Starting at the 4:40 mark….
This is what writer, Matt Taibbi, said about the exchange in the above video….
You basically have a whole panel of CNBC goons pooh-poohing the idea that predatory lending took place, setting up the inevitable revisionist history that the 2008 crash was caused by individual homeowners borrowing beyond their means.
My favorite part of this comes roughly at the six-minute mark. Tavakoli has just deftly explained how a lot of the predatory practices worked — people with limited financial literacy were presented with long and complicated mortgage deals, and told they would have a fixed payment in perpetuity or a guaranteed re-finance, or were nailed by fraudulent appraisals. Then she mentioned the big one, the fact that investment banks then took all these mortgages and with eyes wide open securitized them and sold them off as worthy investments to suckers on the other end of the chain.
While she’s saying all this stuff, Santelli, who is one of the fathers of the Tea Party movement, is shaking his head furiously, video-scoffing at everything she’s saying. When he finally does get a chance to speak, this is what he says:
"Here’s my problem with this. It takes two to tango. You can’t cheat an honest man."
You can’t cheat an honest man? What the f*ck does that mean?
"You can't cheat an honest man?" ……I'm with Taibbi…..what the f*ck DOES that mean?
I bring this up not because I get to copy and paste portions of an article with the f-word in it……you know, as fun as that is. Here's the reason this is important….Taibbi continues….
This whole scene sort of encapsulates what’s wrong with the Tea Party movement. The movement, and let’s admit this, has some of its roots in legitimate grievances about government waste and some not-entirely-inaccurate observations about what’s left of the American welfare state. Of course what resonates most with the suburban whites who mostly make up the Tea Party are stories about minorities and immigrants using section 8 housing, food stamps, Medicaid, TANF and other programs, with the Obama stimulus being for them a symbol of this ongoing government largess. The heat of the Tea Party movement comes from the racial frustrations that actually exist out there, in the real world outside New York and LA, as urban expansion and immigration increasingly throw white and nonwhite communities together, with white Tea Party types more and more often blowing gaskets over increased crime rates, declining school standards, and mislaid or wasted tax revenue.
That this perception that minorities are the prime or sole consumers of government entitlement programs is absurdly inaccurate — white people, for instance, are overwhelmingly the largest nonelderly recipients of Medicaid, making up 42.8% of the program’s rolls nationwide, compared to 22.2% for blacks and 27.9% for Hispanics — is beside the point. The point is that the Tea Party is built largely on this narrative of “personal responsibility,” where the central demons are unwed black and Hispanic mothers and absent black and Hispanic fathers, who are, let’s face it, not uncommon characters in the American melodrama.
…the Tea Party movement contains a lot of people who are far more impressed by what they can see with their own eyes than with what, for instance, they read about. I’ve been to Tea Party events where global warming was dismissed by speakers who, without irony, pointed to the fact that there was snow on the ground outside. And while very few people have ever actually seen a CDO manager or a Countrywide executive, or were aware if it when they saw them, the Tea Party folks sure as hell have seen who their neighbors in foreclosure are.
The Fox/CNBC types have very cannily latched on this narrative to rewrite the history of the financial crisis. They know that Tea Partiers will go for any narrative that puts blame on poor (and especially poor minority) homeowners, because the idea of poor blacks and Hispanics borrowing beyond their means fits seamlessly with their world view.
All of what Taibbi says here is exactly right……all of it…..and you get the bad words as an extra special bonus.
The Tea Parties have had a whiff of racism surrounding them since they began….the audiences are 99% white, most of their complaints have to do with rejecting the leadership of Ameria's first black president…..and their unanimous hatred of Obama's stimulus bill in March, 2009 was primarily because some of the allocated funding paid for continuing government programs…..which Baggers perceive as giveaways, primarily to darker skinned Americans.
I know that many will disagree with Taibbi's assessment, insisting instead, that the Baggers only concern, cross their Tea Bags and pinky swear, is out of control government spending.
As we'll see, if and when immigration reform takes center stage again, the Tea Party movement is basically motivated by a, 'we're the diminishing white majority and we don't like it', philosophy.
The only thing worse than that philosophy is the utterly despicable exploitation of the mostly-white Baggers by the slimiest, most dishonest, Rick Santelli-like, amoral, carnival barkers a rotted and corrupt financial industry can buy.
