Paul Krugman Ironically Attacks “intolerance and cultishness” of Bernie Supporters While Defending Big Banking

by Scott Creighton

On April 2nd I wrote “screw Paul Krugman” and suggested Bernie Sanders go right ahead and continue exposing Hillary Clinton as the career criminal and liar she is. Paul was pretending to do his public service bit: defending the integrity of the Democratic Party from the threat of an all to honest Bernie Sanders. That kind of thing isn’t supposed to be allowed in polite conversation when a Republican presidential candidate might be listening.

The truth is, Hillary is a criminal and a liar and she isn’t qualified for office of any kind, much less the highest one in the land. That’s just a fact no matter how close to election day it is. If you can’t understand that, you can go screw yourself right alongside Paul Krugman.

Today Mr. Krugman has stepped up his assault on the honest left in a little screed he penned for the New York Times, defenders of all things neoliberal and criminal.

“… intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?” Paul Krugman

In this little pro-establishment diatribe, Mr. Krugman equates the passion of Sanders voters with “intolerance” and relegates them to the level of a cult as if real liberals are some kind of monstrous and evil little band of “leftist” brothers ready to strike out against the normal pragmatic “progressives” in his party.

“The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant ((of a person or their manner) childishly sulky or bad-tempered) self-righteousness among some supporters.” Paul Krugman

How dare those leftists not want a war-mongering war-profiteer like Hillary Clinton to be their representative in the presidential election. How childish of them not to realize they have to vote for a former Sec. of State who abused her office for personal gain, lobbied for “humanitarian interventions” in places like Libya which killed thousands of civilians while turning the nation into a cesspool of corruption and thwarted the law flagrantly by creating and using her own email server so she could better hide her criminal activities. What intolerant little brats they are. Don’t they realize Ted Cruz is watching?!?

You know, I can tolerate his attack on the Sanders supporters because I see it for what it is: these young people remind him of what he used to be before he sold out and that pisses him off. Like holding up a mirror to a man who’s been a meth-head for 10 years alongside a photo of what he used to be before the addiction, Sanders supporters shine a light on a path some wish they never had to walk.

So I might cut Paul a little slack when it comes to his intolerance of the young idealists who haven’t yet taken the pragmatic path and joined the cult of the neoliberal “left” like he has.

But I can’t forgive is this asshole’s blanket defense of the banking industry who have, purposefully, caused so much suffering in this country since 2007 and 2008. And for that matter, it was not only the removal of Glass-Steagall that the Clintons perpetrated which aided and abetted this national treason… but, if you recall, they also made it illegal to attempt to regulate the derivatives markets which were the weapons of mass financial destruction the banking industry used to wipe out our economy.

“Let me illustrate the point about issues by talking about bank reform.

The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?

Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to both questions were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big.” Paul Krugman

Talk about whitewashing and historical revisionism. It was ONLY the smaller banks and lending institutions that caused the financial meltdown of 2008, huh? Is that right Paul?

“Citigroup has agreed to pay $7 billion to settle a federal investigation into its handling of risky subprime mortgages, admitting to a pattern of deception that Attorney General Eric Holder said “shattered lives” and contributed to the worst financial crisis in decades, the Justice Department said Monday.” AP 2014

“(Goldman Sachs) said on Friday that it had agreed to buy back $3.15 billion in mortgage bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to end a lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the federal regulator that oversees the two mortgage companies. The agency had accused Goldman of unloading low-quality mortgage bonds onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the run-up to the financial crisis. It estimates that Goldman is paying $1.2 billion more than the bonds are now worth.” New York Times

“The Department of Justice, which reached the agreement with Goldman along with the New York and Illinois Attorney Generals and other regulators, could not be reached for comment. The (5 billion dollar) settlement would resolve any civil claims the government has against Goldman for its role in packaging up home loans into mortgage backed securities and selling those bonds to investors. The settlement relates to MBS that Goldman sold from 2005 to 2007. Many investors who bought mortgage bonds during that time ended up with big losses.” Fortune 2016

“On Thursday, (Bank of America) agreed to pay $16.65 billion to settle the government’s accusations it sold flawed mortgage securities in the run up to the 2008 crisis, the largest settlement ever reached between the U.S. and a single company.” Wall Street Journal 2014

Let’s use this Wall Street Journal graphic to put the role of the Big Banks that Paul is defending into a little better perspective:

Looking at all those fines for Big Banking makes me think they MAY have had a LITTLE to do with the collapse of the economy back in 2008. What do you think? Do you still think it was all Countrywide and little banks, little “shadow banks” like Krugman suggests?

You still think it was the Big Banks who have gotten bigger since the designed collapse of the economy? What are you, a conspiracy theorist?

Let’s take a look at an article from that famous conspiracy theorist website, the Wall Street Journal, and see what they had to say about it back in 2014 (I know we aren’t supposed to remember stuff from that long ago. Sorry)

“The Justice Department’s case against Bank of America provides perhaps the clearest window yet into the behavior that fueled the 2008 financial crisis: Lenders knowingly providing credit to borrowers who couldn’t afford the loans and selling those mortgages to unwitting investors. Borrowers ultimately defaulted, sending them into foreclosure and saddling investors with hefty losses (that’s the derivatives that Hillary and Bill kept from being regulated if you recall)

Many of the mortgage securities in question were made by Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. But the government found problems with Bank of America’s own mortgage securities as well, including efforts to circumvent underwriting standards by changing applicants’ financial information.

In at least one instance, an underwriter at Bank of America made more than 40 attempts to win an “accept” rating from an internal Countrywide system—known as CLUES—that would allow Bank of America to make a loan, according to a statement of facts signed by the U.S. and Bank of America.” Wall Street Journal, 2014

Look at that. Big Banking was USING Countrywide as a patsy, as a kind of a toxic mortgage shell company, to make bad loans they knew would default so they could package them up and sell them to various investors so they too would collapse and fail.

And that information was so well known, there it is written in the Wall Street Journal.

You guys think Paul Krugman might pick up a Wall Street Journal from time to time?

So what is Paul doing with this lying article? What is he doing obfuscating for Big Banking?

Lying? Protecting Big Banking?

Are we talking about Paul Krugman or Hillary Clinton?

How ironic isn’t it that Paul Krugman turns into a petulant, intolerant cultish little lying snot while defending Hillary Clinton from Bernie’s accusations that she aided and then covered for Big Banking’s deliberate demolition of the economy… which they profited from.

There is a symmetry to it, isn’t there? It’s almost picture perfect when you think about it. Makes perfect sense in so many ways. This is the kind of deception and misdirection it takes to back Hillary Clinton for president. And this is the EXACT kind of dishonesty all those Sanders supporters hate about her and her cultish gaggle of neoliberal backers.

Hell, I would rather be called a self-righteous liberal than a desperate lying intolerant fascist any day. How about you, Paul?