Anyone wondering why Congress has approval ratings that hover somewhere between cockroaches and the bubonic plague might want to check out the Sept. 6 Senate Banking Committee hearing on the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This is really, really important stuff, and it got mostly lost in the shuffle as the media focused on the president's jobs speech and the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
At a moment when millions of Americans are suffering and so many worry that the system is hopelessly stacked against ordinary people, this hearing could have been a chance for the senators to show that they really do care about American families. Instead, what we got was partisan posturing and shameless dissembling.
Cordray, who has a strong record and a sterling reputation, came across as eminently reasonable, but few on the committee showed much interest in talking to him. The Democratic members seemed to focus on making the Republicans look like unreasonable, obstructionist shills for Wall Street, while the few Republicans who spoke did their best to live up to that image.
Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, pretty much ignored the nominee and opened with a diatribe demanding that the whole structure of CFPB be rewritten before any nominee could be considered. He actually called the hearing "premature," despite the fact that the law establishing the bureau was passed over a year ago after months and months of bipartisan negotiations. It was hard to avoid thinking that Shelby's version of "timely" would be more like "never."
It got worse. In a statement that Time called one of "the silliest" of the hearing, Shelby claimed, "The director will be virtually free of any constraints on his authority," insisting, "It's only a matter of time before this concentration of power is abused or misused."
Oh dear. No constraints? Really??? Call me silly, but the following statutory provisions sure look like constraints to me:
1) The president can remove the CFPB director for cause anytime.
2) Before issuing rules barring deceptive or unfair practices or simply administering federal financial laws, CFPB is required to consult with other regulatory agencies.
3) The Financial Stability Oversight Council can overrule any CFPB rule that it believes would interfere with the "safety or soundness" of the financial system. There is no other federal regulatory body that can have its rules overridden by other regulators.
4) CFPB's director must testify before each house of Congress twice a year and make detailed, written reports regarding its budget, rules it has adopted, and enforcement actions.
5) CFPB's budget is capped by law. Again, this is a limitation that applies to no other regulatory body.
6) The bureau is required to do a cost/benefit analysis of all proposed regulations and give small businesses an advance look at draft rules. It must evaluate possible increases in credit costs for small entities and consider alternatives that would minimize those costs.
And this list, believe it or not, just scratches the surface. A much more detailed description of the constraints, checks and balances that apply to CFPB has been put together by the Consumer Federation of America.
While dressed up in fine rhetoric about "accountability" and "transparency," what Shelby and some of his colleagues are up to is a blatant attempt to thwart effective regulation of the financial industry. They speculate about overregulation stifling economic recovery while ignoring the fact that it was the failure of the old regulatory system that enabled the rampant speculation and predatory lending that tanked the economy in the first place.
Simply put, some senators seem to think they work for Wall Street, not the voters who elected them. Actually, Shelby's House colleague, House Financial Services Committee Chair Spencer Bachus, put it in so many words last year, telling the Birmingham News, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
There is one way, and only one way, to break this logjam: The public has to scream bloody murder. The Senate phone lines should be jammed with calls from angry voters demanding that their senators vote to confirm Richard Cordray and that attempts to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cease immediately.
Call your Senators through the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Just tell them where you live and they'll connect you. It may be the most important call you make this year.
Follow Preeti Vissa on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Greenlining
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The following seems almost buried in the news but it ought to be front page.
The generic topic is that the Republicans are attempting to repeal the past five decades and most especially regulation of financial firms. We say “front page because is not the near collapse of our financial system erupting in 2008 not the core fundamental cause of our current financial misery?
Repub. Scott Garrett has introduced a House bill which is one more effort to cripple whatever chance the SEC may have to alleviate the kind of financial skullduggery which led the the 2008 near meltdown and the current "Bush recession". Let there be no mistake. The chokehold which Wall Street has had for decades on the U.S. Congress is still there.
The bill threatens to impose the burden upon the SEC to make a preliminary “determination†that the benefits of any new order are greater than the costs. As a practical matter, this means that if the Commission fails to post an encyclopedic array of facts especially about the expected “benefitsâ€, it may not issue an order. All this while the financial lobby is gunning to hamstring the Commission’s operating budget.
Wall Street’s war is still on against the
-House Financial Services Committee Chair Spencer Bachus
I agree with you Ms. Vissa, one would think the American people would be screaming bloody murder instead of singing along 'a cappella' style with Mr. Bachus.
Who you gonna believe? Him? or your lyin' eyes?
Bloody hell.
537 wholly owned, immoral, lazy thieves.
You're going to have to out-BRIBE the Bribers.
... who are, oh pardon me, "exercising their Constitutionally Mandated Rights Of Corporate Freedom Of Speech." Thus saith the Privy Council Of the Nine Kings.
Please remember: High Crime is no longer deemed to be Real Crime, and therefore the following sentence (Article 2 Section 4) in the United States Constitution can be ignored:
"The President, Vice President and ALL civil Officers of the United States, SHALL be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, BRIBERY, or other high CRIMES and Misdemeanors."
Your Senator is obligated to $$listen$$ to the $$people$$ of his or her district, and according to the very well-respected http://www.opensecrets.org, last year happily did so to the tune of AT LEAST $65,000 per Day.
Only if you can convincingly guarantee this person that you can convey to him or her at least $10,000 a minute, 24/7/365, all of it concealed and tax-free, you have no chance against those who can, and will.
They're good at this re-framing of the issues, time and again. They're completely conscious of what they're doing. Duplicity is what their politics is all about.
Will they EVER get their due?
But look at what is happening around you right now. The Americans are trying as hard as they possibly can to destroy the Euro, hoping (a) that there will be no opposition to continued American Dollar hegemony; and (b) that the European nations will believe that as a consequence of their foolish attempts to simplify trade in Europe they are hopelessly bound by chains of debts to ... umm ... American banks, masquerading as the "International" Monetary Fund.
It's a really, really big planet out there, folks. There are over 6 billion human beings on it. The entire population of the USA ... that less-than 250 year old "upstart crow" of a nation ... is less than 5% of that number. And the entire total number of people who are creating this entire problem for the 312 million people who live here ... is less than 750.
So, no political leader in the USA has, ahem, "the stones" to stand up to Wall Street. (Throw another bucket of money at those people and they'll salivate on command.) B - U - T ...
... the leaders and the citizens of hundreds of nations with multi-thousand year histories, and with hopes and dreams that have nothing to do with the USA ...
... they do.
"coined in 1989 by the economist John Williamson to describe a set of ten relatively specific economic policy prescriptions that he considered constituted the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and the US Treasury Department.[1] The prescriptions encompassed policies in such areas as macroeconomic stabilization, economic opening with respect to both trade and investment, and the expansion of market forces within the domestic economy.
Subsequently to Williamson's work, the term Washington Consensus has commonly come to be used in a second, broader sense, to refer to a more general orientation towards a strongly market-based approach (sometimes described, typically pejoratively, as market fundamentalism or neoliberalism)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus
Although, the times they sure are a-changing.
Please see UK's recent attempts at financial reform - I see them as similar to Glass-Steagall Act.
The ONLY segment of US society that has seen their bottom lines grow in the past 30 years, are the wealthiest of our people. The same ones who enjoy a tax rate in many cases LESS THAN HALF of some wage earners. The AVERAGE effective tax rate for those households with incomes over a million dollars per year was 16.7% in 2009, The tax rate of an employee making $380,000 is 33%.
It's just a coincidence that these privileged people are the ones that contributed millions to congressional campaigns? Who believes that?
Our system of campaign finance is no more, and no less, then legalized State sanctioned bribery.
Congress works for those that pay them the most, not those that vote them into office.....and it shows.