You may remember back many months ago, Greg Smith wrote a high profile OpEd in the New York Times as he stepped down as a VP at Goldman Sachs. This last weekend, he was on 60 Minutes in a plug for this new book, Why I Left Goldman Sachs. Matt Yglesias, for one, doesn’t really care about all that. “But the ferocious anti-Smith push from Goldman Sachs PR and Smith’s critics in the media have me interested again!” he writes.

I’m glad to hear this, because I think what Smith has to say is important. And I especially thought that while I watched the 60 Minutes interview. The way it was cut together tended to minimize his arguments. The segment contradicted him by using Frank Partnoy, a former derivatives trader turned (God help us!) finance professor. His refrain was, “Who cares? Everybody does it!”

What everyone does is screw over their clients. Companies like Goldman Sachs are supposed to help their clients make money. Instead, they just use them to enrich themselves. And the more green the client, the better Goldman Sachs likes it.

This is basic stuff. It is like when you were a kid. Everyone’s heard it from their moms, “If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?” Well, would you?! This is something we are supposed to learn at 5 or 6. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right. But maybe we’re all supposed to know that people on Wall Street don’t have the ethics of a kindergartner.

Matt Yglesias explains this in the most forceful terms:

Amen brother!

Update (23 October 4:47 pm)

Hamilton Nolan has an excellent article at Gawker, In Defense of Being Outraged by Things that Everyone Already Knows:

Proposition 30 in California would levy a temporary quarter percentage point increase in the sales tax and a 1 to 3 percentage point increase in the top marginal tax rates (on money made above $250,000 per year). Initially, I was concerned about this proposition, because of the sales tax increase. These taxes are highly regressive and I didn’t want to see those who have suffered the most during this depression be further taxed while those who are doing better than ever are barely touched.

After doing a “back of the envelope” calculation, I am convinced that Proposition 30 is a good idea. Even taking into account the huge and unjust income equality in the state, this is a progressive tax. The amount of money brought in by the sales tax is very small—it was most likely added to argue against claims that the proposition is some kind of class warfare.

Yesterday, I received a mailer from the “Small Business Action Committee.” Calitics has the dirt on this group. It’s leadership team is made up of one guy: Joel Fox. He is the former head of the nutjob group Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the group that brought us Proposition 13 that is a large part of California’s perpetual budget problems.

Other than this, SBAC is just a generic conservative front group formed to take money from wealthy fucktards and use it to subvert the cause of democracy. According to the site, one of its big donors is Charles Munger Jr, who’s given almost $20 million dollars to the group.

Their arguments are exactly the same as the ones in the voter’s manual: this money won’t go to education and even if it did, the government is too damned big! Last night I spoke to a supporter of Proposition 30. I asked why he was against it. He didn’t seem to care at all about giving any lip service to education. It was just that the government was wasting all the money it gets. So I pressed on. What is it the government is spending money on that is wasteful? I got no answer. So I suggested a few things. Roads? Are we spending too much on upkeep of roads? Are firefighters too well paid? Again there was no answer. But this is not a surprise. People like this never have an answer because there is no answer. In general, the government does a good job at what it is assigned.

(This is the same person who bristles every time I suggest we increase the number of elected representatives in order to have a more representative democracy. But no. We can’t have that! That would cost money! How much? Basically nothing. About as much as we spend on NPR. But that doesn’t matter. Waste! Socialism! My hard earned Social Security check!)

The argument against Proposition 30 in the voter’s manual is written by Jon Coupal—the current head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’ Association. Now he has an idea about government waste. And that idea is (Of course!) public employee pensions. But that isn’t actual waste. That is what people in the legal profession call a “contract.” It is the same thing that conservatives like Coupal used to justify all the bank bailout money being used for executive bonuses. “Those were contractually obligated!” the conservative chorus shouted. But when it comes to teachers and other public sector workers, contracts don’t matter. Contracts are not for the little people, silly!

Afterword

Proposition 30 is not the main issue of the Small Business Action Committee. Their focus is on Proposition 32. This is the proposition that would basically stop all paid political speech except for that by dark money groups. It is a vile proposal. The fact that the SBAC is pushing it is about all you need to know.

The polls indicate that both Propositions 30 and 32 are really close. And there are a lot of undecided voters, so each could go either way. It is important to vote Yes on 30 and No on 32. Also: No on 38, because it conflicts with 30 and is a regressive tax.

See you at the polls!

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has a very evenhanded column about Romney’s position on the GM rescue, What Romney Wants You (and Ohio) to Forget About the GM Rescue. The title makes the article sound a lot more critical than it is. Let me briefly lay out Cohn’s argument.

Romney’s New York Times OpEd was far more nuanced than its title “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” would indicate. He was not calling for the liquidation of GM and Chrysler. What’s more, it isn’t clear whether he was for or against Obama’s decision to rescue the auto makers. During this period, Romney indicated elsewhere that he did support it.

And then came the primary season, and Romney—Quelle surprise!—changed his position. This is from a CNBC debate:

And then he changed his position back during the Michigan primary. And now we hear from him all the time, “Of course I supported the auto bailout!” It’s easy to be on the right side of history when you simply change your opinion to whatever history says.

This is not an isolated incident, of course. Consider Obama’s position on Osama bin Laden. When Obama said that he would go into Pakistan to get him, everyone attacked him. This included Mitt Romney. But after Obama did exactly what he said he would, Mitt Romney was totally on board. “Even Jimmy Carter would have made that call.”

I don’t mind inconsistency; I’m one of its greatest practitioners. But there is a real problem with Mitt Romney’s inconsistencies. It doesn’t come from the shifting tides of his moods and facts. Instead, it comes from his decision about whatever is expedient. But even this I wouldn’t mind if he hadn’t surrounded himself with all Bush’s people on foreign and domestic affairs. There is no doubt that if Romney is elected President, there will be a group of neocons and “free” marketeers who will play him like a fiddle. And we don’t need another Cheney administration.

Update (23 October 2012 9:55 pm)

Here is a more negative take on the Romney claim by the exceptional Martin Bashir: