Dave Dayen: Yes, Katrina, Wall Street Won Again, and Progressives Need to Face Up to That

Yves here. I hope you are as excited as I am that Dave Dayen will be posting at NC when the mood strikes him. Welcome Dave!

By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen

Greetings, NC readers! Yves has been nice enough to open up her Internet home to me, and I intend to grab the opportunity from time to time.

This offer turned fortuitous after I wrote a little piece from Salon on the “anniversary” of the securitization fraud task force, announced at last year’s State of the Union address. The scare quotes are warranted because, as I detailed, it’s hard to honor an anniversary of something that never really existed in the first place. I don’t remember annual celebrations of the founding of Atlantis, either.

Well, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, got very upset at my characterization of the task force, and scolded me for taking a “victory lap.” I could spend this entire refutation on the revealing attitude behind that phrase. I would have been extremely happy to have been completely wrong about this whole matter if it meant that even one homeowner would get a measure of justice for what they’ve encountered. I don’t tally up my punditry on a whiteboard and seek out the showiest opportunities to boast about my scores.