For the entirety of DU's existence, we have clamored for real reform.

[Shakespeare]

And we were offered the possibility of that today.

I'm not an Obama supporter (or a Hillary supporter). I was an Edwards supporter who will vote for the eventual nominee.

BUT--I'm not sure very many people here understand the significance of what Obama proposed in today's speech on the economy. What he said today came closer than anything else to winning my support, because he's proposing REAL reform, the kind of reform I'd hoped for under an Edwards presidency.

I'll excerpt a few paragraphs from Andrew Leonard's piece in Salon today for emphasis:

"In the past quarter-century, there has probably never been a better time for a presidential candidate to charge into downtown Manhattan and make a speech arguing for more regulation of the financial industry. The moral authority of market fundamentalism (if such a thing ever existed) is in tatters, and even Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Wall Street's crown jewel, Goldman-Sachs, is acknowledging that new rules are necessary to clean up the current mess.

So for liberal critics of capitalism as currently practiced in the United States, there was much to admire and appreciate in Barack Obama's speech Thursday morning at Cooper Union in New York. The address provided yet another example of what the senator from Illinois does best: It was an eloquent, nuanced, smart defense of the pressing need to roll back decades of government irresponsibility and ensure that the interests of, as he put it, "Main Street and Wall Street" are better aligned.

"Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it," said Obama. He reached all the way back to the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, in his effort to argue from first principles that government has the right and responsibility to intervene in the economy to ensure that the few do not benefit at the expense of the many. He referenced the 1999 repeal of the provision in the Glass-Steagall Act that previously separated commercial and investment banking. He even declared that it was "time to realign incentives and compensation packages, so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders" -- a broadside unlikely to win him a lot of votes in downtown Manhattan (or at the fundraiser at the investment bank Credit-Suisse that Obama headed to after his speech, as was helpfully pointed out by the Clinton campaign)."

This is FDR-level change, if he makes it to the white house. This is, presumably, what we've all been screaming for for years. Please, please put aside the kneejerk impulse to dismiss it just because it came from someone who isn't your candidate--this was a significant speech offering serious reform. We should all be excited about that.

[razors edge]

1. Glass-Steagall was important.

I can't say I noticed when Bill signed off on killing it, but it was the twist of the knife, so to speak.

K&R.

[FrenchieCat]

2. I believe that Obama is doing that with every issue, offering

something dramatically different.

Here's his foreign policy bit that is very different and what we have all been hoping for, according to the Prospect:

Article "The Obama Doctrine" link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_obama_doctrine

[Noirceuil]

9. What exactly is Obama offering?

The only thing I hear in his empty speeches is a promise to bring "hope and change".

[crankychatter]

10. renew your library card

perhaps some night classes?

[Shakespeare]

13. Then you didn't hear or read today's speech.

It was a litany of specific proposals.

[Yael]

3. Glass-Steagall is HUGE

And now, the Fed is giving out debit cards to the unregulated investment banks funded by the taxpayer's money.

Can you say Corporate Welfare? I know you could.

FDR must be rolling in his grave.

[Shakespeare]

12. Yup. That one's directly responsible for a lot of the current pain we're going through.

No matter who our nominee ends up being, I hope Obama's proposals today are realized. We NEED them.

[Maddy McCall]

4. Well, he says that, but then he does this:

CLASS ACTION REFORM:

In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.

By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the “reform” was a thinly-veiled “special interest extravaganza” that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, “Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers.”

Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: “On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions – most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations – all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide.”

Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?

CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:

Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.

Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn’t credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn’t put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.

Why wouldn’t Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.

LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:

These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren’t new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.

In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients’ full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients’ economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama’s solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.


http://quartz.he.net/~beyondch/news/index.php?itemid=5413

[Shakespeare]

11. Couple of things.

I work in the same field that gave us Obama--and I have intimate experience with class action suits (am working two different class action cases right now, in fact). 99.99% of all class action cases are (correctly) removed to federal court because that is the appropriate venue (I have yet to encounter one that didn't involve interstate issues). I have no problem at all with that--it actually unclogs a lot of the backup in state courts, which are far more "backlogged" than the US district courts. This particular reform streamlines the process, and saves a huge amount of money in legal fees (the hoop jumping and kabuki theater that goes on to file in state court and remove to federal court is expensive and pointless).

