Interesting comment from the article - "56 percent of Americans now disapprove of Obama's performance, reportedly the steepest first year decline in modern history." Obama sycophants will argue, in effect, that those people "shouldn't" disapprove, but the fact is that they do and that is all that matters.

I see others arguing today that we can't say the Obama stimulus package isn't working, because for all we know things might have been even worse without it. Again, people are in fact out of work and apologies for Obama don't change that.

There is an underlying assumption in the article that politicians should care about what the public thinks, and whether or not they are blamed for this or that, and whether or not they get re-elected. Watching all of the things that Democrats are doing that seem to be political suicide, suggests that this assumption may be wrong. Probably Democrats would prefer to get re-elected, but satisfying the demands of their benefactors is the higher priority. They obviously see greater risks to them in bucking the fat cats than they do in alienating the public.

They could risk losing a few votes, or risk losing a lot of bucks (bucks that they will get in or out of office if they play the game right.) They see the first as the lesser of the two risks - at least that is how they are acting, as opposed to what they may be saying.

Brace for a "Jobless Decade"
by Mary Bottari

By any measure, the last decade was a rotten one. It started with a stolen election and the worst terrorist attack in American history. It is ending this week with the United States mired in two wars and deep into a catastrophic recession.

It's hard to imagine that the next decade could be worse, but could it?

There are worrisome signs. An increasing number of economists are saying that without major government intervention, the next ten years could be a "jobless decade." "It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries," predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon.

The recession threw 8 million out of work and the losses are slowing, but still piling up. A large percentage of those jobs have simply disappeared, business have closed, work has been offshored.

While the stimulus package passed by Congress was big and slowed the pace of job loss, the problem was even bigger. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Obama stimulus bill has created or saved between 170,000 and 235,000 jobs per month starting in the second quarter of 2009. Yet, Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that the country would have to produce an additional 300,000 jobs per month for five years to achieve full employment.

Unfortunately, the economy is weak and far from producing such spectacular numbers. Economist David Levy, says the country faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade. He calls it the "New Abnormal."

The situation threatens both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans are all too aware that the economy collapsed on their watch. Years of deregulation and "hands off" enforcement of financial rules created a climate of lawlessness on Wall Street. The Democrats of course are now the party in charge. Polls show that Americans are running out of patience with the lack of meaningful relief out of Washington D.C., and they are starting to blame Obama, not Bush for the state of the economy. The most recent Rasmussen poll taken after the holidays shows that 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of Obama's performance, reportedly the steepest first year decline in modern history.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office three years into the Great Depression, understood that there was no "recovery" without jobs and that Democrats couldn't keep power unless they returned people to work. He quickly started experimenting with new economic policies and programs to address the crisis. While there were better known programs in Roosevelt's "New Deal," historian Jason Scott Smith recently documented that two-thirds of emergency spending between 1933 and 1939 actually went to fuel job-creating public works programs.

Many Americans have not forgotten the lessons of this era and are demanding that the administration focus like a laser on job creation, since it will be many years before effects are felt. The newly formed Jobs for America Now coalition is pushing Congress to adopt a five point plan that goes beyond tax incentives to private industry and calls for direct job creation to help communities meet pressing needs, especially in areas of severe unemployment.

Without a deepening, serious and sustained effort to put people back to work, the coming decade could be even worse than the last, a legacy no Democrat or Republican can afford.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/12/28-1

Interesting comment from the article - "56 percent of Americans now disapprove of Obama's performance, reportedly the steepest first year decline in modern history." Obama sycophants will argue, in effect, that those people "shouldn't" disapprove, but the fact is that they do and that is all that matters.

I see others arguing today that we can't say the Obama stimulus package isn't working, because for all we know things might have been even worse without it. Again, people are in fact out of work and apologies for Obama don't change that.

There is an underlying assumption in the article that politicians should care about what the public thinks, and whether or not they are blamed for this or that, and whether or not they get re-elected. Watching all of the things that Democrats are doing that seem to be political suicide, suggests that this assumption may be wrong. Probably Democrats would prefer to get re-elected, but satisfying the demands of their benefactors is the higher priority. They obviously see greater risks to them in bucking the fat cats than they do in alienating the public.

They could risk losing a few votes, or risk losing a lot of bucks (bucks that they will get in or out of office if they play the game right.) They see the first as the lesser of the two risks - at least that is how they are acting, as opposed to what they may be saying.

Brace for a "Jobless Decade"
by Mary Bottari

By any measure, the last decade was a rotten one. It started with a stolen election and the worst terrorist attack in American history. It is ending this week with the United States mired in two wars and deep into a catastrophic recession.

It's hard to imagine that the next decade could be worse, but could it?

There are worrisome signs. An increasing number of economists are saying that without major government intervention, the next ten years could be a "jobless decade." "It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries," predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon.

The recession threw 8 million out of work and the losses are slowing, but still piling up. A large percentage of those jobs have simply disappeared, business have closed, work has been offshored.

While the stimulus package passed by Congress was big and slowed the pace of job loss, the problem was even bigger. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Obama stimulus bill has created or saved between 170,000 and 235,000 jobs per month starting in the second quarter of 2009. Yet, Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that the country would have to produce an additional 300,000 jobs per month for five years to achieve full employment.

Unfortunately, the economy is weak and far from producing such spectacular numbers. Economist David Levy, says the country faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade. He calls it the "New Abnormal."

The situation threatens both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans are all too aware that the economy collapsed on their watch. Years of deregulation and "hands off" enforcement of financial rules created a climate of lawlessness on Wall Street. The Democrats of course are now the party in charge. Polls show that Americans are running out of patience with the lack of meaningful relief out of Washington D.C., and they are starting to blame Obama, not Bush for the state of the economy. The most recent Rasmussen poll taken after the holidays shows that 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of Obama's performance, reportedly the steepest first year decline in modern history.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took office three years into the Great Depression, understood that there was no "recovery" without jobs and that Democrats couldn't keep power unless they returned people to work. He quickly started experimenting with new economic policies and programs to address the crisis. While there were better known programs in Roosevelt's "New Deal," historian Jason Scott Smith recently documented that two-thirds of emergency spending between 1933 and 1939 actually went to fuel job-creating public works programs.

Many Americans have not forgotten the lessons of this era and are demanding that the administration focus like a laser on job creation, since it will be many years before effects are felt. The newly formed Jobs for America Now coalition is pushing Congress to adopt a five point plan that goes beyond tax incentives to private industry and calls for direct job creation to help communities meet pressing needs, especially in areas of severe unemployment.

Without a deepening, serious and sustained effort to put people back to work, the coming decade could be even worse than the last, a legacy no Democrat or Republican can afford.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/12/28-1

They can "buy" votes with the bucks... :(

They can "buy" votes with the bucks... :(

Win or lose an election, if they help the fat cats while they are in office they are set for life. They make ten times (conservatively) more when they are working for the fat cats outside of office then they do when they are working for them inside of the government, and with a lot less worry and risk.

Win or lose an election, if they help the fat cats while they are in office they are set for life. They make ten times (conservatively) more when they are working for the fat cats outside of office then they do when they are working for them inside of the government, and with a lot less worry and risk.

or "we will be fucked either way". Yeah, I know about the ins and outs there, how many have switched from private sector to public and back again, and again?? Especially those in the financial sector...hhhmmm, might have to search...

or "we will be fucked either way". Yeah, I know about the ins and outs there, how many have switched from private sector to public and back again, and again?? Especially those in the financial sector...hhhmmm, might have to search...

in the top Washington law firms the "best & brightest" (who are interested in politics anyway - some simply just want the bucks) go back and forth between the firms & government. For example, they can start out as a prosecutor in DOJ and move from there to partnership in a law firm if they are successful. It goes on between the financial firms and Treasury as well. Some high level folks have homes in both NY and Washington (the shuttles make it very easy to get back & forth between those 2 cities). Convincing the public to vote for them is just marketing - which Obama clearly excels at. They couldn't care less about voters in any genuine way.

in the top Washington law firms the "best & brightest" (who are interested in politics anyway - some simply just want the bucks) go back and forth between the firms & government. For example, they can start out as a prosecutor in DOJ and move from there to partnership in a law firm if they are successful. It goes on between the financial firms and Treasury as well. Some high level folks have homes in both NY and Washington (the shuttles make it very easy to get back & forth between those 2 cities). Convincing the public to vote for them is just marketing - which Obama clearly excels at. They couldn't care less about voters in any genuine way.

