Posted on 04/27/2010 3:54:25 AM PDT by ResistorSister
Debate on the Senate version of the Obama administration’s bank regulatory overhaul is expected to begin shortly. The House of Representatives passed its banking bill last December.
Neither bill does anything to curb the power of the banks or limit their parasitic and socially destructive activities. What the media is calling the “most sweeping overhaul” of the banking system since the Great Depression in reality sanctions the ever greater monopolization of the financial system by a handful of Wall Street giants, imposes no limits on executive pay, and allows the banks and hedge funds to continue gambling on exotic and largely unregulated securities such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.
The so-called bank “reform” is an exercise in mass deception—an attempt to placate popular hostility to the banks and provide the government with political cover while it continues to do the bidding of Wall Street.
The bills have been drawn up in the closest consultation with bankers and bank lobbyists. This collusion has been widely reported in the press and presented as a perfectly normal and acceptable fact of political life. The front-page lead article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal describes the intensive lobbying being carried out by billionaire investor Warren Buffet to alter the Senate bill’s provisions on derivatives.
Buffet, an Obama supporter, wants to exempt existing derivatives deals from collateral requirements in the current language of the bill—a change that would save him billions on his $63 billion derivatives portfolio. Both senators from his home state of Nebraska, one Democrat and one Republican, are championing his cause.
This is just one example of the web of corruption and bribery that extends from Wall Street to the White House and Capitol Hill. The banks have thus far spent $455 million lobbying Congress on the overhaul and handed out $34 million in 2010 election campaign donations, most of it to Democrats.
The circle of corruption includes the ratings companies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which blessed toxic subprime mortgage-backed securities with triple-A ratings in return for fees from the banks they were rating, and government regulators who move seamlessly from regulatory offices to lucrative posts at the banks they were supposedly overseeing.
The colossuses of Wall Street amass their huge profits by means of fraud and swindling. Over the past few weeks systematic accounting fraud at Lehman Brothers has been exposed and the Securities and Exchange Commission has indicted Goldman Sachs for defrauding its clients in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crash. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Obama’s so-called reform will do nothing to hold accountable the criminals at the head of the banks and hedge funds or break up the financial behemoths that exert a stranglehold on the economy. Instead, it will set up a mechanism to institutionalize government rescue operations of big financial firms to protect the interests of bank executives, shareholders and creditors, ultimately at public expense.
The lawless and reckless actions of Wall Street CEOs have had devastating consequences for tens of millions of people in the US and around the world. The wreckage left in the wake of the financial tsunami of 2008 is registered in millions of lost jobs, home foreclosures, utility shutoffs, and rising hunger, disease and poverty.
With the help of trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, the bankers are making more money today than ever, even as schools are closed, libraries disappear and museums and opera houses are shuttered. There is, the people are told, “no money” for jobs or basic social services.
There is plenty of money. The problem is that it is concentrated in the hands of a financial aristocracy. The immense concentration of wealth among these individuals is not only morally repugnant, it is a menace to society. It is the result of the plundering of the social wealth to feed criminal appetites, at the direct cost of the productive forces.
During the rise of American capitalism as an industrial power, the vast fortunes of the corporate elite, while achieved through ruthless exploitation of the working class, were associated with the expansion of industry and the production of useful products. That is not the case with today’s financial elite. Its wealth is amassed on the basis of financial manipulation and outright fraud, linked to the destruction of the social infrastructure and industry...
Take the time to discover if the Socialist bogeyman is your real enemy. Discover if the corporate owned media outlets are actually directing your attention, through Television and radio programming, away from the real issues, and pointing the people towards the much hated and easy to rallying against Socialist.
btw: The rest of the article I posted contains the policies that The Socialist Equality Party is calling for in order to change things around to what they think is best.
Bottomline: I did not post this article for the sake of the SEP's policies, but for the sake of the truth that is reported in the main part of the article.
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper.
We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.
For the next hour sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... THE OUTER LIMITS.
Source: Opening monologue of the TV show, The Outer Limits
doesn’t the proposed bill say something like if you don’t give enough to the winning party, the government is gonna come in and bust you up into little tiny pieces???
I agree with the premise of the article.
That’s a loan dollar. Real money no longer exist home dwag!
I find your comment highly ironic for an article detailing corruption in industry and government.
As the Constitution of the American Republic points out the power of federal government should be limited by the people and the states. That is rather anti-Socialist.
Hey! Dats one of dem Obama dollars dey be talkin about. I gotta git me som.
Same people, same money, same attempt at a NWO.
Look up to the guy, it's a socialist, it's a communist, it's DUPERMAN!!!
We are the enemies of Duperman. The only thing which can stop Duperman are the remaining and scattered fragments of our Constitution.
Yep!
Some history of script and how it was used by coal companies against the miners:
Most of Ohio's coal mines were located in Southern and Eastern portions of the state. Commonly, people migrated from coal regions in other states, such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, to work in the mines. They settled in towns that were often owned and controlled by the same company operating the mines. Many mining companies paid their employees in script, paper that was only accepted at company-owned stores. This policy made it possible for companies to have a great amount of control over the miners, who often became deeply indebted to the company store. Miners faced unsafe working conditions, low pay, and long hours in the nineteenth century because there was almost no government regulation of industry. Miners occasionally tried to organize and strike against their employers but were unsuccessful in their attempts. As oil and natural gas became more popular sources of energy, economic conditions in the coal mining regions of Ohio deteriorated even further.
SOURCE: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1565
Hmm. Well, in a little piece of irony, all the banking mergers that contributed to this situation of cronyism happened under Clinton. If Bush truly failed before TARP, it was in not reversing a lot of Clinton’s banking interference.
The truth behind your statement has brought tears to my eyes.
I don’t believe Bush failed, I believe he followed the plan.
Another day older and deeper in debt.
a common criticism of Barry amongst Socialists...that he is even dishonest about his Socialism
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