Showing posts with label Dodd-Frank. Show all posts

01 January 2016

Newt Gingrich Says Elizabeth Warren’s Signature Program Is "Dictatorial." Here's What It's Really Done. 28DEZ15

Protesters hold banners while shouting slogans during a late afternoon march through downtown Los Angeles on October 3, 2011 in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City . They say they are inspired by revolutions in the Middle East, but protests over economic grievances in Spain and elsewhere in Europe are a closer comparison as anti-corporate demonstrations spread across the United States. As the Occupy Wall Street protest entered its third week Monday, it is being taken more seriously with similar sit-in demonstrations popping up from Boston to Chicago and Los Angeles and this week the New York protest expects to swell with support from trade unions. AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWN

IF you think the republicans running for their party's nomination for the 2016 presidential election are looking out for your best interest you are a victim of their deception or voluntarily ignorant. +Senator Elizabeth Warren D MA helped create the +Consumer Financial Protection Bureau / CFPB, the federal agency charged to protect the American public from the greed of the wall street bank-financial cabal. sen ted cruz r TX, newt gingrich, and those other politicians owned and controlled by the us consumer coalition (chief lobbyist sarah makin, sarah.makin@wisepa.com) and similar fronts for the 1% want to shut down the CFPB because it is a threat to their profit margins. The CFPB's work has saved the American consumer billions since it was created, and Sen Warren will do everything possible to keep the agency alive. A republican victory in 2016 will be the end of the CFPB, keep that in mind when you listen to the candidates for president, and check out Bernie 2016 for +Senator Bernie Sanders unwavering support of the agency and proposals for more protection and rights for us, the American consumer and electorate. From +Mother Jones .....

Newt Gingrich Says Elizabeth Warren’s Signature Program Is "Dictatorial." Here's What It's Really Done.

If eliminating $16 billion in hidden credit card fees is dictatorial, he's right.

—By Patrick Caldwell

| Mon Dec. 28, 2015 6:05 AM EST

US Senate/ZUMA

"Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is so far outside the historic American model of constitutionally limited government and the rule of law that it is the perfect case study of the pathologies that infect our bureaucracies at the federal level," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich solemnly intoned in his opening statement as an expert witness at a congressional hearing on December 16. "It is dictatorial. It is unaccountable. It is practically unrestrained in expanding on its already expansive mandate from Congress. And it is contemptuous of the rights, values, and preferences of ordinary Americans."
Republicans and outside conservative groups spent much of 2015 attacking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—the federal financial regulator that opened in 2011, conceived and launched by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) after it was included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
This month's hearing, where conservatives on the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee lambasted the CFPB for collecting data on credit card usage, was just the latest in a string of attacks against the consumer agency. Gingrich is a paid adviser to a corporate-funded group, the US Consumer Coalition, that doesn't disclose the identities of its donors and was founded by a PR firm to attack the agency. In November, a conservative group ran an ad during the Republican debate attacking the CFPB and Warren as Soviet operators trying to shut down regular borrowers. Republicans in Congress have consistently introduced bills that would hamper the CFPB's ability to function by restricting its budget or weighing down its decision-making process with extra bureaucratic layers. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas and a Republican presidential candidate, has gone even further, introducing legislation to eradicate the agency.
But amid the attacks, it's been easy to lose sight of what the CFPB has actually been up to. Earlier this month, the CFPB released a report examining how one part of its financial regulation has unfolded. The CARD Act, passed in 2010 and overseen by the CFPB, aimed to clean up the credit card industry by eliminating hidden fees that hurt consumers.
According to the CFPB, the CARD Act's changes saved consumers from $16 billion in these sorts of hidden fees between 2011 and 2014. Most of those savings have been paid for with higher upfront interest rates. Still, the total cost of credit cards declined in the first few years after the law's enactment and has held steady since then at about 2 percent less than before the CARD Act.
The banking industry has argued that further regulations along these lines would constrict the availability of credit, since companies might decide it is no longer worth offering cards when they won't reap as much profit off their customers. But the CFPB found that, in fact, approval rates for credit cards are rising, with lines of credit growing as well.
The CFPB plays a broad watchdog role, keeping an eye on financial institutions to see if they're ripping off consumers. When the for-profit school group Corinthian Colleges closed this year, the CFPB set up $480 million in loan forgiveness for indebted students. In March, the agency issued a set of proposed rules to place new checks on payday lending. (The rules have yet to be finalized.) The agency has also been looking to tackle subprime auto loans and the prevalence of arbitration clauses in contracts in order to make it easier for consumers to file class-action lawsuits.
Are these actions against the "preferences of ordinary Americans," as Gingrich said? It's hard to say, since most people have little knowledge of the CFPB. When two liberal-leaning groups—Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending—explained what the CFPB was up to while polling people, they found that 75 percent of respondents supported the agency. Even when the US Consumer Coalition, the industry group Gingrich advises, ran a poll on the CFPB, it found that people generally have a favorable view. Only 19 percent of respondents could identify the CFPB, but of those who were familiar with it, 31 percent had a favorable view, compared with 14 percent who viewed it negatively.

Patrick Caldwell

Reporter

Patrick Caldwell is a reporter in Mother Jones’ DC bureau. E-mail any and all tips to pcaldwell [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

28 March 2014

Hahahaha - Wall Street "Democrats" losing so badly they need to smear us in the media & Kos Folds Up the Big Tent & We Don’t Need Two Wall Street Parties & Here's where I punch back at Third Way in Politico 19,28,24&25MAR14

Dear Third Way: Boo!
voice of the day

"Too often are poor and oppressed people (especially people of color) regarded as threats here in America, while poor and oppressed people in other countries are viewed as victims. This type of perspective is dehumanizing to people here and to people abroad. To overlook the problems here and to focus on issues elsewhere sends the message that poor and oppressed Americans' problems are either insignificant, unimportant, or non urgent and at the same time it leads to the objectification of the "exotic other."
- Ryan Herring
+third way democrats are starting to panic about the projected results of the 2014 US Senate elections. They are mounting a propaganda campaign against +Daily Kos, and will probably attack the +PCCC / the +Progressive Change Campaign Committee next, blaming them for the chance the Democrats will loose the senate in November 2014. What the refuse to acknowledge is the the threat to Democratic control of the Senate is due to their kow-towing to the gop / tea-bagger obstructionist in the Senate, their participation in the Democratic grand betrayal of the electorate that delivered the White House and Congress in 2008. The AFA? third way negotiated with republicans and tea-baggers, the legislation was weakened to meet their demands and in the end not one republican or tea-bagger voted for the bill. They have held 50 votes to repeal the AFA in the house. We could have achieved Universal Health Care. Thanks third way. Dodd-Frank? They should have restored and strengthened Glass-Steagall. Thanks third way. Economic stimulus? third way gave in to the gop and tea-baggers to the extent that the unemployment rate is still 6.7%, there are millions of underemployed and millions who have dropped out of the workforce altogether because there aren't any jobs. Unemployment benefits, job training and other social safety net programs have been cut. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling to survive on $2.00 a day, poverty usually found in Third World countries. Thanks third way. The economy is stagnant, economic mobility is stagnant, wages are stagnant, income inequality has increased by leaps and bounds, while the rich, corporate America, Wall Street, the bank-financial cabal increase their wealth and power on the backs of the poor, students, the retired, our military vets and the shrinking middle class. Thanks third way. It is understood the political parties have to negotiate and compromise in order to govern the country. But when the opposition continues to vote against compromise legislation and begins to dictate how things are going to be or nothing gets done and you go along with that your agenda changes from third way moderation to collusion. You have embraced austerity economics to protect the wealth and power of the 1%, these are the reasons why control of the US Senate is at risk. Thanks a lot third way. rover norquist and the koch brothers say thanks too, but you probably heard that from them in person. This from Politico, followed by an appeal from Daily Kos for a donation to their fund supporting Progressive candidates for congress. Click the link to donate if you can, I did. And finally, Markos Moulitsas' response to third way on +Politico and Daily Kos.....

If Markos Moulitsas had his way there’d be no Affordable Care Act, no Dodd-Frank, no economic stimulus package. That’s the price when purity tests are applied to Democrats.
In a remarkable post yesterday, Moulitsas, founder and publisher of the progressive community site DailyKos, celebrates the departure from the Senate of 10 moderate Democrats over the last decade, and makes clear his hope that Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) lose their tough reelection battles this year. He doesn’t name some other moderates in tight races, like Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), but his logic suggests that he’d be only too happy to say goodbye to them as well.
Moulitsas cares passionately about progressive politics, and he is a very savvy political observer—he knows that we must have Democratic majorities in Congress to make real progress, and that to create those majorities we must have Democrats win in red states like Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina. Surely he can see that such Democrats must be somewhat different than the full-throated progressives that he name-checks in his essay.

Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel understood that fact. As the chairmen of the DSCC and DCCC respectively, they aggressively recruited moderate leaders in red states and districts in 2006, and those moderates made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House and Harry Reid Senate majority leader.
The majorities those moderates helped create made possible the progress of Barack Obama’s first term. Without them, the president would have been unable to reverse our slide toward depression with the stimulus, extend stable and secure health care coverage to all with the ACA, reform the worst abuses of the financial services sector with Dodd-Frank, remove the scourge of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell from the military or pass a sensible immigration reform bill through the Senate.
A charge implicit in the Moulitsas post is that moderate Democrats lack political courage—that they would do the right thing if only they were brave enough. This just doesn’t withstand scrutiny. We actually sat in meetings with Senate moderates during the darkest days of the ACA deliberations. They knew that voting for the bill could send them to the Valley of the Doomed, and for many it did or still could. They put their careers on the line and took that vote anyway—every single moderate named in the piece who was still in the Senate voted for the ACA. So did those unnamed, like Senators Begich and Hagan. That is political courage.
It was laudable, but hardly courageous, for a Democrat from a blue state to have voted for the ACA. The last time a Democratic Senate incumbent lost in New York was 1899, and in Massachusetts it was 1947. They don’t stare political death in the face on any vote, ever. The moderates do.
Moulitsas might have a stronger case if the moderates he abhors were replaced by more liberal members. But almost every instance saw the opposite result. Of the 10 former Democratic senators that Moulitsas identifies, seven were replaced by Republicans, one by Montanan John Walsh, who is in a fight for his political life this year, and another by Democrat Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who is unlikely to make the DailyKos Pantheon of Progressiveness. Just one, Joe Lieberman, of midnight-blue Connecticut, was succeeded by someone to his left. Meanwhile, the moderate Democrats in tough fights this cycle are running against Tea Party true believers.
Democrats across the spectrum agree on far more than we disagree—almost all supported President Obama’s key initiatives, including universal health care and fundamental immigration reform. Most support new gun safety laws, marriage for gay couples and a vigorous federal response to climate change. Yet for some, that’s not pure enough.
If we are to make progress in a divided Washington—and if we are to protect the Democratic Senate majority—we simply must embrace a big tent for the Democratic Party. Even in purple states, there are not enough self-identified liberals to elect Democrats without their winning significant pluralities or majorities of moderates. The idea that more liberal candidates could win in places like Arkansas, Indiana or Alaska is pure fantasy. And to write off those states would consign Democrats to long-term congressional minority status.
We have all witnessed the devastating effect that the politics of purity can have, as the Republicans grapple with the toxic impact of the Tea Party on their candidates, their congressional leadership and their governing philosophy. Let’s not become them.

