Matt Taibbi

r u on the jp morgan payroll?

lagoon, would you recommend Michael Lewis

he's waiting for that one perfect anti-oligarchy journo

we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good! lulz.

Ok I can't get to the original story because of a paywall, but this prospect thing is pretty bullshit. It's 90% insider baseball about who supposedly has what responsibility, and most of that isn't factual at all but just disagreeing with Taibbi on intepretation.

Look at what it says about Gensler, for example! It doesn't even argue with Taibbi, just whine that Gensler is supposed to be fighting "to close the loopholes in derivatives regulation that Taibbi complains about later" -- which is basically Taibbi's point, that Gensler is a former goldman banker and maybe not the most trustworthy person in this position.

Again, the prospect piece complains that taibbi writes that biden "seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform" but in fact they say "Biden has taken the lead on the stimulus and jobs efforts." That's not a factual error -- that's a matter of editorial opinion.

Later on the prospect piece confuses Taibbi's figure on "total cost of bailouts" with expenses to date exclusively for TARP.

And then a dispute over the effectiveness of the CFPA and whether it is "castrated-in-advance" or just "somewhat compromised." Again, not a factual error.

ffs.

In this sort of policy analysis, everyone either overstates or understates or only gets part of the picture. These are mostly not errors (there may be some actual minor ones but I can't check without the article) but differences in interpretation and expectation, which reveal more about the prospect author than anyone else. I mean, lo these three years later, whose projections for govt. policy outcomes w/r/t the banks seem like they were more prescient?

It's rather difficult to find stuff in the Exile archive as i'm essentially just googling half-remembered stories i read eight years ago but there's lots of really good, really detailed material there.

As a semi-random example, Mark Ames' piece on Montenegro:

http://exiledonline.com/kremlin-whores-how-mccain-staff-sold-countries-to-putin/

Press analysis from Taibbi:

http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6274&IBLOCK_ID=35

Kompromat Korner, which gave a regular update on corruption:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8213&IBLOCK_ID=35

Again,this isn't "the best" of their work but it does show that they did take the role more seriously than it looked at times.

Also worth remembering that, regardless of how often Luk3 H@rding likes to bleat on about the time he was jostled by a man in a leather jacket at Sheremetyevo airport, Ames is probably one of the the only Western journalists the Russian government has legitimately run out of town for being too dangerous.

maybe he just scored the wrong babe one too many times, man

not that i nec. want to side with putinism or anything

They say they also take advantage of what they like to call the “white god factor” and make trips to the provinces. “Tens of millions of people live in dire circumstances, stranded in the center of the world’s largest continent, with little hope of going anywhere,” said Mr. Ames. “Which means–sexual opportunity for me.”

rly cool guy

in post soviet russia you rape and pillage across mongols

poverty for you-sexual opportunity for me

that was the underlying principle of the columbian triangle right?

from taibbi's boehner article, this is just a really nice bit of prose styling, describing "the 2000s, back when America was still unfucked enough to enjoy a phony real estate boom and launch recreational wars of conquest in the Middle East."

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/15/how-new-york-will-improve-its-on-street-parking/

p decent summary of asshole Dimon's testimony, if you'd like to get away from Taibbi's ancient peccadilloes:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/senators-grovel-embarrass-themselves-at-dimon-hearing-20120615

from the comments, a nice response to the salmon piece: http://quantiger.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/is-11-billion-a-fair-price-for-new-york-citys-parking-meters/

hmm maybe rando blogger shoulda done basic research on the subject, where they'd quickly learn that the only thing being privitized is operations

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/06/14/what-matt-taibbi-misses-on-the-nyc-parking-meter-deal/

“The basic structure is totally different—Chicago sold the system for a one-time cash infusion,” a Bloomberg spokeswoman told Dana Rubinstein. “We are looking for a private operator but we would still own the meters.” The city’s request, dug up by Rubinstein, is more subtle, but no less cutting. “In contrast to certain precedent U.S. parking transactions, the City’s objective is not to structure an upfront payment,” (emphasis theirs). If this commitment falters, then Taibbi should scream “grifter.”

"his acidic tongue"

really not keen on another argument here. i'll just note that being on forbes doesn't make one less of a rando blogger, nor do promises from the bloomberg administration give one cause for hope, and finally that the "operations" bit doesn't mean the revenue stream isn't going to go to the private operator and furthermore the details on the administration retaining certain elements of control were in the salmon piece already that the blogger was responding to, and aren't at all relevant to the y'know, math, that the blog post actually contained.

+ the plan also means cutting city jobs with decent pay and benefits, regardless.

if bloomberg were throwing away easy money, this would be a huge issue for transit activist groups. it's not really an issue at all, and it's only 'a scandal' for people who haven't been paying attention and don't care to read the details. the revenue stream is not going to go to the private operator. prices will eventually go up, the money will go to the city. there is no reason to believe that nyc public sector would be better at doing the high-tech renovations involved. and 'decent pay and benefits' don't come out of thin air - there's no end to the waste you could justify as 'decent pay and benefits' - you could theoretically hire a million people to do this.

fwiw salmon also seemed to be unaware of some of this, but I still linked it cause he called taibbi a parasitical suburbanite

haha

and hey read pg 10

http://www.scribd.com/doc/96706824/Request-for-Qualifications-NYC-Parking-System

http://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gif

ok everyone is writing as though the bulk of the revenue stream will go to the operator, so i don't know where you're getting this from. plus i read page 10 and it said nothing. plus on top of that i skimmed taibbi's article and he actually accurately reported the claim that NY would retain full control of rates and violations enforcement. So maybe you want to cut bloomberg more slack than taibbi in terms of future projections, but taibbi's working with the same facts everyone else is and, as usual, you're living in made up citing poorly-skimmed pdf-land.

it was my impression the the worst of exile's excesses (in terms of journalism but also private affairs) belonged to ames, not taibbi, but i could be corrected.

ok everyone is writing as though the bulk of the revenue stream will go to the operator, so i don't know where you're getting this from

"In contrast to certain precedent U.S. parking transactions, the City's objective is not to structure an upfront payment. Rather, the City views the possible PMA as an asset management partnership through which a Private Manager would earn compensation for driving up long-term value and service to the public and creating Parking Service upside for the city."

page 10 says:

"The city has an authorized headcount of 466 employees in FY13 to operate, maintain and provide other key functions to support the operations of the Parking System. Employees are represented by various unions and are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Respondents will be asked to provide with their explaination of plans concerning the utilization of these City employees."

the city is, straight up, *not selling the parking meters* and it's not even losing a single union member. this is why it's not big news unless your only source of information is a Taibbi article. I don't care how 'everyone is writing'. for a guy who's usually pretty thorough I'm amazing you reposted someone who started his math assuming every single meter in the city gets used for 12h and that rates don't already vary by area (and 'the real price' varies exponentially by area) instead of just...looking it up. it's on the same pdf above, and it's not 360 million dollars, after-cost revenue was 93m last year.

despite that, his math is mostly stupid because he underestimates - it could be way more than 360 million dollars if the city actually had leeway in pricing - which is one of the the points of this program. there is no reason to believe that the nyc public sector would be better at designing and implementing this technology just as there is no reason to believe that local public servants should be building subway cars.

think bout it: if bloomberg were giving away a trillion dollars *maybe the only people who would notice wouldn't be taibbi and rando blogger doing sloppy math*.

are we done?

'I'm amazing you resposted" = 'I'm amazed you resposted"

you are an amazing reposter. i admit to enjoying the whole righteous indig thing taibbi does. its a cheap thrill.

but i'm kind of a simpleton and i still listen to my old punk rock records for insight.

are we done?

yeah, we've been done.

i admit to enjoying the whole righteous indig thing taibbi does.

when it becomes a schtick, it loses some of its ooomph. plain facts, clearly presented, should always do the heavy lifting for righteous indignation.

schtick: inversely proportional to ooomph.

yeah i think taibbi's doing god's work but i wish he didn't think he has to come up with a new three-word name to call lloyd blankfein every time he writes a blog post. i mean i like thompson on nixon as much as the next guy but senator, i knew hst, i read hst, etc.

that yeltsin obit tho i love.

he doesnt know what hes talking abt!

― lag∞n, Thursday, 7 June 2012 10:35 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh what is there to know really, they make up all that finance stuff up anyways it's all crap

^exactly, this saves me a lotta difficult reading

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620?print=true

Good stuff.

It's passages like this one that ultimately give me a bit of a problem with Taibbi:

Who ultimately loses in these deals? Well, to take just one example, the New Jersey Health Care Facilities Finance Authority, the agency that issues bonds for the state's hospitals, had their interest rates rigged by the Carollo defendants on $17 million in bonds. Since then, more than a dozen New Jersey hospitals have closed, mostly in poor neighborhoods.

Up until that point, the piece, albeit heavy on schtick, basically made a reasonable and accurate summary of the scam. But the connection he draws here is just absurd. Based on Taibbi's own facts, we're talking about, what, 10 basis points lost? 20? 50? Even if it's 50 basis points, the lost interest on $17m would amount to $85,000/year -- real money, but hardly enough to make or break a hospital closing.

On the other hand, he doesn't say that the interest rate issues caused the hospital closings. You can just read it as saying "clearly these hospitals were hurting for cash, and some of the cash they needed was instead taken by unscrupulous parties."

He's not inaccurate, and you can read him perfectly reasonably, but you could also jump to some bad inferences without too much sloppy reading/thinking.

I was more put off by his claims that terms like "nickel" and "dime" were "code" rather than just common slang/argot.

Oh come on. "Since then" implies a causal relationship.

I guess that's the kind of writing that works for Rolling Stone, but I find his constant resorting to hyperbole a little tiresome. "It's as though the mafia and the zetas made an bet to see who could steal the most candy from dying babies" etc.

Like, this was a skimming/bid-rigging scheme. If, e.g., major grocery chains conspired to fix, say, milk prices, you would probably say "that's really fucked up, and they're screwing over ordinary working people." And that would be bad enough. You wouldn't have to embellish it by insinuating that they were causing children to starve to death.

hes sloppy because hes convinced of his moral rightness, which make him less morally right

lag∞n who is your go-to pundit for suitable rage/accuracy

(don't say morbs)

but i want to say morbs

lolz

imagine a blanket search ban on a journo's tweets - forever

If you can’t trust a petulant billionaire, who can you trust?