DeFazio: Sacrifice 2 Jobs to get back Millions of Jobs for Americans

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Pete DeFazio Slams Tim Geithner & Larry Summers  (TheYoungTurks)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Is it finally Time to Bail Out — MAIN Street ?

Wall Street HAS gotten all their Trillion Dollar Bail Out $$$$$$$$$$$$$

AND so far NOT much of it has Trickled Down to Main Street — Where it’s Most Needed!

Something ‘s got to give — and Soon!

Before Small Town America, (and Metro-America) rolls up the welcome mat, and fades into history.

‘The Ed Show’ for Wednesday, November 18, 2009, MSNBC

transcript

Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon is with us on that issue tonight.

Congressman, good to have you on.

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), OREGON:  Thanks, Ed.

SCHULTZ:  Now, what kind of progress can be made to make sure that TARP money goes where it’s really going to stimulate the economy-small business and infrastructure?

DEFAZIO:  Well, that’s our money.  It was borrowed in the name of the American people.  It was borrowed to bail out Wall Street, which has worked famously for Goldman Sachs and others.

You know, we think it’s time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street.  We reclaim the unspent funds, reclaim some of the funds that are being paid back, which will not be paid back in full, and we use it to put people back to work.

Rebuilding America’s infrastructure is a tried and true way to put people back to work.  Unfortunately, the president has an adviser from Wall Street, Larry Summers, and a treasury secretary from Wall Street, Timothy Geithner, who don’t like that idea.  They want to keep the TARP money either to continue to bail out Wall Street if there are future problems or maybe…

SCHULTZ:  So Geithner does not want to give the money to small business the TARP money?

DEFAZIO:  No, they’re saying they’re got to keep the money.  There may be more needs on Wall Street, or maybe they should use it to pay down the deficit.  That’s absurd.  We borrowed the money.  How do you pay down the deficit?

SCHULTZ:  Should he stay in his job, Congressman?

DEFAZIO:  No.

SCHULTZ:  You think Tim Geithner should be gone as treasury secretary?

DEFAZIO:  I do, especially if you look back at the AIG scandal and Goldmans and the others who got their bets paid off in full.  Instead of saying, well, you bet, you lost, they got paid back in full with taxpayer money through AIG.  We channeled the money through them.

Geithner would not answer my question when I said, “Were those naked credit default swaps by Goldman or were they a counter party?”  He said, “I will not answer that question.”

I think they were naked credit default swaps.  They were bets.  They should not have gotten their money back.

SCHULTZ:  So he’s not coming clean with the Congress?

DEFAZIO:  Absolutely not.

[…]

DEFAZIO:  Yes.  He’s being failed by his economic team.  Their total orientation is Wall Street, not Main Street, not real jobs.

I mean, OK, let’s get past all the Goldman bailout and all that stuff.  I’ve got firms in my district that are solvent, very little debt, and they can’t get money out of bailed-out firms

(CROSSTALK)

SCHULTZ:  No, credit is tight.  It’s incredible.

DEFAZIO:  Yes.  Like Wells Fargo.

SCHULTZ:  It’s absolutely ridiculous.

[…]

SCHULTZ:  I’ll tell you what, Congressman, this jobs summit thing coming up in the White House in December, it’s like the Super Bowl of the economy.  Or at least a major playoff game.  That’s how I see it.

DEFAZIO:  Well, we may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.  

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34…

Would you let Gangsters write Mob-busting Legislation?

Would you let Banksters write ‘Derivative Reform’ Legislation?

Well, Apparently we already have …

Giant holes in new banking rules

Interview by Paul Jay, theRealNewsNetwork  – November 20, 2009



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Thomas Ferguson is a political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a Political Science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also a a contributing editor of The Nation.

Thomas Ferguson:  … And above all, specifically on too-big-to-fail, that’s where the derivatives regulation these folks propose, that’s-that was weak in the administration bill, but Barney Frank’s committee gutted it a whole lot more. Basically, the Loopholes in that bill-first thing is they wrote a loophole that allows you to pretty much do what you want over the so-called over-the-counter derivatives.

[…]

Thomas Ferguson:  … When you go to over-the-counter derivatives, there are no prices. They’re just negotiated, and they’re not revealed, and they’re hugely complex. That’s the whole point of them. And when, as Frank’s committee did, in effect they sort of gave you loopholes that allow you to leave open the status of foreign exchanges and people who are doing stuff between the US and abroad. You can do just about anything you want in some other currency than bring it back into here, to put it simply. That stuff-and in effect you have no regulation at all. The loopholes, because of over-the-counter and the treatment of the foreign exchange stuff, they’re giant holes. Giant holes.

[That’s a $50 Trillion Loophole, sponsored by Tim Geithner, according to Cenk Uygur, from the Intro Video]

[…]

Paul Jay: One of the things that was, I think, an underpinning of the whole bubble, the subprime bubble, was the rating agencies who are giving these bundles of derivatives of essentially mortgage triple-AAA ratings.

Thomas Ferguson: Yeah. They were effectively regulating almost anything AAA. …

Thomas Ferguson:  We know this. What’s really going on here is you get a kind of sham good-housekeeping seal of approval, which all kinds of pension funds and everybody else then can say, “I’ve done my fiduciary duty. I’ve done due diligence. I’ll just buy this junk.” You’d be better off just getting rid of that. You just don’t need these guys.

[…]

Paul Jay: So if you were going to lay out, like, three things that need to be done in terms of regulation that are not being done, what are they?

Thomas Ferguson:  

[1] The Fed should NOT be the lead regulator on all too-big-to-fail issues.

[2] Derivatives have to be all moved on exchanges and standardized, just no exceptions, period, point, end of story.

