Obama Talks Left To Move Right, As Wall Street...Given A Free Pass And Reforms Are Watered Down

[Political Heretic]

Obama Talks Left To Move Right, As Wall Street Criminals Are Given A Free Pass And Reforms Are Watered Down
Also: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/links-53110.html

We now know that it was the Obama Administration, led by the President himself, who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by none other than Mao TseTung. He talked left, to move right.

In several high profile speeches, he lashed out at Wall Street for its greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard hitting, if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services industry squealed about them.

But even as he was feigning left, he and his main economic operative, Tim Geithner, were moving right, to kill off amendments that the bankers hated, like Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposal for a deep audit of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the six biggest banks in America.

As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, “Geithner’s team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats.”
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest provisions privately.

No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.

(more at link)

I don't believe Obama is the President America needs in order to escape our own economic and social collapse. And because the Democratic Party on the whole is more interested in maintaining its own power and courting big money than it is in acknowledging the core, structural failures and injustices embedded right into the heart of our modern political economy that are sinking our ship of state - it does not seem to me that we'll ever have a candidate who could or would steer us away from our demise.

The whole vote for any democrat because any republican is worse thing ignores the reality that we have a much bigger crisis than which corporate bought and paid for party is in power. Its a crisis that the leadership of neither party is addressing - which is that the inequality of our political and economic system that both Democrats and Republicans actively maintain and underwrite is simply unsustainable.

We're headed toward a post-Soviet Union style collapse. And Barack Obama has shown himself to be nothing but a friend of the establishment and rich cronies. Talking left, moving right - over and over and over and over again.

[MineralMan]

1. And your suggestion is?

You write: "And Barack Obama has shown himself to be nothing but a friend of the establishment and rich cronies."

For a screed to be "constructive," you need to add a suggestion for a way to solve the problem. I didn't see that in your post.

[obxhead]

4. in 2012 replace Obama with a real progressive.

in 2010 replace blue dogs with progressives.

The solution is rather simple in concept, yet impossible in practice with the current election process.

[MineralMan]

5. Yes, but the impossibility of getting such people elected

sort of makes that a non-starter. I guess I'm asking for some sort of suggestion that has a chance of happening.

[obxhead]

9. It does make it a non-starter

but in the end it's the only solution. We can not continue to put corporate whores in power. As a nation I feel our sole effort should be electoral reform. We can have no meaningful change in any major issue until that happens. How to make it so? I couldn't answer that fully, but I do know that it must be solved first.

[stillwaiting]

15. This. Is. It. We can do this even with conservatives supporting us if we make this the ONLY issue.

The silly conservatives believe that the majority of voters would support their conservative issues. Even now.

With election reform that takes out corporate money, elected officials will be much, much, MUCH more likely to actually work for their constituents, and common sense progressive solutions would have a chance of being publicly discussed and implemented.

It's all a big joke right now. All of it.

[Vinnie From Indy]

6. Gee, sorry your highness. I guess the OP didn't get your royal decree about "being constructive"

Is there a "list" you keep about of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. It would simply make things so much easier for all of us if you could post this list somewhere for our review. Think of the time you could save scolding others for straying from your specific world view.

[MineralMan]

25. Nope. I'm just asking for some sort of concept of how we're going

to elect the progressives who will change everything. It's easy to criticize, but criticism without solutions doesn't do much.

I'm not scolding. I'm looking for concrete suggestions that might work. Do you have some? If so, this would be a good time to bring them out. If you don't, then I guess you're doomed to be disappointed by the people who get elected.

I have suggestions, and I'm acting on them. I'm working in my local DFL organization, along with other progressives, to nominate candidates who have both a chance to be elected and actual ideas for change. That's my suggestion to everyone who wants a new direction for the party. It's a lot of work, though.

[Greyhound]

24. Stop working against the American People.

Stop promoting evil as "the only way".

You want specifics, give me a specific issue.

[MineralMan]

26. I am one of the American People, Greyhound.

I'm promoting progressive candidates within the Democratic party, starting in my own state and in my own congressional district. That's what I'm doing. Instead of complaints without suggested solutions, I'm working on solutions in the only place where I have a chance of doing something positive, right where I live.