... the economics reported are fundamental, even if the description above is naive. "American jobs" depend on "American demand" plus exports. The export component is determined by globalization and is moving in the opposite direction currently. As far as domestic demand goes, that is how the current economic crisis came about in the first place - through the growth of debt and the monetization of "real estate". Default swaps and the rest were not "the problem".... they were the solution. That is how domestic demand was maintained. Unless they catch a very temporary economic miracle, there ain't going to be a "return", even to 2007. Now, think about what 12 to 14% actual unemployment (8% nominal) for 6 or 7 years does to jobs, or demand...

The call for continuing "stimulus" is just silly. That works for a couple years (if they had the appetite, which they don't) until "real" jobs come back. If they don't come back, then the only way for government to create jobs is to create jobs which create revenue... profit... nationalization. That is the exact opposite of what Obama's neo-libs intend. They are exclusively for private "solutions" ("new ideas")- for stimulus, for banks, for healthcare, ...even for war.

I've been playing around with using charts that pick up some particularly important trend to illustrate economic points. Check out the one below. It is devastating. It almost perfectly describes how the post-WW2 standard of living in the U.S. tracked capital accumulation... until the early 1970s. Then the paths diverge (as they were bound to). Now, consider what the wage line will look like after the decade of double digit unemployment to come.

The "death of the middle class" talk is not just hyperbole...

http://clearlyirrational.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/gdp_vs_wages.jpg

... the economics reported are fundamental, even if the description above is naive. "American jobs" depend on "American demand" plus exports. The export component is determined by globalization and is moving in the opposite direction currently. As far as domestic demand goes, that is how the current economic crisis came about in the first place - through the growth of debt and the monetization of "real estate". Default swaps and the rest were not "the problem".... they were the solution. That is how domestic demand was maintained. Unless they catch a very temporary economic miracle, there ain't going to be a "return", even to 2007. Now, think about what 12 to 14% actual unemployment (8% nominal) for 6 or 7 years does to jobs, or demand...

The call for continuing "stimulus" is just silly. That works for a couple years (if they had the appetite, which they don't) until "real" jobs come back. If they don't come back, then the only way for government to create jobs is to create jobs which create revenue... profit... nationalization. That is the exact opposite of what Obama's neo-libs intend. They are exclusively for private "solutions" ("new ideas")- for stimulus, for banks, for healthcare, ...even for war.

I've been playing around with using charts that pick up some particularly important trend to illustrate economic points. Check out the one below. It is devastating. It almost perfectly describes how the post-WW2 standard of living in the U.S. tracked capital accumulation... until the early 1970s. Then the paths diverge (as they were bound to). Now, consider what the wage line will look like after the decade of double digit unemployment to come.

The "death of the middle class" talk is not just hyperbole...

http://clearlyirrational.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/gdp_vs_wages.jpg

One can see the huge recession in the early 80's, plus how little practical wages have raised, looks like a huge downtrend, as the article suggests. Thanks for this. Clear as a bell.

One can see the huge recession in the early 80's, plus how little practical wages have raised, looks like a huge downtrend, as the article suggests. Thanks for this. Clear as a bell.

We can count on anaxarchos to put a rock solid foundation under our sand castles.

On the other thread we are talking about a massive shift in attitudes and approaches that happened at the same time that those two lines started rapidly diverging from one another. There must be a connection.

Would not moving away from organization toward activism, from building solidarity to self-expression, from broad based social movements toward gentrified hobby activities for the few, contribute to or result in (or both) what we see in that graph?

Can it be a coincidence that the people who hijacked the movement and drove it in this new direction were also people who had exceptionally high expectations of personally doing well "working in the system," and who did in fact personally prosper in subsequent years, people who were immune and insulated from the destruction of the working class that the graph illustrates?

We can count on anaxarchos to put a rock solid foundation under our sand castles.

On the other thread we are talking about a massive shift in attitudes and approaches that happened at the same time that those two lines started rapidly diverging from one another. There must be a connection.

Would not moving away from organization toward activism, from building solidarity to self-expression, from broad based social movements toward gentrified hobby activities for the few, contribute to or result in (or both) what we see in that graph?

Can it be a coincidence that the people who hijacked the movement and drove it in this new direction were also people who had exceptionally high expectations of personally doing well "working in the system," and who did in fact personally prosper in subsequent years, people who were immune and insulated from the destruction of the working class that the graph illustrates?

Another line on the graph? True Social/economic Solidarity vs. Social action/Personal fulfillment/achievement

I'm lifting anaxarchos graph to respond to someone elsewhere (thanks!)

