Lies…
Partisan Hackery…
Terrible Writing…
This Douglas Ernst rant has it all!
Today, we’re going to explore the anatomy of an angry Douglas Ernst rant. Lets start off with some stats:
Word Count: | 804 |
Word Count of Quotes: | 167 |
Percentage of Rant Quotes Represent: | 20.7% |
You can already tell that this rant is a Douglas Ernst specialty and conforms to his rule that his rants not take more than 2 minutes to read. As I’ve said before, partisan hackery is not about in-depth looks at difficult issues and Douglas Ernst has picked partisan hackery as his writing style a long time ago. This particular rant is special, not because it highlights partisan hackery, but because of how terribly written and biased it is, even by Douglas Ernst standards.
Now lets look at the title: “Telling: JPMorgan Probed While the U.S. Postal Service Loses Billions”. With that title, you may assume that he is going to be comparing two completely different companies in two completely different industries by some standard they both share and is reasonable to use as a comparison tool. I mean, why would Douglas Ernst use that title if he wasn’t going to mention why JPMorgan Chase being probed while the US Postal Service lost billions is “Telling”? After reading the rant, you still have no idea why that is “Telling”. What point is Douglas Ernst trying to make with that title and a rant that doesn’t bother to explain it? Seriously, read Douglas Ernst’s rant twice then tell me what point you think Douglas Ernst is trying to make.
Douglas Ernst then cites a Reuter’s article that mentions the financial difficulties the United States Postal Service (USPS) is having. Regardless of how you feel about the USPS as an entity, if you are going to quote an article that covers the financial burden it represents to the US taxpayer then you should definitely include the final sentence of the article you’ve linked to that says: “almost all of the red ink … stems directly from a burden that Congress imposed and Congress could fix overnight“. Wait, what? Did I read that right? It seems to be saying that the $5 billion dollar loss that Douglas Ernst felt the need to bitch about wasn’t an actual loss, but a loss booked because of a change in accounting practices. Surely Douglas Ernst isn’t stupid enough to include a link to an article that can be cherry-picked for information in his favor, but also points out that he is making shit up at the same time. Let’s investigate!
It turns out that in 2006 the Republican led congress passed legislation that increased the amount of health care expenses the USPS had to pre-pay dramatically. In fact, if you look into the issue with any effort at all you could find the following article with one (1) Google search:
it’s only those prefund (healthcare) mandates that Jimmy talked about that cause the post office to be so far in the hole, because otherwise, they’ve turned a profit of $837 million in the last four years, $226 million in the last quarter. NPR.org
Either Douglas Ernst is much, much, more lazy than the 500 rants he’s posted to his blog would indicate, or, he does not know how to finish reading an article after he’s seen the quote he wants to use. It has to be one of those two options because you can find a ton of articles bitching about the 5 billion dollar loss that do not mention why the USPS is losing money. If he wasn’t too lazy to look for a new article he could have cited one of those and not give anyone ammunition to use against him in the same citation. Or, he didn’t really care about reading the article and didn’t actually finish it. He probably already knew what he was looking for, and simply copied and pasted the info he wanted without finishing the article. Responsible punditry? Not even close; partisan hackery all day, every day.
Next, Douglas Ernst targets the congressional probe of JPMorgan Chase who had one bad trade that lost $2 billion dollars. Even though he never comes out and says it, I think Douglas Ernst was probably trying to say that the lack of a congressional probe into the $5 billion dollar USPS loss is unacceptable if the government was going to probe JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion dollar loss. I know what you’re thinking: “how could you possibly figure that out from merely reading what Douglas Ernst wrote?” You’re right, I can’t say with 100% certainty that Douglas Ernst was trying to comment on a perceived double standard of allowing unreasonable losses in government operations without oversight, while punishing any mistakes in the private sector with congressional probes. I honestly can’t think of any other reason he would write this rant. Although, Douglas Ernst does provide a lesson to my future students on the reasons they should try to answer whatever questions the title of their essays raise.
The most important thing to know about the $2 billion dollar JPMorgan Chase trading loss is that it was much more than $2 billion dollars. The trade in question was based on hedging potential losses using derivatives and credit default swaps. True to their name, a derivatives trade derives its value from some other hard asset. This means the value of those trades goes up and down with the market, not based off the trade itself, so there was no way to know how much the trade would cost when they made it. When JP Morgan Chase announced the loss, it was at $2 billion. It was a bigger loss by the end of the week and would eventually become a bigger loss on that one trade than the $5 billion dollar USPS (false) loss Douglas Ernst bitched about. By the Friday following the trade, the loss had cost investors $20 billion dollars.
There are two important things to note about how Douglas Ernst chose to treat the JPMorgan Chase loss:
- Douglas Ernst seriously understated how much the loss was even though the date he published his rant was after many media outlets revealed that the loss would be much higher than $2 billion dollars.
- Douglas Ernst is either too stupid to understand why there was a congressional probe, or, Douglas Ernst is too unethical to write anything that contradicts his opinions.
