“Foreclosure,” “Housing,” and “HAMP” Not Part of Epic on Obama’s Recovery Plan

/in , /by

Peter Baker has an almost 6500-word article describing Obama’s efforts to fix the economy.

Obama’s frustration could set the tone for the remainder of his term. For all the trials of war and terrorism, the economy has come to define his presidency. During the first half of his term, he used the tools of government to shape the nation’s economy more aggressively than any president in 75 years.

It describes the counter-productive relationships of his first economic team and the introduction of a second one.

Over the last two months, I interviewed nearly all of the team’s main figures, past and present, and when we talked about their relations with one another, it was like picking through the wreckage of a messy divorce.

It describes Obama’s purported rocky relationship with business (with extensive quotes from the Chamber of Commerce’s Tom Donohue). It describes Timmeh Geithner’s longevity even while quoting him dismissing legitimate critiques of the last two years as “marginal.” It includes the credulous judgment that the tax deal “amounted to a second stimulus package.”

But nowhere in this epic does Peter Baker once use the word “foreclosure.” Or “housing.” Or, god forbid, “HAMP.”

Now, there’s no way to tell whether Baker neglected any discussion of the entire cause of the economic crisis and one of the elements that continues to rot out the core of the economy because he simply didn’t ask about it–in two months of interviews. Or because his sources didn’t or wouldn’t talk about it.

But somehow the paper of record wrote what was supposed to be a definitive article on how the Obama Administration plans to fix the economy without once mentioning that part of the economy, housing, that has traditionally led recoveries but that, partly because of the obstinance of Obama’s economic team, continues to drag down the recovery.

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  1. Mary says:

    Despite all Baker’s “way cool” efforts, they all sound so unlikable and lame.

    When he talks about the briefing Obama got about how bad things were, 2 years ago, and that it was ‘all news to him’ or whatever words he uses in the piece, it just makes you want to beat your head on the wall. Roubini, Stiglitz, Krugman – had all been hammering on how bad it was, that it was way worse than the Bushco happy talk. Obama had Summersco supposedly “advising” him on putting his plans together during about two freaking years of campaigning – in what BUBBLEWORLD would it have been all news to him? And Romer tries to sound like she’s making an effort, now, to own up – but she sounds just like CondifreakinRice! Despite the fact that she ran her own numbers on the stimulus and came up with 1.2 trillion; despite the fact that Krugman was practically devoting himself to nothing other than hammering home that the stimulus was too small, she now does the *well, yeah, looking back, with hindsight – but golly, at the time, who could have known??* bambi blink.

    I haven’t been able to finish it – it reads like bad fiction with no character emerging who you give a damn about.

    • sona says:

      it doesn’t stop at the inadequacy of the stimulus package – bernanke recently asserted that he would prefer to see inflationary trends to counteract a possible deflationary spiral that would delay economic recovery and this just after the much vaunted qe2

      problem with this reasoning or lack of it is that it ignores the real reasons why the housing bubble ocurred in the first place – too much money chasing nonproductive ‘safe’ havens because hedge funds and investment banks were beholden to bondholders’ short term interests

      unlike greenspan, bernanke would prefer interest rates to appreciate but that’s because the demand for US treasuries remain low despite their continuing reputation and wh guarantees of no default and that in a way lies at the heart of multiple sovereign debt crises in the weaker eu economies – bond holders are panicking

      they tend to be risk averse, particularly in a climate of slumping aggregate demand across the oecd economies except for commodities but the majority of these economies are not commodity producers

      next mantra that the fed will chant is the need to hold down wages to boost employment and put a brake on inflation just as they had done throughout the 40 years preceding the gfc

  3. PeasantParty says:

    I haven’t read it yet, but I think we all have been watching closely to see what Obama’s economic recovery plan is. For two years, we have seen nothing.

    On the housing crisis in the interview?

    Out of sight, out of mind equals Out of mind, out of sight.

  4. JTMinIA says:

    If anyone primaries Obama in 2012, that tax deal will be his “read my lips” moment.

