Tag: financial reform

So far in the first two 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.

In this third segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to explain why and how the global economic system depends on the US as importer of last resort 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.

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Part 2 is here.

Yesterday in the first segment of this interview we 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, talking with Paul Jay of The Real News Network about the fact that the global economy has lost the American consumer as the engine for the whole system.

Here in segment 2 D’Arista continues her conversation with Jay, talking about private capital looking for investment safety by abandoning the US Dollar to other things they think will better hold real value such as precious metals, oil, etc. and more about the history of how we got into the economic situation we are in today.

And about who benefits…

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Jane D’Arista is a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she also co-founded an Economists’ Committee for Financial Reform called SAFER, i.e. stable, accountable, efficient & fair reform.

She is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, “A nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy”.

Jane served as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office. Representing Americans for Financial Reform, she has given Congressional testimony at financial services hearings. She has lectured at the Boston University School of Law, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Utah and the New School University and writes and lectures internationally.

Her publications include The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy : 1915-1935, a two-volume history of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation.

Here Jane talks with Paul Jay of the Real News in the first segment of a six part interview, and says now that the US dollar as the reserve currency of all international transactions…

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.

:: ::

Hypocrisy

Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

  While the Senate and House have debated the health care reform endlessly, fighting tooth and nail at every step, all the while being broadcast on network television, the financial reform bill is quietly moving along under the radar. On the same day that Senator Dodd proposed his sweeping reform bill, it passed committee.

 “The bill that finally passes on the floor will be a much more business-friendly bill,” Miller said today. “They won’t get a bill done until Dodd and Shelby agree on the compromise, but Republicans do want to get a bill done this year. So there’s incentive for both sides to come to agreement.”

 The fact that the bill is going to be watered down even more is a sad statement to an on-going tragedy.

Mr Luntz is at it again, doing what he does best:   Making Stuff Up for purely Politcal Gain!

Wall St Consultant Frank Luntz Pens Memo On

How To Channel Economic Anxiety Into Protecting Wall St Abuses

Lee Fang, ThinkProgress – 02/01/2010

[…] Luntz, who gained national recognition for his role in shaping the buzzword-heavy Contract for America with Newt Gingrich in 1994, has built a sizable business selling his messaging advice to both corporations and Republican campaigns.

The new memo instructs opponents of financial reform to simply lie about reform legislation, and to twist economic anxiety resulting from the recession into fear of any government effort to fix the underlying cause of the financial crisis. The most dishonest argument is that financial reform would “punish” taxpayers while rewarding “big banks and credit card companies.” In reality, top financial industry lobbyists are not only fighting proposed oversight regulations, but have said recently that they are opposed to “any regulation” at all.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/…

How DOES this Man sleep at night?

In Part 4 of his continuing series about the causes of and possible fixes for the ongoing economic and banking crisis with Paul Jay of The Real News, Dr. Robert Johnson, Director of Financial Reform for the Roosevelt Institute, and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) discusses his ideas of the main principles for the kind of legislation needed to remedy the situation.

Johnson notes that without fundamental changes in the way the Obama Administration is dealing with, and a new regulatory framework governing, the actions of investment banks on Wall Street and the forms of financial instruments like derivatives that they can create and sell, that another very serious economic crash, almost certainly worse than what we’ve seen so far, is a virtually certainty to occur, probably sooner than later, and that firms that are “too big to fail” must be allowed to fail.

You can watch all four parts of this interview under the tag Robert Johnson.

Following Part 1 and Part 2, Dr. Robert Johnson, Director of Financial Reform for the Roosevelt Institute, and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) (a project with George Soros), in this third part of a series of discussions with Paul Jay talks about the real choices that were ignored by the Obama White House for financial reform in dealing with the financial crisis rather than simply pumping money into the investment banks.

Also see (on the flip):

What Congress Did Not Want You to Read: Robert Johnson’s Testimony on OTC Derivative Market

Saturday, 11/7/2009, by Lynn Parramore at New Deal 2.0 (a project of the Roosevelt Institute)

Yesterday in Crony Capitalism we heard Dr. Robert Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz, and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), talking with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the causes of the economic crisis and about some of his suggestions for banking and financial reform.

Today in Part 2 Johnson and Jay continue the discussion addressing the question of whether the White House governs Wall Street or whether it’s the other way around…

What are we gonna do when  we don’t get true health care reform/out of Iraq and Afghanistan/torture investigations/financial reform/job creation/restored civil liberties/audit of the Fed/repeal of the Patriot Act?   I voted for Obama, admittedly getting a bit caught up in the whole spectacle.  But the reasons I disliked Bush and his cohorts, are the same reasons I am exasperated with Obama and his cohorts.   We aren’t getting any change.  Spare change maybe, but not change “you can believe in”.  As it’s going, Obama will go down in history as the most dishonest President we’ve ever had.  Much like Bush trying to make colonizing through occupation and torture legal, Obama has transformed the “chicken in every pot” political promising propaganda to a whole new level.  

I’ve thought since shortly after the election we wouldn’t get torture investigations.  We won’t “leave” Iraq by 2011.  We won’t get out of Afghanistan and in fact will escalate there and in Pakistan.  We won’t get single payer, which turned out to be a major understatement.  We won’t get financial reform as evidenced by the casinos open for business bonuses and financial gains made by the banks and Wall Street.   We won’t “recover” from this financial catastrophe because there is no plan for creating the millions of jobs that have been lost.  

Why have I been thinking that?  I’m like a jack of all trades, master of none.  I’m not an expert in geopolitics, realpolitik, or the machinations of the political system in the halls of Congress and the Senate.   But I’ve read stuff man.  Lots of stuff.  Stuff written by the experts.  Isn’t that how one learns?  Certainly contrarian views from the MSM and the Obamabots, but stuff that I believe speaks the truth.  Stuff from Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, Real News Network, Truthdig, Salon, Asia Times, and on and on.  

Progressives complain about the MSM and the lack of true reporting.  Well, there is true reporting going on and it is coming from people who have spent the better parts of lives studying, analyzing and living the issues.  These are people that take honest looks at the serious issues regardless of what political party or administration is in charge.  They are consistent and look at the facts, not the promises from the speechmaker.