Rep. Bart Stupak

Stupak (n) – The sepsis commonly experienced after unsafe back alley abortions

Today, Urban Dictionary has posted this definition:

2. Stupak: A medical condition (subset of sepsis) resulting from unsafe – unnecessarily so – back alley abortions as a result of the “Stupak Amendment” to the 2009 Health Care Reform Bill.

Doctor: Unfortunately, while this would have been covered under private insurance carriers, public plans were barred from including women’s health measures. I’m sorry, you’ll have to see “Dr. Julio” in the alley behind 7-11.

(Three weeks later.)

Doctor: I believe you’ve developed Stupak, a form of sepsis, a severe illness in which the bloodstream is overwhelmed by bacteria.

Head on over to Urban Dictionary to vote for definition #2. Bart Stupak is about to be Santorum’d, and he won’t know what hit him.

It’s for Fingar’s comments about the latter that ACW links to his speech–to highlight Fingar’s revelation that the White House ordered declassification of that 2007 NIE.

This example is drawn from the highly contentious 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. It became contentious, in part, because the White House instructed the Intelligence Community to release an unclassified version of the report’s key judgments but declined to take responsibility for ordering its release.

Remember, at the time Dick Cheney and Israel were both trying to force a military response to Iran’s nuclear program … but now we learn the White House ordered the NIE be released?

Was Bush (presumably with Condi’s help) playing Cheney’s games against him, releasing classified information without telling Cheney he ordered its release? As ACW notes, Fingar explains the logic behind the release–which was designed to show that there was time, but some urgency, to resolving the Iran situation diplomatically.

In other words, the message it was intended to send to policymakers was, “You do not have a lot of time but you appear to have a diplomatic or non-military option.” Prior to the publication of this Estimate, the judgment of the Intelligence Community—and of many pundits and policymakers—was that there was no chance of deterring Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon and that the only use of force—military options—could prevent Tehran from acquiring the bomb. The estimate also judged, and stated clearly, that Iran at a minimum had retained the option to pursue a weapon and that whether to do so would be a political decision that could be made at any time.

The entire speech is worth reading. Fingar provides an explanation for the crappy 2002 Iraq NIE.

In my experience, most policymakers ask themselves, and often ask their intelligence support team, whether the reported or projected development requires immediate action on their part or can be deferred while they work on more pressing issues or more attractive parts of their policy agendas. That is a natural and rational approach. To compensate for this, intelligence has a built-in, and on some subjects, like terrorism, a recently reinforced propensity to underscore, overstate, or “hype” the findings in order to get people to pay attention, and to fireproof the IC against charges that it failed to provide adequate warning. I note in passing that this propensity was one of the reasons for the errors in the infamous 2002 Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

While the explanation is not a surprise, there are several implications of it–not least that the former Number 2 in DNI is suggesting that estimates about terrorism are overstated, with the possible result that terrorism has remained a larger policy focus than other pressing issues. (Elsewhere, in his discussion about the Global Trends 2025 report, Fingar does note that the results of terrorism will be increasingly dangerous, largely due to bioterrorism.)

Which brings us to Fingar’s description of the genesis for the climate change NIA.

I should probably take it as a badge of achievement that Members of Congress began to press for an NIE on global climate change in late 2006 and early 2007. The reason I say this is that I made improvement in the quality of analysis, notably NIEs, and the restoration of confidence in the quality of IC analytic work my highest priorities when I became Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in mid 2005. By 2007, we had regained the confidence of a growing number of Members who began to request NIEs in order to have reliable and objective assessments of important issues. Or so they said. Many of these requests came from Democrats who may have had an additional motivation, i.e., to use NIEs as a stick with which to pummel the administration. That is a tale for another time; here I want to focus on climate change. The short setup for the story I’m about to tell is that whether climate change is occurring, the extent to which it is caused by human activity, whether the US was incurring too high a price for being out of step with its allies on the importance of combating global warming, and a host of other politically-charged issues provided the backdrop for the initial requests that the NIC produce an NIE on climate change. Another factor was the release and reception of former Vice President Al Gore’s book and documentary on global warming entitled An Inconvenient Truth.

