In Wake of JP Morgan Chase Debacle, Where is the Tea Party Again?

The fine folks at JP Morgan Chase continued to make unchecked bets (the same kind that A.I.G. made and got burned) and lost big: $2 Billion in the last 6 weeks.  A few of those folks have since lost their jobs.  But not the man who lobbied the hardest against regulations that would prevent Chase from making those bets – no, he still has his job.  The shareholders are doing what they’re supposed to be doing: asking tough questions.  Will Dimon keep his job?  Sure – crony capitalism rewards failures at the top.

What I want to know is where are the massive rallies by the Tea Party calling for Dimon to be fired and regulations to be imposed on gamblers masquerading as bankers?

The answer is easy: there aren’t any and there won’t be any.  The Tea Party was co-opted by the same folks who perpetrated the worst activities that led up to the Great Recession and our continued economic malaise.  No substantive changes were made in the way Chase or other banks do business – save the tens of Trillions of dollars they got for free from the Federal Reserve.

The co-opting included distracting the populists in the Tea Party with the supposedly scarier threat of a Black Man in the White House.

Meanwhile, speculators were allowed to run up the cost of oil and gasoline, which acts as a choke collar on the American economy, and other right-wing economic theories were imposed across Europe, which has led to what is likely to be another recession:

[h/t Bonddad]

The combination of high oil/gas prices, US corporations sitting on Trillions of dollars in cash (not hiring), and European economic weakness will not help the US economy.  Will our “recovery” be over soon; will we follow Europe into weaker and weaker economic conditions?  Don’t ask the Tea Party, they don’t truly care.

Random Pieces 7/22/08

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn is personally holding 100 bills up in procedural gamesmanship. That’s despite the fact that the bills have no serious opposition and even broad support. That’s despite the fact that Sen. Coburn has been in the Senate as long as Sen. Barack Obama. Do we hear about Sen. Coburn’s inexperience as a reason he shouldn’t be where he is? Of course not. Sen. Coburn is just acting like an ass. He’s playing the Republican playbook of “government can’t work” to an extreme. He and his extremist ideologues want to show the American people just how little work the Congress can do.

In a brilliant and likely unprecedented move, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is gathering the bills into what’s called an omnibus and will bring that to the floor. Instead of taking up time with 100 individual bills, the Senate will consider only one.

Sen. Coburn is up for reelection in 2010. I’ll support his opponent enthusiastically.

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Isn’t it interesting how the price of oil is “plummeting” as Congress looks to pass legislation that would crackdown on unregulated speculation of commodities? Throw this on top of the giant list of examples that demonstrate the market isn’t free, as conservatives have been crowing about for too long. Remember, the price of oil kept going up despite a significant decrease in demand earlier this year.

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Barack Obama’s campaign is launching Solutions for Colorado, which is a good thing. The first two events, however, are being hosted by the most right-leaning Democrats Colorado has to offer: the Salazar brothers.

Our first event is in Pueblo, where we’ll share our ideas on the economy and be joined by Rep. John Salazar. At our second event in Windsor, we’ll be joined by Sen. Ken Salazar to discuss our energy solutions for Colorado.

What about Reps. DeGette or Udall, both of whom have been in office longer and both of whom are more progressive than the Salazars? This is an interesting way to begin these meetings and points toward a likely mode of behavior if Obama is elected President: tacking right in search of the mythical center.

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