Worst: Big Scary Lesbians. NBC has two pilots where plots appear to be motivated by the presence of outsized, aggressive lesbians. After her lovely work on Glee, Dot Jones deserves far better than to be cast as a butch lesbian who sexually harasses Laura Prepon while they’re both in lockup on Are You There, Chelsea? And the heavy lesbian contractor who gets passed over in favor of a hottie love interest for the main character on Bent manages to simultaneously reinforce stereotypes about lesbians, and about women and home improvement.

Best: Support for Working Mothers. Amanda Peet mentioned at the Bent panel that NBC had been wonderful about accommodating and supporting her being a working mother during production of the show. Debra Messing says of her character on Smash, “The hero’s a woman who is very passionate about her creative life and needs that part of her life fulfilled, but also is a proud mother who has that home life and wants that part of her life fulfilled. The way Theresa writes, there’s such richness.” Not that we need aggressive emphasis of characters HAVING IT ALL constantly, but it’s nice to hear that the network practices off-set some of the better things it preaches on-screen.

Worst: Uncertainty. Bob Greenblatt doesn’t know when Community‘s coming back. No one knows when Awake will air. Scheduling’s not easy, we know, but stop torturing us here.

Meh: Alcohol: It sounds like the drinking on Are You There, Chelsea? will get tired quickly, but J.B. Smoove as an addict in recovery? That could be intriguing territory. Television’s got a lot of serious drinkers, but fewer people showing us what it’s like to live in a world where most people treat drinking as if it ranges from no big deal to the linchpin of their social lives.

Best: A lack of sniping. NBC may have to fight its way back to the top, but the network seems aware that it’s not close enough to its rivals to tear them down. The folks behind Smash acknowledge that Glee opened the door without slagging anything they don’t like about it. Bob Greenblatt was blunt about the network’s need to find its own way without complaining that his rivals are being wrongly rewarded for less risky programming. When The Voice criticized its rivals, it was on substance and format, which is fair game. NBC’s biggest asset is the fact that people want to like it. It’s clear they have no intention of relinquishing it.

However, the financial prognosticators on CNBC — including Larry Kudlow, Jim Cramer, and Joe Kernan — have found nothing but scorn for the protestors, deriding them as “bizarre,” “freaks,” and “law-breaking” “anti-American” “anarchists” who are “more aligned with Lenin.” Watch a compilation:

It’s no real surprise that the same pundits who derided subprime lending victims as “suckers,” vigorously defended the righteousness of bailed-out banks paying million dollar bonuses, believe tax havens prevent tyranny, and cited Glenn Beck as a new economic indicator would find the Wall Street protests off-putting. But their comments merely highlight how out-of-touch they are with the common American, as they cater all day, every day to the Wall Street crowd.

In a remarkable interview on CNBC, Majority Leader Eric Cantor admitted to Larry Kudlow that both the House Republican budget and the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” Plan — which were both supported by nearly the entire GOP caucus — also counted savings from winding down the wars:

Cantor: Speaker Boehner came out months ago and said we are not going to increase the debt ceiling unless we have comensurate or even greater cuts in spending. Now Sen. Reid’s plan doesn’t do that. What Sen. Reid’s plan says is we’re going to raise the debt ceiling $2.4 trillion and we are also going to cut spending but what he does is counts over a trillion dollars in spending that is assumed to decrease and go away anyway which is the spending associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kudlow: Yes, but isn’t that in the Paul Ryan baseline also, which is the baseline for Cut, Cap and Balance.

Cantor: But, but, but… absolutely it is.

Watch it:

Kudlow started the interview by posing the following question to Cantor: “What’s so bad about the Harry Reid plan? It looks very Republican to me.”

All the guests and hosts appeared to agree that O’Donnell’s victory was a good thing for Wall Street because she supports policies favorable to the financial industry. Although both guests conceded that O’Donnell’s nomination might be bad for Wall Street because it could enable a Democrat to win the Delaware seat, there was a general consensus that the string of Tea Party victories has sent the right “message” that Americans are drifting to the far right. The talking heads rattled off a variety of Tea Party and O’Donnell positions — like extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and opposing regulations — that they agreed with:

REGAN: So when it comes to markets, is the Tea Party and this victory in Delaware good news or bad news?

