Morning Joe

Posted on 03/27/2009 at 8:27 am by Bob Cesca

I’m watching Scarborough and Chris Hanson trying to suggest that Americans with negative incomes and questionable money habits are equally to blame for the economic collapse.

These sorts of conversations are poison — conversations among wealthy media personalities who work for multinational corporations in which they try to say that “greedy” people at the bottom, the least powerful people in the national food chain are equally to blame for this mess.

It’s the “she was asking for it” argument applied to the recession. It’s, in essence, the wealthy telling the middle and working classes: For the last 40 years, we spent untold billions telling you that you need our crap to be happy — manipulating your perception of the world and bombarding you around the clock with our message… but damn you for buying our crap!

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  • Elvis the Dingeldein™

    Meanwhile, the Spazzy White Guys watch the consumer spending numbers while trying not to make the Pee-Pees in their Big Boy Pants, praying that this very behavior continues so that The Gee-Dee-Pees grow and they can get back to the business of building a tranche the size of Noah’s Ark™ consisting entirely of loans made by Bernie Madoff to his Hassidic bookie to cover the Over/Under on his habit of gambling against the leveraged pensions of Holocaust survivors with Nazi Oven-Based Emphysema, huzzah!Make up your mind, Doucheborough: Either we want Americans to save their money and build equity and long-term stability and thereby drastically cornholing The Gee-Dee-Pees with the moneys not pouring into our Infomercial-Based Snuggie Economy, or we want Consumer Spending to go up by way of exactly the behavior you fucking rich white guys are bitching about.

  • Diane

    Ya know, I wish they would have regular people on these types of shows.We are middle class and worked hard all our lives.We were professionals and I am in NO WAY COMPLAINING about our situation, but through no fault of our own we are impacted by this crisisMy husband and I worked hard and I became disabled while working. We had three children to put through college and along with them have 25,000 worth of loans. Plus a mortgage. We have Never lived beyond our means.Now my husband has “retired” but continues to work part time well, because he has to. We watch our investments dwindle every month.I resent these commentators and republicans that push for tax cuts for the wealthy but forget about the middle class.I will not even turn the tv on when Morning Joe is on any more.May he lose a good portion of his income and then talk about the middle class!

  • Elvis the Dingeldein™

    And oh, America, you never learn, do you?

    Consumer spending rose 0.2 percent in February…Americans’ wages and salaries declined 0.2 percent last month, offsetting a 0.2 percent gain in January.Disposable income — personal income less personal current taxes — decreased 0.1 percent.

    So…spending rose 0.2 percent even as wages and salaries declined by that same rate, and disposable income decreased by 0.1%. So American’s are spending 0.1% more than they’ve got, and we’ll all treat the rise in consumer spending as a Good Thing until we’re reminded, a year or so from now, that OOPS! us dumb-fuck middle-class Americans were supposed to be saving our pennies like Fiscally Responsible Republicans do.Would someone kindly teabag this economy, please?

  • James

    Bob, I agree with almost all of what you said/say, and I absolutely hate Doucheborough, but people have got to take a certain amount of responisibility for their actions, no? — if their actions are buying endless torrents of technologic shit and running up debt in order to do it. I mean, we lived by the sword for so long — living in a society which tolerates this type of capitalism and governments which condone/support it, so we’ve got to die by it when the shit hits the fan. No one DESERVES what’s happening but we can’t pretend that 90% of regular people have had at least some part to play in it.

  • James

    “HAVEN’T had” I should’ve said.

  • ceu

    Elvis – tax refunds. People are spending them. One of my accounting jobs is in a small furniture store. Sales in Jan. & Feb. rose sharply over Dec. due to those refunds. ‘Course they’re paying with credit cards with the intent of paying off the balance immediately….but isn’t that what people always intend?

  • http://www.broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    Elvis, while your numbers are showing we’re spending more than we’re making (welcome to America and learning from our government as an example /snark), I would venture to guess that there are probably millions of people that are using their credit cards for groceries and gas when they used to pay for it with cash.While unemployment rises, a lot of these people are looking for other jobs and while trying to make ends meet, are trying to get their families by by putting the basic necessities on the plastic.So we can’t jump to the conclusion and assume people are just buying crap (unless by “crap” you mean high fructose corn syrup).