03 August 2013

CEO pay is grotesque. This might change that. & Everything you need to know about today’s big jobs report & This graph calls the entire economic recovery into question 2&1AUG13

CEO pay is grotesque, it is obscene, and it is a big part of the reason the economy only added 162,000 jobs in July, the unemployment rate is 7.4% and the employment rate is flat. Daily Kos and USAction have started a petition campaign to force the SEC to enforce the provision of the Dodd-Frank law requiring public corporations to disclose the pay rates of executives compared to the corporations lowest paid workers. See the Washington Post's Wonkbook analysis of the jobs report and an interesting graph on the recession. Click the link to sign the petition....

Craig, join Daily Kos and USAction in urging the Securities & Exchange Commission to enforce the law on C.E.O. salaries—which should have happened three years ago. Click here to sign the petition.

Excessive C.E.O. salaries contributed to the reckless financial culture that nearly ruined our economy. The Dodd-Frank law, which Congress passed in 2010, requires publicly traded corporations to disclose how much their executives make—compared to their average worker.

Three years later, the law still hasn’t been enforced. Why? Because the Securities & Exchange Commission has not even passed regulations implementing the law. Meanwhile, big corporations are putting pressure on the S.E.C.—and Congress—to quietly kill it.

Enough is enough. This is basic public information we have the right to know, and will help prevent the next financial crisis. Join Daily Kos and USAction by signing our petition to the S.E.C., urging them to enforce Dodd-Frank’s provision on disclosing C.E.O. salaries.

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

Everything you need to know about today’s big jobs report

By Neil Irwin, Published: August 2 at 8:26 am

(Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The July jobs numbers are out, and we’re here to give you quick-fire analysis of the report. Follow along as we make sense of it in in real time.

How markets reacted

Financial markets interpreted the jobs numbers as moderately negative for the economy. The stock market was down at 10:00 a.m., off 0.3 percent as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
The bond market rallied, meanwhile, with the yield on a 10 year Treasury bond falling .08 percent to 2.625 percent, retracing most of a huge jump on Thursday. That reflects investors concluding that soft jobs data will make the Fed slower and more cautious in exiting from its easy money policies.
Indeed, on Thursday futures markets implied a 41 percent probability that the Fed will raise interest rates by the end of 2014. After the report Friday, those odds fell to 38 percent.

Number of part-time workers still rising

One of the more disappointing trends over the last few months is that job growth has been strongest in low-paying sectors that tend to offer lots of part-time jobs, particularly in retail and leisure and hospitality. Obamacare may also be affecting employers as they wrestle with the health care mandates, though the evidence is still uncertain.
The number of people working part time for economic reasons — they couldn’t find full-time work or had their hours cut back by their employer against their will — rose by 19,000 in July. Since March, that number has risen by a whopping 607,000.

What does it mean for the Fed?

With the Federal Reserve weighing when to begin slowing the pace of its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases, each unemployment report (and inflation report, and so on) takes on extra importance right now. How are Fed officials likely to interpret these numbers, and will the July report augur for tapering the purchases sooner (September) or later (December or beyond)?
On one hand, the unemployment rate came down significantly, to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent. That gets us closer to the thresholds that the Fed has sketched out — that it will end its quantitative easing policies when the jobless rate is around 7 percent and consider raising interest rates when it gets to 6.5 percent or below. Thu, it supports winding down bond purchases sooner rather than later.
But not so fast. The Fed has gone to great lengths to assure that they are making these judgments based on the strength of the job market as a whole, not that one unemployment number. And given that the jobless rate fell in large part because people dropped out of the labor force, that is not going to automatically have Chairman Ben Bernanke reaching for the “taper” button on his desk. (Note: There is not, as far as we know, such a button on Ben Bernanke’s desk)
And the tepid numbers on payrolls, of only 162,000 jobs added and a downward revision for previous months, also appears to support caution in removing monetary accommodation.
Overall, the unemployment numbers help make the case for winding down purchases later rather than sooner, though there is lots more data to digest before the next Fed policy meeting, including the August jobs report.

Negative trends on hours and wages

Another disappointing element of the July jobs report was weakness in measures of worker compensation, which had been a bright spot in June.
For all private employees, average weekly hours worked fell to 34.4 from 34.5, and average hourly earnings ticked down two cents to $23.98. That was enough to push the index of weekly payrolls down 0.3 percent, following an 0.6 percent rise in June.

Where did the jobs come from?

So, what sectors were the big gainers, and the big disappointments, in the July jobs report?
First, the winners:
Retail. This sector has been on a hiring tear in recent months. There were 46,800 more retail jobs added in July, and job creation in the sector has averaged almost 40,000 jobs a month for the last three months. Apparently, consumers are buying, and retailers are staffing their stores to fulfill the demand.
Professional and business services. A stalwart of job creation through the sluggish recovery of the last few years, the sector added another 36,000 jobs in July. Unlike some months, the hiring wasn’t driven overwhelmingly by temporary jobs, which are counted in this category. Only 7,700 of those positions were in temporary services.
Leisure and hospitality. Like retail, this sector has been zooming forward, and it added another 23,000 jobs in July after an average of 50,000 a month in May and June. Americans seem to be going to hotels in restaurants in droves, or at least enough for restaurateurs and hoteliers to staff up.
Government. True, the government employment sector added only 1,000 jobs, and so was effectively unchanged. But the absence of a negative sign is actually progress. It compares with an average of 9,500 jobs lost in May and June. The federal government excluding the post office, dealing with spending cuts and the sequester, nonetheless added jobs, and local governments added 6,000 positions, suggesting that the long bleed may be ending.
And the jobs day disappointments:
Construction. So much for the housing rebound producing a resurgence in construction employment. The sector shed 6,000 jobs in July, continuing a run of uneven results.
Other services. This grab bag category of employment includes the nonprofit sector, and it shed 2,000 jobs.
Why did the unemployment rate fall?

The pleasant surprise in an otherwise tepid jobs report was a drop in the unemployment rate, to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent. But as we’ve all learned by now, you can’t take changes in the unemployment rate at face value. They can be good, bad or indifferent depending on whether they are driven by more people having jobs or people giving up looking for a job.
In this case, it’s all of the above. The number of people reporting that they are employed rose by 227,000. Good! The number of people who did not have a job but were looking for one fell by 263,000. Also good! But the number of people not in the labor force rose by 240,000, driving down the labor force participation rate. Bad!
The single indicator of the health of the job market that can sum all that up is the employment to population ratio, which was unchanged at 58.7 percent.

Unemployment rate falls to 7.4% as 162k jobs added

The numbers are in! The Labor Department reported that employers in the United States added 162,000 jobs in July, compared with a revised 188,000 in June. Revisions to May and June subtracted 26,000 from the earlier estimates of jobs added. That’s the bad news: That’s a bit below recent job market measures and thus a disappointment.
The better news: The unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent, from 7.6 percent. Simultaneously more people had jobs, fewer people were unemployed and fewer people were in the labor force.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-todays-big-jobs-report/?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b

This graph calls the entire economic recovery into question

By Ezra Klein, Published: August 1 at 11:57 am

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The core issue here is that the unemployment rate only counts people actively looking for work. That means there are two ways to leave the ranks of the unemployed. One way — the good way — is to get a job. The other way is to stop looking for work, either because you’ve retired, or become discouraged, or begun working off the books.
The yellow line on the left shows the official unemployment rate since 2008. It’s fallen from over 10 percent to under 8 percent. But the red line on the right shows the actual employment rate — that is, the percentage of working-age adults with jobs. What should scare you is that the red line has barely budged.
At the beginning of 2007, the employment rate was 63.3 percent, and the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. By the end of 2009 — so, after the worst of the recession — it had fallen to 58.3 percent, and unemployment was up to 9.9 percent. Today, it’s 58.7 percent, even though unemployment has fallen to 7.6 percent. That means a lot of the people who’ve left the rolls of the unemployed haven’t gotten a new job. They’ve just left the labor force altogether.
Some of that’s natural. The population is aging, and the labor force was expected to shrink. But it wasn’t expected to shrink this much. The economy is a lot worse than a glance at the unemployment rate suggests. And instead of doing anything to help those people get back to work, Washington canceled the payroll tax cut, permitted sequestration to go into effect, and is now arguing about whether to shut down the federal government — and possibly breach the debt ceiling — in the fall.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/01/this-graph-calls-the-entire-economic-recovery-into-question/

26 March 2013

The Morality Brigade 25MAR13 & Middle Class Murder (Bill Maher video) 12JUL11

I have been making both these arguments for years, the first for much longer than the latter. I have asked anti-choice people how they can claim to be concerned about the sanctity of life yet support and at time promote cuts for social safety net programs that provide for children and their families, be against food stamps, health care, housing assistance, preschool and after school programs? How can they claim to value life and be opposed to raising the minimum wage to a living wage and equal pay for women, policies that would help raise children and their families out of poverty? The most common answer, given with a straight face, is 'I didn't tell them to get pregnant, why should I pay for their kids?'. That lack of compassion is a deliberate rejection of the teachings of +Jesus Christ, the basic beliefs of the Christian faith claimed by a vast majority of these people. I have also asked many of these same people why they support politicians whose political agenda is protecting the wealth and power of the rich, corporate CEOs and boards of directors of the very banks and financial institutions responsible for creating the great recession and who direct their political minions to cut funding for public education, health care, infrastructure, job training, environmental regulation, food and drug safety and regulation to name a few to keep their taxes low and profits up? I continue to be amazed by the number of people who have been brainwashed by the +tea-baggers and so mouth the movement's rhetoric about raising taxes just to fund a socialist welfare state and how governmental regulation of banks and corporate America in general will prevent the country from ever getting out of this recession. Too many Americans actually believe this while personally experiencing economic stagnation and decline while living in communities where the social, economic, infrastructure and environmental quality of life is in decline. I really believe, unless we have a great political awakening in America, the extreme right will be able to establish their theocratic plutocracy in America. I just pray it happens after my lifetime. From HuffPost, followed by a very relevant piece by +Bill Maher .....

We're still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America.

In recent weeks Republican state legislators have decided to thwart the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Legislators in North Dakota passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks or after a fetal heart beat had been detected, and approved a fall referendum that would ban all abortions by defining human life as beginning with conception. Lawmakers in Arkansas have banned abortions within twelve weeks of conception.

The morality brigade worries about fetuses, but not what happens to children after they're born. They and other conservatives have been cutting funding for child nutrition, healthcare for infants and their mothers, and schools.

