the tally, my Congresscritter, Jon Sarbanes, voted against it, but Hoyer, Ruppersberger (no surprise there) and DCCC chair Van Hollen all voted for this sh%$ sandwich.

Any Democrat who votes for this deserves a primary challenge, and the fact that Van Hollen is running the DCCC means that you should not give to that organization, but instead choose your candidates a la carte, because the DCCC will continue to spend their money on spineless wimps with no moral compass.

As to the substance of the deal, words fail me, but they don’t fail the Rude Pundit (NSFW, but if you know the Rude One, you knew that).

Also, read Krugman, whose New York Times OP/ED, The President Surrenders, is a marginally more polite take down.

Me, I don’t think that Obama is as bad a negotiator as we would like to think.  I think that he is getting much of what he wants, and using Boehner as a useful idiot for political cover from his own base.

It Looks Like There is a Debt Limit Deal

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And it looks like it sucks.

I’m still digesting it, but it appears mandate cuts, and not taxes, and it gives the Republicans to pivot away from their disastrous vote to kill Medicare, and accuse Democrats of doing the same.

I guess that’s what serves as bipartisanship in Obama’s mind.

About the only bright spot is the possibility that House Democrats may desert this bill en mass, which has the possibility of changing the dynamic in a positive way.

He’s Proposing Means Testing Medicare? Is He Nuts?

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One of the reason that Social Security and Medicare are popular are because they both apply to everyone.

When you start trying to exclude people for being too rich, you remove a powerful constituency that supports the programs, and save next to no money, and set the stage for a lower level, until finally the programs are just for the poor, and they are easier to kill.

Well, at his press conference, this is what Barack Obama proposed:

“The fall back position, the third option, and what I consider the least attractive option, is one in which we raise the debt ceiling without making any significant progress on reducing the deficit,” he said.

Obama specifically highlighted the possibility of additional means-testing for Medicare as a way to achieve savings, noting that his proposal would not affect current beneficiaries.

“You can envision a situation where for somebody in my position — me having to pay a little bit more — would be appropriate…and that could make a difference,” Obama said during a Friday press conference.

Will someone please primary the bastard before he destroys the last vestige of the New Deal? Please?

His narcissistic interest in accomplishing big things, even when they are bad big things, is profoundly troubling.

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Even though Geithner has denied the rumors that he would be leaving, this hasn’t stopped unnamed sources for floating the names of potential replacements , and this scares the hell out of me:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would like to leave the Obama administration this fall if economic conditions are stronger and the debt ceiling debate is resolved in a timely manner, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Possible replacements to be President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, according to a senior administration official, include Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, and Roger Altman, a prominent investment banker and former deputy Treasury secretary.

So, the front runners are two investment bankers, one of whom co-chaired the cat food commission and launched a full frontal assault on social security, with the hope of delivering that pot of money to Wall Street.

But if you think that the front runners are scary, just look at the B-team:

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is considered a strong dark-horse candidate.Dimon has said he is not interested in public office but many on Wall Street believe he would accept the job if asked by Obama. But the White House will have to decide whether Dimon, who leads the most successful bank in the U.S., is too closely aligned with Wall Street.

Jamie F%$#ing Diamond.  The man who whines because he doesn’t think that overpaid, incompetent, corrupt, immoral, and very very rich rat f%$#s are having their asses kissed enough?

Is there any limit to the extremes to which Barack Obama and His Clueless Minions™ will go to put their tongues up the anuses of the banksters who have wrecked our economy?

It appears not.

Shoot me now!

Please, God, Let This Be True!

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There are now rumors that Timothy Geighner will be resigning as Treasury Secretary after the debt ceiling dispute is resolved:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has signaled to White House officials that he’s considering leaving the administration after President Barack Obama reaches an agreement with Congress to raise the federal debt limit, according to three people familiar with the matter.

First, let me note that this is an interesting contruct, “according to three people familiar with the matter.”

Since when do reporters say how many anonymous sources that they are quoting?

The fact that Geithner has been the longest serving and worst of Obama’s economic advisers, (When you consider that Larry Summers is in the mix, it’s pretty mind boggling) it doesn’t bode well for whoever will replace him.

My suggestion would be to stop giving Wall Street a blow job, and appoint someone up to regulation, but the ‘Phants will filibuster them, so recess appoint someone who who has a history of pursuing fraud and abuse, though Republicans are suggesting that Obama, “Bring a CEO on board.”

So will Obama do the right thing, both politically and policy wise, or will he elect not to disturb the status quo, and engage in another pointless attempt to appease the Republicans?

