Liberal HAMP-Smokers Kicking the Habit?

 

I’m always glad to see liberals waking from their slumbers, however belatedly. Who knows, maybe some of them might turn into real activists in the struggle ahead.

 

So this time the revelatory catalyst was Steve Waldman’s report from last week’s econoblogger conclave at Treasury. Here’s the critical quote:

 

On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”. Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they would have preferred if the program had worked out better for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns, and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address those.

 

(BTW, in the post Waldman continues with his rather disgusting teenybopper fawning over those who are nothing but wretched scumbags. His tone after the first such meeting last year was the same. I really can’t fathom why anyone would admire these bureaucratic thugs or find them humanly attractive in any way. In a comment today Yves Smith tries to explain it in terms of human nature, but I’d say it’s more likely endemic to those who are or in the past have been insiders of a particular system. I’d bet if true outsiders ever had such a meeting, we’d be coldly polite at best, and in our minds just plain cold. At least Waldman admits that it’s discreditable of him, and rues it.)

 

So there followed a chorus of outraged liberals: “We’ve been had!” I won’t bother analyzing any in detail. Here’s one example, and another, and another.

 

Now, those of us who maintain an open mind (and read the econoblogs) knew this a long time ago. If I may toot my own horn for a moment, here’s me calling the HAMP a scam on exactly these grounds last December. There were plenty of others too. As with everything else, none of this is ever a secret nor does it ever require any special genius to figure out. It just requires paying attention and not maintaining stupid faith like faith in Obama and the Democrats (let alone faith in the banks; unbelievably, many still do).

 

Nor were our sources exactly obscure: To give two, McClatchy is a mainstream outlet, while The Nation is a liberal publication.

 

So why didn’t our liberals learn about the HAMP from The Nation back in December? I think the best answer is that Waldman is quoting Treasury cadres themselves affirming that the HAMP was a scam. A liberal, being a type of Right Wing Authoritarian Follower* and elitist suck-up, is congenitally unlikely to believe non-official sources on things (he’ll believe an anti-Republican allegation when a Democrat leads with it), and needless to say he won’t think things out for himself. So he wasn’t previously willing to believe housing activists or some unusual examples of real reporting, and of course he won’t believe econobloggers or radical bloggers.

 

But now that an official from the Treasury Department itself admitted the scam, it suddenly becomes a real scam, for at least some of the liberals.

 

Well, like I said I’m glad when we seem to see some progress in the education of our liberals. Of course I won’t believe anything from anyone until he takes an explicit stance renouncing the Democrats and the system once and for all.

 

[*Altemeyer himself recently came out as an RWA Follower, an Obama cultist, Bailout-believer, war-monger and what have you. Kind of ironic, if you’re familiar with his work. Who knew he was talking about himself all along? (Well, at least I didn’t. Maybe others did.)]