Senate Republicans today debuted their new strategy for financial reform: Refuse to cooperate with Democrats on grounds that the Democrats are too willing to give Wall Street what it wants.
I'm not making this up.
In a Senate floor speech Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans couldn't support the legislation that emerged from Chris Dodd's banking committee because it "institutionalizes" future taxpayer bailouts of the Street, giving the Federal Reserve "enhanced emergency lending authority that is far too open to abuse." Senator Bob Corker, a senior Republican on the committee who had spent many weeks negotiating the bill with Dodd, huffed that Dodd's final bill provides "the ability to have bailouts."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, blasted Dodd for partisanship -- "Dodd jerked the rug out from under Sen. Corker and went back into a partisan bill" -- that is, partisanship toward Wall Street. Alexander said Republicans will hold out for a plan "that would end the practice of too big to fail and that would make certain that we don't perpetually use taxpayer dollars to bail out Wall Street."
Republicans have been looking for a way to oppose Senate Democrats on financial reform without looking like patsies for the Street. And now they think they've found it -- by trying to make Democrats look like patsies for the Street. The strategy is surely the handiwork of Republican pollster Frank Luntz who for months has been telling Republicans "the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout." (See Luntz's memo.)
Let's be clear: The Dodd bill doesn't go nearly far enough to rein in the Street. It allows so-called "specialized" derivatives to be traded without regulatory oversight; its capital requirements are weak; it gives far too much discretion to regulators, who, as we've seen, can fall asleep at the switch; it does nothing about conflicts of interest within credit rating agencies that rate the issues of the companies that put food on their plates; it puts a consumer protection agency inside the Fed whose consumer bureau didn't protect consumers; it doesn't do anything to control the size of banks; it delays dealing with other hard issues by assigning them to vaguely-defined "studies;" and, yes, it preserves the possibility that the Fed could launch another bank bailout.
But the Street thinks the Dodd bill goes way too far, and wants its Republican allies to water it down with more loopholes, studies, and regulatory discretion. Republicans figure they can accommodate the Street by refusing to give the Democrats the votes they need unless the Democrats agree to weaken the bill -- while Republicans simultaneously tell the public they're strengthening the bill and reducing the likelihood of future bailouts.
It's a bizarre balancing act for the Republicans, reflecting the two opposing constituencies they have to appease -- big business and Wall Street, on the one hand, and the emerging Tea Partiers, on the other. The Tea Partiers hate the Wall Street bailout as much as the left does. It was the bailout that "really got this ball rolling," says Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily, a website popular among Tea Party adherents. "That's where the anger, where the frustration took root."
The awkward fact, of course, is that the bank bailout originated with George W. Bush and a Republican congress. "Without this rescue plan," Bush told the nation in September 2008, "the costs to the American economy could be disastrous." New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, the leading Republican negotiator of the bailout bill, warned that without the bank bailout, "the trauma, the chaos, and the disruption to everyday Americans' lives would be overwhelming."
Republicans figure the public's attention span is so short they won't remember, and that the public understands so little about the details of financial reform that Republicans can weaken the Dodd bill without leaving any fingerprints.
I have a suggestion for Senate Democrats: Don't let them get away with it. Smoke the Republicans out. Respond to their criticism that the Dodd bill leaves open the possibility that some future bank will become too big to fail by amending the bill to limit the size of banks to $100 billion of assets -- so no bank can become too big, period. Challenge the Republicans to join you in voting for the amendment. If they decline, force them to explain themselves to their local Tea Partiers.
Cross-posted from RobertReich.org.
Brian Conway
Valatie, N. Y.
is it because they love money too much?
Some time ago I read a short article relating a private meeting in the fall of 2008 of then sec Treasury of the GW Bush administration Paulson and fed reserve chairman Bernanke with the leaders of Congress ..The two government "experts" in finance urged the leaders to provide relief for the banks and insurance companies which were too big to fail, If aid was not provided, they warned, it would be Armageddon, the world would collapse, people would be in bread lines just as in the 1929 collapse.
Mr Boehner, minority leader made an impassioned speech in the House, urging the gift of taxpayer money to the ceo's who were happy to receive it and give themselves large bonuses
According to personal disclosure, the following day Mr Boehner sold all his stock in some mutual fund, thus avoiding a loss of 50 percent of its value.
In the world of the common people, like Martha Stewart, actions like that of Mr Boehner (and of his president GW Bush when director of a corporation) are called "insider trading" a felony subject to prosecution and jail time.. Ms Stewart spent several weeks as the guest of the government, provided with lodging,board and even an orange suit Mr Boehner continues to make impassioned speeches, peppering his remarks with NO, HELL NO
It doesn't matter who plays good cop / bad cop. Both sides got their scripts from the lobbyists for the financial institutions about what role to play and how to put on a good show.
Wonder who caused the need for a bailout? Was that Obama too?
Expect no serious regulation; no consumer protections; no transparency; and no limitations what-so-ever on the ability of investment bankers to use other peoples money to make outrageous profits with risky bets on exotic instruments.
What ever reform eventually passes will be sham. And eventually the next crisis will hit and no amount of government intervention will keep the world economy from going down the tubes.
If the true defenders of the free market system had any sense, they would be insisting on the necessary regulation and transparency to keep the system from destroying itself.
Pin Wall Street bail out on GOP even though congress was controlled by Dems when Bush signed first bailout, and Obama quadrupled what spent and neither he nor the Dems controlling Congress put a stop to it.
Pin any war failure on Bush and take credit for war success even though Obama opposed everything about the Iraq war and has made it clear that the way to the future is for the US to pin ourselves to the direction of the UN which authorized the war in Afghanistan.
You have to give credit to the Obama-Pelosi-Reid perpetual campaign and propaganda machine... they sure know how to spin a yarn. Too bad all the sleepy voters are waking up to all their lies.
I don't credit President Obama with any success in Iraq except leaving a place we should never have gone.
Please cite your authority for UN authorization for invasion of Afghanistan, because that's not how I remember it.
Bush43 started two wars, prosecuted each well, but won neither. Obama is following new policies and the needless war he opposed (Iraq) is getting closer to what the American people voted for in 2008: its end. The facts on the ground in the necessary war that Obama has long supported (Afghanistan/Pakistan) have changed considerably since Bush43 left office: the jury is out on how it will end--but patriotic Americans are rooting for our troops to win, take out bin Laden, or both.
The "perpetual campaign" is an exclusively Neo-Con invention: obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. The voters weren't sleepy in 2008 and it's a bit early for a faltering regional party of aging White folks from rural Dixie and the rural West to do a 2010 victory dance, just yet. (Let's see first who wins the struggle between the Tea Party and the GOP.)
Calling a centrist, corporatist Democrat a "socialist" (and, in defiance of history and logic, "like Hitler" and "like Stalin", all at the same time!) strikes a majority of Americans as way closer to spreading falsehoods than does anything the Democratic Party has done recently (unless you still consider Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln to be Democrats in any meaningful sense).
Why all the anger? If your side is winning, you should be happy! (You ARE winning, correct?)
"Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to
catch Jesus in in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of
the governor. So the spies questioned him: "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is
right, and that you do not show partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it
right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
He saw through their duplicity and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose protrait and
inscription are on it?"
"Caesar's," they replied.
He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.""
Luke 20:20-25 NIV
Since our currency is coined by the U. S. Treasury and insured by the U. S. government, then the government should be entitled to some say in the rate at which it cirrculates for the good of the taxpayers who have ordained the government to represent their interests and discharge such duties on their behalf. Banks hoarding currency beyond their capital requirements doesn't do the economy any good. Money only has value when it's in cirrculation.
As i am one of those short memory Americans please put a site or have your staff make an article listing when, whwheren and who received the bail outs by year, congress and president.
Thanks
Fight for campaign finance reform.
Until EVERYONE starts talking and blogging and marching for Campaign Reform we are just spinning our wheels discussing anything that might challenge the special interests. We have to have Campaign reform or neither you nor I will have a corrupt free government.
http://fixcongressfirst.org
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/volunteer/petition
Fair Elections Now Act (FENA)
Except that the Corporate Democrats who are completely in line with Republicans on all matters financial would never dream of re-instating Glass-Steagall.
And there's the crux of the problem.
The Democratic leadership sold the soul of the party years ago to corporate lobbyists, accepting huge campaign donations from Wall Street. While the vast majority of Democrats in congress would agree with Reich's strategy, they are no longer calling the shots; even within their own party. "You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas," as the saying goes.
The only answer to any of this is fundamental campaign finance reform. It's the only way for Democrats to regain the moral high ground on this and a host of other issues.
http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/volunteer/petition
Hope these help - although I know not specifically what you were asking ;)
We keep jumping from one lost cause to another like fleas.
The will of the senate is the will of the special interests.
veryone knows this but would rather complain about the results than fix the cause.
The ONLY way to save our country is through campaign reform. We must stop our shotgun mentality of arguing over everything under the sun and fight together on the one thing we do agree on. Campaign Reform.
Campaign Reform would heal the split of the American people that big money has encouraged in order to weaken us and keep us fighting with each other.
It is the fault of lying politicians, our media, and most of all our ignorant, stupid citizens whose line of thought is no longer than a bumper sticker.
Blaming this and that politician does no good. The blame lies ultimately on American citizens.
"We The People" are supposed to be in power, but we have let it be stolen from us like Jefferson, Franklin, Eisenhower and many others warned.
Corruption is not a problem in our government--it has become our system.
Until EVERYONE starts talking and blogging and marching for Campaign Reform it is useless discussing anything that might challenge the special interests.
http://change-congress.org/
http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/volunteer/petition