The Terrible Bind America’s Elites Are In
One point worth highlighting right now is that, despite the push to impeach AND convict Trump, Hawley, and others, it’s unclear that it will happen — even unlikely.
These folks did push the invasion of the Capitol, and it’s more and more obvious that some of the invaders had rather sinister plans had they been able to grab Senators, Pence or Reps; the zip-ties make this rather clear.
They made US elites feel unsafe in a way that hasn’t been true since 9/11. US elites regularly kill, impoverish, and hurt millions of people, but for them to even be so much as scared is intolerable.
The problem is, this is colliding with another principle: The principle of elite immunity from consequences. Elites don’t really go after other elites. Trump, pre-Presidency had committed dozens of crimes, but was never prosecuted, because everything he had done, did others had done also.
Essentially, every senior Wall Street and banking executive is guilty of fraud in the lead up to the sub-prime crisis, and they were all let off with slaps on the wrist. George Bush was unquestionably a war criminal and so were many of his senior officials, and I’d argue the same is true of Obama.
Even Clinton’s “emails,” widely dismissed as “no big deal” is the sort of offense which, if done by someone junior, would — at best — end their career and would more likely lead to jail time.
US elites send other elites to jail very rarely, and political elites do this almost never.
So there’s a real bind here. On the one hand, some Republican elites put the rest of the US federal political class at risk. On the other hand, well, who wants to set a precedent that a US president, senator, or representative can be truly held to account? Impeaching is one thing, convicting another (which is why Biden is wishy-washy about impeaching and convicting Trump).
Who knows? After all, where it would end if elites started holding each other accountable, when they all know that almost every one of them has violated many laws and far more norms?
For elites, the law is a sword they use against their lessers, not a weapon intended to be used against them. It is a shield against the hoi-polloi and has nothing to do with justice or equality before the law.
Feel for them, in their terrible dilemma: What is more important? Their physical safety or their legal immunity?
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Z – from your quote above
“A primary Federal Reserve responsibility is to ensure that the financial institutions under its jurisdiction comply with applicable laws and regulations —> established by Congress established by Congress <—
yes, the FED will implement what the Congress legislated. I wrote this over and over and over.
This was my whole point from the beginning.
The culprit is the Congress and not the FED! I rest my case.
davidly
But as things stand Twitter is perfectly well within its own right to free expression to ban anyone it wants,
I think that is a big problem, because all of the internet is private, which means there is no protected speech rights on the internet at all. We basically proclaim freedom of speech and then exempt from it private institutions, promote private ownership at the expense of the public domain and end up not having a sphere with speech rights, which basically makes us look hypocritical.
It seems to me (although further thinking is in order here) Hitler was an expression of the German corporate wishes and impulses to control and sensor the discourse in the otherwise relatively liberal Weimar Republic. The corporations needed it to suppress the socialist and communists movements. We may entering the time when the dominant narrative we are the best of the bad options will come in doubt. Here, we may be seeing these impulses in its naked form.
Mallam (NL),
All you do is talk in circles about the Fed, trying to make some idiotic point that the Fed was created by Congress so it’s inherently innocent since it didn’t create itself … WHAT ORGANIZATION EVER HAS? … and nothing that it ever does is ever its fault anyway since Congress could just abolish it and that all that the Fed ultimately has any responsibilities to is the banks, not the public anyway.
And you keep coming back to that over and over again in different ways, tangling your logic, even creatively misinterpreting that when it states on a Federal Reserve document that “The Federal Reserve was established to serve the public interest” that that is actually just a semantical game that the innocent Fed plays, that in reality they serve the public only by serving the banks.
How intellectually dishonest does one have to be to claim that the plain meaning of the Fed’s words on their own website are not what the Fed actually means, that’s there is some cloaked meaning to its words and that we don’t get it? And if we don’t get it then that means that the Fed is purposely misleading the public. That doesn’t seem to harmonize with your claims that the Fed isn’t doing wrong to the public.
Then you’ll come back and spill nine hundred words saying that I don’t really get it, that it’s more nuanced than that but then you’ll be right back again, like a propagandist who doesn’t give a sh*t about the truth only about what they are trying to sell and write the same sh*t again in a different way: the Fed ultimately has no responsibility to the public but to take care of the banks.
And I’ve pointed out to you repeatedly that if the Fed was just there to serve the banks and only consequently the public then it wouldn’t have on its own website that Regulating Financial Institutions and Activities and Promoting Consumer Protection and Community Development are part of their purposes and functions, which essentially means that they are also supposed to protect the public FROM the banks in some respects something that they have dismally failed at at the public’s expense (see: Financial Crisis 2008).