Another line on the graph? True Social/economic Solidarity vs. Social action/Personal fulfillment/achievement

I'm lifting anaxarchos graph to respond to someone elsewhere (thanks!)

December 4, 2008
In Banking, Emanuel Made Money and Connections
By MICHAEL LUO

In late 1998, while Washington was in the throes of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Rahm Emanuel, a departing senior political aide to President Bill Clinton, ventured out to an elegant restaurant in Dupont Circle for something of a job interview.

John Simpson, who ran the Chicago office of the investment banking boutique Wasserstein Perella & Company, had flown to Washington to meet with Mr. Emanuel at the behest of Mr. Simpson’s boss, Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and renowned Wall Street dealmaker who had gotten to know Mr. Emanuel.

“I had this idea that this could work and that it had upside,” said Mr. Wasserstein, now chairman and chief executive of Lazard, the investment bank. “It worked out better than I could have hoped.”

And better than Mr. Emanuel could have imagined as well. Over the course of a three-hour-plus dinner, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Emanuel discussed how they might work together. Shortly afterward, Mr. Emanuel accepted an offer, nudging him down what has by now become a well-trodden gilded path out of politics and into the lucrative world of business.

Mr. Emanuel, who was chosen last month to become President-elect Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, went on to make more than $18 million in just two-and-a-half years, turning many of his contacts in his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions. He also benefited from the opportune sale of Wasserstein Perella to a German bank, helping him to an unusually large payout.

The period before he was elected to a House seat from Illinois is a little-known episode of Mr. Emanuel’s biography. Former colleagues said the insight it afforded him on the financial services sector is invaluable especially now. But Mr. Emanuel built up strong ties with an industry now at the heart of the economic crisis, one that will be girding for a pitched lobbying battle next year as the incoming Democratic administration considers a potentially sweeping regulatory overhaul.

After Mr. Emanuel left banking to run for Congress, members of the securities and investment industry became his biggest backers, donating more than $1.5 million to his campaigns dating back to 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Emanuel also leaned heavily upon the industry while he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 midterm elections. Financial industry donors contributed more than $5.8 million to the committee, behind only retirees.

Friends of Mr. Emanuel’s from his private-sector days said he still checks in with them regularly to plumb their insights on economic issues.

“He asks me what am I seeing, what business is like, what’s the climate, where are the weak spots,” said John A. Canning Jr., chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago private equity firm that is in the same building as Wasserstein’s offices.

Mr. Canning was one of many financial executives Mr. Emanuel met with soon after he left the White House to discuss job prospects, with Mr. Emanuel’s political connections often opening doors. Mr. Canning agreed to sit down with Mr. Emanuel at the recommendation of several friends, including Stanley S. Shuman, an investment banker at Allen & Company and a major Democratic donor who once stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House as a guest of President Clinton’s.

Mr. Canning could not offer him a job, but Mr. Emanuel came to pitch deals to him and they became friends. Employees of that particular firm became Mr. Emanuel’s biggest financial supporters in Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

When the House was weighing a measure last year to significantly increase the tax rate on profits earned by private equity firms, Mr. Canning said Mr. Emanuel attended a luncheon with Madison Dearborn executives, first reported by Bloomberg News, to listen to their arguments against the changes.

Mr. Emanuel, however, wound up joining other Democrats in voting for the measure.

In an interview, Mr. Emanuel, pointed to other actions he had taken over the objections of the financial industry, including sponsoring a bill last year to curb the ability of hedge fund managers to defer paying taxes on compensation they stashed in offshore tax havens and another measure that imposed new reporting requirements on financial firms for what investors pay on stocks and mutual funds.

“I would say I’ve been as tough on my friends as others,” Mr. Emanuel said. “I call it like I see it.”

Confidants of Mr. Emanuel’s said he decided to try his hand at business because he wanted financial security for his family, before eventually returning to public service.

“He had a number in his head to make enough for the family,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, one of Rahm’s two brothers and a prominent bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health.

It was Morton L. Janklow, the literary agent for several former presidents, who introduced Mr. Emanuel to Mr. Wasserstein. Erskine B. Bowles, the White House chief of staff and a former investment banker, also said he recommended Mr. Emanuel. Mr. Emanuel met in Mr. Wasserstein in his New York office, where they had a wide-ranging discussion about the future of financial regulation, as well as Mr. Emanuel’s plans.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, now deputy chairman of Lazard and a former managing director of Wasserstein Perella’s international practice, said Mr. Emanuel was “both a developed and a raw talent.”

