Jack Kelly Sunday

From the beginning of Jack Kelly's column this week we know we're in for a "No, no, no. I'M not biased, THEY'RE biased" ride. And on the way we get some tried and true right wing bamboozle

Take a look at Jack's N-KB3:

The U.S. budget deficit for February was $223 billion, the largest monthly deficit in history. It was substantially larger than the deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year ($161 billion).

His endgame play is the same bamboozle. Take a look:

The last fiscal year for which Republicans were completely responsible for the budget was 2007, when there was a $161 billion deficit. The next two years, with a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, the deficits hit $438 billion and $1.4 trillion. The deficit rose to $1.42 trillion in the first year in which Democrats were entirely responsible for the budget and is projected this year to reach $1.48 trillion.

If America falls off the fiscal cliff, it'll be clear which party pushed us.

This is a recent right wing spin - the Democrats are responsible for the deficit.

Need evidence? Here's Sean Hannity from a few days ago (transcript from mediamatters):

Let me see if I can give some perspective -- and maybe I'm wrong, but I think Americans are getting lost in millions, billions and trillions. Three-point-seven trillion is a lot. In three years Obama accumulating nearly five trillion dollars in debt is a lot of money. At the end of fiscal year 2007 -- not that long ago, right? -- our budget deficit was $161 billion for the year. For the month of February, this past month, the budget deficit for the month was $223 billion. Not quite twice, but almost twice what it was for the entire year in 2007.

Hardly surprising that Hannity, Jack and the rest of the right wing media have it completely wrong. 2007 is, of course the last year before the Bush era recession (aka the Great Recession) began. From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

CAMBRIDGE September 20, 2010 - The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met yesterday by conference call. At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. [Emphasis added.]

Not that the economy is doing well since the end of the Bush recession of course. The Bureau continues:

In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month.

So things went down the toilet the last full year of Bush's watch and have been pretty bad (though getting better) ever since - so of course the deficit is Obama's fault. This is the (scent of apples) and (drawings of) oranges comparison Jack, Sean and the rest of the right wing media want you to think is exactly fair and honest.

Need more evidence? Here's Justin Fox, financial writer for the Harvard Business Review. He envisions a scenario where the meltdown of 2008 didn't happen and that the fiscal practices just before it continued:

In my no-financial-crisis, no-bailout, no-recession, no-stimulus scenario, spending kept growing at 6.22% a year, and revenue kept growing at 3.45%. You can see from the difference between the two numbers that this was an unsustainable path. But it clearly could have been sustained for a few more years.

Where would it have left us in fiscal 2010? With $2.843 trillion in federal revenue and $3.270 trillion in spending, leaving a deficit of $427 billion. The actual revenue and spending totals for 2010 were $2.162 trillion and $3.456 trillion. So spending was $186 billion higher than if we’d stuck to the trend, and revenue was $681 billion lower. In other words, the giant deficit is mainly the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought on by the recession, not the increase in spending. Nice to know, huh?

This is Jack's skewed frame for his attack on NPR.

Here's Jack's swiss cheese version of events:

Mr. Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving, thought they were having lunch at a posh Georgetown restaurant with Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik of the Muslim Education Action Center to discuss a possible $5 million grant to NPR.

Mr. Kasaam and Mr. Malik described MEAC as an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. They said they were considering giving money to NPR, in part because "the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere."

Mr. Schiller told Mr. Kasaam and Mr. Malik he doesn't find "Zionist or pro-Israel ideas" at NPR. "It's there among those who own newspapers, obviously," he said.

Mr. Schiller also said the tea party movement is dominated by gun-toting racists, and that it has "hijacked" the Republican Party.

We know about the conversation because Mr. Kasaam and Mr. Malik were in reality confederates of conservative film maker James O'Keefe, who posted a videotape of the luncheon online Monday.

Alas, this scam's part of a pattern. Ilyse Hogue of The Nation:

Indeed, the recent attack on Planned Parenthood provoked a sickening sense of déjà vu. Seemingly out of nowhere, undercover activists secretly film an employee of a major progressive institution making embarrassing statements. The resulting video makes news and inflames the debate around federal funding of the organization’s services. It was the ACORN attack all over again.

Simply replace Planned Parenthood with NPR and you've got the next story.

