Financial Reform Gives Geithner Sweeping Influence
Friday, July 16, 2010
Let me refresh your memory.
Obama's Banking Rescue: O for Opaque - http://www
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Financial Reform Gives Geithner Sweeping Influence
Do you remember September 2008, when Paulson wanted a blank check?
That's what this legislation does.
It gives Geithner the powers to do whatever he wants, the powers that Paulson wanted.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Simon Johnson: White House Failure To Appoint Elizabeth Warren Would Be The Last Straw
We on the left warned about this on the financial reform front, too, because we saw it in the years leading up to the economic collapse. Same group of people inside and outside of government, same interests, same war being waged within our government.
http://www
We've seen how regulators have been stymied from doing the job they were tasked with, how special interest plants in government were able to paralyze regulators who predicted and were trying to prevent the catastrophe that we're trying to dig out of now.
The fact that these same special interests got the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Treasury Department auspices shows that nothing has changed. Efforts at reform are just talk and not happening.
Tragically for us, we have ourselves a president in league with the perpetrators. Obama is not the solution. He's not the one.
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Simon Johnson: White House Failure To Appoint Elizabeth Warren Would Be The Last Straw
The economic collapse that has us in a Depression was predictable. It was predicted. It's entirely man-made, it will happen again, because the same culprits responsible for it are still at it, making sure they can do it again.
Those of us on the left who were against this finance reform bill laid out the problems, the steps, where we would see it happening again, and this is one of the first warnings we talked about. This was why we said that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (and all regulators) had to be separate and independent and not under the auspices of the Treasury Department (or any other department) in any way.
It's like what we warned about during the healthcare debate, when Obama was arguing against a public option, saying that exchanges would be just as good for creating competition to keep costs low because there would be a regulator overseeing the costs that insurance companies charge. And that regulator would be hand-picked by the president.
We on the left argued that that wasn't any guarantee for consumer protection, nor is it independent regulation; it's political cronyism at its worst.
And just last week, who did Obama appoint to implement this? The woman responsible for preventing a public option in the healthcare bill, former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler - http://www
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Simon Johnson: White House Failure To Appoint Elizabeth Warren Would Be The Last Straw
Obama's trying to work in a bipartisan way with Republicans sure worked on the most gullible in our electorate (the mushy middle -- centrists & Independents). Not only did it k!II the momentum of CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN (& accomplish) after the election, it became a mantra for the 2010 election, a good excuse for why Obama and Democrats wouldn't be able to deliver on their campaign promises: "It's all the Republicans' fault".
Other mantras, contradicting the 'excuse'-mantra would be circulated in other circles, such as a list of Obama's accomplishments (like healthcare reform) that aren't achievements for the People, but more BushCheney
But all mantras are meant to distract the People from the fact that Obama and Democrats didn't and don't need Republicans to pass any legislation.
http://www
http://www
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Simon Johnson: White House Failure To Appoint Elizabeth Warren Would Be The Last Straw
If nothing else from the Bush-Cheney administration was learned, it was how to overwhelm Congress's natural pace & tendencies to achieve your legislative goals. And it wasn't by working in a "bipartisan manner", giving everybody a say and all the time in the world to say it. Without strict timelines and the White House standing over the process with a taser, knocking heads together, asserting authority and insisting on party loyalty, the legislative process meanders into narcosis.
That was Dick Cheney's purpose in the Bush administration. That was his contribution, what he'd learned from his time in Congress. It worked in concert with what the Federalist Society brought to the Republican Party: The legal loopholes in the Constitution that the Executive branch could exploit. But that's another story for another day.
Obama & the DLC-Democrats learned the Bush-Cheney lesson. Obama's call for working in a bipartisan manner with Republicans on legislation was the last thing any responsible president who was serious about turning the nation around after the 8 year assault by Bush-Cheney would do. You certainly wouldn't do it with a tenuous hold on a 60-vote majority, with two of the 60 on de@th's door (Kennedy & Byrd).