“His years in the White House and what he’d done before that really honed what I’d call deal-making instincts, which could be easily translated into the business arena,” Mr. Rosen said. “Plus, he was someone who was well connected in Chicago and highly respected.”

Mr. Emanuel turned out to be an effective banker, proving a quick study with financial concepts, even as he relied on others in his office for heavy number crunching, former colleagues said. He worked 12-hour days and was known among clients for his relentlessness, constantly on the phone or sending e-mail, and being unafraid to pitch deals. Revenue in Wasserstein’s Chicago office climbed significantly after his arrival.

There is no evidence Mr. Emanuel used his political clout on behalf of his clients, but his connections certainly helped drum up business and contributed to his hiring, former colleagues said. Indeed, a partial list of clients from Mr. Emanuel’s Congressional financial disclosure in 2002 is easily linked up to the various strands of his political career, including his time as a fund-raiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and then for Mr. Clinton’s first presidential run.

The clients included Loral Space & Communications, run by Bernard L. Schwartz, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, who said he got to know Mr. Emanuel while he was in the White House; the Chicago Board Options Exchange, whose chairman and chief executive, William J. Brodsky, became friends with Mr. Emanuel while he was working for Mayor Daley; and Avolar, a business aviation company whose top executive, Stuart I. Oran, was formerly in charge of governmental affairs for United Airlines, a role in which he said he interacted with Mr. Emanuel at the White House.

One of Mr. Emanuel’s major deals was the purchase in 2001 of a home alarm business, SecurityLink, from SBC Communications, the telecommunications company that was run by William M. Daley, the former secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and the brother of Chicago’s mayor.

Mr. Emanuel represented GTCR Golder Rauner, a Chicago private equity firm that was buying the business for an affiliate. Bruce Rauner, the firm’s chairman, had first met Mr. Emanuel when he was still exploring job prospects in Chicago after getting a call from Mr. Bowles, an old friend.

Instead of private equity, Mr. Rauner advised Mr. Emanuel to pursue investment banking, where his political experience might be more valuable in landing deals in regulated industries.

Mr. Emanuel called him back after starting at Wasserstein and asked if he could take over coverage of GTCR for his new employer. That eventually led to the nearly $500 million SecurityLink deal.

Mr. Emanuel’s biggest transaction came in late 1999 when he landed an advisory role for Wasserstein in the $8.2 billion merger of two utility companies, Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, and Peco Energy, to create Exelon, now one of the nation’s largest power companies.

John W. Rowe, the former chief executive of Unicom who now holds the same position at Exelon, sought out Mr. Emanuel after he went to Wasserstein. Mr. Rowe said he believed Mr. Emanuel would offer a different dimension, providing wisdom on what might pass muster at the governmental level.

“You can’t understand utility transactions without thinking about whether they’ll play or not play in legal and political circles,” said Mr. Rowe, who was first introduced to Mr. Emanuel by Lester Crown, the billionaire scion of Chicago’s influential Crown family.

Tax returns Mr. Emanuel released while first running for office and reported in news articles, along with Congressional financial disclosures, reveal his steep financial ascent while working at Wasserstein. He earned more than $900,000 in 1999, his first year at the firm; nearly $1.4 million in 2000; and $6.5 million in 2001, when he left the firm in midyear to run for Congress. He collected $9.7 million more from the firm in deferred compensation in 2002.

Mr. Emanuel’s annual salary was not especially large but his hefty paydays came from bonuses for the business he brought in, as is customary in investment banking, along with the company’s sale in 2001 to the German Dresdner Bank, which allowed him to benefit from an equity stake, as well a large retention bonus paid to him based on his prior performance.

The bonanza Mr. Emanuel reaped would come in handy when he ran for the House seat vacated by Representative Rod R. Blagojevich, now governor.

Mr. Emanuel contributed $450,000 out of his own pocket to his campaign in the primary, and his leading rival accused him of trying to buy a seat in Congress.

December 4, 2008
In Banking, Emanuel Made Money and Connections
By MICHAEL LUO

In late 1998, while Washington was in the throes of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Rahm Emanuel, a departing senior political aide to President Bill Clinton, ventured out to an elegant restaurant in Dupont Circle for something of a job interview.