The new House Republican budget gets a big chunk of its savings from programs designed to help poor kids. The budget sequester already in effect takes aim at programs like Head Start, designed to improve the life chances of poor kids.

Meanwhile, the morality brigade continues to battle same-sex marriage.

Despite the Supreme Court's willingness to consider the constitutionality of California's ban, no one should assume a majority of the justices will strike it down. The Court could just as easily decide the issue is up to the states, or strike down California's law while allowing other states to continue their bans.

Conservative moralists don't want women to have control over their bodies or same-sex couples to marry, but they don't give a hoot about billionaires taking over our democracy for personal gain or big bankers taking over our economy.

Yet these violations of public morality are far more dangerous to our society because they undermine the public trust that's essential to both our democracy and economy.

Three years ago, at the behest of a right-wing group called "Citizens United," the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in politics by deciding corporations were "people" under the First Amendment.

A record $12 billion was spent on election campaigns in 2012, affecting all levels of government. Much of it came from billionaires like the Koch brothers and casino-magnate Sheldon Adelson -- seeking fewer regulations, lower taxes, and weaker trade unions.

They didn't entirely succeed but the billionaires established a beachhead for the midterm elections of 2014 and beyond.

Yet where is the morality brigade when it comes to these moves to take over our democracy?

Among the worst violators of public morality have been executives and traders on Wall Street.

Last week, JPMorgan Chase, the nation's biggest bank, was found to have misled its shareholders and the public about its $6 billion "London Whale" losses in 2012.

This is the same JPMorgan that's lead the charge against the Dodd-Frank Act, designed to protect the public from another Wall Street meltdown and taxpayer-funded bailout.

Lobbyists for the giant banks have been systematically taking the teeth out of Dodd-Frank, leaving nothing but the gums.

The so-called "Volcker Rule," intended to prevent the banks from making risky bets with federally-insured commercial deposits -- itself a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act -- still hasn't seen the light of day.

Last week, Republicans and Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee passed bills to weaken Dodd-Frank -- expanding exemptions and allowing banks that do their derivative trading in other countries (i.e., JPMorgan) to avoid the new rules altogether.

Meanwhile, House Republicans voted to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act in its entirety, as part of their budget plan.

And still no major Wall Street executives have been held accountable for the wild betting that led to the near meltdown in 2008. Attorney General Eric Holder says the big banks are too big to prosecute.

Why doesn't the morality brigade complain about the rampant greed on the Street that's already brought the economy to its knees, wiping out the savings of millions of Americans and subjecting countless others to joblessness and insecurity -- and seems set on doing it again?

What people do in their bedrooms shouldn't be the public's business. Women should have rights over their own bodies. Same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

But what powerful people do in their boardrooms is the public's business. Our democracy needs to be protected from the depredations of big money. Our economy needs to be guarded against the excesses of too-big-to-fail banks.

+ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-morality-brigade_b_2951265.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

http://youtu.be/Q-Ls31RiooQ

09 March 2013

TO BIG TO JAIL? Eric Holder's stunning admission & Attorney general says big banks’ size may inhibit prosecution 8&6MAR13

LET me try to get away with the fraud the wall street bank-financial cabal committed, bring us the "great" recession or laundering drug or terrorism money and I'd be someone's bitch in jail by now. And I'm not talking about one of the country club prisons, I'm talking the prisons you see on Lockup. US AG Eric Holder's testimony shows he is the mega banks eunuch, doing their bidding, protecting their interest, protecting the criminals in the ceo suites and boardrooms. Please sign the petition from Campaign for a Fair Settlement calling on Pres Obama and AG Holder to end the administration's policy of To Big To Jail and to investigate and bring charges against those of the financial industry who broke the law and almost destroyed our economy. The article on Holder's statement is from the Washington Post....

Below is an email from Brian Kettenring of Campaign for a Fair Settlement, who created a petition on SignOn.org, the nonprofit site that allows anyone to start their own online petition. If you have concerns or feedback about this petition, click here.

President Obama: End the policy of too big to jail.

Sign the petition

The most amazing thing just happened.

The Obama Administration finally admitted the truth of what we've been saying all along: giant Wall Street banks have become too big to prosecute. In testimony on Wed, March 6, US Attorney General Eric Holder—the nation's top cop—said,

"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them ... I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large."¹

Exactly.

Tell President Obama to end the Administration's policy of treating Wall Street banks as too big to fail and too big to jail by taking immediate steps to break up the big banks and prosecute the criminals who used them to destroy our economy.

Now we understand why the Obama Administration has failed to bring criminal charges against a single major Wall Street bank or executive for systemic fraud that brought down our economy.When the Attorney General openly admits that the most powerful members of society won't be prosecuted for even the most egregious of crimes, we are in deep trouble as a nation.

Remember that we gave Wall Street bankers $700 billion in TARP bailouts and $2.5 trillion in investments, loans, and guarantees to shore up their business (and outrageous bonuses)² on the theory that letting them collapse would create a generation-long Depression. In return it seems fair to demand accountability for the actions that brought us to that point. Now it turns out the Administration never had any intention of seeking accountability.

Stand up and add your voice in demanding the Administration end the policy of "too big to fail/jail".

That's why we're demanding an immediate end to this unconscionable policy that puts the wishes of Wall Street 1%ers above the well-being of working families, most especially those hardest hit by the criminal actions of these very same people.