The fact that the video comes from James O'Keefe should be a red flag to anyone interested in the truth. We've seen O'Keefe before. He's the "citizen journalist" who faked his identity as a pimp on the now infamous ACORN prank and then dishonestly edited the video that followed.

And so now we have a video about NPR. Why should we take it seriously? Luckily a healthy debunking has already taken place at The Blaze. Jack refers to a section of the video where Schiller says that the "tea party movement is dominated by gun-toting racists" but does it really?

The Blaze:

NPR exec Ron Schiller does describe Tea Party members as “xenophobic…seriously racist people.”

This is one of the reasons why he no longer has a job!

But the clip in the edited video implies Schiller is giving simply his own analysis of the Tea Party. He does do that in part, but the raw video reveals that he is largely recounting the views expressed to him by two top Republicans, one a former ambassador, who admitted to him that they voted for Obama.

The reason they voted for Obama, Schiller says, is because they believe the GOP was hijacked by people they believe are scary and racist. Take a look at O'Keefe's manipulation of reality:

4 Racist tea Party from Naked Emperor News on Vimeo.

And then there's the part about federal funding. From The Blaze:

Let’s look now at one of the other sections most featured in news reports about the original video — the comments about federal funding for NPR.

Schiller says that NPR, “in the long run,” would be better off without federal funding and that most of the stations would survive a loss of such funding. The implication is that Schiller does not believe federal funding for NPR is important. In the raw video, however, Schiller explains the risk to local stations in more detail and why NPR is doing “everything we can to advocate for federal funding.”

But take a look at what they leave out:

6 Fed funding from Naked Emperor News on Vimeo.

O'Keefe edited out how Schiller says that whole the loss of federal funding would be "negligible in the short term" many stations in rural areas would have to close.

Granted, Schiller gives then an easy target (which is why he's out of a job), but these convenient edits of O'Keefe's just as easily undermine the credibility of the whole.

Why should we believe anything James O'Keefe posts? Indeed, why should Jack?

What's left of Jack's column?

Not much, my friends. Not much.

Senator Toomey's Solution To Our Debt Ceiling "Crisis"

He spelled it out in this WSJ piece:

For months, some political leaders and commentators have argued that failure to raise the debt ceiling would necessarily cause the U.S. to default on its debt. President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors chairman, Austan Goolsbee, recently warned, "If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity. I don't see why anybody's talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling."

In fact, if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will still have far more than enough money to fully service our debt. Next year, for instance, about 6.5% of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt, and tax revenue is projected to cover about 67% of all government expenditures. With roughly 10 times more income than needed to honor our debt obligations, why would we ever default?

To make absolutely sure, I intend to introduce legislation that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised. This would not only ensure the continued confidence of investors at home and abroad, but would enable us to have an honest debate about the consequences of our eventual decision about the debt ceiling.

He doesn't want to do this, [nudge] but if the ceiling isn't raised, then [nudge, nudge] spending cuts will have to be [wink, wink] sudden and severe [say no more!].

TPM has an analysis of Toomey's legislation.

If passed, Toomey's plan would require the government to cut large checks to foreign countries, and major financial institutions, before paying off its obligations to Social Security beneficiaries and other citizens owed money by the Treasury -- that is, if the U.S. hits its debt ceiling.

In three words: Pay China First!

But let's be clear. As The National Review Online points out:

The Full Faith and Credit Act, as the bill is called, would “require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised.” However, as Toomey points out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he is not arguing that the debt ceiling should not be raised. Rather, he argues that the impending vote is an opportunity to enact meaningful spending reductions and reform. “Congress should make increasing our debt contingent on immediate cuts in spending and effective reforms of the spending process that helped get us into this mess,” he writes. “We can do so without jeopardizing the full faith and credit of our country — and we should.” [emphasis added.]

That's where they're going. If you don't let us cut the spending now, we'll have legislation in place to severely cut the spending later. Banks first, people later.

The folks who caused the economic downturn (aka those benefiting from the GOP-led deregulation of the financial industry) will still get paid while the people who need the help have to shoulder the burden.

Money protects money. The rest of us have to sacrifice.

That's what the GOP wants. That's what Pat Toomey wants.

Was It All System Wide Fraud?

From Bill Moyers last night.

Moyers had on a man named William K Black who Moyers described as:

The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course.

Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

And Black thinks that the current economic downturn is "driven by fraud."

Fraud. That's something I hadn't heard, though I was waiting to hear it. According to Black, it was found in the specialty lenders lending "liars loans" (a loan where the banks didn't bother to check up on the borrower) and a helpful Bush administration relaxing or otherwise ignoring any sort of oversight or regulation. Then:

This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."

And Moyers summed up this part of Black's story:

...the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.

And then AIG gets into the story:

They made bad loans. Their type of loan was to sell a guarantee, right? And they charged a lot of fees up front. So, they booked a lot of income. Paid enormous bonuses. The bonuses we're thinking about now, they're much smaller than these bonuses that were also the product of accounting fraud. And they got very, very rich. But, of course, then they had guaranteed this toxic waste. These liars' loans. Well, we've just gone through why those toxic waste, those liars' loans, are going to have enormous losses. And so, you have to pay the guarantee on those enormous losses. And you go bankrupt. Except that you don't in the modern world, because you've come to the United States, and the taxpayers play the fool. Under Secretary Geithner and under Secretary Paulson before him... we took $5 billion dollars, for example, in U.S. taxpayer money. And sent it to a huge Swiss Bank called UBS. At the same time that that bank was defrauding the taxpayers of America. And we were bringing a criminal case against them. We eventually get them to pay a $780 million fine, but wait, we gave them $5 billion. So, the taxpayers of America paid the fine of a Swiss Bank. And why are we bailing out somebody who that is defrauding us?

And what about the government regulators that are supposed to keep an eye out on all this?

After 9/11, the attacks, the Justice Department transfers 500 white-collar specialists in the FBI to national terrorism. Well, we can all understand that. But then, the Bush administration refused to replace the missing 500 agents. So even today, again, as you say, this crisis is 1000 times worse, perhaps, certainly 100 times worse, than the Savings and Loan crisis. There are one-fifth as many FBI agents as worked the Savings and Loan crisis.

And the regulations themselves?

There were two really big things, under the Clinton administration. One, they got rid of the law that came out of the real-world disasters of the Great Depression. We learned a lot of things in the Great Depression. And one is we had to separate what's called commercial banking from investment banking. That's the Glass-Steagall law. But we thought we were much smarter, supposedly. So we got rid of that law, and that was bipartisan. And the other thing is we passed a law, because there was a very good regulator, Brooksley Born, that everybody should know about and probably doesn't. She tried to do the right thing to regulate one of these exotic derivatives that you're talking about. We call them C.D.F.S. And Summers, Rubin, and Phil Gramm came together to say not only will we block this particular regulation. We will pass a law that says you can't regulate. And it's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG all by itself, cost the same as the entire Savings and Loan debacle.

Fraud.

Bushvilles

Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy

The Coming Crash No One Is Talking About
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The New Silent Majority

CNBC had Rick Santelli ranting at the Chicago Board of Trade about Real Americans^TM having to pay the price for the losers that the poor, poor bankers were forced to give mortgages to, but as dday points out, he forgets to mention a couple of things:

Lost from this complaint is the plain fact of predatory lending, that lenders got cash rebates to put people in crappy, high-interest mortgages, that they hid terms of the agreement and denied disclosure, and that all of those hardworking folks are seeing their property values plummet as a result of millions of foreclosed homes glutting the market. To the tune of $6 trillion dollars in home value.

The traders on the floor roar in agreement with Santelli's rant, but this isn't enough for the CNBC anchor and she asks him to whip up the crowd again (manufacture news much?) and Santelli goes on to call the traitors traders "the silent majority":

These guys are pretty straightforward, and my guess is, a pretty good statistical cross-section of America, the silent majority.

Yeah. Right.

Watch the atrocities:


.

Whah?

Ok, so I was reading the Trib's editorial page this morning (don't laugh - it's always good to know where the next crazie is coming from) and I found this.

I thought I was reading the wrong paper when I read:

History will show that three years ago many prescient people in the banking world tried to warn regulators of the coming financial apocalypse.

But history also will show, as it should, that the Bush administration's banking watchdogs failed us by ignoring or delaying action on those warnings when they still had time to ameliorate some of the worst consequences of the housing meltdown.

As early as January 2006, as a recent Associated Press review of federal documents shows, some lenders were begging regulators to make it harder for banks to give risky mortgages to the patently unqualified home buyers who were inflating a dangerous housing bubble.

