Banksters buyer's remorse

The Republicans are now so beholden to their crazy, misinformed base that now, even the banksters are now issuing warnings on the GOP budget cut frenzy:

The report by the investment firm Goldman Sachs said the cuts would reduce the growth in gross domestic product by up to 2 percentage points this year, essentially cutting in half the nation's projected economic growth for 2011.

Not that the GOPers are going to be worrying about the Banksters' uncertainty. Republicans have been entirely co-opted by "the angry mob" they created and their own political ambitions.

Congress must pass a spending bill by March 4, when a stop-gap funding measure expires, to avoid a shutdown. But House Republican leaders are under pressure from their conservative base not to give in.

"They're saying they can't go back to the caucus with anything less," an aide familiar with the negotiations between congressional leaders said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. "If they went through a shutdown … then the caucus would at least feel they tried."

There comes a point when trashing the economy for political purposes is going to hurt even the big guys. One might think it's come to that when the Banksters start talking like this:

"Fiscal drag is quickly emerging as a focus," the Goldman Sachs report says. It says the spending cuts are "the most important near-term risk."

Down here, even among the working poor who don't normally follow politics and get all their disinfo from Fox News, I'm hearing murmurs of concern about the shutdown and what it will mean for their checks. Many of them receive some kind of government assistance or Social Security. Of course listens to the poor but when Wall Street gets worried, we should all get scared.