John Simpson, who ran the Chicago office of the investment banking boutique Wasserstein Perella & Company, had flown to Washington to meet with Mr. Emanuel at the behest of Mr. Simpson’s boss, Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and renowned Wall Street dealmaker who had gotten to know Mr. Emanuel.

“I had this idea that this could work and that it had upside,” said Mr. Wasserstein, now chairman and chief executive of Lazard, the investment bank. “It worked out better than I could have hoped.”

And better than Mr. Emanuel could have imagined as well. Over the course of a three-hour-plus dinner, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Emanuel discussed how they might work together. Shortly afterward, Mr. Emanuel accepted an offer, nudging him down what has by now become a well-trodden gilded path out of politics and into the lucrative world of business.

Mr. Emanuel, who was chosen last month to become President-elect Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, went on to make more than $18 million in just two-and-a-half years, turning many of his contacts in his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions. He also benefited from the opportune sale of Wasserstein Perella to a German bank, helping him to an unusually large payout.

The period before he was elected to a House seat from Illinois is a little-known episode of Mr. Emanuel’s biography. Former colleagues said the insight it afforded him on the financial services sector is invaluable especially now. But Mr. Emanuel built up strong ties with an industry now at the heart of the economic crisis, one that will be girding for a pitched lobbying battle next year as the incoming Democratic administration considers a potentially sweeping regulatory overhaul.

After Mr. Emanuel left banking to run for Congress, members of the securities and investment industry became his biggest backers, donating more than $1.5 million to his campaigns dating back to 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Emanuel also leaned heavily upon the industry while he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 midterm elections. Financial industry donors contributed more than $5.8 million to the committee, behind only retirees.

Friends of Mr. Emanuel’s from his private-sector days said he still checks in with them regularly to plumb their insights on economic issues.

“He asks me what am I seeing, what business is like, what’s the climate, where are the weak spots,” said John A. Canning Jr., chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago private equity firm that is in the same building as Wasserstein’s offices.

Mr. Canning was one of many financial executives Mr. Emanuel met with soon after he left the White House to discuss job prospects, with Mr. Emanuel’s political connections often opening doors. Mr. Canning agreed to sit down with Mr. Emanuel at the recommendation of several friends, including Stanley S. Shuman, an investment banker at Allen & Company and a major Democratic donor who once stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House as a guest of President Clinton’s.

Mr. Canning could not offer him a job, but Mr. Emanuel came to pitch deals to him and they became friends. Employees of that particular firm became Mr. Emanuel’s biggest financial supporters in Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

When the House was weighing a measure last year to significantly increase the tax rate on profits earned by private equity firms, Mr. Canning said Mr. Emanuel attended a luncheon with Madison Dearborn executives, first reported by Bloomberg News, to listen to their arguments against the changes.

Mr. Emanuel, however, wound up joining other Democrats in voting for the measure.

In an interview, Mr. Emanuel, pointed to other actions he had taken over the objections of the financial industry, including sponsoring a bill last year to curb the ability of hedge fund managers to defer paying taxes on compensation they stashed in offshore tax havens and another measure that imposed new reporting requirements on financial firms for what investors pay on stocks and mutual funds.

“I would say I’ve been as tough on my friends as others,” Mr. Emanuel said. “I call it like I see it.”

Confidants of Mr. Emanuel’s said he decided to try his hand at business because he wanted financial security for his family, before eventually returning to public service.

“He had a number in his head to make enough for the family,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, one of Rahm’s two brothers and a prominent bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health.

It was Morton L. Janklow, the literary agent for several former presidents, who introduced Mr. Emanuel to Mr. Wasserstein. Erskine B. Bowles, the White House chief of staff and a former investment banker, also said he recommended Mr. Emanuel. Mr. Emanuel met in Mr. Wasserstein in his New York office, where they had a wide-ranging discussion about the future of financial regulation, as well as Mr. Emanuel’s plans.

Jeffrey A. Rosen, now deputy chairman of Lazard and a former managing director of Wasserstein Perella’s international practice, said Mr. Emanuel was “both a developed and a raw talent.”

“His years in the White House and what he’d done before that really honed what I’d call deal-making instincts, which could be easily translated into the business arena,” Mr. Rosen said. “Plus, he was someone who was well connected in Chicago and highly respected.”

Mr. Emanuel turned out to be an effective banker, proving a quick study with financial concepts, even as he relied on others in his office for heavy number crunching, former colleagues said. He worked 12-hour days and was known among clients for his relentlessness, constantly on the phone or sending e-mail, and being unafraid to pitch deals. Revenue in Wasserstein’s Chicago office climbed significantly after his arrival.