As for limiting punies on med mal cases, that's not one that really bothers me, either. There's a spectrum of areas whereby a plaintiff can recover (usually significant) damages, and the vagueness and open-endedness of punitive awards results in uneven precedent and mires down the court system. Capping those damages doesn't keep a plaintiff from recovering money they deserve (which also includes things like loss of income, which can be much more significant than punitive awards). Again, I've worked intimately with these kinds of cases, and I understand why these caps are put in place (and I've also BEEN a plaintiff in a med mal case, so don't assume that I'm speaking only from a defendant/client's point of view; I'm not).

As for the credit card rate cap, I'm not as well-acquainted with that one, but 30 percent doesn't strike me as much of a cap at all, so I'm not that bothered by Obama's explanation.

I'll reiterate that I'm NOT an Obama supporter, and I've never agreed with everything he's done or proposed. But this speech, and these proposals, are significant, and go much farther (for reform) than what Hillary offered. I remain impressed.

[FrenchieCat]

5. I'm linking to my post that I posted earlier that has many links for those who want to know more

about the Glass-Steagall Act, what it meant, and how it went away....and why.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5289570&mesg_id=5290677

[NastyRiffraff]

6. I'll wait and see if he can actually ACCOMPLISH all that in a reasonable period of time

I already know he can make speeches. :shrug:

[Swamp Rat]

7. AMEN!

[Shakespeare]

26. I'm not sure whether to laugh at that picture....

...or be very, very scared. :scared:

:7

[Armstead]

8. Yes it was a strong speech.....These days a balance seems radical

I'm really glad Obama did with teh economy what he did about race.

He's getting to the meat of things.

Alas, the Idiot Media chose to ignore it.

[Shakespeare]

21. True.

I don't think anybody can say anymore that he "just gives speeches."

[Laelth]

14. I am excited. k&r n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[ulysses]

15. thank you!

Excellent. :)

[Shakespeare]

18. I was just blown away. Instead of just offering a bandaid temporary fix...

...he's talking REAL reform. The kind of reform that would keep these crises from happening again.

Regulation. Oversight.

EXACTLY what we need.

[damndude]

16. i thought the same thing when i watched it today.

it was edwards issues wrapped in obama packaging, which is not a bad thing. i think i drew specific lines in the sand on where he stands when it comes to class warfare in the country over the 20-25 years passed. i heard more of edwards message from him today than i had heard from either one of them up to this point.
my thought is what if edwards is filtering information to him in advance of an endorsement or an alliance.

[damndude]

17. p.s.

i think it proved a lot of people wrong that he can't speak effectively about anything other than iraq, race and that he didn't have any tangible plans beyond winning.

[bicentennial_baby]

19. I haven't read the speech yet, but..

:yourock:

I can't wait to not be too busy to read stuff...Call me in late 2009. :P

No, make that 2011, after my Master's. :crazy:

:loveya:

[Shakespeare]

20. YOU, Miss Econ, need to read that speech!

At the very least, check out Andrew Leonard's summary and analysis. You'll LOVE it.

[Zorra]

22. When and where did Alexander Hamilton argue that government has

the right and responsibility to intervene in the economy to ensure that the few do not benefit at the expense of the many?

Can anyone find the source of this inference?

Honestly, I'm not a fan of Hamilton. He basically founded the Federalist Party, a forerunner of the republican party, and is an icon of the infamous ultra-conservative Federalist Society. IMO, hamilton was somewhat of a monarchist, and was the antithesis of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party.

Despite the fact that Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton is not exactly my idea a hero of democracy. IMO, he was an early American fascist.

Why Obama would quote the anti-populist Hamilton as an advocate of regulation of the banking industry is beyond me, and frankly, it makes me very wary, particularly after Obama's comments about his personal admiration for Reagan.

