….Among the greatest barriers to innovation are the industrial giants like GE which have shed jobs at an alarming rate over the last 30 years while wielding intellectual property laws and political clout to crush upstart competitors which are hiring. One way of spurring innovation would be to get dinosaurs like GE, grown huge through rent-seeking, the hell out of the way. I doubt we’ll see suggestions in that vein from Jeffrey Immelt.
The only jobs Immelt will create in America are for K Street lobbyists to secure yet more government contracts for GE. Expect a blizzard of proposed agency regs and executive orders this year as the Oligarchy tries to lock in as much of a permanent rentier economy as they can before the next election cycle.
“We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else,” he [ Rep. Clyburn] said. “Well, the fact of the matter is, we are held to a higher standard in so many other areas, and I think we need to take a hard look at exactly how the TSA interact with members of Congress.”
The indignity of it all! A Congressman, treated as if he was under the same laws as his fellow citizens. An outrage. Maybe with that “harder look” Representative Clyburn can take a little time for how his fellow Americans are being treated by TSA as well.
Perhaps granting the Democratic House minority leadership and their children a few hereditary titles of nobility and some estates on Federal lands would cut to the chase for what these people are really after. At a minimum that would be as relevant a response to the shooting of Rep. Giffords as empowering the FCC to censor FOXnews and force Rush Limbaugh off of the airwaves – and it would do our constitutional order a whole lot less harm. I am perfectly content to refer to Rep. Clyburn as Viscout, Prince-bishop or Archduke if he in turn agreed to, say, read the Bill of Rights. Better late than never, I say.
Incidentally, making credible death threats against anyone is already a crime in most jurisdictions I am aware of, albeit one insufficiently prosecuted by DA’s. Threatening USG officials is a Federal offense.
I reviewed Jones’ 2008 book here on chicagoboyz in April, and followed it up more recently with a late September review of a similar book by Canadian “Michael Ross” on his time with Mossad.
I found both books surprisingly revelatory about the organizational culture of these two intelligence organizations, but found little that would interest the James Bond crowd, or be of much value operationally to foreign governments.
Jones’ book was by far the most damning, however, because he illustrated (with incidents from his own deep-cover career) the extent to which the CIA now operates for its own bureaucratic benefit with minimal attention to its central mandate – gathering actionable intelligence. All the most virulent criticisms of the Tea Party against big government are understatements when it comes to how national security has been subordinated to the HR nostrums of the day at CIA. Jones effectively outlined how “the emperor has no clothes.” Not so much inept as indifferent. As someone operating under “deep cover” in the clandestine branch, away from the support and comforts of consular life, he was certainly qualified to note the career paths and day-to-day obsessions of the “home office” and his colleagues. While he didn’t name names, he described enough duplicity and lassitude in the CIA’s management and staffing to earn the undying enmity of “tap dancers” and “clock watchers” alike.
Most notably, Jones outlined in some detail how the vast number of clandestine officers that were supposedly hired and deployed by the CIA post 9/11 (at huge expense) were posted to the continental US. Numbers were further bulked up by counting support staff as “officers.” Meanwhile, CIA clandestine officers already in the field overseas at the time were being methodically hindered and removed to avoid bureaucratic risk. Jones contrasted this institutional predilection with his time in Iraq as part of a largely Army team of intelligence agents.
Apparently the Panetta CIA will now conduct lawfare against one of its own, after having done so much to limit his success when he was overseas secretly working on WMD proliferation. No good deed goes unpunished. Execute the messenger when the news is bad.
It’s still early days in the legal matter. I’ve not seen any indication that Jones’ legal team has formed a strategy for protecting or saving their client. Goodness knows Jones’ pocketbook will necessarily take a massive hit, as may well be the intent of the suit in the first place. Having spent years delaying out-of-pocket reimbursements during Jones’ active clandestine career (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars), it’s only appropriate that the CIA would try to take back what they did pay him. Pour encourager les autres.
After risking his life overseas, there’s some irony that his own employers will hold him accountable for leaking their institutional dysfunction, rather than any actual secrets.
Will a change in control of the House mean that the CIA finds itself under Congressional scrutiny for misleading elected representatives about how they were spending billions of dollars? One would imagine that Jones’ defense lawyers will be dropping hints about the potential perjury committed by his CIA managers testifying on the Hill over the last decade. Be a shame if something should happen to all those shiny careers. Horse-trading ahead, I assume.
The intelligence agency that works safest, works not at all. And a CIA entirely based in the US or ensconced behind the walls of embassies can look busy without actually being busy. The current CIA bureaucracy, for entirely understandable reasons, has preferred Potemkin villages and iron rice bowls to aggressive intelligence-gathering. Jones’ misfortune is to have been a witness to it all. I hope this all turns out OK for him.
My mini-book review offers additional details for those with an interest in intelligence organizations.
