Financial Reform In Five Steps: Reid Cramer

Mother Jones:

The big banks and their lobbyists are vigorously resisting a rewrite of their operating rules and working hard to insert loopholes and exclusions that would gut the legislation. Obama can prevent that from happening by spelling out the benchmarks the legislators must meet to avoid his veto pen. The details of financial reform can be complicated. But it's not hard to come up with the must-have provisions. Here are five that the White House should insist upon to make sure we get financial reform that works, not just window dressing.

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[armchairfirebrand]

08:09 PM on 03/05/2010

No issue is more critical to ensuring our nation’s long-term economic health than addressing America’s dysfunctional financial regulatory system. Unfortunately, like so much legislation lately, the Obama administration’s economic reform agenda has fallen victim to prolonged partisan gridlock in the Senate.

As a compromise, Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) suggested burying the agency within the existing framework of the Federal Reserve.

However, even this major concession isn’t enough to satisfy Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). The senior senator from Alabama’s stubborn refusal to adopt common sense consumer protections provides further evidence of the Republican Party’s prime directive: protecting the interests of large banks, corporations and the rich at the everyday American’s expense.

Passing a financial regulatory reform bill that includes both the Volcker Rule and an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency is essential to preserving our nation’s economic stability.

The statements of a former Federal Reserve chairmen, Five former Treasury secretaries, a Wall Street CEO, at least one U.S. Senator and a Nobel prize winning economist all attest to this. Richard Shelby and his fellow Republicans owe the American people an explanation as to why they obtusely refuse to accept these crucial reforms.

Read more @ http://armchairfirebrand.wordpress.com/

[PhilipTaylor]

01:35 AM on 03/04/2010

IT IS TIME TO STOP PRETENDING THAT WE HAVE A HONEST SYSTEM!

Our nation is staring at its' DOOM!

This is Financial Warfare against the US with a Financiers' coup de tat Supported by the FED!

We can NOT maintain the FINANCIAL ARISTOCRACY’S FED DEBT-BASED SYSTEM!

We are in an Irreversible, Accelerating, Collapsing Operation with Bailout $23+Trillions intensifying the Collapse.

Audit the FED and put it into Bankruptcy Protection! Recover the bailout $Trillions, and Bankrupt Banks that qualify join the US National Bank under Glass-Steagall standards.

Assert National Authority in US to issue US Credits and a Credit currency into the REAL Economy to MOP and SOP UP the Massive DEBTS that the FED Created over the last almost 100 years!

This will and other actions can MASSIVELY enhance our Standard of Living by job creation and infrastructure projects.

The World is depending on the US Political Process to lead and cooperate with other nations in reorienting the Financial/Economic Systems to WORK for ALL People! NOT just those in the Financial Aristocracy who are trying to USE BUBBLES to POP and the MONEY goes to the WEASELS!

[Billl]

10:25 PM on 03/03/2010

Eliot Spitzer should be put in charge of a federal squad of Untouchables to perform hard nosed audits and investigations of Wall Street and Washington which will ascertain what roll criminal activity has had in the destructive behavior which has decimated individual wealth, political fairness, and the United States Treasury.

Legislation should include an Elizabeth Warren version of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency for protecting consumers, reinstating Glass-Steagle which successfully protected banks and their customers for fifty years before its repeal in 1999 would break up banks, repealing Grahm-Leach-Bliley to eliminate the unbridled use of financial schemes of mass destruction, repealing the unlimited Christmas guarantees given to Fannie and Freddie, enacting the pending legislation to audit the Fed, and make AIG’s records available for public review.

A quick purge and giant house cleaning of all of the government regulations from top to bottom, White House to village court houses, which would find and remove all regulations and policies which impede efficiencies, cost containment's, fairness and open competition would do wonders for restoring our economey.

[ClarcKing]

06:37 PM on 03/03/2010

Mr. Cramer's suggestions are a start; However, the nation is staring at its' doom. If the political leadership, the citizenry, do not or can not perceive financial warfare, however operated, conducted against the United States, there can be no solution. A financiers' coup de tat is enabled and supported by the Fed, to maintain the international monetary financier debt based market system that is now, since at least 2007, in an irreversible, accelerating, collapsing operation. Bailout trillions have only intensified the collapse.