The Campaign for a Fair Settlement has pushing hard during the first hundred days of President Obama's second term for real accountability for the Wall Street criminals who stole our homes, savings, and pensions and destroyed our economy. We think this is the only way he'll secure his legacy as a champion of justice for the millions of homeowners, taxpayers and retirees harmed by Wall Street criminals. This revelation makes this all the more urgent.

Stand up and demand President Obama take immediate steps to break up the big banks and prosecute the criminals who used them to destroy our economy.

It's break up time. Now or never.

In solidarity,

Brian Kettenring
Executive Director—Action for the Common Good, and
Campaign Director—Campaign for a Fair Settlement

¹ http://www.moveon.org/r?r=287895&id=63933-17549061-%3D%3DH0p9x&t=8

²http://www.moveon.org/r?r=287896&id=63933-17549061-%3D%3DH0p9x&t=9

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Attorney general says big banks’ size may inhibit prosecution

By Danielle Douglas

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told lawmakers that some financial institutions have become “so large” that it makes it “difficult for us to prosecute them.”

Holder’s admission bolsters criticisms that federal prosecutors are deeming some banks “too big to jail,” a charge that lawmakers and consumer advocates have routinely made in the wake of recent bank settlements. Although the government has issued record multimillion-dollar fines in these cases, critics say without criminal charges, the agreements amount to a slap on the wrist.

“Stunning” is how Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) described Holder’s remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “After hearing today’s testimony, big bankers know that if they commit financial crimes, they can expect a passive response from the Justice Department.”

Holder’s remarks came during an exchange with Grassley, who questioned why Justice failed to bring criminal charges against HSBC and its employees for allegedly laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.

The British bank agreed to pay $1.9 billion in December to settle charges raised in a report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The 340-page report catalogued years of woefully inadequate monitoring practices at HSBC’s affiliate in Mexico, even instances of affiliates circumventing government safeguards meant to block funding for terrorists.

The mounting evidence led some lawmakers to assume criminal charges would be filed, but none were.

Although Holder declined to comment specifically on the HSBC case, he said the implications of prosecuting megabanks have given Justice pause.

“It does become difficult for us to prosecute when we are hit with indications that if we do . . . bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” he said. “It has an inhibiting influence, impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate.”

Holder added that the geopolitical implications are a function of the fact that some institutions have become too large. He challenged Congress to do more to address the unwieldy size of financial institutions.

That challenge takes direct aim at whether Congress did enough to prevent future bailouts of megabanks that run into trouble, said Mark Calabria, director of financial-regulation studies at the Cato Institute.

“How can that not be an admission by DOJ that they believe Dodd-Frank doesn’t end ‘too big to fail’?” he said. Still, “it isn’t clear to me why ‘too big to jail’ would stop DOJ from going after individual wrongdoers.”

To be sure, Holder defended the financial cases brought by his agency. Justice did bring criminal charges against two UBS traders for rigging benchmark interest rates, and got guilty pleas from subsidiaries of the Swiss bank as well as the Royal Bank of Scotland.

“These are not always easy cases to make,” Holder said. “When you look at these cases, you see that things were done ‘wrong’; then the question is whether or not they were illegal. In some instances that has not been a satisfying answer to people, but we have been as aggressive as we could have been.”

It’s not enough, say lawmakers.

“You expect trouble bringing a criminal to justice when he flees to a hostile foreign country, but it’s shocking that the Justice Department cannot pursue criminal activity when somebody simply walks through the doors of a Wall Street megabank,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/holder-concerned-megabanks-too-big-to-jail/2013/03/06/6fa2b07a-869e-11e2-999e-5f8e0410cb9d_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

01 February 2013

43 GOP Senators Threaten Obstruction Unless Consumer Protection Bureau Is Weakened 1FEB13

BOWING to the demands of the wall street bank-financial cabal, 43 gop / tea-bagger in the US Senate have openly declared their intention to oppose and block Pres Obama's nominee to head the CFPB unless the agency is weakened to the point it will not be able to fulfill it's mandate under Dodd-Frank. This is nothing more that open class warfare being waged by the repiglicans and tea-baggers against the American people to protect the financial interest of the same people who brought us the recession we are still struggling to get out of. It is a blatant acknowledgement of these 43 Senators that they have been bought and paid for by the criminal financiers who almost destroyed our economy in a vain attempt to satisfy their obscene greed. From ThinkProgress....

By Pat Garofalo

When the Dodd-Frank financial reform law first passed, Senate Republicans refused to confirm a director for the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They promised to block any nominee — regardless of that nominee’s qualifications for the job — unless the Bureau was weakened and made subservient to the same bank regulators who failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis.

President Obama was thus forced to recess appoint Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the Bureau’s first director. Now that Obama has renewed Cordray’s nomination, the Senate GOP is again promising to block any nominee unless the Bureau is watered down:

In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog until the bureau underwent significant reform. Lawmakers signing on to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

“The CFPB as created by the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank Act is one of the least accountable in Washington,” said McConnell. “Today’s letter reaffirms a commitment by 43 Senators to fix the poorly thought structure of this agency that has unprecedented reach and control over individual consumer decisions — but an unprecedented lack of oversight and accountability.” [...]

In particular, Republicans want to see the top of the bureau changed so it is run by a bipartisan, five-member commission, as opposed to a lone director.

They also want to see the bureau’s funding fall under the control of congressional appropriators — it currently is funded via a revenue stream directly from the Federal Reserve.

Republicans want to implement a commission (instead of a lone director) and subject the CFPB to the appropriations process in order to stuff it full of appointees with no interest in regulating and starve it of funds. The other financial system regulators that have to go before Congress for their funds already don’t have the resources to implement Dodd-Frank, thanks the House GOP, leaving large swathes of it unfinished. There are also a host of other reasons that the CFPB needs to be both independently funded and have a strong, independent director.