There is no evidence Mr. Emanuel used his political clout on behalf of his clients, but his connections certainly helped drum up business and contributed to his hiring, former colleagues said. Indeed, a partial list of clients from Mr. Emanuel’s Congressional financial disclosure in 2002 is easily linked up to the various strands of his political career, including his time as a fund-raiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and then for Mr. Clinton’s first presidential run.

The clients included Loral Space & Communications, run by Bernard L. Schwartz, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, who said he got to know Mr. Emanuel while he was in the White House; the Chicago Board Options Exchange, whose chairman and chief executive, William J. Brodsky, became friends with Mr. Emanuel while he was working for Mayor Daley; and Avolar, a business aviation company whose top executive, Stuart I. Oran, was formerly in charge of governmental affairs for United Airlines, a role in which he said he interacted with Mr. Emanuel at the White House.

One of Mr. Emanuel’s major deals was the purchase in 2001 of a home alarm business, SecurityLink, from SBC Communications, the telecommunications company that was run by William M. Daley, the former secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and the brother of Chicago’s mayor.

Mr. Emanuel represented GTCR Golder Rauner, a Chicago private equity firm that was buying the business for an affiliate. Bruce Rauner, the firm’s chairman, had first met Mr. Emanuel when he was still exploring job prospects in Chicago after getting a call from Mr. Bowles, an old friend.

Instead of private equity, Mr. Rauner advised Mr. Emanuel to pursue investment banking, where his political experience might be more valuable in landing deals in regulated industries.

Mr. Emanuel called him back after starting at Wasserstein and asked if he could take over coverage of GTCR for his new employer. That eventually led to the nearly $500 million SecurityLink deal.

Mr. Emanuel’s biggest transaction came in late 1999 when he landed an advisory role for Wasserstein in the $8.2 billion merger of two utility companies, Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, and Peco Energy, to create Exelon, now one of the nation’s largest power companies.

John W. Rowe, the former chief executive of Unicom who now holds the same position at Exelon, sought out Mr. Emanuel after he went to Wasserstein. Mr. Rowe said he believed Mr. Emanuel would offer a different dimension, providing wisdom on what might pass muster at the governmental level.

“You can’t understand utility transactions without thinking about whether they’ll play or not play in legal and political circles,” said Mr. Rowe, who was first introduced to Mr. Emanuel by Lester Crown, the billionaire scion of Chicago’s influential Crown family.

Tax returns Mr. Emanuel released while first running for office and reported in news articles, along with Congressional financial disclosures, reveal his steep financial ascent while working at Wasserstein. He earned more than $900,000 in 1999, his first year at the firm; nearly $1.4 million in 2000; and $6.5 million in 2001, when he left the firm in midyear to run for Congress. He collected $9.7 million more from the firm in deferred compensation in 2002.

Mr. Emanuel’s annual salary was not especially large but his hefty paydays came from bonuses for the business he brought in, as is customary in investment banking, along with the company’s sale in 2001 to the German Dresdner Bank, which allowed him to benefit from an equity stake, as well a large retention bonus paid to him based on his prior performance.

The bonanza Mr. Emanuel reaped would come in handy when he ran for the House seat vacated by Representative Rod R. Blagojevich, now governor.

Mr. Emanuel contributed $450,000 out of his own pocket to his campaign in the primary, and his leading rival accused him of trying to buy a seat in Congress.

nt

nt

So does it even matter if we the electorate turn against a certain candidate or even an entire party?

This is what discourages me most as a progressive - even if we could rally every one who wants to vote their consicence to do so, the outcome could still be whomever the MIC/Powers that Be want to have in as their guy.

We hardly matter in a world in which the computerized vote is changeable.

So does it even matter if we the electorate turn against a certain candidate or even an entire party?

This is what discourages me most as a progressive - even if we could rally every one who wants to vote their consicence to do so, the outcome could still be whomever the MIC/Powers that Be want to have in as their guy.

We hardly matter in a world in which the computerized vote is changeable.

I feel for you man, I'm sure things will look up for you soon, brighter days are just around the corner

Don't worry man, I'm here for you during your personal tragedy

I feel for you man, I'm sure things will look up for you soon, brighter days are just around the corner

Don't worry man, I'm here for you during your personal tragedy

The guy who writes for the blog did a reasonable amount of work on the graph. When he was done, he wrote "aha, see what happens when they went off the gold standard and wages didn't keep up with inflation."

