dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

DC Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

DC chatter class seems (1); DC Insider speaking (1); DC media (1); Washington DC political reporting (1).

Fri 2010-10-08 20:58 EDT

Foreclosuregate and Obama's "Pocket Veto"

Amid a snowballing foreclosure fraud crisis, President Obama today blocked legislation that critics say could have made it more difficult for homeowners to challenge foreclosure proceedings against them. The bill passed the Senate with unanimous consent and with no scrutiny by the DC media. In a maneuver known as a "pocket veto," President Obama indirectly vetoed the legislation by declining to sign the bill passed by Congress while legislators are on recess...By most reports, it would appear that the voluntary suspension of foreclosures is underway to review simple, careless, procedural errors...However, those errors go far deeper than mere sloppiness; they are concealing a massive fraud. They cannot be corrected with legitimate paperwork, and that was the reason the servicers had to hire "foreclosure mills" to fabricate the documents. These errors involve perjury and forgery - fabricating documents that never existed and swearing to the accuracy of facts not known...

Foreclosuregate; Obama's; Pocket Veto.

RollingStone.com: Matt Taibbi | Taibblog Sat 2010-08-07 21:06 EDT

Are We In a Recession or Not? [Summers versus Romer]

...Obama's economic team...has seen two fairly major resignations...[Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer] and budget director Pete Orszag...neither of them got along with Larry Summers...Most of the DC chatter class seems to have interpreted the dual resignations as a sign of the ascendant power of the Summers-Geithner axis within the Obama White House...Romer was the Obama administration official who was loudest in her advocacy of a much bigger stimulus, with the idea that the administration's economic strategy should have been based around creating jobs and shaving unemployment as quickly as possible...she was really the only person close to Obama's economic inner circle who isn't a former Clintonite or Rubinite and isn't either a former Wall Street banker or, like Geithner, a public-sector tool of Wall Street...Not that Christina Romer was a savior...but she was at least not completely a Wall Street pod job -- she was pretty much the last inner-circle adviser who wasn't, and now she's gone...

com; Matt Taibbi; Recession; rollingstone; Summers versus Romer; Taibblog.

Mon 2010-01-04 18:00 EST

A DC insider speaks to us about ``Voices of Power'' <<; Fabius Maximus

Elizabeth Warren interviewed by Lois Romano. ``I believe that the middle class is under terrific assault.''

DC Insider speaking; Fabius Maximus; Power; voiced.

naked capitalism Wed 2009-10-14 12:03 EDT

New York Times: Missing in Action on Health Insurance Lobby Duplicity

...the dubious reporting object lesson is the New York Times, on what is supposedly its most prized beat: Washington DC political reporting. The Times ran two articles that verged on sycophantic in its coverage of the health insurance industry as it moved its chess pieces on the health care reform game board. The Times acted as close to a PR outlet...The Financial Times reports tonight that the health insurance industry, after its great show of making nice to the Obama administration, backstabbed it on the eve of a key vote. Do we see any coverage of this duplicity in the US media, much less the New York Times? [excellent commentary by kevin de bruxelles ``Washington General'' and DownSouth ``political theater, perfect dictatorship, and junkyard dogs'']

action; Health Insurance Lobby Duplicity; missing; naked capitalism; New York time.