    In case the rock upon you is heavy, the tax deal raised the total taxes on those making $20k. Obama promised that this wouldn’t happen.

    The idea that raising taxes on people who don’t save anything while lowering taxes on those who do will be a “stimulus” of any sort is flat-out moronic and Timmeh and Obama know it.

    • Denn says:

      The Obama tax cut is actually a great stimulus – for China China China China China (to borrow Immelt’s cheerleading nomenclature).

      • JTMinIA says:

        I actually disagree. One of the only real defenses of raising taxes on the lower lower middle class and cutting them on the upper upper is that it will shift things slightly away from China.

        Those making $20k a year do much more shopping at WalMart than those making $120k. If you cut taxes on the lower lower MC, more plastic crap from China will be bought. If you cut taxes on the upper upper MC, much of the spending will be on US and EU stuff, instead.

        • behindthefall says:

          Or try: If you take money away from those already strapped, they’ll HAVE to buy Cheap Chinese Crap at, e.g., Walmart. People probably don’t LIKE to buy stuff that is badly made and breaks, but what choice are they given?

        • Denn says:

          I’m not thinking about consumer goods here. The investment spending by these people in the billionaire brackets is about promoting a race to the bottom in labor costs.

        • bobschacht says:

          The investment spending by these people in the billionaire brackets is about promoting a race to the bottom in labor costs.

          This possibility should have been obvious to anyone looking at the labor market from an international perspective over the past 10 years. With the American wage structure being so far above wages elsewhere, and with national barriers becoming non-barriers, that American workers were going to be under pressure until wage standards in the rest of the world equalize.

          Bob in AZ

        • sona says:

          If you cut taxes on the lower lower MC, more plastic crap from China will be bought. If you cut taxes on the upper upper MC, much of the spending will be on US and EU stuff, instead.

          sounds plausible on the face of it but not entirely if you think about it given the lower propensity to consume and higher prensity to save for upper income brackets

          it’s more likely to fuel bondholder panic unless their speculative rushes can be better regulated

          the ecb has been making noises but they have not come up with any workable propositions leaving iceland to do its own thing, rightly from where i stand and ireland to intervene directly in halting bonus payments to banks which were bailed out with taxpayer funds to remain solvent, again, the right decision

          true, bondholders had already fled iceland and ireland but neither has sunk for calling their bluff

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Quite a few who make $20K or less vote. That is, when they are not obstructed by too few polling stations; poor public transportation; too rigorous, at-the-poll identity checks; gauntlets of police cars and looks that say, “I know who you are”; poorly designed communications about when and where to vote, and poorly designed voting materials, etc.

        America also might be the only major country in which voting day is not a day off from work. So there’s also the little problem of scheduling one’s vote – and the often hours long wait entailed with it – with work, child care, food, transport, and exhaustion, issues that loom rather larger on that income. It is the rich who may vote more often with their money than by pulling the voting lever.

  5. prostratedragon says:

    Or because his sources didn’t or wouldn’t talk about it.

    Ought Baker not tell us this, if it were so? I’d sure like to know such a thing, so there I guess are at least two of us. [grumble grumble] Looks like I’ll have to read the darn thing.

    Edit: Just so it’s clear where I’m going, if the President’s advisers refuse to discuss the major source of economic pain among the citizenry, then their fitness to continue as his advisers should be called into question, including questioning of the President himself.

    What he says and does after being asked should have an impact on the playing field thereafter.

  6. klynn says:

    Peter Baker has an almost 6500-word article describing Obama’s efforts to fix the economy.

    (snip)

    But nowhere in this epic does Peter Baker once use the word “foreclosure.” Or “housing.” Or, god forbid, “HAMP.”

    Thus, in 6500 words, Baker failed on an epic scale to address economic recovery.

    Waste of ink and paper.