Did I really read that? The Tribune-Review is blaming the "financial apocalypse" (at least in part) on a lack of action by the Bush Administration's financial regulators? I would have expected to read such clear thinking coming from - well most any place other than DickieCougarMellonScaife's editorial board.

But then after all is said and done, the editorial ends with:

Socialists love to blame the financial meltdown on too little regulation. But as the AP's investigation shows, we had all the banking regulation we needed. It was just captured and kept from working as it should have by special-interest politics.

Whah? After pointing the finger at the Bush White House, (and citing the AP as a source along the way) they spin it to "special interest politics." But does the AP story actually say what they say it says?

Not really.

The AP story they site begins with:

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

And this a paragraph away:

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

So there were regulations proposed that didn't see the light of day. Not exactly what the Trib wrote. Close but no cigar.

By the by, does the AP offer up any sort of explanation for the Administration's regulatory inaction? Well, yes. Yes it does:

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy.

Ah - that's a bit different from what Scaife's gang said, huh?

The SECOND Bush Recession

Here's a news Flash for those wingnuts who insist on calling it "The Obama Recession."

It started a year ago.

The U.S. economy has been in a recession since December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday. The NBER _ a private, nonprofit research organization _ said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.

But the NBER's dating committee uses broader and more precise measures, including employment data. In a news release, the group said its cycle dating committee held a telephone conference call on Friday and made the determination on when the recession began.

Here's the NBER's press release.

Yer doing a heckuva job, Dubya. Heckuva job. Two recessions in two administrations. Wow.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Not much fact-checking today, I'm afraid as Jack Kelly's column is on the Economic Stimulus Package. I'll just try to fill in some blanks.

Jack doesn't like the economic stimulus package:

When Democrats and Republicans agree quickly on something, it's usually either a meaningless gesture or a raid on the federal treasury. The economic stimulus package agreed to by President Bush and congressional leaders will be more beneficial to politicians than it will be to our economy.

The deal -- the principal element of which is to give income tax rebates to people who pay little or no federal income tax -- is driven by fear our economy may be going into recession. Since the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, we're not in one yet, and neither the Congressional Budget Office nor the Federal Reserve thinks we'll go into one this year. But the economy is weakening, for two principal reasons.

Note his use of the phrase that starts with "principle element" here. More on that a little later.

Actually the folks that are the official definers of "recession" don't exactly share the same definition with our J-Kel. From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Q: The financial press often states the definition of a recession as two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. How does that relate to the NBER's recession dating procedure?

A: Most of the recessions identified by our procedures do consist of two or more quarters of declining real GDP, but not all of them. Our procedure differs from the two-quarter rule in a number of ways. First, we consider the depth as well as the duration of the decline in economic activity. Recall that our definition includes the phrase, "a significant decline in economic activity." Second, we use a broader array of indicators than just real GDP. One reason for this is that the GDP data are subject to considerable revision. Third, we use monthly indicators to arrive at a monthly chronology.

But that's a minor point.

Here's another view of the package from someone else who doesn't like it, Paul Krugman:

House Democrats and the White House have reached an agreement on an economic stimulus plan. Unfortunately, the plan - which essentially consists of nothing but tax cuts and gives most of those tax cuts to people in fairly good financial shape - looks like a lemon.

And then:

Aside from business tax breaks - which are an unhappy story for another column - the plan gives each worker making less than $75,000 a $300 check, plus additional amounts to people who make enough to pay substantial sums in income tax. This ensures that the bulk of the money would go to people who are doing O.K. financially - which misses the whole point.

The goal of a stimulus plan should be to support overall spending, so as to avert or limit the depth of a recession. If the money the government lays out doesn't get spent - if it just gets added to people's bank accounts or used to pay off debts - the plan will have failed.

And sending checks to people in good financial shape does little or nothing to increase overall spending. People who have good incomes, good credit and secure employment make spending decisions based on their long-term earning power rather than the size of their latest paycheck. Give such people a few hundred extra dollars, and they'll just put it in the bank.

In fact, that appears to be what mainly happened to the tax rebates affluent Americans received during the last recession in 2001.

On the other hand, money delivered to people who aren't in good financial shape - who are short on cash and living check to check - does double duty: it alleviates hardship and also pumps up consumer spending.