But the other lesson learned well in the previous 8 years was that if you tell a Iie often and loud enough, people will eventually start to believe it.
Obama trying to work in a bipartisan way with Republicans was just that kind of I!e.
About Timothy Geithner
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Simon Johnson: White House Failure To Appoint Elizabeth Warren Would Be The Last Straw
Our biggest problem as citizens is that we see an event like the collapse of the economy as unique and singular, an isolated occurrence from which to dig out from and go on with our lives. We don't see it as a continual war being waged by the Haves who want more.
We're discouraged from investigating it (Obama has actually prevented investigation & prosecution), and we're encouraged to think of it like a hurricane or earthquake, a natural disaster, "normal business cycle", like something beyond our control, "so we should just dig out and get on with our lives because it's unlikely to happen again". Or if it does happen again, "it won't be in the same way so there's no way to prepare for it".
The argument against regulations runs from, "regulations would have a chilling effect on business" (fear tactics) to "they'd have no effect on what caused the collapse" (a useless waste of time).
The snail's pace of how Washington functions plays right into the hands of the culprits behind this heist. The sheer tedium of fighting those at work to stall any momentum for real reform after a catastrophe lulls the public into apathy while it exhausts those fighting the robber barons. It enables the watering down of any tools or mechanisms in legislation that might prevent a future meltdown.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
It's worse than Obama being just a lawyer,
==========
I agree. With everything you said.
I was merely referring to Obama's precision with language. It's lawyer-speak. Those who go back and listen to Obama's speeches, interviews and the debates (now with more experienced ears, seeing the actions connected with those words), will see how deceptive Obama was.
About Financial Crisis
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
This battle was lost when the agency itself (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) was put under the auspices of the Treasury Department.
Whenever regulators are not independent, whenever they're not out from under politicians and political will, regulation will not occur.
We learned that lesson with Brooksley Born -
http://www
We learned, too, that Obama isn't above political cronyism.
When Obama argued against a public option, saying that exchanges would be just as good for creating competition to keep costs low because there would be a regulator overseeing the costs that insurance companies charge (and we could rest easily because that regulator would be hand-picked by the president), we on the left argued that that wasn't any guarantee for affordable healthcare, for consumer protection, nor was it independent regulation.
Just last week, who did Obama appoint to implement this? The woman responsible for preventing a public option in the healthcare bill, former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler - http://www
About Financial Crisis
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
We on the left warned about this on the financial reform front, too, because we saw it in the years leading up to the economic collapse. Same group of people inside and outside of government, same interests, same war being waged within our government.
http://www
We've seen how regulators have been stymied from doing the job they were tasked with, how special interest plants in government were able to paralyze regulators who predicted and were trying to prevent the catastrophe that we're trying to dig out of now.
The fact that these same special interests got the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Treasury Department auspices shows that nothing has changed. Efforts at reform are just talk and not happening.
Tragically for us, we have ourselves a president in league with the perpetrators. Obama is not the solution. He's not the one.
About Financial Crisis
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
The economic collapse that has us in a Depression was predictable. It was predicted. It's entirely man-made, it will happen again, because the same culprits responsible for it are still at it, making sure they can do it again.
Those of us on the left who were against this finance reform bill laid out the problems, the steps, where we would see it happening again, and this is one of the first warnings we talked about. This was why we said that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (and all regulators) had to be separate and independent and not under the auspices of the Treasury Department (or any other department) in any way.
It's like what we warned about during the healthcare debate, when Obama was arguing against a public option, saying that exchanges would be just as good for creating competition to keep costs low because there would be a regulator overseeing the costs that insurance companies charge. And that regulator would be hand-picked by the president.
We on the left argued that that wasn't any guarantee for consumer protection, nor is it independent regulation; it's political cronyism at its worst.
And just last week, who did Obama appoint to implement this? The woman responsible for preventing a public option in the healthcare bill, former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler - http://www
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
"Doing what is right (for the People)" is not who Obama is.
That seems to be the hardest thing for Obama's most ardent supporters to accept and understand.