I’m not an optimist.

Normally, I Find This to Be a Typically Meaningless Gesture…

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But Dennis Kucinich and the other house members who are suing Barack Obama for violating the War Powers Act in Libya are doing the right thing:

Ten House members led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are filing a complaint in federal court against President Obama for taking military action in Libya without first seeking congressional approval.

Kucinich and Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Howard Coble (R-N.C.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) Ron Paul (R-Texas), Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), Tim Johnson (R-Ill.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.) filed the complaint Wednesday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated,” Kucinich said in a statement. “We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies.”

The House members argue that the Obama administration overstepped its constitutional authority by authorizing the use of U.S. military force abroad without first receiving approval from Congress. U.S. forces have been involved in the campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi for 88 days.

Critics argue that Obama violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by failing to seek congressional approval for the mission.

It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court might handle this.

I’ve always felt that the requirement for Senate to declare war implies that there should be a legislative requirement for the approval of war, but these days, no one seems to take this particularly seriously.

I would note that Libya appears to be a particularly cut and dried case though, there is no security threat to the US, and the primary reason that we are involved seems to be that the US Military didn’t want to be left out of the party started by French and British neo-Colonial political calculus.

Daniel Ellsburg Says the Most Depressing Thing This Century

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When he notes that all the crimes committed against him, crimes which were a significant part of the impeachment case that drove Richard M. Nixon from office under threat of impeachment, are now legal:

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal.

There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit obstructions of justice (like Nixon’s bribes to potential witnesses) to conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more years.

Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the 54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks, almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).

He could only admire Obama’s boldness in using the same Espionage Act provisions used against me–almost surely unconstitutional used against disclosures to the American press and public in my day, less surely under the current Supreme Court–to indict Thomas Drake, a classic whistleblower who exposed illegality and waste in the NSA. [ED Note:  The Drake Case Collapsed, and the government settled on a plea for a no-jail-time misdemeanor]

Drake’s trial begins on June 13, the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers. If Nixon were alive, he might well choose to attend.

While the erosions of civil liberties began under Reagan, and picked up steam under Bush II, it’s clear that that Obama has devoted the power and prestige of his office to further expanding the role of the Presidency and normalizing what are extreme views of executive power.

Obama is like Nixon, without the charm.

2 Years Too Late, Timmeh

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So, the US Treasury is finally taking action against banks who have not engaged in HAMP in good faith:

As the nation’s housing market continues to teeter, the Treasury Department on Thursday penalized three of the nation’s largest banks for subpar performance in administrating a government-sponsored program to modify mortgage loans for distressed homeowners.

As part of a new assessment of mortgage servicers, Treasury officials said they would withhold incentive payments for the three banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — until the problems are resolved. At that point, those payments would be made, a Treasury spokeswoman said.

In May, the three banks received $24 million in incentives as part of the modification program.

The Treasury Department has previously withheld payments from mortgage servicers, but Thursday’s action focused on some of the biggest players in the program. Called the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, it is voluntary for mortgage servicers. Nearly all of the nation’s largest banks have signed contracts to participate.

Only, as Yves Smith observes, this is not accountability, it’s accountability theater, from the folks who so f%$#ed up HANP so badly that, “HAMP was so clearly a disaster that Treasury Department officials didn’t try very hard to defend it in a meeting with bloggers that I [Yves Smith] participated in last August. The best they could do was claim that it helped the housing market by spreading out foreclosures over a long time period,” so in this bit of atmospherics, the banks still get their money, they just won’t get it today.

Someone must have informed Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner that even if Barack Obama would never fire him,* if the voters fire Obama, he’s still out of job.

*This fact that Geithner is unfirable makes a pretty argument against a 2nd Obama term.†
†We now have revelations that Larry Summers was more on the ball than he.

Why the Recess Appointment Exists

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Because when some narcissistic sociopath gets a bee in his bonnet and blocks a Nobel prize winner in economics from a seat on the Federal Reserve:

The decision by a noted economist Monday to end a 14-month wait for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is renewing concerns among some Democrats about the fighting spirit of the Obama administration.

The candidate, Peter A. Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize laureate for his work on labor markets, cited Republican opposition in asking the White House to withdraw his nomination.

But Democratic leadership did not press for a vote on the nomination, and Congressional aides said that the White House invested relatively little energy in fighting for Mr. Diamond. Moreover, they said that the administration had not submitted nominations for vacancies atop several of the federal agencies charged with overhauling and improving financial regulation in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

“There’s a deep feeling of frustration,” said one Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “No one wants to insult the administration or put them in a position that’s uncomfortable for them or worse for them. So you’re just sitting around waiting for them to take the lead.”