That's why many of the stimulus proposals we were hearing just a few days ago focused in the first place on expanding programs that specifically help people who have fallen on hard times, especially unemployment insurance and food stamps. And these were the stimulus ideas that received the highest grades in a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

And here's what the CBO has said as recently as this past Thursday (1/24/08):

The state of the economy is particularly uncertain at the moment. The pace of economic growth slowed in 2007, and there are strong indications that it will slacken further in 2008. In CBO’s view, the ongoing problems in the housing and financial markets and the high price of oil will curb spending by households and businesses this year and trim the growth of GDP. Although recent data suggest that the probability of a recession in 2008 has increased, CBO does not expect the slowdown in economic growth to be large enough to register as a recession. [emphasis added.]

Though they say elsewhere:

Strong indications suggest that economic growth is slowing and will remain sluggish for much of 2008. Most professional forecasters are continuing to project very slow growth, as opposed to an outright recession, this year. The risk of recession is elevated, however, and some respected economists believe that the probability of a recession has now risen to 50 percent or greater. [emphasis added.]

The CBO continues:

Discretionary fiscal policy stimulus (that is, legislative action aimed at providing stimulus) may not be necessary to avoid an outright recession, if most current forecasts are correct. Nonetheless, policymakers may choose to proceed with a stimulus package to bolster a weak economy and as insurance against the elevated risk of a recession. Some economists advocating a stimulus also believe that a recession, if it occurs, could prove to be unexpectedly deep; a fiscal stimulus would help reduce the severity of a recession, should one occur.

Effective stimulus does not necessarily require addressing the source of economic weakness directly; instead, it requires strengthening aggregate demand.

And so what does the CBO have to say about that "lump sum rebate" that may or may not be necessary for a recession that they say may or may not occur?

Linking the size of the rebate to tax liability—such as returning a fixed proportion of taxes paid—substantially reduces the cost-effectiveness of the stimulus. It would place much of the government’s revenue loss in the hands of households likely to save much of the rebate. Fixing the rebate’s size or setting a relatively low maximum amount per household or person would concentrate more of the aggregate cut among lower-income households, who are more likely to be up against credit constraints and thus to spend any additional resources. Making the rebate refundable would further boost the cost-effectiveness of the stimulus.

To the extent that the rebate depends on incurring tax liability, the choice of tax base is significant as well. A rebate based on income tax liability would, for instance, reach fewer families likely to spend it than a rebate based on payroll tax liability. A large number of lower-income families incur no income tax, and many others pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. As a result, their income tax liability alone may be insufficient to be eligible for the full rebate even though their payroll tax liability is.

Now take a look at what Jack said. He didn't like the idea of rebates being sent to people who pay "little or no federal income tax." No word, of course, on whether these folks pay payroll taxes.

And I think that's the point of Jack's spin. In the end, however, an economic stimulus package should be designed to stimulate the economy. Getting tax rebates (however defined) and/or unemployment benefits to people who will actually spend the cash seems to be the thing to do. Too bad politics got in the way.

I'll end this with Krugman's analysis:

There was also some talk among Democrats about providing temporary aid to state and local governments, whose finances are being pummeled by the weakening economy. Like help for the unemployed, this would have done double duty, averting hardship and heading off spending cuts that could worsen the downturn.

But the Bush administration has apparently succeeded in killing all of these ideas, in favor of a plan that mainly gives money to those least likely to spend it.

Why would the administration want to do this? It has nothing to do with economic efficacy: no economic theory or evidence I know of says that upper-middle-class families are more likely to spend rebate checks than the poor and unemployed. Instead, what seems to be happening is that the Bush administration refuses to sign on to anything that it can't call a "tax cut."

Behind that refusal, in turn, lies the administration's commitment to slashing tax rates on the affluent while blocking aid for families in trouble - a commitment that requires maintaining the pretense that government spending is always bad. And the result is a plan that not only fails to deliver help where it's most needed, but is likely to fail as an economic measure.

The words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt come to mind: "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."

And the worst of it is that the Democrats, who should have been in a strong position - does this administration have any credibility left on economic policy? - appear to have caved in almost completely.

Yes, they extracted some concessions, increasing rebates for people with low income while reducing giveaways to the affluent. But basically they allowed themselves to be bullied into doing things the Bush administration's way.

And that could turn out to be a very bad thing.

Indeed.