And prior to this OP, I was starting to lean somewhat toward Obama.

Now I'm once again about down on my knees praying that Al Gore will announce.

[Shakespeare]

23. From the text of his speech:

I think the reason for his reference to Hamilton is quite clear, and mostly anecdotal. And I don't find it the least bit scary.

" The great task before our Founders that day was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young secretary of the Treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy.

Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market. But he balanced that belief with the conviction that human enterprise "may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government." Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets. And he encouraged manufacturing and infrastructure so products could be moved to market.

Hamilton met fierce opposition from Thomas Jefferson, who worried that this brand of capitalism would favor the interests of the few over the many. Jefferson preferred an agrarian economy because he believed that it would give individual landowners freedom, and that this freedom would nurture our democratic institutions. But despite their differences, there was one thing that Jefferson and Hamilton agreed on -- that economic growth depended upon the talent and ingenuity of the American people; that in order to harness that talent, opportunity had to remain open to all; and that through education in particular, every American could climb the ladder of social and economic mobility, and achieve the American dream."

edited to correct a typo

[Zorra]

24. That's quite a stretch for the author of the OP article to take, to infer that

"government has the right and responsibility to intervene in the economy to ensure that the few do not benefit at the expense of the many" means the same thing as "may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government."

Sen. Obama gets somewhat of a pass here, but the author of the OP article may need to consider the possibility that his personal prejudices influence his journalism to the point of major inaccuracy.

[Shakespeare]

25. Not to parse too much, but Leonard isn't referring just to Hamilton in that sentence.

He's summarizing Obama's several-sentences-long statement about the need for government regulation and oversight.

I'm also not sure what you mean by personal prejudices--I don't think Leonard is an Obama supporter (most of the staff at Salon are openly supporting Hillary, in fact). Leonard is, however, one of the better journalists covering global economic issues.

[Zorra]

27. I'm sorry, but I don't see how that speech offered significant reform.

It reads like so much pojama people pablum blissninny air to me.

If Obama said, "Hey, now listen up, folks....we seriously need to regulate the motherfucking finance industry, and corporations as well, because they are screwing the majority of the people of the US due to their conscienceless greed and overwhelming, compulsive sick lust for power, profit, control and material gain... We the People need to take back our democracy from these filthy sonsabitches or they will soon enslave us all and destroy our nation..." etc, ad infinitum...

Well then, wow, I could get behind the speech as a modern day FDR type genuine serious reform type spiel, and would crawl over fields of broken glass to get Obama elected.

Now if Obama had referenced Thomas Jefferson, with something like,

“The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our constitution… if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Well then, I'd say wow...this Obama cat is a serious contender...he really gets it.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure Obama really gets it. Kucinich and Edwards really got it, that is obvious. But I'll vote for Obama if he is nominated, hoping he really does get it, but feels he needs to get elected first before he kicks ass, takes names, and sends the fascists to prison.

(And no, I'm not supporting Sen. Clinton, unless she is nominated)

[bhikkhu]

29. Probably not what you are looking for...

but my digest of Hamilton vs Jefferson is essentially North vs South. That is, the British style new industrialism and capitalism of the North on Hamilton's side, vs the old (almost Greek idealistic) vision of an agrarian culture of small government on the Jefferson side.

At the point of the civil war the path to our own time was clearly chosen.

[JCMach1]

28. Not FDR change- Chicago School change and I'm not buying it

NO WAY-- NO HOW...

[readmoreoften]

30. It's encouraging that you think so. Doesn't sound like big change to me, but I'm no banking expert

"time to realign incentives and compensation packages, so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders"

I may be mistaken, but anything set up to "better serve the interests of shareholders" doesn't sound like substantive change. But, hell, maybe I just don't know how bad it's gotten in the past 15 years....

[readmoreoften]

31. Oh, okay, it's a corporate welfare thing. That's a good start. /nt

[Whisp]

32. not sure about that, many topics are taboo. nt