Statecraft demands the termination of the monetary system: put the Fed into bankruptcy protection, recover the bailout trillions, banks that qualify will join the U.S. National Bank under Glass-Steagall standards. Assert the national authority in the U.S. Government and create the long-term debt capital to re-finance industry. Counter the Market forces that are expanding the useless populous. Credits and currency will be issued into the population's physical economy with the executive of creating the necessary facilities that enhance our standard of living. The attendant job mobilization and infrastructure projects, that put people to work, will activate actual economic recovery.

The world is depending on the political process in the United States; must lead and cooperate with other nations to reorganize the financial / economic system. Rational, courageous and powerful measures must counterattack the collapsing operation of the international monetary financier system.

[blueskybigstar]

06:16 PM on 03/03/2010

Great article.

[nelly55]

05:52 PM on 03/03/2010

Articles like this is why I have MoJo delivered to my house.

[Bloggerrogr]

05:40 PM on 03/03/2010

The last sentence of Reid Cramer's excellent piece boils it all down nicely, " And here’s a final tip that will tell you whether a final bill contains the right tools to produce real reform: The big bankers won’t sign on."

Proof positive that the banksta's actually run Congress. Everything else is either window dressing or smoke and mirrors.

FWIW

[Y3rMawm]

03:47 PM on 03/03/2010

Too much reliance on government regulators who are bought and paid for by the industries they are suppose to regulate, and created the TBTF's in the first place. More regulation is pressing the pedal to the floor on the path to monopoly.

Who will watch these new regulators? When it fails, we will just add another layer of bureaucracy on top of the bureaucracy, to watch the bureaucracy. Who then watches the double secret bureaucracy?

Eventually it will all fall under national security, and rolled into Dept of Homeland Stupidity, just as FEMA was. Rumblings of this are already evident with Billary's recent comments about deficits being a National Security issue.

[PartyPartyParty]

01:06 PM on 03/03/2010

A good start.

But instead of regulating executive pay, why not just return income tax levels to where they were in 1955 (49% for $2 million and over, for example) and tax ALL pay, including stock options?

[oscar420]

01:58 PM on 03/03/2010

The only problem with that is it would be fixed up with so many loopholes the amount of taxes paid would be the same we have now. The same thing happened in the 50's.

[davidwayneosedach]

12:37 PM on 03/03/2010

Good article - Mother Jones!

[DebtNavigation]

11:24 AM on 03/03/2010

The American people can reform the big banks by depriving them of money.

In Mexico in the mid-'90s Wall Street engineered a currency coup that tripled the debt owed by small businesses and family farms and also allowed for them to be massively ratejacked on top of it. Mexicans consequently formed the "el Barzon" movement and pushed back Wall Street and deposed their ruling party of 60+ years. In this country YouTube phenom Ann Minch has already declared the debtors' revolt and begun going after them http://www.revoltstartsnow.com

If you've been pushed under, you can read my book for free: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25443175/Debt-Hope-Down-and-Dirty-Survival-Strategies-Evaluation-Version-Complete

[booki]

01:06 PM on 03/03/2010

what about "too big to fail?"
when you have
bernanke, geithner and summers w/the capibility of pulling the same strings..that were pulled., pushed ..
before.

if the big banks lose..they will be there , w/tax payer money.....to bail out again.

as an aside, i just heard ..RE: the Chilean Earthquake: an estimate to restore will be approx 30 Billion dollars.............
i am saying to myself, "thats nothing"..........after all the loot we have given to the banks.
sad

[DebtNavigation]

01:47 PM on 03/03/2010

TBTF can't possibly stand up against MCSD (massive coordinated strategic default). Although democracy is more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, when the sheep way outnumber the wolves, the Congress won't dare bail them out again.

[vfx]

11:23 AM on 03/03/2010

Huff Po or Mother Jones need to write about this! Talk about rewriting rules.

Video
http://www.thinkbigworksmall.com/mypage/archive/1/29027

Original blog
http://activerain.com/blogsview/1243528/is-the-fdic-killing-short-sales-

snip* "Next, in order to "sweeten the pot", the FDIC stepped in and guaranteed the following: For any residential mortgages where OneWest experiences a loss, the FDIC will step in and cover anywhere from 80%-95% of the loss. The loss is calculated using the ORIGINAL LOAN BALANCE, not the amount that OneWest paid for the loan. "