There needs to be a clear message coming from the public regarding exactly which changes are being sought. Perhaps there are too many views for everyone to agree, but from what the New York Times is reporting, it appears that there just isn't enough understanding of the regulatory hairball that governs our nation's financial system in order to untangle the mess -- which is hardly the public's fault. Here's my own view on what we should be demanding:
- Reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. This law kept retail banks separate from investment banks from the Great Depression until 1999, when Larry Summers thought it was no longer necessary. Citigroup in particular benefited from the repeal in the short term, but in the long term it allowed banks to take on insane amounts of risk, which eventually led to the 2008 financial crisis.
- Federal preemption of state money transmission laws. Money transmitters, such as PayPal (and FaceCash, which my company operates), are the best hope consumers have for an alternative to traditional banking services. With banks instituting fees left and right for debit card use, checking accounts, ATMs, and other supposed benefits, one would think that an entire industry of money transmitters would be popping up in order to take advantage of consumer anger. That's not happening because the financial lobby has made money transmission illegal in most states without licenses that come at exorbitant expense. Right now, every state has a different law -- just yesterday, the New York Department of Banking changed its interpretation of New York law to make it harder for money transmitters to compete with banks in the State of New York. The current system is insane, hurts consumers, and should be centralized at the U.S. Treasury (via FinCEN), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or Federal Reserve. In order for this to happen, Congress needs to act.
- Criminal investigations of government and banking officials. There's a long list of bank CEOs who aren't in jail but should be. There's a similarly long list of government officials who paved the way for them but never got caught. Right now more entrepreneurs are being threatened with jail time for violating money transmission laws than former bank CEOs.
- Elimination of Wall Street bonuses. For a while the investment banks decided that it would be bad PR to keep on giving away six-figure bonuses to traders--"a while" meaning a few months. Wall Street bonus culture is toxic and needs to be fixed.
- New taxes and SEC requirements for extremely high (greater than 500,000) levels of executive compensation. The last CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a publicly-traded corporation, walked away with more than7 million as part of his golden parachute after only 11 months on the job. During that time he made a series of catastrophically bad decisions that hurt the company's brand, employees, and stock price. Yet this is hardly an exception; criminal levels of compensation are the norm among CEOs of large companies, and Board of Directors rarely if ever account for the reasoning behind fat paychecks. At least embarrass them a little.
- New semantic rules. How exactly is a "savings" account going to help you save any money with an interest rate of 0.05%? With1,000.00 in deposits, you might earn two quarters per year. It should not be legal to call such an account a savings account, especially when fees are attached.
- Required disclosure for credit default swaps and other unregulated securities. Though it might in rare cases be necessary for some transactions to remain confidential for a time, there need to be records. Half of the battle in the mortgage mess is figuring out who owns what. We live in an age where two-terabyte hard drives cost100. It's ridiculous that we don't know this information.
- One banking regulator. Your bank might be regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (http://www.occ.treas.gov). Or the FDIC (http://www.fdic.gov). Or the Federal Reserve Bank (http://www.federalreserve.gov). Or the California Department of Financial Institutions (http://www.dfi.ca.gov), if you live in California. It gets complicated quickly. Complexity is bad when you are trying to prevent fraud.
- Simpler taxes now. Everyone is always arguing about how high tax rates should be, but have you bothered to look at the forms? If the Secretary of the Treasury (who oversees the IRS, among other divisions) can't figure out how to do his own taxes, then we shouldn't have to either. It should not require a CPA or any other degree to figure out how much to pay the government.
This is just a start. The financial system is complex and even the most knowledgeable experts only understand a fraction of what is going on at any given point in time. But it's better than nothing.
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What would we do with people like Mitch McConnell? Isn't he a foreign agent?
At some point, American progressives and those occupying Wall Street are going to wake up and recognize there is only one solution NEEDed right now that can solve the problems of income inequality and debt peonage.
That one thing is already available as a solution.
It is all spelled out.
It is all done in black-and-white for you to read right here.
http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NEED_Act_FINAL_112th.pdf
It has been entered into the Congressional Legislative hopper by Congressman Dennis Kucinich as The National Emergency Employment Defense(NEED) Act of 2011.
Remember this, please.
""2990, or we do it all again, grandkids.""
H.R. 2990 is the most progressive and most economically revolutionary piece of legislation proposed in this country for a hundred years.
Maybe two.
A public money system.
End the private Fed through nationalization - cause its OUR money system.
End debt-based fractional-reserve banking.
Issue the currency without issuing debt.
For the Money System Common.
With corporate influence into government you receive faceless unaccountable decision making. Corporatization of healthcare, mortgage lending, and 19th century energy resources take advantage of individuals rather than aid them. The person is buried for profits.
There is nothing more aggravating than having to talk to some third party corporate broker (who only gives you their first name) to determine how much your sickness is going to cost.
There is nothing more disgusting in borrowing money from some abstract corporate bank who then slice and dice your debt and then change the fine print behind your back. There is no one to talk to in the end except an automated phone system.
There is nothing more disturbing than corporations that make billions of dollars who then barely put it back into the environment and whose profits are based on waste. Try rationalizing and breaking down your electric bill.
-XF Pine
http://latestcoolthing.com
a) How would Glass-Steagall have stopped the Housing Crisis and follow-on Financial Crises? Subprime, CDO’s, standalone mortgage houses, etc all existed before the repeal of G-S and would not have slowed the growth of toxic housing debt.
b) ‘Federal preemption of state money transmission laws. Money transmitters, such as PayPal (and FaceCash, which my company operates), are the best hope consumers have for an alternative to traditional banking services.’
Excellent. Good to see a contributor on this site come right out and say that you are a special interest and you want special treatment and then tie it to social protest elsewhere.
c) Since the housing crisis was caused by the Fed and bad government policies, it would be better to just investigate Barney Frank, Greenspan, and Bernanke. The protestors are in the wrong place; they need to be in DC.
The laws made by the Fed were designed to help all people get mortgages, not just the people who banks decided to qualify. It all got out of controll when greedy mortgage lenders and banks began carefully choosing who to place in toxic flexible rate loans and who not to... then inflating those balloon rates to epic proportions. They also inflated the property values to capitalize off of every transaction knowing that the values of the homes were more than the mortgaees could afford. It is the lenders who should have known better. The FEDS did not force them to do that. If they want to blame the "Feds" for that then shame on our government too. Either way thank God for the protesters and journalists like Mr, Greenpan who are asking all the right questions and demanding answers. Why is that such a threat? We should be grateful to them and helping them in any way possible. It is the ONLY way w will get this country back on track.
You state, ‘The laws made by the Fed were designed to help all people get mortgages, not just the people who banks decided to qualify’
With regard to the Fed, I am referring to its monetary policy, not its housing policy. Since the 1990’s the Fed has been keeping credit too cheap and too easy for too long, leading to bubbles, first IT and then Housing, and collapses which have led to unemployment. When you keep credit too cheap, it creates yield chasing and asset bubbles which cause malinvestment and restructure our economy. When these bubbles pop, you end up with structurally unsound economy and mis-skilled labor that needs to be repurposed. This takes time and is painful.
Regarding Housing Policy, why have two standards fro buying houses anyway. Such a system is open to abuse and is the primary reason that our housing markets have collapsed. In Canada, Germany, etc. You have to put a substantial amount down, say 20-30%, in the US we had people putting down 5%. You cannot blame greedy banks without blaming greedy borrowers, they go hand in hand. Borrowers signed documents overstating the value of their homes and their ability to repay mortgages. The important point is that the house ultimately should belong to the bank in the event of default. Fullstop!
Regarding the astro-turf protests, they are simply in the wrong place, arguing for the wrong kind of justice.
Kai
e) Typical. If you do not like what H-P pays its CEO, but the company and pay them what you want. Why do you want to have a say on what shareholders pay the people that work for their company.
f) Your point on ‘savings accounts’ seems misguided.
g) You are solving non-problem on your point about CDS and unregulated securities.
h) Your point on having one regulator makes sense.
i) Totally agree with your point on simpler taxes. I live in Hong Kong now. 15% individual flat tax, 17% corporate tax, and tax forms are two pages, with the first page filled in for you. It takes 5 minutes.
Kai
But it involve criminal investigations of government, military industrial complex and banking
The "Occupy Wall Street" action (and sympathetic actions in other US cities) are organized by AdBusters-- a Canadian anti-consumerist organization and ANONYMOUS, a collective of hacker cyber-terrorists.
Any legitimate grievances regarding economic and social inequality in the United States -- and there are some -- are completely undermined when hijacked by these groups.
If you wish to engage in direct action, start your own instead.
Choose credibility. Don't be duped.
Actually many of the items you mentioned are on the "working list of demands" on https://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-please-help-editadd-so-th/ - This list also starts with reinstating Glass-Steagall.
Many of your other ideas are very good too - why don't you #OccupyWallSt and participate in the direct democracy and make your voice heads? If you can't make it, why not go to OccupyTogether.org and find the next General assembly in your city?
bring the troops home form every military bases around the world, stop bombing libya, End Home land security, Close Guantanamo Bay detention center and all other secret military detention centers, investigate CIA, FBI, ATF, Military industrial complex, new money system, end rendition kidnaping, investigate 911, Investigate CNN MBC FOX, End the war on Drugs, Healthcare as a right, Fire Obama congress and the senate, Start working on a new updated constitution
I am only 1 voice, the 99% have many voices, but I agree your ideas are great. Judging from signs and speeches I’ve seen, many with the Occupation movements would agree that most items on your list are important too. The proposed working list of demands is only what consensus has been reached on so far through an open direct democratic process where all are given a chance to speak.
Do you have more demands? Go OccupyWallSt.org and make them heard! Or go to occupytogher.org and making them heard at the general assembly in your town.
Congress pass HR 1489. This reinstates many provisions of the Glass-Steagall act
Use congressional authority and oversight to ensure appropriate federal agencies fully investigate and prosecute the Wall Street criminals
Congress enact legislation to protect our democracy by reversing the effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision
Re-establish the public airwaves in the U.S. so that political candidates are given equal time for free at reasonable intervals in daily programming during campaign season
Congress pass the Buffett rule on fair taxation so the rich and corporations pay their fair share & close corporate tax loop holes and enact a prohibition on hiding funds off shore
Congress completely revamp the securities and exchange commission
Congress pass specific and effective laws limiting the influence of lobbyists and eliminating the practice of lobbyists writing legislation that ends up on the floor of congress
Congress passing "Revolving Door Legislation" legislation eliminating the ability of former government regulators going to work for corporations that they once regulated.
Eliminate "Personhood" legal status for corporations