Contrary to the words Douglas Ernst uses, the congressional probe was not a punishment for making a mistake in the private sector. Businesses rise and fall every year without anyone probing why. A simple explanation of the reason for the congressional probe was because Wall Street banks received billions upon billions of dollars in bailouts in 2008 to stave off a complete economic collapse, that crisis was, in part, based off bad bets in credit default swaps. When a bank as big as JPMorgan Chase admits to a $2 billion dollar loss on one trade that was based on derivatives of credit default swaps less than four years after they crashed the whole world’s economy using the same exact tools, the US congress may think it is their duty to ask why. You may think congress has no right to question JPMorgan Chase, but you can’t deny that the picture Douglas Ernst painted about why there was a probe is completely wrong. By the way, if you saw the disgraceful footage of members of congress apologizing to the CEO of JPMorgan, you might think that he enjoyed the ego boost more than he despised them for summoning him.
There is one more point to make about this terribly written, horribly dishonest, Douglas Ernst rant. If Douglas Ernst had bothered to write the truth about the USPS financial woes, he would have been able to point at one very specific example of the federal government literally eliminating the profits of a business for five consecutive years via legislation. Everything Douglas Ernst claims about the federal government ruining businesses actually happened to the USPS and it was a Republican congress that enacted the profit-killing legislation. This stunning example of irony make this Douglas Ernst rant my favorite by far.
This post has absolutely nothing to do with figuring out whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America. My apologies, I promise to (try to) stay focused next time.
Smurfalot
Did Douglas Ernst Disrespect His Sweet and Caring Grandmother?
Author/Editor/Publisher’s Note: This post was accidentally published as the first real post of this blog. The actual published order is: introduction, a mini FAQ, a solicitation of a reader’s theory post, “Dissing Granny” and then “Hitler’s Footsteps”. I had some free time tonight and decided to clean up this blog’s format and other details. Originally, I wrote the entire series and was going to post them chronologically in the order that I wrote them, but somehow the correct order was lost in translation. I had to change this post when I published it the first time and that resulted in having to change everything that followed, so I’m saying screw it and putting it back so I don’t have to change anything in the next posts from here forward. I am moving this one back to where it goes, chronologically, and creating permanent pages for the Intro and FAQ. Next time I think I’ll plan ahead a little better and spend longer than 30 minutes writing and executing everything.
Growing up during the Great Depression could not have been an easy task for anyone, and the reward for those that survived it was World War 2. Millions of deaths later, World War 2 ended and signaled the close of 15 years of misery the US had endured. With bad times finally behind them the soldiers, and the civilians that supported them, put down their guns and collectively pushed this country into a level of wealth the world had never seen. The citizens and soldiers who showed such a high level of personal sacrifice during those dark times are the most selfless and patriotic citizens that any country has ever had in the history of the world. Who could possibly criticize the people whose determination endured the poverty of the Great Depression, won World War 2, and then came home and redefined themselves as crusaders of capitalism? Douglas Ernst.
While Douglas Ernst has been enjoying the world his grandmother helped create, he still feels the need to point out that her opinions on the events she lived through are stupid and wrong, the events he has only read about. Keep in mind, he doesn’t tell her to her face that she is stupid and wrong, that would be rude, instead he smiles politely and says nothing to her face, then goes behind her back and talks shit about her in his blog. That is just the kind of guy Douglas Ernst is: too nice to say anything to her face, too much of a dick to ignore it completely.
From the way he described it, it seems as though Douglas Ernst was pretending to listen to his grandmother speak about her personal hero, FDR, while thinking: “YOU’RE WRONG! YOU’RE WRONG! YOU’RE WRONG! YOU’RE WRONG! YOU’RE WRONG!” Why is she wrong? Economics of course! Obviously, Douglas Ernst is smarter than anyone in history, that would include FDR and his own grandmother, and since he already knows everything, he has nothing to learn from his grandmother sharing her experiences and life lessons. Instead of listening, Douglas Ernst spent that time thinking of a way to attack what his grandmother was saying.
I understand why he did it, telling his grandmother that she was wrong was probably pointless, she’s probably one of those types of people who think living through history makes her more keenly aware of what actually happened than a book her grandson, Douglas Ernst, had read. In place of telling her why she was wrong, he decided to write a post about why she is wrong. It seems like this tactic’s main purpose was letting anyone sitting with them (pretending to listen like Douglas Ernst was) they would know she was wrong, and the reasons why she was wrong. I imagine the thought process going through Douglas Ernst’s head sounded something like this: “Why is she trying to lie to us? I know more than her! Does everyone here think she is right? I should put an immediate stop to this bullshit! Is she fucking stupid? I know, I’ll use the power of my blog!!!” At the end of the day it is important to Douglas Ernst that he lets everyone know he is smarter than they are, and that includes a rambling old lady who thinks her grandchildren might be interested in learning about her life.
How does this apply to the greater goal of understanding Douglas Ernst? I’m not sure yet, but a perceived lack of respect for his own grandmother is an interesting comment on the quality of his character that I hope to explore more of later. This is only my first look into Douglas Ernst’s mind, and although it raised more questions than answers, I think we did make progress. I hope you’ll continue to stay with me and together we can determine whether or not Douglas Ernst hates America.
Smurfalot
Posted by smurfalot on July 20, 2012
https://doesdouglasernsthateamerica.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/did-douglas-ernst-disrespect-his-sweet-and-caring-grandmother/