100 seconds of Barney Frank connecting all the dots (MUST SEE)

[underpants]

Run time: 01:49 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1fM28w34uQ   Posted on YouTube: September 18, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: September 19, 2008 By DU Member: underpants Views on DU: 8419

 
On Charlie Rose

"I think we will celebrate September 15th as 'Free Enterprise Day'"

"you have to start with why we are in this fix"

Reagan
Deregulation
Sec. Treasury and Reserve chairman now going to Wall Street and saying "We're from the government and we are here to help you"

"a TRUE understanding of the free market and of capitalism understands the role for regulation...they are more deeply engaged in the market in an financial entanglement with the market than the liberals ever wanted to be"

[gristy]

1. Excellent. His last statement, which you have posted, is spot on

"a TRUE understanding of the free market and of capitalism understands the role for regulation...they are more deeply engaged in the market in an financial entanglement with the market than the liberals ever wanted to be"

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

26. They are only involved because they were forced to do it

By avoiding modest regulation in the first place, we set ourselves up for the need to have a massive intervention, i.e. bailout, further down the road.

I truly hope that this hard lesson is the key for Americans to learn that we need more, not less, government involvement in the economy: more regulation to stabilize the financial system, more rules with regard to media consolidation and bias, stronger labor unions to fight for the rights of workers and a larger share of the pie, and more redistributive taxation to address inequality and provide fair and equal educational opportunities in disadvantaged communities.

LET THE REAGAN/BUSH/BUSH LEGACY DIE!!!!

[gateley]

2. He is always so impressive - thanks!! nt

[spelldmilk]

3. Ha! I love it when Barney Frank gets to speak.

[ingac70]

4. kick. n/t

[trthnd4jstc]

5. A list of what this liberal, democratic socialist wants with the markets:

Making the US Better:

1. Governmental ownership of energy production and distribution, not to remove Big Oil, or Big Energy, but to mine, process, and distribute coal, gasoline, and natural gas, bypassing the fascist, A$$holes, and providing some competition to these A$$holes, and to put US citizens to work.
2. End the tax break that allows offshoring and outsourcing of jobs in this country.
3. Obtain stock for every single company on Wall Street that US tax dollars are bailing out.
4. Have the Feds. Manufacture Solar Panels and Wind Turbines and put US citizens to work installing these onto every governmental building, office, and military post.
5. Global Treaty to end all Short Trading and all Speculators in the market. End the Tyranny of the Rich over the markets.
6. Make the large monopolies and oligopolies divest into smaller companies, and only be allowed to be this large in the Global market place, and never again in the domestic market place. Mergers often mean less R & D, less customer service, less employment, and less competition. Republicans are a bunch of A$$holes pushing for all of the mergers that the FTC had allowed. This is/was criminal.
7. Have government businesses to compete with any monopoly or group of oligopolies to push innovation and competition. End the Tyranny of Monopolies and Oligopolies.
8. End derivatives as we know it. Hedging stock purchases is insanity that creates a sense of money that does not even exist. More than that, when the world finds out how much fake money we have, our dollar will be worth pennies to its 2000 AD value. Idiots. The Dollar has lost so much value because of US Governmental, and Consumer Debt, when the derivative market is looked at in full, it will be seen as a house of cards, making our Dollar even less valuable.
9. Make an Hour of Labor the standard for value, and return to the House of Representatives the right to control the currency. End the Federal Reserve. It is Unconstitutional.

Yeah, I am an evil socialist. I believe in fair trade. I hate corruption. I believe markets are more important than the Rich. They have theirs, the rest of us are struggling. Their system is hell on earth, and unnecessary. Most people wish for a fair deal. The Republican, liar, murderer way, is to take as much as you can get away with, and blame and hate people like me as the cause of the problems with society. One thing that I can say, I do not have a string of people in my life that I have taken advantage of. How many Republicans can honestly say that?

[truedelphi]

9. Can I add on a number ten to your fine list?

Those in power will be debating National Health Care for the next twenty years. But here's a thought - if someone is uninsured, and they end up needing massive amounts of money from their retirement funds to survive (as pre-existng conditions would NOT let them have insurance), make sure that that person does not have to pay pentalties for making use of those funds, nor should they have to pay taxes on those funds.

[trthnd4jstc]

13. That sounds completely reasonable.

I would like to see a way of providing healthcare that is not as expensive as it is being provided now. Have you heard of Monarch Medical Group: http://monarchhealthcare.com/
It began with 1900 physicians forming their own mutual insurance company. If I am not bankrupt, and I can succeed in business, I would like to start, or work with theirs or another mutual insurance company to provide nonprofit insurance coverage and medical care. What we have now is amazingly wrong.

Peace and good luck.

[awoke_in_2003]

23. Speaking about retirement funds

one thing I never understood is- when you leave a company, why do you have to roll your 401k money into an IRA? Why are you not allowed to put it into your new companies 401k? People might say you cannot do that because of employer matching, but it would be easy to exempt them from rollover money. Who is making out on this silly rule?

[mwooldri]

31. That's odd... maybe it's 401k plan dependent...

I am not a financial adviser.

My plan at work, whether it was managed by American Express, Ameriprise and now Wachovia has always allowed rollovers of previous employers' 401k, 403b or even personal IRA into the company 401k plan.

My previous pension plan was HM Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I don't know how much that's worth. Unfortunately that was not a qualified plan, so it don't get to roll over.

Mark.

[awoke_in_2003]

35. 3 years ago...

I had to move 401k money, and here in the US, the only place I could move it without paying tax was into a rollover IRA. Things may have changed since then, but if they did it would be a change for the better- something this country has a hard time doing :(

[Lucky Luciano]

30. from a finance professional

Responses in order:

1) That is fine as long as the government turns a healthy profit by running an efficient company. The government should also issue shares to raise money that the public can own and vote with.

2) Sounds good.

3) The government has been extracting its pound of flesh in all the bailouts except Bear Stearns. FNM and FRE are 79.9% owned by the government now. AIG is 79.9% owned by the government as well. AIG was lent $85B that has to be repaid over two years at an interest rate of 8.50% + 3 Mo LIBOR. During this time, AIG will be able to sell off its assets at non-fire sale prices that can be used to pay off the loan. Their balance sheet has $1T, so they should be able to come up with the cash. If AIG can get back up on its feet and actually run a sustainable company, then its share price should go up - benefitting the government which is now the maority owner.

4) Sounds good.

5) Total Rubbish/Excrement. Many shortsellers are doing the most diligent work in the world to uncover corporate fraud! They are so motivated because if they are right, they make a fuckload of money. What is the proper definition of speculator anyway?

6) There are shades of gray in this, but you are right in some instances for sure - Exxon/Mobil? WTF? They should be separate.

7) A repeat of number 1. Bear in mind that the government will have to pay what corporations pay in order to attract the top talent. If they do not, then they will lose the competition. Having the top people is everything.

8) Total Rubbish/Excrement. Derivatives are quite useful, but more regulatory oversight could be useful - not to mention, the European, Brits, and Asians are loaded to the gills with many exotic derivatives contracts. This is a long story and cannot eb discussed adequately on a msg board.

9) Some kinds of labor are worth more than others, so that is quite ambiguous. The Fed helps keeps banks in check, but to be honest, I am not sure how things would be without the Fed - cannot imagine it to be honest. I have no clear vision on how it would be different.

[trthnd4jstc]

33. I appreciate your reply to my reply.

I am an electrician, and self taught about a few things, and in no way a financial expert. I do try to run my own electrical contracting shop. To your response to my point 5, I define a speculator as someone who gets into the commodities market only to make profit, and are not involved in needing raw materials for production, for example, if I was fortunate enough to get a factory going, which I would like to do, and I buy copper and iron futures, I have a legitimate interests in these markets, but if I was a speculator in these markets, I would buy attempting to make a profit, but not be involved in production. I am a purist. I hate exploitation of labor and resources for the sake of profit. I believe in making money to serve not only my family, but my country, and the the world. I do not apprecite the leisure class. I think that having wealth means responsibility to not hoard wealth, and to use that wealth in creating more industry, and using wealth to help alleviate the many ills in our society.

Our world can improve, if enough people with power, and I include my lowly self in this (I am not rich, but I am a Master Electrician, able to pull electrical permits in several jurisdictions, and to coordinate electrical work with electrical utilities.), used their power to behave responsibly, and productively. Sure there are lazy people, greedy people, and selfish people, but there are people who have a true concern about the present and future, and not everyone wishes to live a self-serving life.

I do know that short-trading and speculators keep money flowing, that money flow is critical for us members of labor, for without it, we could be starving. I would like there to be more industry, more jobs, and hopefully more people who have prosperity, but that can be convinced to save some of that wealth, and behave nobly. Goodness is difficult, and evil is easy. With evil, one only needs to be selfishly concerned about ones own ends. With goodness, one needs to take care of herself or himself, and yet behave with a concern about the effects of ones actions, and attempt to create a more fertile world than we currently have.

I admit that I put that list out to provoke a reaction. I hope that is not manipulative. I appreciate any response: Positive or Negative. I do try to understand a person's honest criticism.

About point 8, that you thought was bullshit rubbish, I once again will say that I see that the flow of money helps the markets in general, but the declines of last Monday and Tuesday were caused by short traders. There is no reason that stock prices needed to fall that quickly. Once our government stepped in, oh wow, the world thinks better of US publicly traded companies, and the value of the dollar can sink even farther.

About your last bit concerning my point 9: http://anti-poverty-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/hour_money_may_create_equality
There is a professor emeritus, named Bob Blain, I very much appreciate his idea of Time Money. I am a master electrician, in the market a fellow like me, if he can find a position in another firm, may be able to make from $55,000 to $85,000 a year. I understand that people think that some labor is more important than other labor, but this class system also has negative effects: resentments, desparation amongst the lesser paid, The Peter Principle, a sense of entitlement and superiorty, amongst those who have the better skill sets, and a sense of inferiorty amongst those without those skill sets. I questioned Professor Blain's ideas for a couple years, but my anger towards the injustices in our society has made me consider something like the Time Dollar is superior to the system where debt creates money, which inevitably leads to wild market swings, depressions, and recessions. Labor does create all value in our world. Money is the means of exchange. If Labor was to create money itself, in less than 30 years we would have a world where most people would at least not be in poverty in the world.

Here are some more links to Bob Blain's work:
http://www.siue.edu/~rblain/index.htm
http://browse.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ath=Bob+Blain
http://prorev.com/sovreign.htm

[truedelphi]

34. Regarding derivatives: You say

"8) Total Rubbish/Excrement. Derivatives are quite useful, but more regulatory oversight could be useful - not to mention, the European, Brits, and Asians are loaded to the gills with many exotic derivatives contracts. This is a long story and cannot eb discussed adequately on a msg board."

The derivatives cooked up 32 to 45 times the value of a unit - leveraging the same offering up again and again.

You'll have to be patient with those of us in the public who are understandably steamed.

The whole derivative thing seems to us to be nothing more than extending margins and playing "the shell company" game that hurt the Enron stockholders so badly. Same game - different name.

One excuse that I have heard the TV talking heads use in defense of the bailout for AIG is that the derivatives embodied within the investment sector of AIG are so convoluted that it could take forever and a day to unravel them, let alone figure out how to settle them monetarily from a legal stand point.

Again that makes us in the public mad. As a citizenry, we need to start demanding that the government and financial "experts" start keeping it simple. If you cannot explain a business plan in 10 pages or less, than maybe the busines plan should be labelled "So unacceptable that should this fail - no way will public funds be authorized to bail it out." (I'm not saying that the plan and all its details have to be confined to ten pages, but you certainly should be able to explain its synopsis in that amount of space.)

[truedelphi]

37. Another point about your defense of derivatives:

I live in casino country, and I don't know how many times, even after the person has lost the house, the car, the bank accounts, the spouse, the kids, their whole damn enchilada, they still DEFEND gambling.

[Fovea]

36. I agree with Universal Healthcare as 10

National high speed rail as 11.

As infrastructure programs go, you could do lots worse than a national high speed rail program. Energy efficient, fuel agnostic, and would employ a large number of workers. It would be a cornerstone of energy independence.

[trthnd4jstc]

38. I like both of your points.

The institution of both has to been performed carefully. We do need a balanced budget. I suggest that we end our militarism, and support an international peace army, ending all of our nations competing with each of our militaries. The idea is simple. Noone is allowed to invade anyone, and no nation is allowed to oppress any other population. The US, China, and Russia would of course be against it, but I am certain that the majority of nations would support such a force. We could reduce the government monies going to the military by more than half, thus freeing up more resources to buy down our National Debt, and to work on positive governmental projects.

Thanks for your post.

[Fovea]

39. We used to call it the peace dividend

but it never came, or perhaps it is only coming 30 years too late.

Suddenly we were living in a scary world full of nameless terrors.