I'm not promoting evil. I'm promoting liberal progressivism. In the meantime, we have Barack Obama as President. If you want a specific, and dislike President Obama, then start by discussing how you'd like to see him replaced in 2012. Specific suggestions. If you don't have any, then what's your point?

Besides, you can create your own list of specific areas where change is needed and come up with suggestions for how those areas can be changed. Practical suggestions. Suggestions that have a chance of being implemented.

Raw criticism is not helpful.

[Greyhound]

28. The question related to President Obama, not you. You asked for suggestions,

I said name a topic.

I never said that he should be replaced, that's all you. Pointing out that he is not working in our best interests is essential to dissuading him from this road to further ruin.

Yes, things will get better once they are done getting worse, that is inevitable. But when they do, they will not be even as good as it was when the coup first took place, and he has ensured that all of the mechanisms of failure will continue without any significant restraint. This is not in our national interest.

As for suggestions, I repeat, on which topic do you want them?

"Ignore what they say, watch what they do".

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. IN many respects, the OP is dead on

The Bush regime did the bidding of our corporate overlords using fear as a justification for basically doing whatever the hell they wanted regardless of the law or basic human decency. The Obama Admin. appears to also be a one trick pony. They do the bidding of our corporate overlords by talking a progressive game publicly and then working like hell to defeat anything really meaningful and progressive from becoming law. Banking stocks went up just as the healthcare stocks went up after passage of a so-called "progressive" bill.

I predict that as the financial fortunes of Americans continues to fall, enough Americans may come to understand that both parties have been acquired and assimilated by business interests and a tiny, unbelievably wealthy elite and begin to fight back.

[RKP5637]

11. What you say is 100% on track IMO. Many Americans are still asleep at the

wheel as they've not been hit yet by the corp./gov. shenanigans... by both parties. The Bush administration got what they wanted by fear, and the current one by hope. Another OP said this recently on DC, I'm just repeating, but it made sense to me. My hope in financial reform is getting pretty tattered by now. And I'm not alone in feeling this may, many I know are and we all are hardcore democrats for decades.

[flyarm]

13. I think many Americans are waking up ..but many are wispering it ..i hear those wispers daily!

they are just afraid of being called names..and we all know what names thise are ..at least those of us who have spoken up know what those words are..but the words are now meaningless..and have lost most their power.

But people are speaking up..everywhere I go they are..and more and more and more democrats are wispering louder and louder!

[RKP5637]

22. I was explaining DLC'ers to some recently. They were all democrats

and had no idea what the DLC was. They thought democrats were democrats, like an FDR democrat, for example. Once they learned what the DLC was they could start to see what was going on with the financial stuff. The problem is when you start to say something some lash out at you as an Obama basher which is certainly not the case.

I strongly think the gov. is way too far in bed with corporations, contributions and lobbyists. You basically end up with a bribed government, how could one expect it to be different.

We need to get to public financing and the elimination of the electoral college, but I have no idea how is that going to happen. Maybe as more and more wake up.

[amborin]

3. almost as if the more left he talks, the farther right he walks...orwellian....like the "clear skies

act, which rolled back emissions caps for corps to 1970s levels...

[Odin2005]

7. The DLC is a bunch of Orwellian doubletalkers.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[laughingliberal]

10. K & R nt

[ProSense]

12. Here's a perfect example of why this piece is nonsense

The Senate version of financial regulation hits Wall Street harder than expected, with some analysts estimating it could cut the profits of major financial institutions by roughly 20%.

Clearly a move to the right. Ludicrous.

[flyarm]

17. oh please..Ludicrious is a band right? yawn..........

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[ProSense]

18. Clearly, you have no idea what you're talking about

FAIL.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Individualist]

14. That's standard operating procedure for DLC/NDC.

They say one thing in an attempt to fool people, then do another. Reality check, DLC/NDC; people aren't as stupid as you think we are.

