According to Bloomberg News, the financial industry's success "demonstrates that four years after Wall Street helped cause the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and prompted a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, its lobby is regaining its power to blunt or deflect efforts to rein in the banks."
Those are discouraging words. So to find out more about what's going on, I thought, why not go right to the source, the man after whom the Volcker rule was named. Educated at Princeton, Harvard and the London School of Economics, Paul Volcker has been a formidable figure in government for more than 30 years, serving two terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987.
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The insurance industry and financial (banking) industry also need to be kept separate so they can be a check & balance on each other--even for hedge funds.
If Volker headed Obama "advisory board", he mega failed by letting the second bailout occur w/o getting Glass Steagall re-enacted.
I agree w/prior posts that taxpayers need to STOP insuring the private for mega-profit financial industry. To do this:
We need to diversify the USPO -- put an ATM in every one that survives the 2012 closures and make it a branch of the United States Treasury Bank--one account per citizen, cash and debt card transactions in addition to current money order and US savings bonds or treasurary instruments. No loans. Nominal fees aimed at "breaking even" rather than profit.
We need congress to tell BANKS TO BIG TO FAIL, "No regulation no FDIC"!
Let depositors then chose where to put their money!
Why are the American People on the Hook if Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, or Spain go bankrupt?
The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in direct response to the Great Depression and helped to stabilize and rebuild the nation's economy. It expanded the regulatory powers of the Federal Reserve, prohibited banks from trading in corporate securities and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Read more: The History of Bank Deregulation | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5413083_history-bank-deregulation.html#ixzz1rg12N15L
. . has been the Dumbing-Down of the Analysis and Successful Misdirection of our attention away from the REAL Culprits
1) Villainizing of BANKS; Traditional Banks had relatively little to do with the Meltdown. The banks where most people deposit their paychecks and have Debit-Cards, made some stupid choices to be sure- but they were minor players.
INVESTMENT BANKS who knowingly put together all those fraudulent Mortgage-Backed-Securities (MBS) WERE key players. They knew full well, that those securities were not of the Highest-Investment-Grade (AAA), which is why they took out all those Credit-Default-Swaps (CDS) to cover them, when, not if, they blew up.
2) NUMBER ONE CULPRIT= Credit-Rating-Agencies, who, FOR MONEY, issued fraudulent ratings for securities containing Subprime-Loans.
Maybe you could make a case that they should have been rated B, BB, BBB, or even A= but there is no rational justification why they should have honestly been given the Highest Investment Grade Rating.
AS LONG AS CreditRatingAgencies rely on the firms issuing the securities for their income,
. . there will ALWAYS BE A CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST, and now days there is no other model available.
These agencies need to be sued into bankruptcy and out of existence.
. . Without their malfeasence, this entire Bubble/Meltdown WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE
3) MERS, destroying our RealEstate-Recording Systems SEE wiki, AND
http://www.zipz-services.com/public/MERS_System/
Frank-Dodd and the Volcker rule make 100% common sense. Yet the media insist it doesn't. Why is that?
I don't know what MEDIA you are referring to.
Most so-called MEDIA doesn't ever address Sarbanes-Oxley, Frank-Dodd, or the Volcker-Rule
. . SIMPLY BECAUSE, most media consumers don't know, or really even care about these topics anymore than the intricacies of the Grand-Unified-Theory.
Wrong. First there is nothing intricate about "investment" banks insisting on having Federal Insurance to bail them out and also wanting to do what ever they want no matter how reckless.
As far as the media. The only media coverage regarding Frank-Dodd,Volcker...has been negative and full of lies.
That's the media will are stuck with. That is the media the Republicans own. That is the media the Republicans continue to consolidate.
The "liberal" media is a fantasy a lie.