Supposed reporter Rick Santelli is just horrific in this clip from CNBC, slamming President Obama’s mortgage plan – and of course he’s cheered on by the traders on Wall Street.
The same big money traders who ran America into the ditch, took our bailout money and passed out that money to those same richy riches.
Yes, geniuses, we should totally listen to you asses again.
CNBC is Fox News without the murder mystery stories
I no longer look at the stock ticker during the day as a guide to how the economy is working. Wall Street got the man at Treasury they preferred and still buck any attempt to stave off serious economic disaster. I even think that if we gave Wall Street a blank check with no oversight they would still complain it was not enough and sell off stocks. They can go to he double hockey sticks for all I care.
“I no longer look at the stock ticker during the day as a guide to how the economy is working”
Ha! That’s funny! What do you look at? TEA LEAVES!!!
Hey Michael. Let me know how that works out………………
I like that a “pretty good statistical cross section of America” is a room full of middle aged, white, male stock traders.
But why debate policy sensibly when you can shout a lot? That’s always better.
Mr. Sipple, you just blew the tiny shred of credibility you had by throwing in the ‘white’ part in your little post.
If the floor traders were Black and young the whole Santelli statement would be ok. RIGHT?
You sir, are a MORON!
Yeah, Eric, and what if the floor traders were LEPRECHAUNS?!? or UNICORNS?!? Bet you wouldn’t bother to mention it then, would you.
joaquin, it is your statement makes no sense. Sipple pointed out that the sample set in view on the video was not representative of the entire US. CNBC has a live poll up on it’s website asking who supports the Chicago Tea Party concept. I doubt that the viewers of CNBC are an accurate reflection of the entire country. Thus the poll can be expected to be strongly in favor of Santelli’s statement.
It is only logical to include age and ethnicity into a statement about representing a cross section of the US. It is a mere fact. A statistician would reject the results of the CNBC poll because the sample was skewed.
Oh wait, I started out with a tiny shred of credibility with? That’s a relief, here I thought you would have blasted me regardless of what I said. I feel so much better.
You, sir, have no dignity and must resign!
Oh wait, I started out with a tiny shred of credibility with?
Yeah, because Joaquin is STOOPID with credibility. maybe you can bum some off of him.
Heh – after seeing Obama (and Oliver) repeatedly use populist themes in pursuit of political power, I find myself surprisingly unmoved by Oliver’s whining when someone does it back to Obama..
And there’s nothing more populist than the cries of indignant stock traders.
There are test patterns that have a higher average viewership than CNBC.
Ha! That’s funny! What do you look at? TEA LEAVES!!!
Probably would be a more accurate source. After all, why would they lie? They’re freaking leaves.
“I no longer look at the stock ticker during the day as a guide to how the economy is working”
joaquin says: “Ha! That’s funny! What do you look at? TEA LEAVES!!!”
How about unemployment numbers? Median income figures?
There are a lot better choices for an economic barometer that stock figures.
joaquin says: “Mr. Sipple, you just blew the tiny shred of credibility you had by throwing in the ‘white’ part in your little post.
If the floor traders were Black and young the whole Santelli statement would be ok. RIGHT?
You sir, are a MORON!”
Joaquin marches dumbly on.
As Eric Sipple pointed out, if they were all young and black, then it wouldn’t be a representation of the United States as a whole. However, there needs to be at least some young, some black, some Hispanic, some women, some Asian, etc. before the sample is valid.
You guys are hilarious and pitiful at the same time.
You throw out the Santelli statement/ because he wasn’t ‘in tune’ with your America. ha ha!
His comments are discredited because you don’t agree, or is it that maybe you are unable to relate to hard working, smart guys on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile?
Please continue to merrily whistle down the road.
Well, as long as I’m both hilarious AND pitiful.
Actually I seem to remember, somewhere in the deep, far past of this comment history, throwing out Santelli’s statement because of a massive flaw in his argument: that the room of Chicago traders is not a “pretty good statistical cross section of America.” Which it isn’t. At all. It’s not even close.
Successful people have a tendency to assume they represent An Average American Experience, to the point where they can logically jump from “I was successful” to “Therefor you should have been successful.” But there really isn’t an Average American Experience. Where you live, who your family was, what kind of affluence in which you grew up: These have a significant impact on your life, like it or not.
Can you go from abject poverty to financial success? Yes. Is it common or likely? No.