[flyarm]

16. + millions of Americans!! the fooling is over! eom

[inna]

20. K&R

[amborin]

21. Gretchen Morganstern on the "reform" bill:

snip

Yet despite all that verbiage, there are flaws in both bills that would let Wall Street continue devising financial black boxes that have the potential to go nuclear. And even if the best of both bills becomes law, investors, taxpayers and the economy will remain vulnerable to banking crises.
Some will argue that these bills, at around 1,500 pages each, have to be weighty and complex if they are to curb the ill effects of convoluted and inscrutable financial instruments. That makes it doubly disappointing that the bills don’t go far enough in bringing greater transparency and better oversight of everyone’s favorite multisyllabic wonderment these days: derivatives.
Certainly the banks and the Wall Street trading shops that have so richly scored in the derivatives market are happy to keep the status quo — after all, profits flourish where opacity rules. But for most of the rest of us that’s an unsatisfactory, and possibly dangerous, outcome.

Despite their ubiquity and the pivotal role they play in modern finance, many derivatives don’t trade openly on exchanges as stocks and other instruments do. When an institution buys a derivative like a credit-default swap, for example, to protect itself against the default of an investment like a bond, that transaction is a private contract, struck between it, the seller and perhaps an intermediary, like a bank.
Because private transactions like these can mask big and risky exposures in the markets (think American International Group), financial reformers decided to make derivatives trading more transparent, which is a good thing. Both the Senate and House bills require standardized derivatives to be traded on an exchange or a swap execution facility.
But the devil is always in the details — hence, two 1,500-page bills — and problems arise in how the proposals define what constitutes a swap execution facility, and who can own one.
Big banks want to create and own the venues where swaps are traded, because such control has many benefits. First, it gives the dealers extremely valuable pretrade information from customers wishing to buy or sell these instruments. Second, depending on how these facilities are designed, they may let dealers limit information about pricing when transactions take place — and if an array of prices is not readily available, customers can’t comparison-shop and the banks get to keep prices much higher than they might be on an exchange.

Nobody lets auto dealers, airlines, hardware stores or an array of other businesses sell their wares without a price on the window, the ticket or the tag, but Wall Street is still getting away with obscuring prices in the derivatives market.
To resolve problems that might arise from derivatives dealers controlling trading facilities, the House bill bars them from owning more than 20 percent of a swap facility. The Senate bill, however, has no such limitations.
It is unclear, therefore, what the final bill will allow on this crucial matter. What is certain is this: Banks will lobby hard to be allowed to own swap facilities.

Another part of the Senate bill that keeps derivatives markets opaque resulted from a tiny change in the proposal’s original language.
Initially, the Senate bill’s discussions of derivatives platforms defined them as “trading” facilities, a term of art from the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. In that law, a trading facility refers to a system in which multiple participants place bids and offers and in which price transparency exists both before and after a trade is made. Such a definition usually excludes making deals over the telephone because negotiating on the phone may not provide access to as many different prices as an exchange does.

But the word “trading” was eventually struck from the final Senate bill’s definition of derivatives platforms. That change would allow dealers to make derivatives deals over the phone, hardly a victory for transparency. Dealers love trading by phone because it makes it harder for customers and investors to see prices and comparison-shop, which, of course, bolsters dealer profits.
Because the House bill never specifically took on the issue of “trading” facilities, it is unlikely that the reconciliation of the two proposals will bring back this important distinction — leaving derivatives trading more opaque than it should be.

Finally, lawmakers who are charged with consolidating the two bills are talking about eliminating language that would bar derivatives facilities from receiving taxpayer bailouts if they get into trouble. That means a federal rescue of an imperiled derivatives trading facility could occur. (Again, think A.I.G.)
Surely, we beleaguered taxpayers do not need to backstop any more institutions than we do now. According to Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., only 18 percent of the nation’s financial sector was covered by implied federal guarantees in 1999. By the end of 2008, his bank’s research shows, the federal safety net covered 59 percent of the financial sector.

"...............

[LWolf]

23. k&r

[waiting for hope]

27. K&R PH

:thumbsup: