Nothing better illustrates the core critique of the Occupy Wall Street movement against the financial sector's dominance of our political institutions than the spectacle of high-profile Democrats, like former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, fretting over the "tone" of the Obama campaign's advertisements targeting Mitt Romney's days as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital.
The only political outcome of this internal bickering coming from Democrats who want their party to uncritically service Wall Street's interests is to remind us that the Democrats were equally responsible for setting the stage for the financial meltdown that threw eight million people out of work and continues to degrade the quality of American life.
Most people make no distinction between a "private equity" firm, a big investment bank, or a "financial services" corporation. All they remember is that taxpayers were left holding the bag on an $700 billion "bail out" to shore up Wall Street's biggest banks (and the Federal Reserve opened the cash drawer to the tune of $7 trillion) while the rest of us got unemployment, underwater mortgages, austerity through budget cuts at the state and local level, and a general sense of economic insecurity.
Commentators have presented the thumbnail history of what led to our current economic malaise with dreary repetition: In the late 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration (and a Republican Congress) enthusiastically deregulated the financial sector, gutting the 1933 Glass-Steagall wall of separation between commercial and investment banks and ensuring that "over the counter" derivatives would be regulation-free. Clinton's Treasury Secretaries, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, along with Alan Greenspan, (who Clinton reappointed as Fed chairman), showed zero concern about the potentially disastrous effects of their deregulatory zeal. They had dollar signs in their eyes. To these men, Wall Street's interests always superseded the nation's. They lit a fuse that blew up the economy in 2008, requiring a deeply unpopular taxpayer bailout or else (we were told) we were heading into another Great Depression.
The nation experienced a series of financial crises that would not have been possible had the regulatory laws been left in place: the dot-com bubble; the collapse of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, Global Crossing, and many other corporations that traded derivatives; the mortgage/housing bubble; John Corzine's MF Global; and JP Morgan's credit default swap (CDS) loss, which will be followed by the next crisis, and the next one after that, and the next one after that.
And when President Obama turned to Larry Summers and his apprentice Timothy Geithner and other Wall Street hacks to manage his economic team, it showed that "Hope" and "Change" really meant "Business As Usual."
Understandably, as the 2012 presidential campaign heats up, the Obama people want to tap into the deep contempt held by most Americans toward anything involving Wall Street. They want to highlight the record of the president's Republican opponent who boasts about his business acumen yet was among the most rapacious elements on the Street at the time when he built his vast fortune. Bain Capital is "fair game" we are told.
But Obama's chumminess with people identical to those who ran Bain Capital in its glory days and the pathetic dependence of most Washington Democrats on Wall Street money undermines his populist appeal. It's an uphill climb for Obama to even mildly criticize Mitt Romney for being a vulture capitalist given his lack of accomplishment in holding anyone on Wall Street accountable for the economic carnage they wreaked and for maintaining the bipartisan servitude to the big banks (even when the public was ready to tear them apart).
The whining of Ed Rendell and Cory Booker and others about Obama's campaign ads poor-mouthing Bain is a reminder that through legalized bribery and their control of more money than God, financial kingpins have not only captured the federal regulatory apparatus, but key politicians from both parties.
Immunity for the big banks was the whole point of deregulating financial services in the first place.
JP Morgan Chase's recent $3 to $5 billion loss in credit default swaps shows that the reckless casino gambling using publicly insured money continues unabated. Whatever the Obama campaign says about Romney's time at Bain Capital, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and others like him still hold a "Get-Out-Of-Jail Free" card. When news broke that Dimon's CDS bet went sour, what followed was the age-old pattern white-collar corporate criminals have been using for years:
First, deny there's a problem, and tell the public there's nothing to worry about; it's "a tempest in a teapot," Dimon said.
Second, say you're "investigating" the problem and like everyone else you want to "get to the bottom of it."
Third, blame subordinates, engineer a few high-profile resignations, and throw some expendable people "under the bus."
Fourth, spin it as an "error," or the result of "sloppiness," or even "misjudgment," while admitting no liability and claiming your people had the best of intentions, and no crimes were committed, (i.e. "mistakes were made").
Fifth, use your money, power, and influence over the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, the S.E.C., the Obama administration and the Congress to sweep the whole thing under the rug (while saying you want to "move forward" and "look ahead").
With toothless federal oversight and a long tradition of immunity for rich and powerful people like Jamie Dimon, this predictable pattern is sure to run its course.
Financial shocks today are like streetcars, but with each go-around the giant banks become more consolidated, more concentrated, more powerful, too big to fail, too big to manage -- too big PERIOD. Wall Street money has so corrupted our political system that there can never be even the hint of using existing anti-trust law to break up these behemoths, which can bring down the whole house of cards at any given time if their casino bets go south.
The bailouts were deeply unpopular. Millions of Americans are feeling more insecure about their economic wellbeing and their futures, and it's affecting their political attitudes and their view of the role of government. Wall Street's immunity, as soon as it became clear that the Obama administration was not going to do anything substantial to hold people accountable, spawned an enormous and spontaneous social movement that literally occupied Wall Street and spread like wildfire to cities across America. The evidence is mounting that the 1 percent controls both of our major political parties. And now the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is getting pissy about the "tone" that its standard bearer is showing toward vulture capitalism? It's going to be a long campaign.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JosephPalermo1
Leo Hindery, Jr.: A More Honest Assessment of Private Equity
Robert Reich: Romney's Regressivism
Richard (RJ) Eskow: How to Fix the Fed: Dismiss Dimon, Boot the Bankers, and Can the Corporations
Obama: Romney's Bain Record Is No Distraction : It's All Politics : NPR
Obama: Romney's Bain Record 'Worth Examining' | PBS NewsHour
Obama ad calls Mitt Romney's Bain Capital firm a 'vampire' - The ...
PolitiFact | Fact-checking Obama about Romney and Bain Capital
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
http://www.thenakedemperor.com/oligarch/tim-geithner
For more on corruption, greed in Wall Street, politics and top corporations in the US, go to: www.thenakedemperor.com
Scroll down to Financial Fraud Pending Cases.
If you check pending Financial Fraud Cases since 2007, I think even my progressive friends would be disappointed!
Exactly right, It was clear as to me and the fact that there were absolutely no attempts to prosecute anyone or calls from anyone in either party for it, made it evident that both parties represent the banks, not the people. It's time for a change. Eliminate corporate lobbying. Bust up the TBTFs. End corporate campaign contributions and PACs. Restore Glass-Steagall.
What happened to cause the economy to tank was done legally- thanks to weakened regulations caused by politicians over a decade ago.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html
".... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..."
Depressions are not caused by a "loss" of the meaningless abstraction "money." They are caused because the rich refuse to circulate their money because they don't think they can make a profit in the current climate.
Thus, all you have to do to end a Depression is take money away from the rich and circulate it amongst people who will spend it right away.
Don't talk "producer" and "non-producer" to me. A jnkie collecting dividends in his yacht is not a "producer."
The people have land and resources to make themselves self sustaining = they are free men and women.
Why? They know where all the bdies are bried.
Third party, or independent candidates, have two problems. The first is the huge amount of money needed; this graph gives some idea:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/
Banking on Becoming President | OpenSecrets
That was before the SCOTUS "Citizens United" decision
The second problem is that ballot access laws have been rigged by the two-party duopoly to make it almost impossible for independenÂt or third-partÂy candidates to get on the ballots:
http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/ralph-nader-ron-paul-agree-ballot-access-laws-are-rigged-against-independent-third-party-candidates
Ralph Nader & Ron Paul Agree: Ballot Access Laws are Rigged Against IndependenÂt & Third Party Candidates | The Liberty Voice
http://rangevoting.org/Strangle.html
RangeVoting.org - Stranglehold of 2-party domination
Even the Green Party doesn't have ballot access in all states:
http://www.gp.org/committees/ballot/
Green Party Ballot Access Committee
There was more turnover in the Soviet Politburo than in the U.S. Congress
There is some progress:
http://www.freeandequal.org/2011/04/ballot-access-reform-bills-in-16-states-nation-wide/
Ballot access reform bills in 16 states nation-wide | Free And Equal
Ralph Nader pounded this issue over and over and yet no one listened. And every prediction Nader made about Obama's moves have come true. The people who worship all things Obama and dine at his lotus blossom take out keep pointing their fingers and parrot, "it's the GOPTers fault." They conveniently forget or never knew that a courageous group of Senators and House members tried to reinstate Galss-Steagall and Obama had it shot down just like he did with the public option for health care reform.
Obama is Clinton in a Black man's skin. He is what we used to call a Wall Street Democrat which was nothing more than a Republican in a Dims clothing. Obama cuts the revenue to SS and if that tax cut is made permanent does what no Republican President was ever able to do, kill SS. And he wants to strengthen Medicare by denying more people access to it. Scheer and Palermo are just now addressing what Ralph Nader predicted4 years ago. When you look at the people Obama surrounds himself with, you have to know where he is headed. He appoints Brennan to take of as the Drone Cazar, a Bush CIA underling that was in charge of "enhanced interrogation." Obama's goals are obvious to those that can look objectively at the facts. But this country will continue to decline because both parties are so criminally corrupt that they have lost sight of what our government is supposed to be doing. Instead of taking America's family car to the store to get groceries they are on a joy ride that will result in the destruction of that family car. And then they will call their chauffeur to pick them up and take them back to the mansion.................It is a sad state of affairs when your only choice is the lesser of two evils and you have to choose between Attila or Genghis Khan.
The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway
by Matt Taibbi
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/13-8
Do you understand how many illusions you may have shattered?
But most are to partisan (to blind) to see the truth!
They'll keep supporting President Obama no matter how many jobs he creates in ---- Asia!
remains internationally and privately owned for profit, all the voters in this country can do is spit
into the wind.