Obama is, first and foremost (and in the worst sense of the word), a lawyer.
Obama chose his words very carefully during the campaign, giving people the sense of what they wanted to hear to get their vote. It's why even among his most ardent admirers, they still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican.
Doing what is right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America."
About Financial Crisis
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
If nothing else from the Bush-Cheney administration was learned, it was how to overwhelm Congress's natural pace & tendencies to achieve your legislative goals. And it wasn't by working in a "bipartisan manner", giving everybody a say and all the time in the world to say it. Without strict timelines and the White House standing over the process with a taser, knocking heads together, asserting authority and insisting on party loyalty, the legislative process meanders into narcosis.
That was Dick Cheney's purpose in the Bush administration. That was his contribution, what he'd learned from his time in Congress. It worked in concert with what the Federalist Society brought to the Republican Party: The legal loopholes in the Constitution that the Executive branch could exploit. But that's another story for another day.
Obama & the DLC-Democrats learned the Bush-Cheney lesson. Obama's call for working in a bipartisan manner with Republicans on legislation was the last thing any responsible president who was serious about turning the nation around after the 8 year assault by Bush-Cheney would do. You certainly wouldn't do it with a tenuous hold on a 60-vote majority, with two of the 60 on de@th's door (Kennedy & Byrd).
But the other lesson learned well in the previous 8 years was that if you tell a Iie often and loud enough, people will eventually start to believe it.
Obama trying to work in a bipartisan way with Republicans was just that kind of I!e.
]
About Financial Crisis
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama Admin Praises Elizabeth Warren But States 'There Are Other Candidates As Well' To Lead CFPB
Our biggest problem as citizens is that we see an event like the collapse of the economy as unique and singular, an isolated occurrence from which to dig out from and go on with our lives. We don't see it as a continual war being waged by the Haves who want more.
We're discouraged from investigating it (Obama has actually prevented investigation & prosecution), and we're encouraged to think of it like a hurricane or earthquake, a natural disaster, "normal business cycle", like something beyond our control, "so we should just dig out and get on with our lives because it's unlikely to happen again". Or if it does happen again, "it won't be in the same way so there's no way to prepare for it".
The argument against regulations runs from, "regulations would have a chilling effect on business" (fear tactics) to "they'd have no effect on what caused the collapse" (a useless waste of time).
The snail's pace of how Washington functions plays right into the hands of the culprits behind this heist. The sheer tedium of fighting those at work to stall any momentum for real reform after a catastrophe lulls the public into apathy while it exhausts those fighting the robber barons. It enables the watering down of any tools or mechanisms in legislation that might prevent a future meltdown.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
3rd - President Obama is going to be our nominee in '12.
==========
3. Maybe. Maybe not. But if he is the nominee, a whole lot of people who voted for him in '08 are not going to be voting for him again. Obama knows that. He knew that going in. It's why he turned his back on the Democratic base even before he got into the WhiteHouse. It's why he's pandered to the right, delivering their policies into legislation (for all the good it's done him). He's been inauthentic, as a Democrat, as a politician, & as a person. And voters' belief in his authenticity is what got him elected with the greatest number of voters to turn out for an election ever. More people than ever in the history of this nation turned out to vote for a black man in good ol' rac!st America. They had the audacity to believe in him and hope for change.
When you think about what could have been, what he could have accomplished had he been what he promised: The one to lead the 'We are the ones we have been waiting for'-movement. It's sad, tragic really. And when you think about it some more, the anger sets in. At Obama. About the con job he did on voters.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
2nd - If you want to be the left's version of the Tea Party, go right for it. Real Democrats want to win elections.
==========
2. There is a move afoot to do that (a Latte or Coffee Party), but I prefer that the left kick the DLC (DINOs, moderate Republican
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
1st - You are a minority. You will never get your perfect candiate elected legally.
==========
1. The DLC, which controls the DemocraticParty, is actually the minority. It's a minority of the minority within the DemocraticParty. The base of the DemocraticParty, 70% of registered Democrats, are left of center.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
Give us an example of a populist who is making a difference in Washington?
