Friday, April 16, 2010

BOEHNER'S SELF-CANCELING GOLDMAN TALKING POINTS

Y'know, I give the president a hard time, but I'm delighted to see the SEC suing Goldman Sachs for fraud.

John Boehner has responded (response also available here), and well, I'm confused:

“These are very serious charges against a key supporter of President Obama's bill to create a permanent Wall Street bailout fund. Despite President Obama's rhetoric, his permanent bailout bill gives Goldman Sachs and other big Wall Street banks a permanent, taxpayer-funded safety net by designating them ‘too big to fail.’ Just whose side is President Obama on?

"Instead of permanent bailouts for President Obama’s Wall Street allies, Republicans believe the best way to protect taxpayers is by reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that sparked the meltdown by giving high-risk loans to people who couldn’t afford it."

NOTE: Goldman Sachs was President Obama’s top Wall Street contributor during the 2008 election cycle, donating nearly $1 million to his campaign.


So let me see if I follow this.

If (per Boehner's logic) the financial reform bill is a gift to Goldman, then suing Goldman is ... what? Another gift -- sneakily disguised as punishment? A lawsuit as a reward? Is that supposed to be some sort of fiendishly clever evil Kenyan Marxist ruse? Is that what Boehner is implying -- that the suit is somehow good for Goldman?

And if -- as Boehner and virtually every other right-winger insists -- 100% of the blame for the financial crisis belongs to Fannie and Freddie and absolutely none to Goldmann, then why would it be (in Boehner's view) a bad thing for Goldman to have been Obama's biggest backer in 2008? I mean, it certainly seems like a bad thing to me, and I'm pleasantly surprised to learn about the suit But when it comes to the meltdown, Boehner thinks Goldman is blameless, doesn't he? So shouldn't he want poor, suffering Goldman to be rewarded, if in fact it was the victim of the horrible, all-powerful Fannie and Freddie?

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