  • camel54

    Blaming someone who mismanages a $5000 credit card versus blaming someone who mismanages a billion dollar hedge fund is ludicrous. However, when you consider that our entire culture encourages those with the $5k card to max them out and then removes all criteria for getting larger loans for more stuff, it becomes a serious problem–like all our individual debt adding up to the same as GDP as was illustrated on This American Life recently. We’re not blameless, but we certainly don’t share equal culpability with the Masters of the Universe.Also, Snuggie Economy! Fucking priceless.

  • Elvis the Dingeldein™

    Ceu – As always, there’s a West Wing to do my thinking for me.

    LEOYeah, it sounds like you’re getting tripped up by 1783.CHARLIEWhich is?LEOHR 1783; it’s a tax rebate from last year.CHARLIEWhy would that affect my return for this year?LEODid you get a tax rebate last year?CHARLIEYeah.LEOThere’s the answer.CHARLIEWhere’s the answer?LEOYour rebate came off of this year’s taxes. That’s how we paid for it.CHARLIEHang on. The money I got back last year has to be paid for?LEOYeah.CHARLIEThat’s not a rebate; that’s an advance.LEOWell, technically I guess…CHARLIENot technically. This is like getting a Christmas bonus and having it deducted from your January paycheck.LEOThis doesn’t sound like very patriotic talk to me, Charlie.CHARLIEIt’s not. Why did you call it a rebate?LEOSo people would spend it. If they thought it was an advance, they might save it.CHARLIEIt was an advance.LEODid you spend it?CHARLIEI paid my VISA bill.LEOWe would have preferred it if you’d ate in a restaurant or travelled.CHARLIEMe too.BARTLETLeo.LEOHe used the rebate to pay off his VISA bill.CHARLIEIt wasn’t a rebate; it was an advance.BARTLETA trip to Banana Republic would have killed you?

  • Elvis the Dingeldein™

    Oh, this is the real money quote from that same episode (“Stirred”, Season 3, Episode 61):

    BARTLETYup. It was the rebate.CHARLIEIt wasn’t a rebate. It was an advance.BARTLETYou say potato.CHARLIEI do say potato, and so does everybody else I know.BARTLETWe wanted to inject some money into retail and tourism.CHARLIEWhy not wait until people were supposed to have the money?BARTLETThe economy might have improved on its own by then.CHARLIEIn which case the whole thing would have been pointless in the first place.BARTLETYeah.CHARLIEEconomists just make it up as they go along, don’t they?BARLTETYeah.CHARLIEDid it work?BARTLETNot that much. Most people did what you did. They saved or they paid down debt.CHARLIEWe don’t want people save or reduce their personal debt?BARTLETWe do, but when the next guy’s President.CHARLIEYou win.BARTLETI always do.

  • http://www.broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    God, I miss that show.

  • http://www.vanreedmedia.com Tim

    Chris Hanson didn’t seem to buy into Scarborough’s attempt to point out that it is the greedy people not the lenders that created this. He pointed out that the lender in one case changed the persons income to qualify them.Of course the lender says, hey they could have read the documents, unfortunately most don’t understand what they are reading with all of the legal language etc.People have a reasonable expectation when they talk to a lender that the lender is being truthful to them, unfortunately we are also led to believe the lender has our best interest in mind, they don’t.Lenders are the final say on whether a loan goes through, so that really is where the problem was, the lender.No one forced them to write loans they knew were going to likely default.

  • Elizabeth Connors

    The Republican mantra of “the only hard-working and successful Americans are those that are financially successful” is nauseating.I teach a significant number of first generation college students. Against huge odds, they work harder and are more successful than any of the wealthy idiots that spout this nonsense.

  • http://www.bobcesca.com Bob Cesca

    Jeff wrote:>>>people have got to take a certain amount of responisibility for their actions, no?Yes to a certain extent, but it’s just wrong to take the “she was asking for it” posture after this philosophy was systematically injected into society from the top down.