JOHNSON: You know in a strange sort of way, I think it’s good news because it first of all indicates passion but its passion on the part of the Republican Party. The passion is, we’re kind of tired, we’re fed up with big government and raising taxes. [...]

BUSCH: Well certainly the stance by the Tea Party candidate of a capital gains elimination for two years is wonderful for the markets! I think the central point or the salient point of the victory is not that this candidate is flawed. A lot of candidates are flawed as human beings are. But the point is, there is an energized base that is pulling the conversation this stance of fiscal responsibility but also business-friendly and market-friendly policies. [...]

KUDLOW: I totally agree, and we’re looking at a configured, conservative Congress. We don’t know if Republicans can take the Senate, that’s going to be close. It looks like they’re going to take the House, big time. That’s a conservative Congress. And as Andy said, that’s going to be pro-growth, pro-business, anti-spend, anti-tax views.

Watch it:

Generally, Kudlow and his associates have been proud partisans hoping for a Democratic defeat this November. But O’Donnell’s opponent Rep. Mike Castle’s (R-DE) was one of the few members of the GOP caucus to vote for financial reform. Notably, CNBC’s Kudlow is also a Tea Party movement funder through the attack group Club for Growth.

Earlier this month, McClatchy demolished this meme, reporting that “maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn’t an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn’t blocked anything.” But this hasn’t stopped the drumbeat from the right-wing, with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) going so far as to say that aid from 17 countries has been rejected because of the Jones Act. “Due to the Jones Act, these vessels are not permitted in US waters,” he said.

Yesterday, on CNBC, Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute repeated this talking point, claiming that there have been several rejections of foreign aid due to the Jones Act. However, he ran into a host who had done his homework, as CNBC’s Mark Haines noted that 68 different offers of foreign cleanup help have been accepted. Haines challenged Bader to cite examples of the Jones Act causing a problem, with predictable results:

HAINES: How many rejections under the Jones Act?

BADER: I don’t know how many.

HAINES: Excuse me, Senator McCarthy, you can’t tell us how many there are? I want the facts, give us hard facts, give us evidence, not innuendo, not baseless accusations, okay? It’s offensive to intelligence. The fact is sir, you have told us there are examples of rejections and you can not name a single one.

Watch it:

Bader eventually cited one Dutch ship that was supposedly turned back due to the Jones Act. So today, Haines was back on the case, pointing out that the Dutch offer had been made before the federal government even knew there was an oil leak, and the rejection was initiated by the EPA. “It was not because of the Jones act, it was not a conspiracy to protect the unions and sacrifice the environment,” he said.

I’m pretty tough on CNBC’s team for spending most of its time shilling for big bank bonuses, tax cheats, predatory lenders, and the ultra-wealthy, while falsely scaremongering about the effects of the Obama administration agenda. But, credit where credit is due, Haines was prepared to call this nonsense for what it is: an attempt to demagogue unions and score political points off an environmental catastrophe.

(HT: ThinkProgress reader Richard)

Liesman’s points threw Santelli into a mental breakdown. When prompted on whether tax cuts would truly help address the deficit, he and fellow right-wing economist Jeff Nielson launched into a childish tirade against government spending and the capital gains tax:

LIESMAN: Let me get this straight, all you guys wanna cut taxes en route to bringing down the deficit,

SANTELLI: No I didn’t say anything about taxes Steve. I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! That’s what we want! Stop spending!

NIELSON: And cut capital gains spending! Cut capital gains. Cut capital..make it zero percent and see what happens. [...]

LIESMAN: You know, you know I just — I just keep saying what the data show and the data show that the tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. By the way –

SANTELLI: Oh you wouldn’t know data if it bit you on the nose.

NIELSON: Boo.

SANTELLI: Go read some Austrian economist instead of the funny pages!

Watch it:

Liesman tried one more time to question how “we are going to cut taxes and deficit spending at the same time.” Santelli yelled, “Go back to Russia where you understand the state and the citizen” and walked off the set.

Santelli and Nielson are wrong on their stance on federal spending and taxes. As Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman recently noted, “[P]enny-pinching at a time like this isn’t just cruel; it endangers the nation’s future” and “doesn’t even do much to reduce our future debt burden, because stinting on spending now threatens the economic recovery, and with it the hope for rising revenues.”

Parroting Newt Gingrich’s calls for lowering the capital gains tax and other tax breaks for the rich is not much wiser. After the 2003 capital gains tax cut, growth in non-residential investment “only matched the historical norm.” Instead, this cut would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers.

Santelli has made a habit of railing against federal aid for economic recovery. In 2009, Santelli famously called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest President Obama’s housing rescue plan to help Americans “refinance their homes or avert foreclosures.”

Steele then suggested that we return to the failed economic polices of President Bush, because, Steele said, Bush “created a lot of jobs.” Haines, obviously stunned by the remark, exclaimed, “Beg your pardon?”:

STEELE: George Bush created a lot of jobs.

HAINES: Beg your pardon?

STEELE: I think there were jobs created in the eight years that George Bush was in office.

HAINES: No I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. [...]

STEELE: I think jobs were created. I’m almost confident about that. And I think the markets reflect that. [...]

HAINES: So, did the Lehman blow up and all, that didn’t happen on Bush’s watch? … You were talking about the markets. The markets tanked. [...]

Watch it:

While Steele is “almost confident” that Bush created jobs, the facts disagree. As the Wall Street Journal noted in the last month of Bush’s term — in an article that Burnett references on air while fact checking Steele — Bush’s job data “shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.” A paltry 1 million jobs were created under Bush; that’s “a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton’s administration.” Even President Carter — who conservatives love to cite as the paragon of poor economic management, and who only served one term — created 10.5 million jobs. That’s more than three times as many jobs as Bush, in half as much time. More jobs may be created under Obama in this year alone than in Bush’s eight.

The Journal article doesn’t even account for the jobs lost after it was published due to Bush’s economic policy, and before President Obama’s began to take effect, as this chart demonstrates:

As Haines tells Steele, “we tried” Bush’s economic plan, and “we wound up with a disaster.” Indeed, Bush’s supply side economics “fostered the weakest jobs and income growth in more than six decades,” along with “sluggish business investment and weak gross domestic product growth,” the Center for American Progress’ Joshua Picker noted. Meanwhile, the Bush years saw an additional 8.3 million people fall below the poverty line. “On every major measurement” of income, “the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms,” the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein observed, citing Census data.

The American public disagrees with Steele as well. More Americans continue to blame Bush, rather than Obama, for the country’s current economic woes, according to a recent Rasmussen poll.

At the end of the interview, after Steele delivers his laughably vague “plan” to “take the billions of dollars we’re spending on government intrusion into the markets and turn it over to the capitalist,” Kernan concludes, “You must be used to, like, buying time and speaking without interruption.”

One of these is a change in the taxation of carried interest, or the payment that hedge fund and private equity managers receive for successfully managing other people’s money. Currently, these managers are inexplicably allowed to pay the capital gains rate (which is meant to encourage investment) on money that they receive in exchange for providing a service. It’s as if we taxed the proceeds of a movie that go to its lead actor as capital gains instead of income. Levin and Baucus have suggested that their pay be subject to normal income tax rates.

Of course, CNBC’s talking heads — who never miss an opportunity to defend the right of the wealthy to use tax havens or the sanctity of bonuses for bailed out bankers — are going nuts about the tax increase, led by devout supply-side devotee Larry Kudlow. They’re calling it “one of the five dumbest things in the history of the Earth,” a “job killer,” “mind boggling,” “patently unfair,” and the result of “left-wing social policy.” Watch a compilation:

What’s actually mind boggling is that CNBC’s cast of pundits and anchors thinks it’s entirely appropriate for both a janitor and a hedge fund manager to receive a paycheck, yet have the former be subject to income tax rates and the latter subject to the lower capital gains rate. As Citizens for Tax Justice explained:

The preferential income tax rate for capital gains was created to benefit those who invest their own money. The partnership income that investment managers earn is clearly compensation for services and not a return on investment (except to the extent that they actually have put up their own money — and the treatment of that won’t change). They should pay income taxes at ordinary rates on their compensation, just like everyone else, from the folks who sweep their floors or answer their phones to CEO’s exercising stock options and professional athletes getting playoff bonuses.

CNBC’s gang deploys a lot of rhetoric about innovation and job creation being smothered by the tax, but let’s be clear — investors will not see their taxes go up because of this change. It applies to managers, who are paid to take money from investors and make more money with it. These managers typically receive hundreds of millions — if not billions — annually for their services.