It’s simple for someone who went to good schools and grew up in a smaller house in the suburbs to consider themselves someone who pulled themselves out of poverty, even though they had significant advantages which they did not earn.
If Santelli were honest with us he would say that he doesn’t give a damn about what the people in these homes’ circumstances are, he just doesn’t want his affluence to be lessened in any amount to pay for it. He can cloak it by calling every struggling homeowner a lose and he can claim that an economically, racially and probably geographically homogeneous group is a good statistical cross section of America.
But what it comes down to is the same sense of entitlement he’s trying to blast. He – just as I did – got lucky by being born into a situation that enabled his success. He didn’t earn it, any more than a child born into poverty earned his life. There’s nothing populist about a shouting rich guy who thinks everyone’s out to take away his stuff.
There’s nothing populist about a shouting rich guy who thinks everyone’s out to take away his stuff. Eric Sipple
So I guess when shouting rich guys who give very little to charity and belong to a party that one by one their esteemed representatives, themselves shouting rich guys, are proven daily to be tax cheats tell you they want to spread the wealth around and that it’s patriotic to pay more taxes, THAT I guess is your preferred style of populism.
When a smooth-talking shouting rich guy tells you explicitly he wants to spread that wealth around and then in the very first few weeks on the job begins to set the wheels in motion for one of the largest redistribution ploys in the history of mankind, that is your preferred style of populism?
DOW down 120 this morning. A market with no bottom. A stimulus package that investors have no faith in, people that know how well government schems that throw good money after bad works in the long run. A liberal blog populated with people who believe their shouting rich guy messiah can make no mistake.
God help us all.
Dennis, I’m upset that bankers took advantage of people selling them homes that the bankers knew the client could not afford. Why do I blame bankers? I blame bankers because they are the professionals.
The physician who implanted 6 embryos in the octuplet mom is under investigation by the state medical board. The physician did something that the patient wanted, but professionally was questionable and associated with higher risks for mothers and embryos. The behavior of the professional is under question. If the mother has some psychological issues factoring i to her demand for 6 embryos, the professional should at least suspect that something unusual was occurring and suggest referral to a mental health professional.
The bankers were the professionals. I doubt that there were laws on the books “forcing” bankers to fudge income levels of clients on official bank forms. I think bankers found a way to make money on the front end and pass the debt off to another entity. I think some bankers may be at fault as much as the fertility specialist who implanted the 6 embryos.
Since NBC and it’s outlets blasted the Santelli rant repeatedly yesterday, I wonder if Santelli and NBC is partially responsible for the market decline today.
Deadbeatonomics: Obama stiffs Chicago for $1.74M”
Maybe this is why Santelli is highly skeptical of the shouting rich guy’s economic policies.
“It sounds a lot like Obama’s economic policies. Spend the money now, and simply default when the bills come due. How is this any different from Porkulus, or from Obama’s plan to have the government force banks to write off parts of mortgages by having judges set interest rates? All of this gives the same message: spend it now, promise to pay it back, and then walk away. It’s Deadbeatonomics, which is the simplest way to describe Obama’s entire economic approach.”
rmrd-
Too busy to deconstruct your thoughts, but the market is down because we are throwing good money after bad. If you are of the belief that bankers were too lenient in their standards, and so am I-they were because it was easy to shift the risk downstream- then you should be of the belief that giving those same people their homes back where they are likely to be in the same boat in the very near future is just bad business, pure and simple.
Incidentally, the Octomom you are referring to is now looking at a home valued at $1.2mm. How f’ed up is that.
Ain’t that America. Little pink houses for you and me. Appropriate song for shouting rich guy’s inauguration.
Fortunately Rick Santelli does not represent the views of the vast majority of Americans. He represents the views of the few stock and bond paper chasers and their banking counterparts that have been exposed, bent over, with their drawers down to their ankles stuffing benjamins in their arses at the expense of average Americans.
The howling that you hear from the right is in effect a death cry. Their way of life has been terminated. And the fact that an African American has been chosen by the people of this country to pull the plug on their madness has caused Rick to pull the angry monkey out of his hat and shoot it until it dies.
Dennis: Would you like to respond to what I actually said, or do you want to continue making up arguments on my behalf? I know it’s far easier to just respond to what you’d like me to have said, but I submit to you that we’ll have more fun if we stick to responding to things actually said.
What I did say was that Santelli represents a subset of the American experience and is trying to say that he and his traders represent all of America. I’m saying it doesn’t, and thus his fear of his wealth being given to others does not represent anyone but his own niche culture. This is not populism, and the fact that you identify personally with what he’s saying does not make it so.
Regardless, my point stands: Santelli’s entire performance hinged on his assertion that the traders around him were a representative sample of America. They’re not. It may represent you, but it does not represent most, any more than if I staged a similar performance on the corner of Fayette and Monroe in West Baltimore and asked them if they thought we should legalize drugs.
Oh, one general point to make on Santelli’s rant:
We don’t need to have a referendum on Obama’s policies, because we already had one. It was on November 4th, and he won. He can now propose whatever legislation he’d like. Then, the representatives who won their own referendum so that they might represent us get to vote on whether or not it becomes law.
If you don’t like what happens, you get to have another referendum in 2 years for some of them, so call up the people you vote for and convince them to listen to you. That’s the system that our founding fathers, the guy who Santenlli also claims to represent, thought would work best. In the meantime, Santilli can stop whining and keep his tea where it belongs: in a mug.
Eric-
Rick Santelli is a reporter. Rick Santelli talks to a lot of people. Rick Santelli was reporter from a large trading floor that you saw a tiny, tiny part of, so you and I don’t know what that cross-section he was referring to comprised of. Rick Santelli had nothing to do with the crisis, unless you think he didn’t scream loud enough and is therefore at fault. He may make good money but he’s not a mortgage trader, so the views you are ascribing to him are not one of a greedy Wall Street (even though its the CBOT) Gordon Gekko-type person.
I think his entire assertion was more of the folly of throwing good money after bad and seeing it take us further down the money hole, like the stock market’s daily actions are proving it out to be perceived from the people who need to invest their money. Those people, and they are a cross-section of America because that money coming out of the stock market is from you and me and yes, even those people on the corner of Fayette and Monroe in West Baltimore.
On your last point, you are correct, but if you’re telling folks like me and Rick Santelli to STFU because we have little faith in this monstrosity of an redistributionist sheme, then please reconsider. Reconsider all the way back to you (likely you, I’m only assuming) the similar scenario of Bush winning two elections and your feelings and voice on the Iraq War decision and it’s aftermath.
Commodities traders are hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Americans.
The evil Em Ess Em, on the other hand, is nothing but an untrustowrthy band of leftist, elitist, commies.
Fortunately Rick Santelli does not represent the views of the vast majority of Americans. He represents the views of the few stock and bond paper chasers and their banking counterparts that have been exposed, bent over, with their drawers down to their ankles stuffing benjamins in their arses at the expense of average Americans.
Actually, Santelli represents me. I am one of the people in that group of 92% of homeowners still paying their mortgage every month and on time. I bought in 2006 as the market was on the way down. But I’m still upside down and paying my mortgage is not easy. However, what I have not done is decide that the easiest way out is to default and hope that I can rely on Uncle Sam to save me. Nor I am going to hope bankruptcy rules change that allow a judge to lower the principle on the mortgage that I took out. There’s this thing called SACRIFICE that people have sometimes deal with. If means getting rid of cable television to save $50 a month, people should do it. If it means no more eating out, people should do it. If it means canceling Xbox live accounts, doing away with dancing lessons and karate lessons and any other activities that people spend money on to save extra dollars to pay the mortgage, then people should do it. If it means getting a part time job outside of their full time job or the Mom in the house having to go back to work, then people should do it.
But apparently its just wrong to actually think that people should behave this way. Oh no. Why? Because they didn’t get themselves into this situation. It was all the fault of somebody else. They couldn’t possibly look at their financial situation and say, “You know what. We just don’t have the money right now to buy a home.” They were all suckered into it by the big mean bankers and bond paper chasers (who are all white apparently, according to comments here) and none of it is their fault.
I also was opposed to TARP and other bailout packages given to lenders as they were part of the problem as well.
And the fact that an African American has been chosen by the people of this country to pull the plug on their madness has caused Rick to pull the angry monkey out of his hat and shoot it until it dies.
Ah yes. Nothing like breaking out the strawman. I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen anybody actually try to defend Obama’s plan in any meaningful way other than to ignorantly claim it was the big mean banks or actually present a valid rebuttal to what Santelli said other than to offer the same heaps of left wing drivel about “rich white men.”