I totally agree that we need to radically re-think our national security vis a vis being the world's largest military.

[nankerphelge]

6. If Barney was in charge...

we would not be where we are today.

[Hulk]

7. So, how do we educate our IGNORANT populace on this one??

You know the repug/neocon/fascist party is going to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of "the Democratic Congress", right? It's already starting. How do we get this message out to the public? Doesn't the preznit have a responsibility to inform the dumb ass populace sheeple of what is going on and WHY it is going on.

I hope President Obama is going to take that initiative during his first fire side chat.

[Piewhacket]

8. Barney has been stealing my stuff....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3452621&mesg_id=3452994

that's OK barney, I stole it from you earlier.

[pinto]

10. Thanks. One smart, articulate guy.

:kick:

[DeSwiss]

11. K&R!!! n/t

[Wetzelbill]

12. That's some great work, succinctly put.

[Patiod]

14. I got to meet him once

I was doing make-up for a TV shoot. He's a very impressive person, oozes power, and I noticed the other bigwigs in the room seemed sort of intimidated by him. He definitely gives off a "don't toy with me" vibe

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

27. No stereotypes here!

If anything Frank's tough-minded attitude and aggressive-but-smart approach to debate helps dispel the whole "sissy" stereotype of gay men. The fact that he takes on the tough issues like social spending, economic regulation, and medical marijuana makes him one of my big heroes.

[Patiod]

32. Yeah, unfortunately the guy that hired me

for the shoot (I don't normally do TV make-up, but did theater make-up as a hobby, and he needed a last minute fillin) put his foot in it.

I was working in the next chair, and the guy that hired me said "I'm going to have to use some of this on you to get rid of that 5 o'clock shadow - we don't want you looking like a drag queen."

Later I said "do you know who that was?"
No idea
I said "it was the only out gay Congressman, and you told him you didn't want him looking like a drag queen. Nice work"h

[defendandprotect]

15. "We're from the government and we are here to help you" -- LOVE HIM-!!!

"a TRUE understanding of the free market and of capitalism understands the role for regulation...they are more deeply engaged in the market in an financial entanglement with the market than the liberals ever wanted to be"

[katty]

16. yes, result is predictable--whoops i spent it all, now bail me out

[pleah]

17. K&R

[bjobotts]

18. Not just unregulated "market" it's unregulated "greed". Making billions from our energy "needs" is j

is just greed

[Captain Hilts]

19. I wish Frank were speaker. Or prez! nt

[sallyseven]

21. He almost made speaker but he

is gay and The congress is afraid that it is catching. What a difference he would have made. He is a real decent man.

[bobbolink]

20. EXCELLENT! Thank you so very much for bringing this to our attention!

And speaking of Barney Frank, don't forget to call your senators about Frank's National Housing Trust Fund!! THE way to create housing to end homelessness!

You go, Barney! :patriot:

[Pete2069]

22. Notice most of the time Democrat speeches are censored from the news.

If the news media would report the FACTS in their reporting
instead of republican's BS and propaganda , their republican
voters would be silenced.

If Americans can not see by the policies of the Bush
administration that when you give them control and
"self" regulation , then we go bankrupt....

Most of the elite and corporations have walked over people in
creating their wealth , power and empire like the Bush's ,
Cheney , Enron , Exxon , Halliburton , Blackwater and so on.

They wish to tax the people in our country which work a full
year to earn their hourly wage and p..... off when they are
ask to pay their share of taxes.

[nytemare]

24. The pendulum can only swing so far

before it swings back. The farther it swings, the harder it swings back.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

29. Right-wingers were pulling on the pendulum really hard for years

...and it now has a ton of pent-up potential energy. It's just starting to swing back, but very soon it will accelerate wildly and then - wheeeeeee! It'll be a fast and thrilling ride deep into left field.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

25. One of the few voices hitting the spot

Barney Frank has the balls to aim the arrow squarely at laissez-faire ideology, and believes that we need the same kind of massive sea change in economic thinking that happened 28 years ago, albeit in a different direction. What I would like to see, of course, is the same kind of ideological sea change applied to marginal tax rates, social spending, and labor union rights. The all-out Anti-Reagan Revolution!

It's sad that we didn't learn our lesson from the S&L catastrophe of 20 years ago, or from the global financial contagion crisis 10 years ago.

[bluesmail]

28. Too few Barney Franks in government.