The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said on Monday that the White House did everything it could to push the nomination, and he lamented the “partisan obstructionism” that had prevented approval of Mr. Diamond.

(emphasis mine)

Yes, “partisan obstructionism”, and the fact that your boss is a hopeless clueless chump.

Or maybe he really does not want meaningful regulation, and so he’s leaving seats empty, so that Geithner can continue to run things for the benefit of the banksters.

Your call, but I am leaning toward door number 2.

Giving into hostage takers just encourages more hostage taking.

BTW, you can read Diamond’s take on all of this here.

What Krugman Says

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He says what needs to be said on the debt ceiling negotiations:

According to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, Mr. Obama has told Democrats not to draw any “line in the sand” in debt negotiations. Well, count me among those who find this strategy completely baffling. At some point — and sooner rather than later — the president has to draw a line. Otherwise, he might as well move out of the White House, and hand the keys over to the Tea Party.

Of course, since Barack Obama seems incapable of drawing such lines, I’m thinking that the only question will be whether or not the ‘Phants use lube before having their way with the American people.

Actually, the ‘Phants won’t use lube.

I Still Don’t Buy the Idea that Obama is Playng “Eleventy Dimensional Chess,” but …

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That rumble here is stark raving terror!

But John Boehner has gotten himself completely pwn36 (OWNED) this week.

First, the CBO scored the budget cuts, and it turns out that that the $38 billion in budget cuts are actually only $352 million in budget cuts, and then Boehner loses ¼ of his caucus on the budget deal and has to rely on Democrats to put it over the top, and finally, the Democrats abstain on an amendment proposed by the even-more-right-wing-than-Paul-Ryan Republican Study Committee, which had the amendment passing until Boehner whipped Republicans to change their votes at the last minute:

Normally something like that would fail by a large bipartisan margin in either the House or the Senate. Conservative Republicans would vote for it, but it would be defeated by a coalition of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. But today that formula didn’t hold. In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes — from “no” to “present.”

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan — and if the vote closed, it would pass. That would be a slap in the face to Ryan, and a politically toxic outcome for the Republican party.

I do believe that Boehner is a rum and nicotine soaked incompetent, but I see this as more of a residue of luck than any sudden outbreak of competence by the Obama administration.

Your Government Reigning In Meaningless Speculative Arbitrage

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And surprise, surprise, it’s Sheila Bair’s FDIC that has put a stop to this bit of cheating.

All things considered, I think that as a rule of thumb, if Timothy “Eddie Haskell” hates a policy, like protecting consumers, or hates a person, like Sheila Bair or Elizabeth Warren,* you can be pretty sure that it’s a good policy or person, or at least that the policies/people are better than Geithner and his policies.

Case in point,the FDIC levying a fee on a form of bank arbitrage that had banks profiting at taxpayer expense:

The introduction of a new insurance charge on overnight borrowing by banks in the US has led to the collapse of a profitable arbitrage opportunity that financial groups have used to rebuild their balance sheets after the financial crisis, traders say.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which guarantees deposits at US banks, on Friday began levying the charge on funds borrowed by banks in the overnight money markets.

The move is part of a plan to rebuild the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund after the failure of more than 350 banks since 2007. The charge is based on the risk rating of the borrower, but is believed to be about 15 basis points for larger banks.

In response, banks are abandoning trades in which they borrowed in the overnight Fed funds market – often from government-controlled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – at about 10bp-15bp, then deposited the money at the Federal Reserve at an overnight rate of 25bp.

Some dealers estimated these trades could have allowed banks to lock in profits of about $200m since late 2008, when the Fed began paying overnight interest of 25bp on so-called excess reserves.

“What some banks now face is that the FDIC has just ‘taxed’ the arbitrage that they have been playing,” said William O’Donnell, strategist at RBS Securities.

Understand this: the taxpayers own Fannie and Freddie, and the Federal Reserve, so this was basically free money for the banks to be the banks.

I’m sure that Geithner is mad as hell about this, because it’s shut down another way for banks to extract money from taxpayer money to firm up their balance sheets, but our esteemed Treasury Secretary can talk to Bender.

It’s nice to know that someone in the Obama White House, even if it is someone that they would rather not have there, is actually doing things that prevent this sort of looting by the financial industry.

*Have you ever wondered why all of Timmy’s sworn enemies always seem to be women? I wonder some times.