==========
In federal government, in elected office? Or as an activist, a lobbyist?
I'm not sure I understand the question. It looks like you mean it to be a sucker punch, a dare to me to give you names which you would then try to find something about them to disparage, mock, knock down. Is that where you (you with a history here as a combative 0bamab0t) are going with this?
Or do you mean to imply that there are no "populists in Washington making a difference", which calls for an entirely differently tracked discussion?
Let me know.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
In the past decade, the presidential candidates who won did so by Iying to the American people. Whether it was preying upon voters' fear of terr0rism or pretending to be something he's not (left of Hillary), both Bush & Obama won by Iying to voters.
It only works for so long without blowback by resentful Americans.
Obama's been governing as if he's Bush's Siamese twin and working overtime to get Sarah Palin as the GOP's candidate in 2012. If he governed as a real Democrat, delivering on the promises of his campaign, think how much better off we all would be right about now.
The point is that he's not a good leader, not a good politician, and a lousy president. I wouldn't vote for Bush, or Cheney, or Reagan, but here the three of them are in the policies of Barack Obama.
When I think about the lengths Obama's gone to to control the 2012 playing field on the Republican side, so that he would look good by comparison (instead of actually BEING good, being better by comparison with anyone the GOP would put up against him), that makes Obama a slug. Both as a human being and as a president of the US.
Obama's not the one we've been waiting for. The sooner we get on with finding the one, the better for us all.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
Replacing incumbents with populist candidates IS working with the system we have.
In truth, unless & until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are pretty much useless. The same can be said for the two political parties -- Both are corrupted and controlled by the same Establishment Elites.
The only thing that We The People have going for us, the only chance we have to take back the machinery is the networking that the internet has enabled. Networking to break up the Establishment Elite's grip on our democracy by replacing their politicians with true public servants.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
They all need to tossed out of office.
And we need to be taking the initiative in replacing them with suitable populist candidates.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
I go the extra mile to support 'Made in America' whenever I can, with one exception. I have bad feet and indulge in a brand of shoes that is no longer manufactured in the US (victim of NAFTA). Actually, I don't think that any shoes are manufactured any longer in the US.
The last pair of these shoes that I had, that had been made in America, are more than 20 years old. I bought a new pair after NAFTA, and they had 'Made in Mexico' on them. That pair fell apart within 2 years. I got another pair which were then 'Made in China' (Mexico had exactly 4 years to try to develop a middle class before their labor was priced out of the market by 1.3 billion Chinese). That pair also fell apart within 2 years, as has every pair since.
'American made' was a superior product.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
What's wrong with education and everything else is that it's been short-changed, privatized, deregulated, for decades, and Obama is not the guy to change that. He doesn't believe in traditional Democratic values; he's modeling himself on Ronald Reagan.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama: 'I Expect To Be Held Accountable' On Jobs
Pure twaddle.
Obama disappeared from the public discussion on healthcare reform, saying that it was Congress's job to write the legislation. All the while he & RahmEmanuel were undercutting the congressional committees writing that legislation, making secret deals with phRma, the AMA, hospitals and Big Insurance, to prevent any serious reform, any public option, any competition, from happening.
The only "step" is toward ending all public healthcare programs sooner rather than later through backended bankrupting. That's what Obama's deficit commission is about -- Just ask the chairmen, Erskine Bowles & Alan Simpson. http://www
Obama's latest betrayal on the healthcare front: Hiring Liz Fowler, former WellPoint executive, to implement the healthcare law - http://www
Where's the Barack Obama who moved more people to vote for him than any previous time in our history with the power of his speech, an ability to persuade, on promises of change from what BushCheney
No sooner had Obama been elected than he went into hiding, & then flip-flopped on just about every position he held during the campaign.
You're going to have to wake up & realize Obama & the DLC-controlled Democrats are no better than Republicans if the American people are to stand any chance at all.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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