  • SillyRatfacedGit

    Doucheborough is another fine example of the obnoxious fratboy twats that seem to be the bulk of the Republican Party membership. They consider themselves above the average Americans. We exist only to provide valet service for their Mercedes. Of course everything is our fault since they have never been responsible for anything in their lives.

  • http://www.colorado-yardening.com Peter

    and damn you for propping up the con/scam known as Wall St with your puny 401Ks, ad nauseum.

  • Handel

    When a lender makes a loan to someone that they probably shouldn’t have, you can technically blame both parties. The borrower should know better than to borrow money they cannot realistically pay back. However, who in this situation is responsible for evaluating risk? Who has the resources to do so? Of course most borrowers are going to be over-optimistic regarding the investment. The lender has all the bargaining power, dictates the terms, and has final say as to whether to enter into the loan agreement. To me, this swings the balance and therefore, absent bad faith by the borrower, the lender shoulders more of the responsibility in this mess.

  • Tony

    What a load of crap. I don’t ever recall any ads that said go in debt to your eyeballs to buy our products. Sorry that the people who ran those adds and sold those products gave people credit for having enough sense not to spend more than they have consistently. Maybe you should have to pass a basic IQ test to get a credit card or a bank loan.Certainly there are plenty corporate execs who should be roasted for the mess the created, however they aren’t the only ones. One of the biggest problems with the left is an unwillingness to hold anyone who isn’t wealthy accountable for their actions.

  • http://broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    Tony, that is a load of bullshit. Ever wonder why first year college students get bombarded with credit card offers? Do you think it’s responsible for the lender to make these risky credit offers to someone who is in school and most likely have a part time job at the most?We’re not dismissing irresponsible customers who maxed out their credit cards. One of the biggest problems with the right is dismissing predatory lending and the greed that caused bundling CDOs for a quick buck regardless of the consequences.As camel54 said

    Blaming someone who mismanages a $5000 credit card versus blaming someone who mismanages a billion dollar hedge fund is ludicrous.

    When you are applying for a mortgage because you want a piece of the “American Dream” and are tired of paying rent with nothing to show for it, and a lender who has all your information and who is responsible for accepting or rejecting the loan based on your info decides to accept the application knowing that it would probably go into default, who is to blame?Most of us know how many hoops you have to jump through when applying for a mortgage. If a lender says yes to a risky applicant and teases them with low APRs by saying they can renegotiate when the balloon payment is due, why should the applicant doubt them?

  • SillyRatfacedGit

    The corporatists have always dehumanized the average American citizens. We are John and Mary Sixpack of the Consumers Clan. They set everything up so that consumers pay for everything.The Rich and Powerful might pay as much as 15% on their profits (all capital gains) as opposed to the 38% paid by the upper middle class on earned income. However the Rich and Powerful have ways of hiding their gains and seldom actually pay 15%.They shipped manufacturing jobs overseas since the costs are much lower there. They cost savings were not passed on to the consumer however. The profit margin went up dramatically.Since they got used to thinking of us as consumers, they forgot that we were also employees. The economy has collapsed because too many ‘consumers’ are now unemployed ex-employees. The wrong wing is still in denial about this. Giving tax cuts to the corporations will not fix the U.S. economy since providing more jobs in India and China is what caused our problems in the first place.When the wrong wing stops shouting empty platitudes and starts addressing the issues, I’ll stop ignoring them. In the mean time thy are simply a source of very annoying noise.

  • James

    Bob, you called me Jeff, but never-mind! ;-) Ah, I totally agree with you: I wasn’t for an instant suggesting people hadn’t been led astray by corporatism, their government, brokers, lenders, etc. I was just saying – or, rather, meant to say – that unless we use this as a warning to take notice, to self-educate, we will never stop this happening.It’s just that I’m hearing a ton of “I can’t believe they did this to us” – as if it was a family member that screwed us, and not multi-national companies with histories of cronyism and abuse.