August 24, 2009
In January of 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a 48-page pamphlet, entitled: Common Sense, in which he argued the case that the American colonies should be independent from Britain. He published the pamphlet anonymously, providing only a hint of authorship with the statement: “Written by an Englishman”. This aspect of Paine’s pamphlet brings to mind the debate over the issue of anonymity in the blogosphere, which became quite heated-up this past weekend. As it turned out, a writer for one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, who uses the surname “Whitehouse”, targeted the Zero Hedge website, accusing its publisher (who uses the pseudonym: Tyler Durden — i.e. Brad Pitt’s character from the movie Fight Club) of being a fellow who was “banned from the securities industry” for making $780 on an “insider” trade. For whatever reason, Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith (whose real name is Susan Webber) saw fit to write a posting (now removed from the site) critical of the “messianic zeal and strident tone” of the material at Zero Hedge, despite the fact that Tyler Durden has written many guest posts for her own Naked Capitalism site. She also criticized the use of pseudonyms by bloggers, particularly at financial sites — because the practice “raises questions about credibility”. She differentiated her own situation with the explanation that her true identity could be ascertained with only “a modicum of digging”. Making a point more supportive of Zero Hedge, she shared her suspicion about the motive behind the attempt to identify Tyler Durden as a disgraced trader:
. . . this story is appearing now precisely because Durden is getting to close to some even more damaging stories than he has provided thus far.
Ms. Smith (or Webber) believes that “Tyler Durden” is actually a pseudonym used by a number of writers at Zero Hedge.
As a result of that posting, Naked Capitalism lost one of its best contributors: Leo Kolivakis of Pension Pulse, whose final contribution to Naked Capitalism can be found here. Mr. Kolivakis then immediately joined the team at Zero Hedge, providing this explanation. When reading his posting, be sure to read the comments, which are always entertaining at Zero Hedge.
I enjoy both Naked Capitalism and Zero Hedge and I will continue to keep them both on my blogroll, despite this dust-up. In response to the intrigue concerning the identity of Tyler Durden, his cohort, Marla Singer submitted this proposed op-ed piece to The New York Times, reminding readers of the anonymous writings by Thomas Paine.
This past weekend brought us another invocation of Thomas Paine, with the publication of a piece entitled: “Common Sense 2009”, which appeared in The Huffington Post. The author did not conceal his identity, since he has made a point of generating controversy about himself throughout his life. He was none other than Larry Flynt. Flynt began with the explanation that last fall’s financial crisis was caused by the fact that “the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929”. He rightfully criticized President Obama for attempting to lay part of the blame for this disaster on “Main Street”. Beyond that, he noted how Obama continues to facilitate the same bad behavior that started this mess:
To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.
Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.
Obama’s failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.
Larry Flynt then offered a bold solution to break the hold of the plutocracy that has been controlling our country for too long:
I’m calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.
Let’s set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn’t effective — if the politicians ignore us — we do it again. And again. And again.
This initiative is a much more effective and constructive use of populist rage than what saw at recent “town hall” meetings and “teabagging” events. Besides: If anyone knows what can and cannot be accomplished by “teabagging” – it’s Larry Flint.
Offering Solutions
October 22, 2009
Many of us are familiar with the old maxim asserting that “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” During the past year we’ve been exposed to plenty of hand-wringing by info-tainers from various mainstream media outlets decrying the financial crisis and our current economic predicament. Very few of these people ever seem to offer any significant insight on such interesting topics as: what really caused the meltdown, how to prevent it from happening again, whether any laws were broken that caused this catastrophe, whether any prosecutions might be warranted or how to solve our nation’s continuing economic ills, which seem to be immune to all the attempted cures. The painful thorn in the side of Goldman Sachs, Matt Taibbi, recently raised an important question, reminding people to again scrutinize the vapid media coverage of this pressing crisis:
That quote inspired Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism to write a superb essay about how “access journalism” has created a controlled press. What follows is just a small nugget of the great analysis in that piece:
Fortunately, one television news reporter has broken the silence concerning the impact on America’s middle class, caused by Wall Street’s massive Ponzi scam and our government’s response – which he calls “corporate communism”. I’m talking about MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan. On Wednesday’s edition of his program, Morning Meeting, he decried the fact that the taxpayers have been forced to subsidize the “parlor game” played by Goldman Sachs and other firms involved in proprietary trading on our coin. Mr. Ratigan then proceeded to offer a number of solutions available to ordinary people, who would like to fight back against those pampered institutions considered “too big to fail”. Some of these measures involve: moving accounts from one of those enshrined banks to a local bank or credit union; paying with cash whenever possible and contacting your lawmakers to insist upon financial reform.
My favorite lawmaker in the battle for financial reform is Congressman Alan Grayson, whose district happens to include Disney World. His fantastic interrogation of Federal Reserve general counsel, Scott Alvarez, about whether the Fed tries to manipulate the stock markets, was a great event. Grayson has now co-sponsored a “Financial Autopsy” amendment to the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency bill. This amendment is intended to accomplish the following:
From his website, The Market Ticker, Karl Denninger offered his own contributions to this amendment:
It’s nice to know that bloggers are no longer the only voices insisting on financial reform. Ed Wallace of Business Week recently warned against the consequences of unchecked speculation on oil futures:
Did you think that the “Enron Loophole” was closed by the enactment of the 2008 Farm Bill? It wasn’t. The Farm Bill simply gave more authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate futures contracts that had been exempted by the loophole. In case you’re wondering about the person placed in charge of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by President Obama — his name is Gary Gensler and he used to work for … You guessed it: Goldman Sachs.