The CFPB has done important work on behalf of consumers, winning wide praise from consumer advocates and the financial industry. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have made it abundantly clear that they believe that blocking any and all nominees is an acceptable strategy.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/01/1530481/gop-senators-pledge-block-consumer-bureau/?mobile=nc

11 October 2012

Memo to Joe, Re: Debate 10OKT12

THIS is what we expect from VP Joe Biden, good advise from Robert Reich. Godspeed Joe!

TO: VPOTUS
FROM: Robert Reich
RE: Debate
Beware: Paul Ryan will appear affable. He's less polished and aggressive than Romney, even soft-spoken. And he acts as if he's saying reasonable things.
But under the surface he's a right-wing zealot. And nothing he says or believes is reasonable -- neither logical nor reflecting the values of the great majority of Americans.
Your job is to smoke Ryan out, exposing his fanaticism. The best way to do this is to force him to take responsibility for the regressive budget he created as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Ryan won't be able to pull a Romney -- pretending he's a moderate -- because the Ryan budget is out there, with specific numbers.
It's an astounding document that Romney fully supports. And it fills in the details Romney has left out of his proposals. Mitt Romney is a robot who will say and do whatever he's programmed to do. Ryan is the robot's brain. The robot has no heart. It's your job to enable America to see this.
I suggest you hold up a copy of the Ryan budget in front of the cameras. You might even read selected passages.
Emphasize these points: Ryan's budget turns Medicare into vouchers. It includes the same $716 billion of savings Romney last week accused the President of cutting out of Medicare -- but instead of getting it from providers he gets it from the elderly.
It turns Medicaid over to cash-starved states, with even less federal contribution. This will hurt the poor as well as middle-class elderly in nursing homes.
Over 60 percent of its savings come out of programs for lower-income Americans -- like Pell grants and food stamps.
Yet it gives huge tax cuts to the top 1 percent -- some $4.7 trillion over the next decade. (This is the same top 1 percent, you might add, who have reaped 93 percent of the gains from the recovery, whose stock portfolios have regained everything they lost and more, and who are now taking home a larger share of total income than at any time in the last eighty years and paying the lowest taxes than at any time since before World War II.)
As a result it doesn't reduce the federal debt at all. In fact, it worsens it.
On top of all this, Ryan is on record -- as is Romney -- for wanting to repeal both ObamaCare (taking coverage away from 30 million Americans) and the Dodd-Frank law (thereby giving cover to Wall Street).
Your challenge will be get this across firmly and clearly, with an appropriate degree of indignation -- on a medium that rewards style over substance, glibness over detail, and optimistic happy talk over grim reality.
My suggestion: Be cheerfully aggressive. Take Ryan on directly and sharply but do so with a smile. Force him to take responsibility for the regressiveness of his budget and the radicalism of his ideology.
Prepare your closing carefully (unlike the President seemed to have done last week), and tell America the unvarnished truth: Romney and Ryan plan to do a reverse Robin Hood at a time in our nation's history when the rich have never had it so good while the rest haven't been as economically insecure since the Great Depression.
Their agenda is all the more remarkable in that we have a growing budget deficit to deal with, along soaring healthcare costs and aging boomers without enough to retire on because their net worth went down the drain with their homes.
The fundamental question is whether we're still all in it together -- whether as American citizens we continue to have obligations to one another to assure equal opportunity and help for those who need it -- or we're on our own, without a common bond or a common good. Romney and Ryan represent the latter view, a view utterly at odds with what we have accomplished as a nation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/biden-ryan-vp-debate_b_1955964.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

04 October 2012

The First Presidential Debate & Five Takeaways From The First Presidential Debate 4OKT12

I was disappointed in Pres Obama's debate performance last night, I thought he allowed mitt robme romney to get away with the lies and deceptions he has been repeating while campaigning and failed to challenge him directly on his economic agenda, bain capital and outsourcing jobs to the prc china. Pres Obama can not repeat last night's performance in the remaining two debates if he wants to win this election. Here are two sane, sobering, realistic analysis of the debate from Robert Reich on HuffPost and NPR, and for commentary on what wasn't covered in the the debate see my post Why Obama Didn't Mention the 47 Percent Video & Who Didn’t Win the Presidential Debate? 4OKT12
.....
In Wednesday night's debate, Romney won on style while Obama won on substance. Romney sounded as if he had conviction, which means he's either convinced himself that the lies he tells are true or he's a fabulous actor.
But what struck me most was how much Obama allowed Romney to get away with: Five times Romney accused Obama of raiding Medicare of $716 billion, which is a complete fabrication. Obama never mentioned the regressiveness of Romney's budget plan -- awarding the rich and hurting the middle class and the poor. He never mentioned Bain Capital, or Romney's 47 percent talk, or Romney's "carried-interest" tax loophole. Obama allowed Romney to talk about replacing Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act without demanding that Romney be specific about what he'd replace and why. And so on.
I've been worried about Obama's poor debate performance for some time now. He was terrible in the 2008 primary debates, for example. Expectations are always high -- he's known as an eloquent orator. But when he has to think on his feet and punch back, he's not nearly as confident or assured as he is when he is giving a speech or explaining a large problem and its solution. He is an educator, not a pugilist, and this puts him at a disadvantage in any debate.
Romney stayed on script. If you look at a transcript of his remarks you'll see that he repeated the same lines almost word for word in different contexts. He has memorized a bunch of lines, and practiced delivering them. The overall effect is to make him seem assured and even passionate about his position. He said over and over that he cares about jobs, about small businesses, and ordinary Americans. But his policies and his record at Bain tell a very different story.
The question now is whether Team Obama understands that our president must be more aggressive and commanding in the next two debates -- and be unafraid to respectfully pin Romney to the floor.

Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-first-presidential-de_1_b_1938720.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Five Takeaways From The First Presidential Debate

by Alan Greenblatt

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Obama talk after the first presidential debate at the University of Denver on Wednesday.

Enlarge Charlie Neibergall/AP Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Obama talk after the first presidential debate at the University of Denver on Wednesday.

Mitt Romney may have given his campaign something of a reset with his performance in the first debate against President Obama.
He appeared more comfortable on stage than the incumbent, and was able at least to lay the groundwork for a message of bipartisanship that could appeal to remaining undecided voters.
Of course, it's not clear yet whether the debate will create enough momentum to offer Romney an advantage heading into the next debate, let alone through Election Day. Perhaps some of the inevitable post-debate fact checking will challenge Romney's credence on certain points.
But it's notable that Obama failed to do much of that himself, launching far fewer attacks during the debate than his aggressive campaign advertising strategy suggested he might.
Here's a quick review of five takeaways from the first debate in Denver:
Obama Looked Tired And Sounded Defensive
Obama's advisers noted before the debate that the president was having a hard time finding much unbroken debate practice time, and much of what he did have was devoted to boiling down his positions to fit the time limits. All of this showed.
Romney looked straight at his opponent, often wearing a confident Mona Lisa grin. Obama looked down at his notes or over at the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, only occasionally looking directly into the camera.
Aside from his body language, some of Obama's answers came across as wonky. Both men offered laundry lists of their ideas, but Obama failed to craft a compelling case for his own record or second-term agenda, instead repeating complaints that he had inherited a mess.
What's more, he failed to go after Romney aggressively. There was no mention of Bain Capital or Romney's dismissive videotaped comments about the "47 percent" of Americans who are dependent on government.
Only in the last 20 minutes of the 90-minute debate did Obama land much of a blow, complaining that Romney was keeping the specifics about his tax plans and his approaches to health care and banking regulation too much a secret.
Romney Grasped The Mantle Of Bipartisanship
Romney said he didn't want to lay out anything other than broad principles during the campaign, because he found out as Massachusetts governor that a "my way or the highway" approach doesn't win over legislators.
Even before Lehrer had made "partisan gridlock" the subject of his final question, Romney stressed the importance of bipartisanship. He said that something as important as the federal health care law should have been passed on a bipartisan basis (it received essentially no GOP support) and paid homage to the working relationship of Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill in the 1980s.
"I had the great experience — it didn't seem like it at the time — of being elected in a state where my legislature was 87 percent Democrat," Romney said, "and that meant I figured out from day one I had to get along and I had to work across the aisle to get anything done."
Given consistent Republican opposition to Obama in Congress — some have called it obstructionism — no doubt Democrats will question the sincerity of Romney's embrace of bipartisanship. But it's a message that could be welcomed by voters, particularly centrist independents.
You're A Drinking Game Winner If You're Middle Class
Both candidates were at pains to pay tribute to members of the middle class, again and again. Each referred to specific members of the middle class they had met along the campaign trail, who had gone back to school or were now out of work. Each insisted his plan would do more to help such people out and create middle-class jobs.
Obama argued that Romney's plans to cut taxes and increase military spending would necessarily cause the deficit to balloon or "burden" the middle class, because there would not be sufficient savings available to offset their cost by ending deductions or closing loopholes.
Romney insisted that his tax-cut plan would impose no such hardship. "I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families," he said.
When Candidates Have The Microphone, They'll Keep Talking
Romney sought to refute a study Obama had cited to show his tax package would hurt the middle class was wrong: "There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it's completely wrong," Romney said.
Many of the candidate's responses were like that: Sometimes arcane, often straying from the original question that Lehrer had asked. At one point, Romney used an education question to repeat a charge that Obama had squandered billions on unsuccessful green-energy programs.
Nearly all politicians use debate questions merely as jumping-off points, concerning themselves with highlighting policies they deem most important. Both men did that Wednesday, ignoring Lehrer's frequent invitations to confront or question their opponent directly, in favor of rattling off other arguments of their own.
Partly as a result, the debate's intended format, of 15-minute segments each covering six different topics, was broken almost immediately, leaving only three minutes for the final segment.
Lehrer struggled unsuccessfully to cut off the two candidates and redirect them to the supposed topic at hand. A stammering Twitter handle called @SilentJimLehrer went up during the debate, quickly attracting thousands of followers.
Democrats Will Want To Retool For Future Debates
For all his oratorical gifts, Obama has sometimes struggled in debates. He was often out-mastered during the long series of debates during the Democratic primary season in 2008 and hasn't had much practice since then — except for his debates against Sen. John McCain in 2008.
Republicans, meanwhile, have been nearly salivating for months at the prospect of the vice presidential debate, which takes place on Oct. 11. They believe Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has the intellectual and rhetorical firepower to wipe the floor with Vice President Joe Biden.
That may prove to be wishful thinking. Ryan has put many of his own ideas on ice while serving as the loyal No. 2, while Biden is deeply versed in both domestic and foreign policy.
But Obama's lackluster performance — coupled with Biden's remark Tuesday that "the middle class ...has been buried the last four years" — will leave GOP partisans giddy with anticipation of next Thursday's debate.

Election 2012

NORTON META TAG

01 January 2016