Tag: financial reform

Financial Reform and Elizabeth Warren

The Challenge Elizabeth Faces  Fourteenth banker

Dodd-Frank establishes that the purpose of the Bureau is to implement and enforce Federal consumer financial law to ensure that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. Which raises the question, if all it is to do is enforce existing law, what has been going on all this time? Dilorenzo addresses that in great depth. A lot of the problem is that the enforcement of the existing law was not a priority of the various regulators that are currently extant. Consumer protections were always secondary. In many cases, consumer protection was viewed as being in conflict with the primary legislative purposes. Two of those legislative purposes have been to keep financial institutions safe and sound and to make home ownership cheap and easy. To accomplish these purposes, a regulator may have determined that banks should have nice fat profits and that credit should be liberal and easily obtained. Well, for a long time the regulators accomplished both of those purposes. However, it was at great expense. Dilorenzo identifies in his paper what some of that expense was. It can be summed up as lasting harm to vulnerable populations who have had their wealth and credit ravaged, predatory profits by many unscrupulous lenders, and of course the damage to financial institution safety and soundness that required the bailout of the entire system, at great taxpayer expense. Then you can add to those the large numbers of unemployed and the damage to general business conditions and the security of all citizens.

So that should be easy to fix, no?

The Week in Editorial Cartoons (Part I) – Dropping the Ball

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

John Sherffius

John Sherffius, Comics.com (Boulder Daily Camera)

Note:

Due to the unusually high number of editorial cartoons published over the past week or so (I literally have another 300+ cartoons saved), I’m going to try and post another edition of this diary by Friday, August 6th.  It something I’ve never done before.

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – The Real Costs of Fossil Fuels

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Matt Bors

Matt Bors, Comics.com (Idiot Box)

12

Does the GOBP even know, What a Social Contract Means?

It seems that Party who likes to apologize to Corporations  — for Our Oceans, getting in the way of, their Profitsis at it again!

Not only are they blaming the Victims of the Bush Great Recession, for not taking one of those non-existent Jobs (there is only 1 job to had for each 6 people that need one) —

The Leader of the GOBP Party is now telling American to brace for the Raising of the Retirement Age — his rationale: It’s the only way we’ll be able to pay for the Afghanistan War!

Jeesh!  Don’t they know that the Unemployed, have PAID FOR Unemployment Insurance,  just for times like these?

Don’t they know that American Workers have PAID FOR FICA Taxes, just so that we can retire with a meager shred of Dignity?  

Don’t they know that these are Social Contracts, that OUR Govt has MADE WITH US — in a effort to carry out the ideal “that all are created equal” —

that none should be cast aside, without hope, without opportunity, without a social safety net…

NO of course Not … the Party of No Way, has some very different type of Contracts in mind …

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – General A*S Kicking and When Joe Met Tony

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Jeeves and Wooster

Mike Luckovich

Mike Luckovich, Comics.com (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Senate Saves Too Big To Fail, Orders Another Iceberg

Yippee !  Wall Street is saved !

Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D OH)  amendment 3733 on the Financial Stability Act bill, to break up the Big 6 Banks into smaller ones that couldn’t take down the entire nation’s economy if they failed, itself did not pass the vote in the Senate this evening, failing by a spectacular 61 noes to 33 yeas, with 6 senators too timid to approach the subject.

http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

Not all bought and paid for yet:

YEAs — 33 votes

Begich (D-AK)

Bingaman (D-NM)

Boxer (D-CA)

Brown (D-OH)

Burris (D-IL)

Cantwell (D-WA)

Cardin (D-MD)

Casey (D-PA)

Coburn (R-OK)***** Republican

Dorgan (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL)

Ensign (R-NV)

Feingold (D-WI)

Franken (D-MN)

Harkin (D-IA)

Kaufman (D-DE)

Leahy (D-VT)

Levin (D-MI)

Lincoln (D-AR)

Merkley (D-OR)

Mikulski (D-MD)

Murray (D-WA)

Pryor (D-AR)

Reid (D-NV)

Rockefeller (D-WV)

Sanders (I-VT)

Shelby (R-AL)*****   Republican

Specter (D-PA)*****  ex Republican

Stabenow (D-MI)

Udall (D-NM)

Webb (D-VA)

Whitehouse (D-RI)

Wyden (D-OR)

_______________________ end of people who don’t like Great Depressions and financial chaos

___________   Begin list of Senators who liked that Citizens United Ruling by the Supreme Court:

NAYs — 61

Akaka (D-HI)

Alexander (R-TN)

Barrasso (R-WY)

Baucus (D-MT)  a small, cold, scenic state of tiny population,  which votes with Utah.  wtf.

Bayh (D-IN)  does you wife get more insura/pharma stock options for this ?

Bennet (D-CO)

Bond (R-MO)

Brown (R-MA)

Brownback (R-KS)

Burr (R-NC)

Carper (D-DE)   meh. typical.

Chambliss (R-GA)

Cochran (R-MS)

Collins (R-ME)

Conrad (D-ND)

Corker (R-TN)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Crapo (R-ID)

Dodd (D-CT)  looking for that Golden Parachute……

Enzi (R-WY)

Feinstein (D-CA)  meh.

Gillibrand (D-NY)  really, Kirsten, how could you

Graham (R-SC)

Grassley (R-IA)

Gregg (R-NH)

Hagan (D-NC)

Hatch (R-UT)

Hutchison (R-TX)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Inouye (D-HI)

Isakson (R-GA)

Johanns (R-NE)

Johnson (D-SD)

Kerry (D-MA) meh. first no public option, an excise tax, and now this.   you still suck.

Klobuchar (D-MN)

Kohl (D-WI)

Kyl (R-AZ)

Landrieu (D-LA)  say, how’s the Gulf doing, Ms. Mary of Louisiana?

Lautenberg (D-NJ)

LeMieux (R-FL)

Lieberman (ID-CT)  suing Atty General Holder over the tragic Ft Hood shooting information release, too

McCain (R-AZ)

McCaskill (D-MO) midwestern Blew Dawg who thinks she’s a hot shot financial whiz.  ya huh. not.

McConnell (R-KY)

Menendez (D-NJ)

Murkowski (R-AK)

Nelson (D-FL)

Nelson (D-NE)  at least he’s consistently not on our side

Reed (D-RI)

Risch (R-ID)

Roberts (R-KS)

Schumer (D-NY)  wants to be next Majority Leader after making us all get biometric cards. Swell.

Sessions (R-AL)

Shaheen (D-NH)

Snowe (R-ME)

Tester (D-MT)  meh. These netroots Dems.

Thune (R-SD)

Udall (D-CO)

Voinovich (R-OH)

Warner (D-VA)

Wicker (R-MS)

__________________   chickenhearts

Not Voting – 6  

Bennett (R-UT)

Bunning (R-KY)

Byrd (D-WV)  okay, you’re old and frail.  pass. barely.

DeMint (R-SC)

Lugar (R-IN)

Vitter (R-LA)  you don’t have enough diapers to clean anything up

Senate Subcommittee: The Role of Credit Rating Agencies

I saw Krugman on the TVeee over the Weekend. Something he said, made me think the Goldman Email Gate, was a big Mis-Direction.

So I decided to follow up on that hunch; I took to the Intertubes, and began to follow his trail of breadcrumbs …

Berating the Raters

By Paul Krugman, NYTimes — April 25, 2010

No, the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent – 93 percent! – have now been downgraded to junk status.

What those e-mails reveal is a deeply corrupt system. And it’s a system that financial reform, as currently proposed, wouldn’t fix.

Derivatives: An Investment on Nothing!

Warren Buffet gave a prophetic pronouncement back in 2003 about the Derivatives market, seeing the exponential dangers of this “paper-thin” type of investment.

Buffet did not mince words. He called them “financial weapons of mass destruction“:

Buffett warns on investment ‘time bomb’

BBC – 4 March, 2003

The derivatives market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk.

But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and “financial weapons of mass destruction” that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.

[…]

Some derivatives contracts, Mr Buffett says, appear to have been devised by “madmen”.  […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/bus…

$well $peech, Mi$ter Pre$ident!

Lloyd “That’$ why they call me, ‘$hine'” Blankfein:

Photobucket

Enjoyed your prowe$$ a$ you begged u$ not to fleece the public.  You $o $a$$y! He $pank$ me, he $pank$ me!!  LOLcat$.

Thank$ a quadrillion!  Hug$ and ki$$e$,

Goldman $ach$

P$: Love$ you!

Stop Too Big To Fail: Astroturfing The Anger Over Wall Street

Justin Elliott writes at TPM Muckraker Wednesday April 21, 2010:

Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform


In the last few weeks, a new player entered the financial reform fray with a $1.6 million ad buy, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message, cooked right into the group’s name — Stop Too Big To Fail — that liberals could love.

But as TPMmuckraker has looked into the group, every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform.

The group’s leader has a long history running a rent-a-front operation: offering up his services to large corporations who are willing to pay top dollar for a “consumers group” that will engage in stealth advocacy on behalf of industry. The group refuses to divulge its funding sources. The respected economist whose support the group touts now says he was deceived. And Stop Too Big To Fail has links to DCI Group, one of Washington’s best-known astroturf operators.

Besides all that, Stop Too Big To Fail’s real goal is clear: kill the financial reform bill.

Re-Creation: Can The US Dollar Collapse? Part 4

In the first three segments of this six part interview we’ve heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving ‘engine’ of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income – – –  finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person, but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the ‘American Dream’ through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.

In this fourth segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to give us the broad outlines of a solution she proposes to help reorganize the US and global economies – “an investment fund…in which you can attract, also, not only the savings that end up in central banks and government treasuries around the world, but the private savings, the important private savings, which are pension funds, not only in the US and other developed countries, but also in emerging market countries where pension funds are growing like crazy and they have no place to put them”, an alternative in a world where “politicians in the US, but certainly not only the US, in much of the world-are so entwined with the finance sector that the politics is pretty much as parasitical as the banks”



Real News Network – April 20, 2010

Can US dollar remain world’s currency? Pt.4

D’Arista: The world wants a new reserve currency – would be good for Americans too

Transcript here

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

All four parts are under the tag Jane D’Arista

Another bank goes bust. This time, it’s personal.

Crossposted at Orange

On a few occasions in recent years, I’ve written about my mother’s death, the horrific relationship I had with my brother, and commented in various diaries about the status of healthcare, the financial meltdown, the state of the economy, etc.  In all of this, one common thread linking this has been my heartfelt relief that my mother died before the crash, before we had to rely on the sale of devaluing assets to care for her.  But she was not the only sick member of the family.  

The recent news of the SEC’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs coincided with other news of a much more personal nature.  The bank she invested in was taken over by the FDIC this past Friday, April 16, 2010.  Today, my estranged brother died of lung cancer.  He was 59, a longtime smoker.  

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