In order to tell the story, I will compress a number of conversations with several Members and staff into a single and greatly simplified set of invented exchanges that
accurately reflect the dialog.

Member: We need an estimate on climate change.

Me: We don’t do climate change, talk to NOAA or the National Academy of Sciences.

Member: But we trust you and know we will get an objective assessment.

Me: Thank you, but the NIC doesn’t know anything about climate science.

Member: But we trust you, and the NIC does analyze geopolitical developments, right?

Me: Yes, but we still don’t have any expertise on climate change.

Member: OK, then do an NIE on the geopolitics of global climate change.

She had me. Congress eventually ordered us to produce an Estimate on the geopolitical implications of global climate change.

(While Fingar insists this was entirely fictional, the gender of his imagined interlocutory suggests Nancy Pelosi or DiFi as possibilities for the member asking for the estimate.) Again, not a surprise, but out of this request came–in Fingar’s estimation–a document that provided some early resource allocation suggestions and red flags for dealing with climate change.

Most of the rest of the document talks about Fingar’s attempts to improve the process of collaborative documents like the NIEs and NIAs, which gives a glimpse of how our intelligence community attempts to improve its analytical process. Well worth reading the whole thing.

During his first nine and a half months in office, he has authorized as many C.I.A. aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office.

The drones are “piloted” at takeoff by operators in Afghanistan who then hand off control to teams here in the US that include both CIA and contractors. Controlling the drones by joystick, they watch and select targets with final approval for attacks under the control of “C.I.A. officials, including the head of the Counter-Terrorist Center, whose identity remains veiled from the public because the agency has placed him under cover.”

People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. “You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,” a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.) Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: “squirters.”

The results of these strikes include:

Still, the recent campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud offers a sobering case study of the hazards of robotic warfare. It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing him. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon. …

In just one of those sixteen strikes, Mayer notes:

C.I.A. reportedly killed between two and six unidentified militants outside Makeen, and then killed dozens more people—possibly as many as eighty-six—during funeral prayers for the earlier casualties. An account in the Pakistani publication The News described ten of the dead as children. Four were identified as elderly tribal leaders. One eyewitness, who lost his right leg during the bombing, told Agence France-Presse that the mourners suspected what was coming: “After the prayers ended, people were asking each other to leave the area, as drones were hovering.” The drones, which make a buzzing noise, are nicknamed machay (“wasps”) by the Pashtun natives, and can sometimes be seen and heard, depending on weather conditions. Before the mourners could clear out, the eyewitness said, two drones started firing into the crowd. “It created havoc,” he said. “There was smoke and dust everywhere. Injured people were crying and asking for help.” Then a third missile hit. “I fell to the ground,” he said.

As Mayer points out, while there was an uproar over Cheney’s targeted assasination program which was apparently never put into practice, there has not only been no similar reaction to the growng use of unmanned drones to do precisely the same thing – though often with higher civilian casualties  – and in fact Vice President Biden and others are advocating an increase in their use yet the same legal issues apply.

In addition to our escalating unmanned air war in Pakistan,  9 Afghan civilians were killed Wednesday in an air strike on the village of  Babaji near Lashkarga the  capital of southern Helmand province

The villagers who drove the bodies to the capital, Lashkargah, said that the strike happened at 7:00pm while the people were harvesting.

The angry people called on the government to oust foreign troops from their area and were chanting “death to America”.

“Two of children are among the dead,” a protester said.

Video footage shows that at least two teenagers were among the killed and people around the bodies were asking in tears, “Are they Taliban or civilians?”

And “more than 25 foreign and Afghan soldiers were killed or injured” in a NATO airstrike on Friday – details are still hard to sort out but:

Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s defence ministry, told the AFP news agency there was no doubt Afghan personnel had been killed and injured by their international partners.

“It was an erroneous air strike which caused casualties to friendly forces,” he said.

The troops had apparently called in air support after they became involved in a battle with Taliban fighters while searching for two missing US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.

NATO has confirmed that 7 Afghan soldiers and 1 Afghan civilian worker were killed in this strike but is not yet confirming that the air strike was a friendly fire incident.

And any idea that we’re going to decrease these air attacks are laid to rest by  Nick Turse, writing from Afghanistan for TomDispatch that we are making huge investments in Afghan bases – improving the air strips at Bagram, Kandahar and more.

This massive construction goes ahead while we are told that Obama is still considering what to do next. The latest reports say that he is only considering options that require sending more troops but we are learning that there are no troops left to send.

In August 2008 at TomDispatch.com, we reported on the deplorable conditions at the 82nd Replacement Barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, more than 50 members of Echo Platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 82nd Replacement Detachment were being held while awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. Investigations launched since then — in part in response to our article — have revealed that the plight of members of Echo Platoon is not an isolated one. It is, in fact, disturbingly commonplace on other bases throughout the United States. And it is from these “holdover units,” filled with disgruntled soldiers who have gone AWOL, many of whom are struggling with PTSD from previous deployments in war zones, that the military is hoping to help meet its manpower needs for Afghanistan.

And no one is explaining how we will pay for all of this:

At the same time, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, has just made it clear that the Pentagon will once again request supplemental war-fighting funds sometime next year, over and above the $130 billion Congress appropriated only a month ago in the Defense Department budget. These will be based, in part, on a calculation that each 1,000 new troops sent to Afghanistan must be supported by an extra billion dollars in funds. (You can do the math yourself on those 40,000 troops and then wonder just where all that money is going to come from.)

Can we say quagmire?

This was an unhealthy choice on your part… like taking up smoking.

No. Really:

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the head of the Republicans campaign committee, caused a stir at last night’s Rules Committee meeting when he suggested that treating female-related health conditions was comparable to insurance-company imposed restrictions on smokers.

“Why should a woman pay more than a man?” asked New Jersey Democrat Frank Pallone, according to the Courthouse News Service.

“Well, we’re all different,” Sessions explained. “Why should a smoker pay more?” he said before interrupted.

So, to sum up: your decision to own a not-penis is going to cost you.

In all fairness, you are already well compensated by no-cover Ladies Nights and two-for-one drink specials, so let’s just call this even-stevens.

No word on whether this will affect the dickless Democrats who voted against health care.

Here are some snippets from the transcript of the appearance:

WALLACE: I’m going to pursue that in a second. But any evidence so far that what you or your staff have heard in briefings that he — because we know he was on some radical Islamic Web sites…

LIEBERMAN: Right, right.

WALLACE: … that he was exchanging communications either in this country or overseas with other Islamic radicals?

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Nothing I can confirm at this point. I think it’s very important to let the Army and the FBI go forward with this investigation before we reach any conclusions.

But what we do know on the record from third parties reporting over the last two or three years — that he made a series of statements justifying suicide bombing, comparing it to the bravery of an American soldier who would throw himself on a grenade to protect his colleagues, that he said that — well, he shouted out, according to bystanders at that — while killing the other day at Fort Hood, the words Allah Akbar, an expression of faith in Islam which the Islamist extremists have corrupted.

And the fact that he did that at the moment of these murders — if that’s confirmed, of course — raises genuine concerns that this was a terrorist act.

I will add to this, Chris, this is not the first attempt by Islamist extremists to strike at American military bases. We’ve broken up plots to go after Fort Dix, Quantico Marine base in Virginia.

In fact, the one successful, if I can put it that way, terrorist act that was done in recent years was the individual in Little Rock, Arkansas who walked into an Army recruiting station and killed a recruiter.

And there is testimony that Dr. Hasan actually said that he understood that and supported that act.

/snip/

LIEBERMAN: I am intending to begin a congressional investigation of my Homeland Security Committee into what were the motives, what were the motives of Hasan in carrying out this brutal mass murder, if a terrorist attack, the worst terrorist attack since 9/11, and to ask whether the Army missed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him.

Really, in the U.S. Army, this is not a matter of constitutional freedom of speech. If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone.

Of course, there are absolutely zero grounds for holding such hearings. As reported by AFP, all evidence points to Hasan working alone and having no contact with terrorists:

“All evidence at this point indicates the suspect allegedly acted alone,” said army investigation spokesman, Chris Grey, appearing to strike down any theories that Hasan was part of a radical Islamist sleeper-cell.

/snip/

An initial search of Hasan’s computer revealed no direct exchanges with known extremists, but US Army and FBI officials had yet to rule out completely possible links to terrorist groups, US media reported.

Joe LIEberman will never ask for one bit of accountability from his BFF’s in the Republican Party, but is entirely willing to LIE while convening hearings aimed at whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria. There really is no limit to how low LIEberman will go.

HuffPost asked Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), the lead Blue Dog negotiator, why he succeeded and the progressives failed.

“Because I didn’t threat[en]. These are the facts,” he said.

But you did threaten, a reporter pointed out.

No, Stupak said, it wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. “No, they know I’ll vote against the rule,” he said.

Stupak said the Blue Dogs have gradually been sending a message to leadership and that much of it goes back to a previous vote involving an appropriations bill that Blue Dogs wanted to include pro-life language.

In July, the House considered a Financial Services Appropriations bill that would allow publicly-funded abortions in the District of Columbia. Stupak and allies were not allowed an amendment, so they sought to “take down the rule” — in other words, round up enough votes to deny he bill a chance to get voted on on the floor. When time expired, the pro-lifers had prevailed. But Pelosi held the vote open for extra time and persuaded four members to switch their votes.

They didn’t win in the end, Stupak said, but they accomplished their goal.

“We wanted to send a message,” he said. “We went back and I said, ‘See, I can take down your rule.’”

He has held his fire since then, saving his strength for the health care bill.

“Now, I have not threatened that every time that we went to Rules Committee and we didn’t always get our pro-life amendments, I did not try to take down any rules. You have to pick your fights at the right time. You can’t be crying wolf all the time because you lose your wolfiness. You lose your credibility,” he said. “So I’m not going to lose my credibility. So you use it at certain times when it’s appropriate.”

Viewed through the lens of Stupak’s C Street membership, this victory lap (and all the others he has been doing) comes off as what it is: a naked grab for power through hypocritical moralizing.

Too bad that formula works so well for so many in Washington.

Strange Rubble by Joseph Hatfield via flickr

I had to check out before the final vote, but last night at 11pm ET, the House of Representatives, for the first time ever, passed health care reform by the skin of their teeth, by the narrow score of 220-215. 39 Democrats voted against, 1 Republican voted in favor. That would be Joseph “The Future Is” Cao, who won’t be a Congressman next year, having won a seat over Dollar Bill Jefferson in 2008 in a massively Democratic district.

We’ll look at the final Democratic totals in a second. But let’s just take a step back. It’s been arguably a century since the US has started talking about reforming the health care system; certainly Democrats started running on it in earnest by 1948 and the Truman Administration. This is the first time it’s passed even one House of Congress. It would cover 36 million Americans who previously did not have health insurance, and would pay for that through ending waste and subsidies in Medicare, sharing sacrifice among all stakeholders, and responsibly raising revenue on those who can most afford it. It even includes a public option to compete with private insurance companies, one that Jacob Hacker, the godfather of the public option, deems worth it, despite the use of negotiated provider rates instead of Medicare rates.

But this came at a huge price. In the name of what anyone would agree is an incremental health reform (and entrenched powers in this country leave little opportunity for reform in anything but an incremental fashion, sadly), women’s reproductive rights were set back further than at any time in the last generation, with the passage of the Stupak Amendment, a brazen introduction of the anti-choice movement into private insurance markets. Under this standard, any insurance company offering plans on the exchange, be they public or private, would effectively have to deny coverage of elective abortion services. The exchanges are set to grow to encompass practically all companies, large or small, and maybe all individuals, so you’re basically talking about, over time, banning insurance coverage of abortion. This puts a massive restriction on access to anyone who doesn’t have the funds. Jon Walker explains further.