Then you’ve come back and tried twisting it a different way and have written that the Fed is only supposed to protect consumers from market disruptions so again it’s all about the banks and nothing about the public. And I’ve pointed out to you that on the Fed’s website it states:
Various consumer protection, fair lending, fair housing, and community reinvestment laws apply to financial institution interactions with customers and communities. A primary Federal Reserve responsibility is to ensure that the financial institutions under its jurisdiction comply with applicable laws and regulations established by Congress and the federal regulatory agencies.
Think they may have come up a little short on that responsibility to the public during the era of “liar loans”?
Now you’re back with this nonsense:
“Implement” is an interesting passive word choice in regards to regulations. How the Fed failed the public was that they didn’t enforce existing regulations. And that’s one of the many ways the Fed has failed to serve the public’s interests.
But there is no use arguing with someone as intellectually dishonest as you, so keep on going about spouting your bullsh*t, I can’t stop you. No one can ever stop a dedicated propagandist who refuses to listen to anything that he doesn’t want to hear and doesn’t give one damn bit about the truth and only about what they’re trying to mislead people into believing.
Z
Z – Some people have thick skulls, sorry.
NL,
Then there’s people that lie like you.
Z
Z- No, I did not lie. But you seem to be trying to satisfy your need to be always right by claiming that your opponent lied when it is clear that you did not know enough about the FED and were bested in an argument. Just accept it and move on… no need to insult anyone.
Ha ha ha ha ha …
Z
Mallam’s infallible Fed.
It’s Congress’s fault that the Fed doesn’t enforce the regulations that Congress wrote.
The Fed’s just doing what it’s supposed to do …
Z
Mallam’s Origin of Guilt Theory …
If the Congress didn’t write the regulations then the Fed wouldn’t have failed to enforce them.
So you see, it’s not the Fed’s fault!
Z
Z – it is nice to “see” you laughing. Smiles extend life.
“It’s Congress’s fault that the Fed doesn’t enforce the regulations that Congress wrote.”
If there is a case that the FED does not enforce a legislature passed by the Congress, then naturally the Congress is also responsible for holding the FED accountable. The FED is not accountable to the people, the governors (a total of 6 now) are NOT elected. The remaining members of FOMC (the decision making body) are banking executives. The Congress decided on your behalf that the monetary policy should be left mostly in the private hands.
“If the Congress didn’t write the regulations then the Fed wouldn’t have failed to enforce them.”
Yes, pretty much. What is so puzzling here?
Z – Here’s a very important article from El Erian from this morning:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-10/rising-u-s-treasury-yields-flash-a-warning-sign
Basically it says that the faceless private financial decision makers are leaning toward shutting down further funding of the US government for the reason the US is no longer a ‘safe’ country.
“hesitancy on the part of Treasury buyers … consistent with the considerable market chatter about how government bonds, being so highly repressed by the Fed and facing an asymmetrical outlook for yield moves, are no longer ideal for mitigating risk.”
NL: “I think that is a big problem, because all of the internet is private, which means there is no protected speech rights on the internet at all. We basically proclaim freedom of speech and then exempt from it private institutions, promote private ownership at the expense of the public domain and end up not having a sphere with speech rights, which basically makes us look hypocritical.”
It’s absolutely hypocritical. I agree this is where the problem lies. My point in only that Merkel, true to form, has attempted, I assume, to platz her voice on the matter in contradiction with the force of her government’s action, on the one hand, while maintaining the hocus pocus argument justifying foremost state power over its people.
With the Network Enforcement Act, the federal government (the Merkel administration) only recently legally obliged the operators of large platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to intervene actively, independently and without further request by courts or authorities if they discover criminal content on their platforms.
Is she now saying they have to submit applications to the feds for permission on a case by case basis? And if they are violating some rights, why don’t they step in against these bad actors in Germany?
Because, as always, the feds wanna have both ways anything to their convenience, which includes holding monopolies to account in theory only.
It occurs to me only just now that this particular debate shines a light on what has become the traditional enablement of corporate power by the state, which I have anyway long perceived as nearly indistinguishable from one another. So this latest faux disagreement could be analogous to so many other things that the 1 percent whine about, as if.
davidly
“Is she now saying they have to submit applications to the feds for permission on a case by case basis? And if they are violating some rights, why don’t they step in against these bad actors in Germany?”
I see. I am not super up to speed on this debate in Germany.
NL: As it turns out, neither was I. Forgive me for using my latest response to you to fuel my own writing and research. The compromise in said legislation eventually passed in the Bundestag means that, yes, platforms of a certain size must first decide what they need to purge within 24 hours (obvious illegality) versus 7 days (less obvious illegality) and save same date for a period of 6 months (if I recall correctly), but then, and here’s the funny kicker, maintain coordination with the judiciary (or responsible rep) so they can decide upon the legality of the purge.
“date” should read “data”.