It was sitting right before his eyes, but... no can see.

dipshit...

Second post down. The top post is real beaut too

http://clearlyirrational.com

"gee, I can't figure out my political persuasion. Moderate Republican? Fiscal conservative? Teabagger? Libertarian (ie closeted Republican)? Its all so confusing!!"

The site name is no misnomer! Dipshit is about right...

caused by trying to pull the wool over the people's eyes???:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122903322.html?hpid=topnews


Of course all is forgiven.... from the end on page five:

But when jurors saw the entire e-mail, it suddenly seemed less clear-cut and less damning. Tannin wrote at length about different courses of action the company could take in regard to the funds, and he seemed to be agonizing over making the wisest decision.(blf: I had to get out my fucking handkerchief here)

Jurors, after the trial, said that the men had given an unrealistically optimistic picture of reality about the state of their funds, but that having private anxieties did not amount to fraud.

"The entire market crashed," one juror told a reporter. "You can't blame that on two people."

By early 2008, the optimism of the previous fall at AIG no longer seemed plausible. The e-mails reflect an internal change in tone.

"We have to be doubly sure that, if Bob [Lewis] is still going to assure investors we will not incur an economic loss from any of the deals, we can support the assertion with very solid analysis," McGinn, the AIG chief credit officer, wrote to Gary Gorton, the architect of Financial Products' mathematical models, on Jan. 21. "If we have to hedge the previous assertion, let's do it now."

On Feb. 11, AIG disclosed that its auditors had concluded that the company "had a material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting and oversight relating to the fair value valuation" of its swaps portfolio.

"Quite a mess," Cassano wrote to colleagues after learning that Pricewaterhouse had made the case for a material weakness to the AIG board. In follow-up e-mails, he added that the disclosure had led to "new calls from our counterparts stating that they can no longer accept our pricing methodology" and that it had "weakened our negotiation position as to collateral calls."
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He was right. Trading partners smelled blood in the water, and collateral calls poured in. On Feb. 28, AIG's year-end SEC filing reported that its collateral postings had reached $5.3 billion. Paper losses had ballooned to an estimated $11.5 billion.

The filing retained some optimism, however, saying that "management believes" it could raise the billions of dollars needed to meet "anticipated cash requirements." Seven months later, however, only a government rescue eventually totaling $180 billion in cash and loans would save the insurance giant.

Staff writer Robert O'Harrow and database developer Ryan O'Neil contributed to this report.

They can't help it, placed in a similar environment a rat would do the same, they can't help it.

Capitalism is a cancer, consuming it's environment, crowding out the very organs which make it's own existence possible.

which attacks itself until there's nothing left; death being one cure, a good cure for Capitalism...

It is the approach that progressives are using that is flawed, and even were that not true I can't help but noticing that the personal emotional crisis progressives are facing is presented as though it were the important thing, rather than the crisis the people are facing, which is happening in objective reality not in people's imaginations.

The changing hearts and minds and following your individual conscience approach is steamrolled by various vote suppression schemes easily because it is so weak to begin with. The assumption that elections are the method for effecting social change is weak and flawed, as well. That entire line of thinking - personal values > personal choices > pulling a lever > wonderful things happening - is so child-like and naive, so easily crushed, that the right wing operatives just laugh their asses off about it.

You ought to be discouraged - about the approach, not the results. The results we are seeing are inevitable from the approach you are taking.

Why are progressives so pathetically weak? That is the question we should be asking. They live in a fantasy world of "if only..."

Do we really think that the "PTB" need to "pull off 911" or kill JFK or steal votes or whatever in order to rout the progressives? Yelling "boo!" at them in a gruff voice is sufficient - witness the tea bagger and Palin phenomena.

So what if Nader were elected, or the Greens, by some magical process? Do you think the opposition would go down without a fight? Do you think progressives would then stand up and fight? No. They refuse to fight. They would be dazed and confused, as always, and say "we voted for progressive change. How come we don't have it now?" and concoct more and more complex and improbable explanations and wring their hands and sigh.

We should be extremely discouraged about the approach that liberals and progressives have been taking toward politics. We should be extremely encouraged that this is becoming more obvious and that people are starting to question that approach, starting to see that it is failing, has failed, will always fail.

I took the snark approach :)