    What a narcissistic narrative about failed leadership and journalism.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      But somehow the paper of record wrote what was supposed to be a definitive article on how the Obama Administration plans to fix the economy without once mentioning that part of the economy, housing, that has traditionally led recoveries but that, partly because of the obstinance of Obama’s economic team, continues to drag down the recovery.

      Well, if the infighting was as bad as the ‘bad marriage’ metaphor implies, it would be a miracle if they accomplished much of anything.

      Also, IMVHO, when Obama was elected, very few people on the left were realistic about how intransigent the GOP was going to be, nor how intransigent, and how blindly greedy the banksters were going to be. Until there are perp walks and a simplified banking system, this will continue.

      ————————
      OT alert!

      klynn, recall our old threads about Yukos? Interesting development reported at CSM today:

      Claims that the Khodorkovsky verdict has negatively affected Russia’s foreign investment standing appear to be contradicted by last week’s announcement of a $7.8-billion Arctic oil exploration deal, which was brokered by Putin, between Rosneft and the British petroleum giant BP.

      A 2008 US diplomatic cable released Tuesday by WikiLeaks shows that BP has been courting Rosneft for years, despite that company’s close links to the Kremlin and deep involvement in seizing Khodorkovsky’s assets.

      But if Medvedev wants to look like a viable candidate for reelection, he needs to do something to break decisively with Putin, his powerful predecessor and likely rival for the job, experts say.

      Interesting, eh?
      EW, apologies for the OT part of my comment.

  7. rosalind says:

    ot: supreme court over-rules the 9th Circuit’s decision on JPL workers privacy rights. laugh line of the day:

    Writing for the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed it would raise true privacy concerns if the government were to pry into the private lives of ordinary citizens.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      …but its’ OK to investigate all employees of government contractors as if they were govt employees.

      (It does not seem OK, though, for the govt actually to oversee or investigate the contractors themselves, as suggested by the lack of executive branch audits and the absence of Congressional hearings on contractor practices and abuse – I’m thinking of you, Joe Lieberman.)

      • rosalind says:

        (had the same thought as i was reading adam b’s post over at the great orange satan. is every contract employee of Keep America Safe International subjected to these background checks? who’s watching the watchers?)

    • rosalind says:

      paging Justice Alito:

      Perched in the fog-covered hills of Lompoc north of Santa Barbara sits a massive 23-story rocket ready to blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

      The three-engine Delta IV Heavy rocket, the tallest ever to be launched from the base, will be carrying a top-secret spy satellite for the U.S. government capable of snapping pictures so detailed it can distinguish the make and model of an automobile thousands of miles below, analysts say.

      oh goody, just right for that whole prying into private lives of ordinary citizens thingy.

      • PJEvans says:

        Problem is it’s hard to tell most cars apart from looking at the top. /s
        What those analysts really mean is that the resolution is extremely high … well, once it gets to less-than-1-foot resolution, it’s pretty darn good. (The spy satellites may be into millimeter-type resolution now.)

    • PJEvans says:

      Or, as I commented at the LA Times, it would have been more of a surprise if this court hadn’t already made it clear that individuals don’t get any rights that aren’t explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.

      I feel sorry for the people at JPL, though; they don’t deserve this kind of hassle, since nothing they’re working on should require a clearance.

  8. joanneleon says:

    Sometimes, with this administration, what they don’t say is more important than what they do say. Social Security is one example of this, and this article might be another.

    You can bet that “foreclosure” and “housing” are frequent topics in this White House. Why they didn’t appear in this article is curious indeed.

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    During the first half of his term, he used the tools of government to shape the nation’s economy more aggressively than any president in 75 years.

    What a hoot; is Baker as historically challenged as most other Americans? Mr. Baker seems to have cottoned on to the fact that “It’s the economy, stupid” that will determine whether Mr. Obama has a second term, but seems happy simply to portray Mr. O as flailing to find things to fix.

    That may be the image Obama or the Times (is there any longer a difference on such matters?) wants to portray to the base he so loves. I don’t think anyone who lobbied the FCC or any of the MOTU think that’s his problem. They’re quite happy with what he does; they just know a Gooper would do even more of it. It’s the rest of us who aren’t happy. We know what government could do, has done in the past, and, deprived of tax revenue by the GOP and like-minded “democrats”, will rarely be able to do again in the foreseeable future.

    Like Winnie-the-Pooh with a honey jar stuck on his nose, but with a full cupboard behind him, Mr. Obama is looking for ideas only in places he knows he won’t find them. Because if he did, he’d publicly have to say why he won’t act on them. Although a good actor, he knows he wouldn’t be able to carry that off convincingly.

  10. fatster says:

    Update on Baby Doc w/apologies for the interruption:

    Four Haitians accuse “Baby Doc” of torture, abuse

    “Four Haitians, including a former United Nations spokeswoman, filed criminal complaints on Wednesday against former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, accusing him of crimes against humanity including torture.”

    LINK.

    • phred says:

      I really hope they throw the book at Baby Doc. We could do with a good example of the application of the rule of law. Maybe we could emulate it someday.

  12. tejanarusa says:

    Oh, that article — I already started tried reading that, and gave it up after a few paragraphs, as clueless and likely to be extremely depressing.

    • tejanarusa says:

      Went back and skimmed it – deserves every criticism here.

      I was glad to see that commenter after commenter castigates the writer for referring to Paul Ryan as respected, including the first comment.

  14. seabos84 says:

    WHY is pravda telling the upper middle class anti-palin crowd how hard he tried and … boo hoo … how much he was stymied, oh noble barack?

    well, IF they reported that the “recovery” could NOT have been better planned – those of us employed terrified of being unemployed, out yelling each other with “how high master” each time the boss man says JUMP! if they reported how the thieving scum who wrecked everything are still in charge AND still thieving! if they reported that all the pigs at the top are still on top and still pig$

    well, why the fuck would DEMOCRATS vote for these corrupt & incompetent slimeballs?

    poor noblerer gooderer smarterer betterer 0$sell0ut isn’t a sell out, just a noble loser!

    IF we’re stupid enough to believe this drivel, we deserve it.

    rmm

  15. bayville says:

    From the story:

    Geithner and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, argued against it. Ultimately the tests found the banks were in better shape than feared, a critical moment in shoring up confidence. “The cheapest form of stimulus is confidence,” Summers likes to say.

    Who can argue with economic theory like that? That is why Big Lar is one of The Men Who Saved The World.

  16. bayville says:

    Frankly, the whole story was obviously written by someone who doesn’t have a clue as to what exactly was involved in the ongoing and neverending global economic crash.

    An incredible accomplishment, for a nationally prominent political reporter such as Peter Baker.

  17. parsnip says:

    Not mentioning foreclosure, etc. is a ‘tell’ that a cover-up of the massive Ponzi scheme is in progress. It also diverts attention away from whatever they may be planning to implement at the federal level in that regard.

    ——–

    It just dawned on me yesterday…

    The loan schedules for the bogus MBS Trusts, meaning the lists of the mortgages supposedly in each trust…..don’t include loan numbers, addresses, or names of the mortgagors. All they list is zip codes and ‘payment histories.’

    Well, if you’re going to sell the same loan multiple times into multiple trusts, and the trust documents have to be filed at the SEC, you sure as heck can’t put the specific loan information on the documents or anyone could find out what you did.

    ‘Payment history’ is an interesting identifier. It must have been quite fun fabricating payments to dozens of trusts from one mortgage, in effect paying the investors with their own money just long enough for the mortgages to default. No wonder the PSAs provide for the servicer to continue advancing payments until foreclosure is final. The continued payments hide the evidence of the Ponzi.

    ew: I just finished writing a 2-page reply to your query* last night. Since it’s about foreclosures, and this thread is relatively short, is it ok to post it here?

    * “Are you saying the bolloxing of the land registry through things like MERS is part of this , though?” By “this” I assume you were referring to my comment, not specifically the conversation sparked by Freddie DeBoer’s blindspot blogpost.