Tomorrow, a bank-not your bank, but any bank-could evict you from your home. Even if you didn’t know the bank was foreclosing. Even if your mortgage is paid off. Even if you never had a mortgage to begin with. Even if the bank doesn’t hold a single piece of paper that you signed. And major banks not only know this fact, but have spent millions of dollars to defend it in court. Why? The answer starts with a Jacksonville homeowner named Patrick Jeffs.
In 2007, Deutsche Bank sued Jeffs for his home, which is a necessary step in the process of foreclosing on a homeowner in the state of Florida. Curiously, despite the fact that he immediately hired a law firm to defend his property when he found out about the foreclosure, neither Jeffs nor his attorneys were at the trial. That’s because it had already happened. Deutsche won by default because Jeffs wasn’t able to travel backwards in time to attend, even though the trial featured a signed affidavit indicating that he had been served his court summons.
The only problem with the summons Jeffs supposedly received was that it had been conjured out of thin air.
In June of this year, a Florida court ruled that the document was fraudulent, as the person who was supposed to make sure Jeffs was served had mysteriously received a copy of the summons before the lawsuit had even been filed, and Jeffs never even saw the copy. The text of that ruling was posted on various financial news websites in September. The lawyers that Jeffs hired to defend his case say that fraud such as this is not uncommon. It’s a widespread problem, and it has cost countless families their homes.
“I think it’s safe to say that 95% of the foreclosure cases in Florida involve some form of fraud on the part of the bank,” David Goldman of Apple Law Firm, PLLC told The Daily Caller in a phone interview. “It’s probably closer to 99%. And the court system is helping them get away with it.”
Banksters should not only be going to prison for intentionally destroying the lives of people who are not only NOT in default on their mortgages, but have never transacted a mortgage with the institutions attempting to illegally seize their property, these guys should be made to face an angry mob composed of the people they have defrauded.
This is the Oligarchy in action. They intend to hollow this country out and move their loot offshore just like in Russia during the 1990’s
Blogfriend Fabius Maximus, who often blogs on economics, would like to offer a counterpoint and i have agreed to let him put up his perspective here and some excerpts:
….The real estate title system in the US is complex, with safeguards protecting debtor and creditor (for details see this by Barry Ritholz). It’s also local (rules and data are not national). This system worked well for generations, but collapsed during the housing boom.
Loan volume accelerated, overloading key parts of the system. Appraisals were often corrupted, as loan originators routed business to compliant appraisers.
Massive securitization of mortgages ignored these constraints, and erected a pseudosystem on top of it that cheaply processed the high volume of both mortgage origination and securitization (e.g., the Mortgage Electronic Registration System – a faux version of security clearing corporations; see this explanation). Securitization also broke the link between the originator and end owner, with many ill consequences. Among other things, this put great pressures on the servicing firms to lower costs.
During the RE boom years recoveries on foreclosed mortgages were zero or positive, which meant a low rate of foreclosures (homes could be sold by the owner rather than default on the mortgage). So the institutional apparatus for foreclosures atrophied.
The the default bust hit. Massive flow, overwhelming the system – which was never configured for such an event. Remember, experts believed home prices never decline for more than a calendar year. The worst scenario considered by the most experts was flat prices for 3 years.
The servicers (sometimes the bank originating the mortgage, often not) reacted by cutting corners (seethis Reuters story). Finding the original loan documents was too expensive, so they used lost document procedures designed for extraordinary circumstances (e.g., fire, flood, or misfiling – see this at Calculated Risk and here at Reuters). Some servicers hired law firms set up as foreclosure mills (e.g., FL), processing incredible numbers of foreclosures. It’s not clear how, but clearly proper procedures were not followed.
As a result there have been many claims that foreclosure notices were never served (an easy way to make serving a high-margin profit center). Employees have admitted under oath in depositions to fraudulently signing thousands of notarized affidavits.
This took place in the 23 states with judicial foreclosures only with the cooperation of Judges. A few Judges protested when shown that their banks and their agents were committing perjury. But the process ran smoothly for the past few years. Now the wheels are coming off. This might be difficult for the financial sector to conceal or mitigate, despite their de facto control over the government’s regulatory machinery.
….Despite the oft-hysterical analysis, there is as yet insufficient public information about the scale of the problem. Quite likely even key players (e.g., banks, their law firms, government regulators) lack the necessary information. Deliberately, as all prefered to “see no evil.” But now that the problem has erupted into the daylight, this leaves them ill-prepared to respond. Especially as any adequate response will reveal their incompetence and malfeasance in creating the situation. (Here are Wells Fargo’s procedures regarding creditors’ complaints; nothing available for their procedures to debtors’ complains).
Political factors, not legal or economic, probably will control the evolution of this crisis. Hence the likelihood of modest impact to the national economy. More than the small impact expected by Wall Street; less than expected by the increasingly rabid doomsters. Over a longer horizon, a year or more, the economy will affect the political dynamics. For a good analysis of the current political situation see “Congress Taking Cautious Approach with Foreclosure Mess“, American Banker, 14 October 2010. The Republicans, as usual, eagerly support the banks – despite any violations of the law, despite the interests of the American people.