And then, of course, [3] we have to have the Consumer Protection Agency part of the bill-that’s been gutted also-needs to be very strong and in there. I mean, that was an excellent idea. It should happen.

Paul Jay: Okay. So when all is said and done, what are your expectations of this banking bill?

FERGUSON: Well, I remind you that America is not a Disney movie. A happy ending is not guaranteed.

http://therealnews.com/t/index…

Well perhaps all this Geithner (and Wall Street) bashing is unfair? Maybe they are just the ScapeGoats of the week?

Maybe he DOES have the best interests of the American PEOPLE in mind?

Afterall he can talk a good game.  He sounds “pro consumer” and “pro regulation” … at least when he needs to — in the Public Arena:

Geithner Testifies Before House Committee



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Written Testimony House Financial Services — Committee Hearing,  March 26, 2009

Our system is wrapped today in extraordinary complexity, but beneath all that, financial systems serve an essential and basic function. Financial institutions and markets transform the earnings and savings of American workers into the loans that finance a home, a new car or a college education. They exist to allocate savings and investment to their most productive uses.

Our financial system does this better than any other financial system in the world, but our system failed in basic fundamental ways.

Compensation practices rewarded short-term profits over long-term return.

Pervasive failures in consumer protection, leaving many Americans with obligations they did not understand and could not sustain.

The huge apparent returns to financial activity attracted fraud on a dramatic scale.

Market discipline failed to constrain dangerous levels of risk-taking throughout the financial system.  

New financial products were created to meet demand from investors, and the complexity outmatched the risk-management capabilities of even the most sophisticated financial institutions.  

Financial activity migrated outside the banking system, relying on the assumption that liquidity would always be available.

Regulated institutions held too little capital relative to the risks to which they were exposed.  

Supervision and regulation failed to prevent these problems. There were failures where regulation was extensive and failures where it was weak and absent.

And while supervision and regulation failed to constrain the build up of leverage and risk, the United States came into this crisis without adequate tools to manage it effectively.  

And as I discussed before this committee on Tuesday, U.S. law left regulators without good options for managing failures of systemically important non-bank financial institutions.

To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game. The new rules must be simpler and more effectively enforced and produce a more stable system, that protects consumers and investors, that rewards innovation and that is able to adapt and evolve with changes in the financial system.

http://www.ustreas.gov/press/r…

So Has Geithner Delivered, on his stated agenda from last spring?  

Has he and Summers lived up to their own stated goals for ‘comprehensive reform’  with ‘new rules of the game’ ?

Have they managed to convince their Big Banker buddies to help out ‘American workers into the loans that finance a home, a new car or a college education’ ?

Have they bothered to prime the pump of Small Business?

????  … NO They Haven’t!   NOT according to Rep DeFazio.

And NOT according to Cenk Uygur, with TheYoungTurks either.  He summarizes the Outrageous Irony of having Wall Street’s prime representative, Tim Geithener, jamming the Reform Regulation, before the House right now … Tim is arguing for Loopholes that will just give us ‘more of the same’  … yet another Derivative “house of cards”, traded in “hidden markets” … beyond oversight.

Time Mark [9:40] from the Intro Video of this post (incredible if true.)

Cenk Uygur:

All we are asking the Banks is …

Can we at least SEE the Derivative Bets that you made?   Can you do them in a Open Market so that people know what they are?

And they’re saying:  ‘Piss off! No!  Were NOT going to tell you, OK?   I can make any damn Bet, I like — and if it goes bust, you’re going to have to pay for it.‘

So now the House is reconsidering a Loophole that they had in their Derivatives Reform Bill.  Do you know what the size of the Loophole was? It was for ‘Foreign Derivatives’ — 50 TRILLION DOLLARS!

And Guess WHO pushed for that Loophole?  Say it with me — Tim Geithner.  He wants to put in the so-call Reform Bill a $50 Trillion Loophole!

[…]

Now finally after a lot of pressure the House Democrats are beginning to think, Hey maybe we should close that Loophole? — ya think! And that isn’t even to Regulate these guys — It’s just to find out the Transactions that they are making !!

Dick Durbin was right — ‘The Banks Run the Place’.

They run Congress, and they certainly run Tim Geithner and Larry Summer.

Pete DeFazio is right […]

Geinther’s got to go. He’s got to get fired, He’s poisoning the Administration.

Hey DC Numbskulls! and Wall Street representatives …

Here’s a News Flash for you guys:

Wall Street’s reckless drive to the edge of the Cliff HAS been averted —

NOW is time to pick up all the broken-pieces of the America Economy, that the Banksters left in their wake.

It’s time for Representing the ailing American Workers, and folding Small Businesses on Main Street, and struggling Home Owners underwater or worse — you know, the “collateral damage” of all that Opaque OTC Derivative betting that Wall Street was binging on, during Greenspan’s reign —

you know, It’s time that the little guys had a say in DC, afterall as DeFazio put it ‘It’s OUR Money — WE ARE underwriting all those Trillion Dollar the Bailouts”, to deal with the endless fall out of Wall Street’s “Thelma and Louise” Act.  (A “thrill ride” the Banks are STILL fighting hard to continue, btw  …)

An exciting movie, but decidedly lacking a “Happy Disney Ending” —

much like the prospect that many on Main Street are facing, as they watch the opportunities of the American Dream, simply disappear “over the cliff”

never to return?

Hmmm … perhaps WE ALL Should become Wall Street Bankers!?!

Hey Tim, can you float me a Trillion Dollar Loan, … pretty please?

(psst, I’m good for it … Trust Me.)

MY Economy is depending on it!