Then again, intellectual laziness is hallmark of the left because after all, “They care” and that’s all that matters.
Santelli’s entire performance hinged on his assertion that the traders around him were a representative sample of America. They’re not.
Eric, you’re doing something you’re quite good at which is raising a false point. Santelli didn’t say the traders around him were a representative sample of America. He said they were a representative sample of America – that fits into the 92% of homeowners that aren’t in foreclosure and shouldn’t have to pay the mortgage of the guy next door because he wanted a 3000sq foot home instead of a 1500sq foot home.
Besides, your entire complaint is a red herring as it doesn’t address Santelli’s criticism of Obama’s plan but rather seeks to bring to light your grade-school attempt to attribute success to people based on nothing but the luck of the draw.
Joaquin,
My uncle works at the Merc in Chicago and he thinks this Santelli guy is full of crap. He also isn’t delussioned into thinking he represents “the average worker”. The real problem is you bought into Santelli’s bluster/bravado because he is speaking out against Obama. It would behoove you to not dismiss this stimulus bill because a tv personality shouted into the camera and some people cheered. Commodity traders are not some monolithic group that think and act the same. I would offer that if our traders were all of the same mindset, we would be much worse off.
“There’s this thing called SACRIFICE that people have sometimes deal with. If means getting rid of cable television to save $50 a month, people should do it. If it means no more eating out, people should do it.”
Jay,
I actually agree with you on this point. We should not dismiss selfish behavior from people who live outside of thier means, however its a tad unfair to paint this crisis as the fault of a bunch of irresponsible idiots. These banks are selling a bill of goods and will tell anybody what they want to hear. They(banks) actually have the power in this situation to lend or not to lend. I think the term is “the buck stops here”. We may disagree, but MOST of the onus is on the banks and lenders. I know you disagree with TARP and bailouts, which I do on some level, but is it plausible to allow SO much to just go bankrupt? I am no expert, but I don’t see how that can help.
“Santelli didn’t say the traders around him were a representative sample of America. He said they were a representative sample of America – that fits into the 92% of homeowners that aren’t in foreclosure and shouldn’t have to pay the mortgage of the guy next door because he wanted a 3000sq foot home instead of a 1500sq foot home.”
First, even if that was what he said, it’s still untrue.
Second, that’s not what he said.
“Listen, all’s I know is, is that there’s only about 5% of the floor population here right now, and I talk loud enough they can all hear me. So if you want to ask ‘em anything, let me know. These guys are pretty straight forward, and my guess is, a pretty good statistical cross-section of America, the silent majority.”
Anyway, I can’t respond to what does not exist. Santelli offered no critique of Obama’s plan. I’m not even sure Santelli actually read Obama’s plan, frankly. He certainly didn’t respond to the plan itself.
He said that Americans who aren’t paying their mortgages are losers, he said we should have a referendum on Obama’s plan and he said of the people on the floor: “This is America.” I’ve responded to all of that, so unless you’d like me to start making things up on his behalf, I’m pretty much out of things to say.
Hello Jay,
Most Americans (like myself) that bought homes with mortgages did so with the intent and the ability to pay them off. Some did not. If President Obama’s mortgage plan was being offered as a program to assist the opportunists and those whom knew they were getting in over their heads by purchasing a mortgage they couldn’t afford, I would be howling as loud as Santelli. But it is not.
From where I set, this country and the world is in an economic crisis. In my business (rough diamonds, copper cathode, gold dust and bullion) I’ve personally have witnessed an almost 30% decrease in business in the last six months. People that I have known for years have either left the business or have decreased their capacity. (Regrettably I had to lay off five people, most of whom have been with me since 2002.) A great number of these people have lost their homes, their families have been destroyed, and they are suffering. These people need help and they need it now!
I’m sure all of us witnessed similar suffering in the industries we work in. The Obama plan is not perfect, but it damn sure beats the alternative; which is to do nothing and allow the markets to correct themselves. Unfortunately the whole market system is f’ed up and it needs propping up and so do those Americans that did nothing wrong; yet find themselves caught up in this madness.
In reference to your straw man comment, I’ve watched Santelli long enough to know that he has issues with Obama’s non-alabaster skin pigment. So does Rush, various Faux-News personalities, the NY Post and a host of other right wing cowards. So let us not fool ourselves. It is what it is.
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