The economic impact looks to be minimal and probably less than the political effects. New home sales are unaffected by this crisis. The title problems are solvable. New home finance is unaffected, and in any case are now 90% government financed or guaranteed. Interruptions in sales of existing homes will have severe effects for those affected, but little for the overall economy (despite the massive attention to the volume of existing home sales, they have minimal economic effect).
What could change this forecast? A second dip would radically change the situation, as more links in US and global economy “unexpectedly” break. As would a long foreclosure moratorium, although this is unlikely under the current political regime. It could happen as part of system change, of such magnitude that the moratorium would be one of the lesser results.
Moral decay is often cited as a reason for why empires/civilizations collapse. The slow failure of the US mortgage market, the largest debt market in the world and the shining jewel of the US economic/financial system, is a good example of moral decay at work.
Why is this market failing? It’s being gutted — from wholesale fraud and ruthless profiteering at the bank/servicer level to strategic defaults at the homeowner level — because a relatively efficient and effective moral system is being replaced by a burdensome and ineffective one. What shift? Our previous moral system featured trust, loyalty, reputation, responsibility, belief, fairness, etc. While these features were sometimes in short supply, on the whole it provided us with an underlying and nearly costless structure to our social and economic interactions.
Our new moral system is that of the dominant global marketplace. This new system emphasizes transactional, short-term interactions rather than long-term relationships. All interactions are intensely legalistic, as in: nothing is assumed except what is spelled out in the contract. Goodness is solely based on transactional success and therefore anything goes, as long as you don’t get punished for it.
In this moral system, every social and economic interaction becomes increasingly costly due to a need to contractually defend yourself against cheating, fraud, and theft. Worse, when legalistic punishment is absent/lax, rampant looting and fraud occurs.
Given the costs and dangers of moral decay, it’s not hard to see why it can cause a complex empire/civilization to collapse.
John is drawing on an intellectual tradition goes back to Gibbon,Ibn Khaldun, Polybius, Confucius and Menciusbut is mashing it up with modern concepts of social complexity, such as is found in Joseph Tainter’sThe Collapse of Complex Societies. This makes sense; when members of a ruling class start to behave in an unethical manner, there is a natural reaction by morally vigilant members of the ruling class to check future abuses of power by dividing administrative authority, increasing regulations, creating new watchdogs and erecting balancing countermeasures. This is an increase in complexity that decreases rather than improves efficiency. Society pays more for the same level of effective governance and the creep of corruption will soon require another “re-set” and yet another no-value added increase in complexity as the elite multiplies and seeks their own aggrandizement.
When Robert Wright wrote of “ossifying” societies unable to stand the test of barbarians in the ancient and medieval worlds, in Nonzero:The Logic of Human Destiny, he was explicit that a moral critique often correlated with economic/darwinian fitness. Rome, for example, eschewed adaptive technological innovation due to it’s heavy reliance on inexpensive slave labor. Oligarchic societies fit the moral decay theory because oligarchies focus on the zero sum game of extracting existing wealth from the population instead of creating and accumulating it. The extraction process requires an expensive social architecture of control and this is subject to diminishing returns. At a certain point, any system reaches the tipping point on adding the next level of non-productive complexity and begins to unravel.
What if the historical ratchet could be reversed?
What if the excess complexity could be systemically pared back along with the opportunities for corruption and self-aggrandizement that required countermeasures?
Societies are occasionally capable of moral and political renovation, cases in point, the Glorious Revolution and the Meiji Restoration, both of which tied ancient ideals to new political forms while sweeping away a corrupt elite. The American Revolution period, through the adoption of the US Constitution would be another example of societal transformation. These successes, which involve constitutional reforms and a rejuvenated political economy are essentially of a social contractual nature and are rare. Failure is more common, as with Sulla’s bloody reforms that temporarily got rid of bad actors and rebooted the Roman Republic to an older, more virtuous model but failed to address the fact that the structural flaws of the Republic itself were the problem, not the ambition of Marius.
Things are not yet too far gone. There is much that is wrong with the United States but we have a more resilient and coherent foundation upon which to reconstruct than did the Romans of the 1st century BC.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
security has been subordinated to the HR nostrums of the day at CIA. Jones effectively outlined how “the emperor has no clothes.” Not so much inept as indifferent. As someone operating under “deep cover” in the clandestine branch, away from the support and comforts of consular life, he was certainly qualified to note the career paths and day-to-day obsessions of the “home office” and his colleagues. While he didn’t name names, he described enough duplicity and lassitude in the CIA’s management and staffing to earn the undying enmity of “tap dancers” and “clock watchers” alike.
. This makes sense; when members of a ruling class start to behave in an unethical manner, there is a natural reaction by morally vigilant members of the ruling class to check future abuses of power by dividing administrative authority, increasing regulations, creating new watchdogs and erecting balancing countermeasures. This is an increase in complexity that decreases rather than improves efficiency. Society pays more for the same level of effective governance and the creep of corruption will soon require another “re-set” and yet another no-value added increase in complexity as the elite multiplies and seeks their own aggrandizement.
