Wampum

I think Senator Obama lost last night's debate. I think he lost, not because of what he said, but because of what he didn't say.

He didn't say limiting executive compensation was a fig leaf, and that if a billion in graft would result in a net savings, it was a bargin, but that he intends to ask his Justice Department to prosecute and where pleas or convictions obtain, to fine and fine heavily every single person at any level of management responsibility, and where executive conduct met the plain intent of the Statute of Frauds, to jail the guilty.

He didn't say that granting new authority to the Secretary of the Treasury was an absurd capitulation of the Legislative Branch's Constitutional responsibility for oversight of the Executive Branch and the place to start was holding hearings to determine if any federal agency failed to properly carry out its responsibilities and impeaching the officials, if any, who played any role in facilitating any of this mess. When that is done, then extending, changing, or reducing the responsibilities of the Department of the Treasury may be properly considered.

He didn't say that "saving the firms" really was just the "summer homes in Aspen and The Hamptons" version of Survivor, and that while the TV versions of "vote them off the island" are cheap to produce and yield amusing distraction for millions, the trillion dollar knock-off for the seven-figures demographic was not happening. He didn't talk about how to go about nationalizing or dissolving the failed firms with all the assets going back into the US Treasury, how a second Resolution Trust Corporation would work.

He didn't say that the marginal tax rate before Reagan, and the regulatory regime the financial services sector was subject to, before Reagan, were close and obvious policy goals that we should see and steer towards, through all the fog and bombast of the corrupt enablers of the greatest generation of swindlers and cheats.

He didn't say Phil Gramm had a role in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, otherwise known as the Enron loophole, and in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. He didn't say that Switzerland has an extradition treaty with the US, and Switzerland too has laws against fraud.

He didn't say that James K. Galbraith & William K. Black and Bernie Sanders and Nouriel Roubini each have proposals, and discuss the pros and cons of each, and leave Senator McCain to either attempt to keep up, or fall back on his not terribly relevant record, without mentioning the Keating Five prosecutions for the S&L failures

MB thinks he won last night's debate. Maybe so, but he didn't put anything nourishing on the table, and millions of decided, and undecided voters will try and chew over what they heard and saw, and try to find the defining differences between the two parties on the question of the day, and they don't even have "I understand one, I don't understand the other" clarity. Just two men mumbling over how much to give away, unable to act as if our lives mattered at all.

Most of the paras above were mined from Avadon's morning post. She's several time zones ahead of me (in general).