The Plight Of The Dean Baker

Dean Baker:

There has been an enormous rise in wage inequality over the last three decades. Most economists attribute this increase in inequality to the increased premium that highly valued skills can command in a globalized economy.

Fannie Mae (along with the rest of the financial sector) is working hard to prove these economists wrong. Daniel Mudd, the CEO of Fannie Mae, has earned tens of millions of dollars in this position over the last three years. In exchange for this extraordinary compensation, more than 1000 times what a minimum wage earner pulls down, Mr. Mudd pushed Fannie in bankruptcy. How many minimum wage earners could do that?...

Any normal worker would be fired in a second for such incredible incompetence, however Mr. Mudd is still in his job drawing a seven figure salary. Furthermore, no one seems to view this as strange, which suggests that it is common to have people with no skill whatsoever in the very highest paid positions in our economy.

Of course, Baker is well aware that Mudd possesses real, significant skills. True, Mudd is no good at keeping Fannie Mae solvent, but who cares? He wasn't hired to keep Fannie Mae solvent. He was hired to enrich his political patrons. And clearly he excels at that. So it's really not accurate to criticize Mudd for a lack of skill, any more than it's accurate to criticize bank robbers for a lack of skill at preventing bank robberies.

But Baker can't say that. Suggesting that the people who run America have any interest but Helping The Widows And Orphans is against the law if you need to be taken "seriously."

Thus, Baker's plight here is similar to that of the people who work at FAIR, as described by John Caruso:

One of my favorite things about FAIR is reading the careful, measured formulations they have to use in order to maintain an air of unbiased professional detachment, because you can practically feel the author doing everything in their power to restrain themselves from writing something like, "HOLY FUCKING JEHOVAH! HAVE THESE TOE-SNIFFING TURDS EVER EVEN CONSIDERED DOING JOURNALISM FOR ONCE IN THEIR LIVES INSTEAD OF KISSING GOVERNMENT ASS 24 HOURS A DAY? GYYYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" And that's why you should give lots of money to FAIR: so they can pay for the megadoses of Valium it takes to keep from going insane as they immerse themselves in this dreck day after day.

If it were up to me, people like FAIR staffers and Baker would receive (in addition to their ration of Valium) some type of mental combat medal.

—Jonathan Schwarz