Baucus has said that there’s a “growing sense of inevitability” that the tax change will be adopted and Levin today added that it won’t be taken out of the legislation. “We’ve already worked hard to balance all of the needs, here,” Levin said. “The basic principle is, if it’s your money [at risk] you pay capital gains; if you’re managing other people’s money, essentially you pay ordinary income tax like everybody else.”

During the House regulatory reform debate, Rep. Walt Minnick (D-ID) proposed an amendment that would have gutted the CFPA by turning it into a loose council within the existing regulatory framework. The Minnick proposal would make the CFPA into a conflicted, ineffectual body (Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called it “the bureaucratic version of the Christmas song”), which is exactly what the financial services industry would love to see. And the proposal was only narrowly defeated.

Today, Financial Services Forum president Ron Nichols said on CNBC that his organization (which represents the 18 largest financial firms in the country) is actively pushing Minnick’s plan in the Senate:

We’ve talked to a lot of senators, on both sides of the aisle, who have seen what Walt Minnick has done. He is a conservative Democrat from Idaho and he proposed an amendment to the House bill that, instead of having a CFPA, would have a council — within each regulator would have an office of consumer protection and education that would get together, talk about best practices, talk about what they’re seeing in the marketplace, in lieu of a CFPA…It would marry consumer protection with the prudential regulator.

Watch it:

CNBC’s Becky Quick pointed out the obvious, noting that such a council would have “no real teeth in being able to implement anything.” Indeed, look at Nichols’ description of what the council would do — “talk” about this and that, but take no action.

Of course, the biggest financial firms in the country are loath to see a CFPA with rule-making and enforcement authority come into being. And they’re joined by Senate Republicans, who as Ryan Grim noted, “consider [the CFPA] as threatening as their current arch-nemesis regulator: the Environmental Protection Agency.” “From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema,” said Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT).

But an independent agency with rule-writing and enforcement authority is exactly what we need to even the playing field between big banks and consumers. “For reform groups, this effort will not be successful without a stand-alone consumer agency,” said Graham Steele, policy counsel with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. “These [bank] regulators repeatedly prioritized banks’ business practices over consumers’ financial security.” And only an independent agency that is on even-footing with the bank regulators can actively ensure that such pernicious practices don’t reemerge.

For the last several months, the Basta Dobbs and Drop Dobbs campaigns pushed CNN to sever ties with Lou Dobbs. CNN, while denying any connection to the intense pressure it felt, did end its long relationship with Dobbs. When the New York Times reported that CNBC was in negotiations with Dobbs, many of these same civil rights groups chose to similarly and quickly pressure CNBC. The groups, in a letter, warned CNBC that such a move “would be a clear demonstration that CNBC is willing to use its airwaves to promote hate.” They “respectfully” requested the network “refrain” from hiring Dobbs.

Nogales says he reached out with the groups’ concerns to Executive Vice President of Diversity for NBC Universal, Paula Madison, and informed her that his group had signed the letter and she should expect all the major Latino civil rights advocacy organizations and their allies to do the same. Nogales brought up the $30 billion pending deal between Comcast and General Electric on the acquisition of NBC Universal, pointing out that an ugly public battle would not be in NBC’s best interest. According to Nogales, he received a call one hour later from Mark Hoffman, President of CNBC, extending his sincere apologies and assuring Nogales that CNBC would not be offering Dobbs a job. Nogales says that CNBC was in fact talking with Dobbs, though it was unclear whether the two parties had reached an accord before Hoffman contacted him.

Nogales believes CNBC’s decision is yet another affirmation of the power of the Latino community and slams the new “immigrant-friendly” position that Dobbs adopted in his interview with Telemundo’s Maria Celeste last month:

This is a big win for the Latino community…we’re showing our power by collaborating with other groups and putting pressure on networks to do the right business thing. We’re ready to take on the antagonists.

Dobbs is opportunistic. For years he’s been hitting on us [Latinos] on every front — immigration, health care, the economy — and then all of a sudden he says he’s our champion. You’d have to be blind or stupid to believe that he’s our friend or that he’s going to help Latinos advance in society…as far as we are concerned, the damage is done.