64 members of the Democratic caucus voted in favor of the Stupak Amendment. 62 were men (of course, Marcy Kaptur and Kathy Dahlkemper were foregrounded in the debate, but no women joined them). Of the 64, 41 ended up going ahead and voting for the bill. But 23 members voted for Stupak, to restrict choice, and then against the health care reform bill. These 23 are simply moles inside the caucus, opposing key planks of the Democratic platform. What’s more, they will have giant targets on their back, both from Democratic activists seeking primaries and Republicans who know that their base will turn out in much stronger numbers for their candidates than these so-called Democrats who appear to stand for nothing. Those names:

Altmire (PA), Barrow (GA), Boccieri (OH), Boren (OK), Bright (AL), Chandler (KY), Childers (MS), Davis (AL), Davis (TN), Gordon (TN), Griffith (AL), Holden (PA), Marshall (GA), Matheson (UT), McIntyre (NC), Melancon (LA), Peterson (MN), Ross (AR), Shuler (NC), Skelton (MO), Tanner (TN), Taylor (MS), Teague (NM)

I don’t know any Democrat who would actually miss any of them.

Artur Davis is running for Governor of Alabama and obviously thinks he has to vote that way to win. His district is extremely Democratic and mostly African-American. It’s vital to get a real Democrat in that seat. Charlie Melancon is running for Senate in Louisiana. David Vitter should breathe easier today because Melancon won’t get one dime from any national Democrat worth his or her salt.

As for the rest of the pro-life Democrats, the fact that 64 would vote that way is a bit shocking. I knew there was a pro-life majority in Congress, but not quite that large of one. Clearly the House leadership didn’t whip the vote at all, allowing everyone who wanted to take a vote against choice, presumably to help them back home. Amy Sullivan says that the leadership didn’t address the Stupak caucus’ concerns until it was too late, losing their leverage. But I’m not convinced that Stupak ever had the votes to kill the bill, although clearly the leadership bungled what could have been a better compromise earlier.

There were 39 total Democratic votes against health care, the above 23 plus 16 more (Full roll call here). The New York Times has a nice chart about them and their districts. Lots of these members ran unopposed or won by over 20 points. Eight came from districts Obama won last November. The total 39:

Adler (NJ), Altmire (PA), Baird (WA), Barrow (GA), Boccieri (OH), Boren (OK), Boucher (VA), Boyd (FL), Bright (AL), Chandler (KY), Childers (MS), Davis (AL), Davis (TN), Edwards (TX), Gordon (TN), Griffith (AL), Herseth Sandlin (SD), Holden (PA), Kissell (NC), Kosmas (FL), Kratovil (MD), Kucinich (OH), Markey (CO), Marshall (GA), Massa (NY), Matheson (UT), McIntyre (NC), McMahon (NY), Melancon (LA), Minnick (ID), Murphy (NY), Nye (VA), Peterson (MN), Ross (AR), Shuler (NC), Skelton (MO), Tanner (TN), Taylor (MS), Teague (NM)

Only one, Dennis Kucinich (arguably Massa but I’ve said my peace on that), voted against the bill from a liberal perspective. His statement is here.

Clearly the Democrats allowed exactly everyone uncomfortable with the bill to let themselves go on the vote. They didn’t expect Cao, so they got one above the total needed so nobody could be called “the deciding vote” for health care. Of my final 32 undecideds, they held 24 of them, including Blue Dog votes like Chris Carney, Jim Costa, Zack Space, and Dennis Cardoza.

The White House released a statement of praise.

I’ll have lots more to say on all this later. I think the price of passage was extremely steep, and should not be tolerated. If Barack Obama indeed said he would work to take this language out in conference he should be held to that.

In the wake of some criminal or morally reprehensible behavior by a brown person non-conservative, wingnuts absolutely hate any attempt to examine the psychological state of the culprit.

You saw this last week after the tragedy at Ft. Hood — they were besides themselves that the media reported the allegation that Nidal Hasan had been taunted because of his religion. OMG THE LIBRUL MEDIAS MAKING EXCUSES FOR THE TERRORIST OMG!

So it was amusing to see that pasty butterball Frank Luntz, wearing way too much makeup on “This Week”, telling us we really need to understand that those patriotic teabaggers were waving disgustingly graphic and wildly inappropriate holocaust signs because they’re just fearful for their children’s future. And we should understand that John Voight’s speculation that Obama had been “programmed” to “destroy America” was merely the result of his fear that his grandchildren would inherit a diminished America.

You know you’ve really screwed the pooch when you get put in your place by…Cokie Roberts.

photo: Carrie Sloan via Flickr

That’s the title of Chapter IV of John Kenneth Galbraith’s book The Great Crash 1929. The description of the activities of GS in the months prior to October, 1929, are eerily similar to those of GS in the run-up to the great crash of 2008, as described by McClatchy.

Galbraith tells us that GS was late to the investment trust game. Investment trusts were similar to the mutual funds of today, except that they created leverage by selling bonds and preferred stock as well as common stock. The returns to bonds and preferred stock are fixed, so the benefit of increases in asset values flowed to the common shareholders. GS formed Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation in December, 1928, and bought 1mn shares of its stock at $100 each. It immediately sold 90% of them to the public at $104. It sold more stock, and in February, 1929, the stock was selling for $222.50, which was about twice the value of the assets of GSTC.

Then it merged with the Financial and Industrial Securities Corporation. The assets of the merged company were about $235mn. GSTC bought over $57mn worth of its own stock, which helped the price considerably. Some of that stock was sold to William Crapo Durant, a speculator, who bled it back into the market as conditions would allow.

GSTC then organized a pair of investment companies that took leverage to new heights, first Shenandoah Corporation, which had common and preferred stock. Shenandoah sponsored Blue Ridge Corporation. The combined entities bought another large investment corporation, financed in part with more sales of stock. The total raise from the public was over $250mn. A lot of people paid a lot more than that in the open market. When the crash came a few weeks later, the stocks of all these Trusts collapsed.

In a tag line to Chapter IV, Galbraith quotes from testimony of Mr. Sachs in a Senate hearing several years later that the stock originally sold at $104 was then selling for a split-adjusted $3.50. . . .

Flash forward to 2002. Goldman Sachs, now a powerful corporation, decides to enter the securitized residential mortgage business, and partners with New Century Financial Corp., among others. McClatchy’s Greg Gordon explains what happened:

In at least nine deals from 2002 to 2007, Goldman sold bonds backed by more than $5 billion of New Century’s mortgages, one even after the California lender’s underwriting criteria all but disintegrated and a cash squeeze paralyzed its operation. Goldman also marketed at least three secret offshore deals bearing New Century’s name.

Separately, a GS mortgage subsidiary made a warehouse loan of $450mn to New Century. This is a revolving loan; it funded mortgage loans, and was repaid by transferring the note and mortgage to the GS sub.

Gordon gives a well-written description of New Century’s business, a sad and sordid tale of every kind of corrupt and predatory lending practice. He also describes the gradual deterioration of the standards of review by the mortgage buyers, like GS. For example, buyers examined 100% of the loans in the 90s, but that dropped to “probably less than 10% in 2006”….

GS denies that its standards were weaker in 2006 than 2007, but Gordon doesn’t take this on faith like a typical political writer would:

Goldman Sachs Mortgage, however, published guidelines in early 2007 indicating that it would accept a “stated income, stated asset” loan for a person with a subpar credit score of 600 who was borrowing 90 percent of his or her home’s value. The designation meant that although the borrower had poor credit, his or her claimed income and financial background would go unchecked.

In December, 2006, GS jerked the warehouse line, and other firms called their loans, and New Century spiraled into bankruptcy in April, 2007.

In February, 2007, GS sold for $1.7bn a pool of 9,800 notes and mortgages originated by New Century. Gordon gives us a taste of the disclosures in the prospectus:

· 3,422 of the borrowers had credit scores below 600, levels that experts say could include applicants with past bankruptcies.
· 3,688 of the borrowers were required only to state their incomes, not to document them — mortgages that became known as “liars’ loans.”
· More than a quarter of the borrowers had combined first and second mortgage balances that equaled or exceeded 90 percent of their homes’ values at the time.

Several weeks after the bankruptcy, GS “… started selling securities backed by New Century mortgages in a secret deal based in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven for U.S. companies.” This may refer to the notorious ABACUS securities, which I described here. I’m guessing these led to some of the AIG credit default swaps held by GS that were eventually paid off by the taxpayer. If so, taxpayer money bailed GS out of its lousy New Century subprime loans.

And here’s the first draft of a tag line like Galbraith’s for the story of GS involvement in the great crash of 2008, from SEC filings on one of the last pools of New Century mortgages:

“… You should consider … the risk that your investment in the offered certificates may perform worse than you anticipate.”