So it begins again. More fear of crisis and disillusionment. More preparation by the Obama regime to jam legislation down the throats of the American people. Just how bad is it this time say, compared to Health Care Reform? Worse. This time, the government is acting in direct contravention to the interests of the taxpayer. Course, that’s not surprising since its doubtful many actual taxpayers would actually vote for him again. They DO NOT want another recurrence of the “too big to fail” scenario where government bailed out wall street with $20 trillion of their money.
That is put in place permanently. Like TARP? Then you will love Obama’s financial reform. Wall Street wouldn’t even dare ask for such a thing, but Obama is giving it to them on a silver platter. This is a recurring episode of Gangster Government. The Obama regime will put government in charge of picking the winners and losers. Deciding who is, and who isn’t too big to fail. He will institute a permanent cycle of “moral hazards” where companies who can rely on government cronies to back them up will behave irresponsibly. And seeing as how Wall Street showered twice as much money on the Democrats as the Republicans, when Heavy Breathers and moral idiots start crowing about Fat Cats, just remember who benefits and that Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street.
Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Head Gary Gensler is a Goldman Sachs partner. Rahm Emanuel worked for Goldman Sachs as far back as the Clinton days, pulling in a $3000 retainer while he worked on the 1992 Clinton campaign. Nice way to loophole the fundraising laws, having Wall Street make your payroll. Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithners top deputy on the (say it again!) $20 Trillion TARP bailout. Treasury is being partly managed by Goldman Sachs cronies. Obama’s campaign finance chief and senior adviser Penny Pritzker worked for a subprime specialist that went belly up, and her lawyer is now Obama’s deputy National Security Adviser. He earned $4 million during the meltdown representing, among others, Goldman Sachs. Then there’s Geithner himself, who as head of New York Federal Reserve pushed AIG to cover up sweetheart deals for (say it again) Goldman-Sachs!
“Every day we don’t act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place, with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities,” President Obama says. “And if we don’t change what led to the crisis, we’ll doom ourselves to repeat it.”
He’s right. Which is why this bill should be killed. This is the way it always is with corrupt pols. They talk a big game against the special interests and the social ills. Then you find out they’re cavorting with the very elements they claim to be opposed to. Crime fighter Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who was found to be canoodling with prostitutes, is a case in point.
And don’t believe the SEC fraud case will go anywhere. The government isn’t interested in stemming fraud. It wants to control it. See, the complaint basically says that Goldman Sachs sold a “collateralized debt obligation”, and it was formed with the help of a hedge fund investor named John Paulson. Paulson made about $20 billion betting against the housing market. Wow! Like no one else saw that coming. The thing is, Paulson was not a name when he participated in putting the hedge fund together. So how is it that Democrats think they can go back in time and say “Hey, here’s this billionaire helping put this together and you didn’t mention it!” Not only that, but I’ll bet they won’t spend any time at all looking into George Soros. Soros has called the economic collapse “the culmination of my life’s work“.
The only reform that actually needs to occur is governments role in the economic mess. Certainly both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in it. But you don’t hear any of that reform. That’s why Fannie and Freddie aren’t named anywhere in this financial reform. Politicians and regulators pressed lenders to make shaky loans to people who couldn’t afford them and the word from the Obama regime is “just keeping selling those unsecured mortgages“.
The reeking political opportunism cannot be overlooked. The Democrat National Committee bought Google ads directing web users who typed “Goldman Sachs SEC” to direct them to a fundraising site. Do I believe that the Obama Chicago machine colluded with an “independent” government entity to get a weak charge out just as he was getting ready to push this false reform? You bet. That, of course, is government corruption at its finest. Nothing different about that than telling the FBI to stop investigating something. Just exactly what you’d expect from the Obama regime.
Think I’m being overly dramatic? Know who wants to replace Obama in the United States Senate? A man named Alexi Giannoulias who has mob ties to his family bank. Tony Rezko had an account there. Chicago Mobster John D’Arco Jr is linked to the man. The Speaker of the Illinois House, a Democrat, has refused to endorse this machine crony. But not Obama.
No surprise there, really. Given the regimes behavior thus far. The Dodd bill being discussed in the Senate will continue the status quo of favoritism, corruption and cronyism on Wall Street that gave us the last economic disaster and cost American taxpayers (say it again!) $20 trillion. It will enshrine it. It will put American workers permanently on the hook every time a company with friends in Washington makes a bad bet.
And the Democrats don’t really even try to address the problem. They just say “If you oppose this, you oppose reform.” Then they throw out fig leaves like “Well, we have this $50 billion fund here” that we will use as a backstop against future failing. $50 billion. That won’t stop anything. And they know it. Know what that is? That’s a government slush fund. A payoff to influential pols who will use that money for politically favorited efforts, like shifting money back to ACORN now that the government spigot has been shut off again.
What do we want? More money! When do we want it? Now!
Terry, besides the “knee jerk” reaction to OBAMA (which is a whole separate discussion), what is in the financial reform bill that you are opposed to???
My general understanding is that it will set up a $50 Billion fund from funds collected FROM the BANKS and not the taxpayers. The purpose will be to facilitate the winding down/liquidation of an insolvent institution.
There are certain metrics/benchmarks that will be used in doing a clean winding down of a non-performing institution without using taxpayers funds.
Additional reform is required to include:
1) Regulating derivatives and the CDS (Credit Default Swaps) which apparently are about $600 TRILLION when the total world economy is about $100-200 Trilion (the US Annual Total economy is about $12-14 Trillion).
The CDS industry is a lot about creating very risky paper transactions to earn a commission with no real underlying economic purpose.
2) The other reform that needs to happen is that it needs to include reducing the LEVERAGE (debt to capital) ratio to reduce risk – it used to be like 12-1 before. Meaning that if banks want to engage in risky ventures they need to have a certain level of capital reserves set aside or “skin in the game” to ensure that they engage in true risk management, or in the event of failure that they have funds set aside to reduce or eliminate risk to the taxpayers and prevent future taxpayer funded bailouts.
Francisco Barragan (my opinion only and not those of any group)
Banking has been a government run con game ever since the Fed Reserve system was established in 1913. So until it is repealed we’ll never get anywhere near the “free market” fairy tale that was developed by a 17th century university philosopfer and embraced by conservatives more fervently than any Disney tale. Unfortunately, investment banking has gotten away from the function of allocating capital and now mainly concentrates on trading paper – a pretty useless activity.
I think (guess) that the $50B is going to be used to keep freddie and fannie solvent. There’s more.
The House bill contains an authorization for the Federal Reserve for $4 trillion in “secured loans” to bailout individuals, partnerships or corporations in financial distress. Page 506 of the House passed bill, titled the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act states in part:
The amounts made available under this subsection shall not exceed $4,000,000,000,000.
The Senate bill has the same loan authority with no cap on the amount of funds available to failing businesses.
On page 1302 of the latest draft of Senator Dodd’s bill (a 1336 page bill) the Section titled “Federal Reserve System Provisions” modifies existing Fed “emergency lending authority” to make it easier for the Fed to loan monies directly to troubled financial institutions. This section expands the authority of the Fed to loan out money directly to firms in trouble. Free market capitalism does not include a federal backstop when a company fails. Conservatives and liberals agree that this form of crony capitalism, which looks more like socialism with private gains and taxpayer insured risk, is a terrible economic model.
So now I read that Blagojevich attorneys want to subpoena Obama. Geez…I thought the bush admistration was bad. But the obama white house (and its reaches) is the biggest cluster fK I have ever seen. obama-goldman-sec-rahm-blago-rezko-jarrett-ayres-wright-assorted tax cheats-lobbyist-AF One buzzing NYC-“acted stupidly”-“come up here and say that to my face”….it never ends with this guy.