On his radio show this week, Dobbs continued claiming that his Telemundo interview was not a flip-flop, but rather the reaffirmation of the same “humane” immigration views he has always held and expressed. The successful Comcast – General Electric agreement was announced yesterday.

The business news network said Tuesday evening that it was no longer talking to Mr. Dobbs, the former CNN anchor, about a potential job.

The statement came after The New York Times reported on Tuesday morning that Mr. Dobbs had “held talks with the business news network CNBC in recent weeks.” A network spokesman did not deny the report about the talks, but said: “We are not in talks or negotiating with Lou Dobbs. He is not going to work for CNBC.”

This morning, in an interview with Don Imus on Fox Business Network, Dobbs denied ever talking to CNBC:

IMUS: So I read in the paper that you’re going to CNBC, that can’t possibly be true. Is it?

DOBBS: I have no idea where they even got that. I am sitting her in Florida at our vacation home, thinking about what I’m going to be doing.

IMUS: Did you talk to anybody at CNBC?

DOBBS: Absolutely not, absolutely not.

Watch it:

However, Dobbs did admit to Imus that he talked to Fox News president Roger Ailes. Dobbs stated that Fox News did not offer him a job, but that he would “consider” working there if they did. He added that he would also “consider being President of the United States” amidst widespread reports that Dobbs is contemplating either launching a 2012 presidential campaign or a senatorial run against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

This number was derived by taking the entire cost of the stimulus package and dividing it by the number of jobs created in just one year, obviously inflating the per job cost a few times over. At the time, Paul Krugman called the Republicans’ number a “bogus talking point,” while Joe Klein dubbed it “phony-baloney propaganda.”

With the White House’s announcement last week that the stimulus package has thus far created 640,000 to 1 million jobs, the GOP is at it again. Don Stewart, spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told reporters on Friday to “get out your calculators” and divide the spending by the jobs, ending with a figure of $230,769 per job. In addition to Republican lawmakers, Fox News, CNN, and CNBC have all repeated some variation of the number (using slightly different estimates) in the last few days. Watch a compilation:

The Associated Press’ Calvin Woodward, however, was not fooled, and today released a piece telling readers to “beware the math” coming from the Republicans:

Some Republican lawmakers critical of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package are using grade-school arithmetic to size up costs and consequences of all that spending. The math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading…First, the naysayers’ calculations ignore the value of the work produced. Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker’s output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid. Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

As Woodward wrote, “dividing apples by oranges won’t settle” whether or not the stimulus package has been a success. But it seems to be good enough for the Republicans and all of the cable news hosts that they can get to listen.

An executive at one of the seven companies told the Wall Street Journal that “the terms came as a shock,” and that the restrictions “were clearly much worse than what had been anticipated.” And of course, CNBC, which never hesitates to defend bailed-out bankers and their sky-high bonuses, went to bat for the banks once again, arguing that Feinberg should make pay comparable “across the industry,” lest some bankers take such exception to their pay cuts that they go work at the DMV. Watch it:

CNBC also managed to blame the falling value of the dollar on Feinberg’s decision. But if Feinberg really applied compensation levels comparable to other Wall Street banks, his restrictions would be rendered moot, as Wall Street pay is headed for a record high this year, eclipsing the previous highs from 2007. (For the record, the average DMV employee makes $35,000 per year.) Goldman Sachs alone has already set aside $16.7 billion for compensation.

And this gets at the limitations of the administration’s action. While I think it is entirely appropriate that Feinberg crackdown on the pay at these seven companies, they represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with Wall Street’s pay structures.

As Nomi Prins wrote, “by simply tying compensation caps to the TARP program (a year late), Feinberg and the Obama administration are completely ignoring the rest of the $14.6 trillion federal bailout and subsidization of the banking industry, which has helped propel many key banks to 2007 levels of compensation, unfettered.” And as evidenced by Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Griffiths’ comment yesterday that we must “tolerate” income inequality “as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Wall Street doesn’t seem too interested in changing things on its own.

The Fed took a step towards reform today, seeking comment on compensation formulas that would defer payment over a longer-term. Indeed, what has to happen — by regulation if necessary — is that a large percentage of any particular pay package needs to be tied to the long-term performance of the firm. This, along with a resolution authority that ensures that banks can fail without bringing down the rest of the economy, will correctly align incentives going forward, and hopefully help to prevent another situation in which Wall Street bankers run to the federal government for aid and then use that aid to line their own pockets.

Back in reality, the International Monetary Fund has actually warned that the United States “should have a second stimulus package ready just in case deflation becomes more evident,” while the percent change in the Consumer Price Index isn’t consistently above zero. But instead of relaying that information, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera — the same anchor who thinks tax havens prevent tyranny — took Beck’s tirade as the true indicator that the dollar’s six month slide in value is effectively over:

We’ve been talking about it ad nauseum here on CNBC, but, last night, Glenn Beck, the first eight minutes of his show — roll the tape — he spent decrying the demise of the dollar…Whenever we see any kind of economic trend permeate into the general media, doesn’t that almost tell you that it’s over?…Glenn Beck, contrary indicator!

Watch it:

On one hand, good for CNBC for calling out hyperinflation fearmongering. But is citing Glenn Beck really the best way to make that point? After all, Beck may have an ulterior motive for pumping inflation fears. A Color of Change-driven boycott has lost Beck’s show 80 advertisers, but one of the few sticking with him is Rosland Capital, a company that specializes in selling gold. And as Ryan Witt pointed out, Beck never notes his conflict of interest:

So Beck essentially scares his audience into believing that hyperinflation and economic collapse is a near sure thing and then advises them to buy gold to protect themselves. All along Beck never mentions that a gold-buying company happens to be one of his few remaining sponsors. Beck also never interviews other economists who believe that we are nowhere near the economic conditions necessary to see hyperinflation. Finally Beck also never informs his audience of the risks involved in buying gold. Gold has seen its price skyrocket with the economic troubles of the last few years and there is a real danger that the price of gold may actually decrease if the economy improves in the coming years. Quite simply if one buys gold high right now they may be forced to sell low later.

Witt added that “usually Glenn Beck’s show simply misinforms his audience on political grounds which is dangerous enough. Now however Beck is actually guiding his followers down a financial path that may cost them dearly.” Incidentally, Beck himself is a spokesman for Goldline International, another company that specializes in selling gold.

As the Washington Post noted, “while the health-care debate has raged nationwide throughout the summer, financial reform virtually vanished from the public radar, even as an army of lobbyists worked on Capitol Hill to reshape the president’s agenda.” And as Wall Street has started to rake in profits again, the urgency to reform the system has faded. In fact, CNBC’s Melissa Lee wondered today if the case for regulatory reform can even be made “when we have recovered without it”:

It is business as usual on Wall Street, and Wall Street has recovered and adopted a lot of their own sort of standards these days. For instance, not many CEO’s on Wall Street say 30-1 leverage is a good idea any more. 15-1 is more the way they like it these days, as John Mack told our own Maria Bartiromo over the weekend. So therefore, is there a need, is there a case for regulation when we have recovered without it?

Watch it:

As we’ve seen with an increasing unemployment and mounting mortgage troubles, Wall Street profits don’t in any way mean that “we have recovered,” if “we” is inclusive of anything other than Wall Street banks. And even Wall Street’s profits are mostly the result of government guarantees, bookkeeping tricks, and relaxed accounting standards.

While Lee seems content to trust that the banks have learned their lesson and will regulate themselves appropriately, as the New York Times pointed out, “the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges”:

Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs…For now, banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos.

Plus, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed out, the problems inherent with having banks that are “too big to fail” are “worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

In his speech, Obama said that “there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment…We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.” But in some ways, we are already there, and it will take a concerted effort at enacting regulatory reform over the objections of the financial industry to stop the slide back to 2007.

This is the same fraud coming from the other party. When Republicans did it they called it trickle-down. You do this, you benefit one guy, he goes and spends it and it benefits another guy. The Democrats got their own version now, it’s called Keynesian or whatever, but they’re saying if I give an unemployment check to somebody who’s not working, he’s going to go spend it and create more jobs. It’s just another version of the trickle-down fraud and it’s a fraud.

Watch it:

Reich correctly characterized the dispute as a “ridiculous argument.” But the same ridiculousness was also put forth by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, who claimed on ABC’s This Week that the unemployed have stopped looking for jobs because “if you put enough government cheese in front of people, they are just going to keep eating it.”

The truth is that unemployment benefits provide a vital lifeline to 9 million Americans who have lost their jobs, and keep those families going in an environment where jobs are scare. As Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, explained, “for every job that becomes available, about six people are looking.” “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said.

And unlike trickle-down tax cuts, unemployment benefits are one of the best ways to provide fiscal stimulus, as they are almost certain to be spent quickly. One dollar put towards unemployment benefits contributes about $2.15 to economic growth.

As Maurice Emsellem, a policy director at the National Employment Law Project, said, “if more help is not on the way, by September a huge wave of workers will start running out of their critical extended benefits, and many will have nothing left to get by on even as work keeps getting harder to find.” Indeed, even if job losses have slowed, it’s likely to be some time before employment picks up again, and thus extending benefits is a prudent move.

Before the unveiling, Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Dave Camp (R-MI) appeared on CNBC to discuss the bill, and when asked about the surtax, Van Hollen approved while Camp did not. The CNBC anchors, however, didn’t question Camp’s incorrect statistic that half of small businesses would face the tax, while casting considerable doubt on Van Hollen’s much more accurate number of businesses that would be affected:

CAMP: This is going to be a massive tax increase, half of which will be paid by small business. We expect that as many as 2 out of 3 manufacturers could pay significantly higher taxes under this. [...]

CNBC: Rep. Camp, give some details of the alternative [Republican] proposal.
———————————————

VAN HOLLEN: 98 percent of small businesses are not going to feel anything with respect to the surcharge and 99 percent of American citizens are not going to feel anything with respect to the surcharge. These are very high-income individuals who did very well under the Bush tax cuts.

CNBC: It’s difficult for viewers to just hear those numbers and assume that they’re true, so we can’t go into the details of whether it’s accurate or not.

Watch it:

As Igor Volsky noted yesterday, the overwhelming majority of small business owners earn far less than $350,000, and thus will not be affected by the tax. Of people who earn most of their income from their own business, only 98 percent make less than $250,000, while “more than half have income below $30,000 and 80 percent make less than $100,000.”

Republicans come up with their 50 percent number by categorizing everyone that earns any money from a business or investment as a “small business owner.” But Citizens for Tax Justice ran the numbers on the House proposal today and found that about 5 percent of actual small businesses would be affected by the surtax, and that “even for those who must pay it, the surcharge would usually not affect their ability or incentive to hire workers or expand their operations.” But CNBC’s talking heads have never let the facts get in the way of their opinions.

Instead, network anchors Larry Kudlow and Melissa Francis, along with CNBC contributor James Pethokoukis, spent a segment today claiming that the Obama administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) is a terrible idea because it will inevitably be “extremely elitist” and its creation will result in only rich people having access to financial products. Watch it:

Fortunately, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was there to characterize the CNBC position as “unreal.” But CNBC is not the only one using this argument to try and deride the proposed agency. Here’s the American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison in today’s Washington Post:

Conservatives have always argued that liberals are elitists who do not respect ordinary Americans; this legislation seems to prove it. For example, the administration’s plan would allow the educated and sophisticated elites to have access to whatever financial services they want but limit the range of products available to ordinary Americans.

Now, any regulation is bound to carry some cost increase and reduce some choice. For instance, mandatory seat belts and air bags make new cars slightly less affordable to some consumers. Do they make it such that only the wealthy can afford cars? No, of course not. This line of reasoning from CNBC and Wallison is simply a disingenuous distraction from those who fear any kind of regulation.

The point of the new agency is to ensure that consumers have to actively make the choice to purchase a riskier financial product. Consumers would have to opt-in to a non-standard financial product, and the firm offering the product would have to fully disclose that product’s risks. The agency would also be able to ban some of the worst practices of lenders, but as Tim Fernholz put it, “the loans the CFPA [is] designed to ban were premised on the idea that they were risky and consumers didn’t understand them, since that was a better way for banks to make money.”

The reality is that exploitative and predatory lending is often quite profitable for a financial institution, creating an incentive to push consumers toward riskier products, even when a standard product will suffice. This is what the new agency is meant to address. CNBC’s professed concern for the little guy is simply the same Wall Street-centric nonsense that the network always engages in, dressed up in different clothing.

I do have a problem when they’re taking taxpayer money. Larry, you hate paying taxes. I understand that. But if there’s one thing you hate more than paying taxes, it’s seeing those taxpayer dollars go to waste. And that’s what’s going on here.

Watch it: