Now that we're talking conspiracy theories (and see also this striking graph), I thought I'd offer my own favorite, which is that Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers caused the stock market crash in order to benefit the Democrats.
My theory was inspired by this note by John Cassidy in the New Yorker a couple of months before the election:If Barack Obama is victorious on November 4th, someone on his transition team should send inauguration tickets to Richard Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers.
This was meant to be ironic, I believe: Fuld was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought down the house of cards that was the American banking system etc etc.
But this got me wondering . . . could Cassidy’s statement be literally true??
I remember from talking with Tom Ferguson that, while the superrich generally favor the Republican Party, the financial sector is one area that leans Democratic. So I looked up Richard Fuld and--hey--here he is:Richard Fuld, Lehman Rothers – Chairman, CEO 1994-present
Total donations since 1978: $208,550
To Democrats: 63%
To Republicans: 16%
To Special Interests: 21%
In 07/08, he was hedging his bets: $10K each to the Republican and Democratic Senatorial Committees, $4600 to Hillary Clinton, $2300 to Barack Obama, $4600 to Chris Dodd, $2300 to John McCain, $2000 to John Reed in Rhode Island, and $10K to the “Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Political Action Committee.”
I was kinda hoping Fuld had only contributed to Obama-–that would make a more interesting story. (Or I suppose if he’d only contributed to Republicans all his life, then there’d be an even better story of Richard S. Fuld, Jr., as a sleeper agent for the Democratic Party.) Still--63% of contributions to Democrats. Makes ya wonder, huh?
P.S. No, I'm not seriously advancing this as a conspiracy theory. It's more of a reminder of where a lot of the political money is coming from.
8.11.2009
My Own Pet Conspiracy Theory
@ 7:54 PM
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"P.S. No, I'm not seriously advancing this as a conspiracy theory. It's more of a reminder of where a lot of the political money is coming from."
Too late for that, Nate. It's already out there; there's no taking it back. Can't wait for someone to really pick this up and run with it then quote you as an expert source.
Whoops, that was actually Andrew, not Nate.
Looks like Andrew will be getting quoted, then.
In the year 2009, no conspiracy theory will be too crazy.
I realize this one is satirical, but who knows how long before Michelle Malkin or the Rush-man start peddling this as true.
Give it a week. Maybe two. I mean, these people did think that car dealerships that donated to Republicans were unfairly axed. And they thought an obviously fake Kenyan birth certificate was a smoking gun.
You're giving too much information. Haven't you learned anything from Nate's posts, the one about the auto dealership closings comes to mind. If the real data doesn't fit, don't waste your time reporting it. He gave to Obama! It was clearly Fuld's plan! 'nuf said
One way to fix campaign finance would be to only let people donate to one of the two candidates in a race. Anyone who's donating to both is clearly just buying influence. You'd think candidates would be smart enough to realize that they only got the "net" amount of money from some entity, not the total amount donated. But apparently they're not, or nobody would bother.
Hey Nate, congratulations on being an answer choice on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" (even though it was a wrong answers).
I like this one to. You heard it here first.
Flud and a secret wall street society wanted to corner the Kenyan Soda Ash market. They made a deal. The wall streeters would sink the US economy so Obama, a Kenyan would win the election. Kenya agreed that the wall street society would be the sole exporters of Kenyan Soda Ash to the world. With a Kenyan as President of the US, Kenya would get tons of aid money.
Fox News will probably have a breaking story by morning. You heard it first.
Oh No! It all makes sense now. The long trips to Kenya, the unusual comments from some local leaders in Kenya, and the assurances of Flud - a man with seemingly unlimited power to make everything work out. It is just so real, so riviting, so fox.
I can't imagine a worse strategy for Mr. Fuld, given that Obama was a favorite to win anyway, and that Obama has spent a disproportionate time of his administration to date cleaning up the mess, rather than doing what Fuld presumably would have wanted Obama in office to do in the first place, whatever that would be. So even if it were true, he'd probably regret it.
More GOP worms being unearthed.
One gets the sense that there is nothing but rot in the Republican Party, from the head on down to the lowly Rudys, Pete Kents and Mule Riders.
Sorry for repeating myself, can't help it with this level of GOP venality...
Fuld looks to be just a bad guesser of successful presidential picks as he is of stocks and CDSs. He put Obama in the lower tier and bet big on Hillary, I bet Hillary would have been more helpful to him IF she had won and IF he had survived the crash. Instead, he bet all kinds of wrong and has nothing but failure to show for it. Example dismissed, let's move on to your next mediocre post.
This new thread receives the weekly Tom Schaller award for most bullshit thread. Congratulations, Andrew.
Nate - please dump these bozos!
Ugh, the thing that sticks with me about this post is the use of the double question mark.
Inconsistent grammar or spotty spelling I can forgive, but the flagrant abuse of punctuation marks irritates me to no end. Hard to take someone seriously who uses too many question marks or exclamation points, you know!!!?!
@Dane
"Too late for that, Nate. It's already out there; there's no taking it back...Whoops, that was actually Andrew, not Nate.
Looks like Andrew will be getting quoted, then."
You were right the first time. What good is a conspiracy theory if it doesn't have evolving iterations?
This would actually be an excellent conspiracy theory if the Democrats weren't the strong favorites to win in 2008.
A seemingly doomed election given new life from the fact their rivals brought down the financial sector as epitomized by the crash of Lehman Brothers.
This theory is too complex for the birthers, and it involves someone with a "fereign" sounding name, Nope, no legs with the crazies.
Hmmmm rich people can be Democrats too!?!? I've no real problem with money in politics providing it's not buying influence beyond what ordinary people can get. I think that PACs are often used to circumvent fundraising limits. I think the real challenge for politicians is to stand apart from those who donated money, and use there own judgement, not the judgement of their paymasters.
STepper?
If the threads not written by Nate are so bad in your opinion, there's simple solution:
Don't read them.
Then we won't have to read your ad nauseum moaning and groaning about how bad the post was.
After all, if you don't read any posts except Nate's, it will be, to you, the same as if only Nate posted.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/0284889341225109596
I've already heard Republicans argue that the Democrats caused or at least hoped for the recession.
This isn't really a new conspiracy theory.
Mike in MD:
"STepper?
If the threads not written by Nate are so bad in your opinion, there's simple solution:
Don't read them.
Then we won't have to read your ad nauseum moaning and groaning about how bad the post was."
Let me get this straight. You go on one of your typical angry, loon rants because someone is complainig about a non Nate post. You suggest not reading the post instead of complaining about them.
Why don't you take your own advice? There's a simple solution:
Don't read STepper's posts.
http://bit.ly/16ErPb Dems have 11% party ID over repubs, repubs dying as national party
There are plenty of Republican voters in finance, but there are two obvious reasons why an intelligent finance executive might slant Democrat, for self-interest -
1) For all its machismo and nepotism, finance is a field in which formerly or currently discriminated-against groups of people, such as gays, women, and Asian-Americans, have found opportunities (albeit not at the very highest level). There might be some distaste for the party which is associated with discrimination against some of the talent.
2) On a more strategic level, it's a blatantly obvious hedge. The Republicans are guaranteed to grovel and toady to the finance industry when in power. You don't need to buy something that's already yours, lock, stock, and barrel. So naturally, it makes far more sense to give money to the guy who is a small risk to stand up to you.
Isn't it logical that financial services just gave more money to campaigns that were likely to win (i.e. Democrats) rather than by ideology. Since Bush lowered the winning % for all republicans, it makes more sense to buy your way in with a probable winner than support a longshot.
Dick screwed up, but I don't think it was on purpose. It looks like most people assumed there would be a bailout. Unfortunately the powers that be decided to make an example of Lehman without a solid plan of how to deal with the effects of that decision.
The link referred to still shows assymmetrical polls and results. The birther theorists were quickly given conclusive evidence proving Obama's Hawaii birth. To still hold any doubt they must actively seek to avoid this proof.
The 9/11 conspiracy theorists don't have this luxury. While silly on its face, it's not so easily and completely disproven. The question asked a much broader question--whether "anyone" in the federal government may have known. Further, we were fed a series of revelations in the years following 9/11 of things we didn't know, undermining the supposed facts we were originally given. One of the most prominent of these was the revelation that Bush had in fact been briefed about Al Qaeda's hopes, in Summer 2001. This all leaves us with the unanswered and open question, "What else didn't we know?"
Rush beat you to it, Andrew. He suggested months ago that George Soros might have somehow engineered the financial panic in order to bring down the Republicans. (Fuld makes a likelier suspect, though.)
Peter Thiel claimed that he predicted which firms would be bailed out based on whether they leaned Republican or Democratic.
rush limbaugh has been claiming something similar for months.
Despite the depth of the arguments provided, wouldn't the same data support the
alternative conspiracy theory that Paulson et al let
Lehman die precisely because the latter were democratic supporters?
It's all just a game of spin it seems.
--jswift
My pet "Economic crash" conspiracy theory is that those in the Bush Administration and their highly placed friends and supporters on Wall Street manipulated the market in a series of maneuvers to deliberately crash the economy, thus giving them an excuse to loot the Treasury on the way out and give the money to their friends, while legitimately being able to claim that the country could no longer afford a social safety net.
Of course, when Bush was elected the first time I said he was planning on bankrupting the country so he could claim we could no longer afford that safety net.
Unfortunately, I am right more often than I want to be.
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Betty
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