Finance Reform: Congress. We Got a Deal!

[J-P]

Dang it!!!

I'm sure my finances will be looking up just as soon as the President signs that little thing. Oh wait...

 

[OrangeEmpire]

Wealth redistribution is awesome!

 

[golfballs]

the only certaintly in this is that it will do nothing to prevent the next financial collapse.

of course!

 

[gsvol]

This is the worst piece of legislation ever passed in the history of the USA with the possible exception of the federal reserve act of 1913.

Anyone who thinks this is something to rejoice about are either very stupid, very ignorant, very gullible or a combination of two or more of the above.

At this point we can prepare to kiss our bourgeois asses goodbye.

The U.S. Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out: Heres the Stats to Prove It: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

BTW, it has just become mathematatcially impossible to ever pay the national debt because we owe more money that actually exists.

 

[MG1968]

Scott Brown is turning into an embarrassment.

 

[volfanjustin]

Scott Brown is turning into an embarrassment.

I agree, I had high hopes for him. As many conservatives I was dupped. I would have rather the dem won up there. I am coming to realize that any R that wins in the Northeast is just dem light.

 

[OrangeYankee]

I'm disappointed but not surprised at all. What does surprise me, is I wonder if he's not truly a democrat but saw the opportunity to jump on with the TP to get himself fast tracked into office.

 

[joevol320]

Scott Brown is turning into an embarrassment.

scott brown is from the peoples republic of mass. you're not going to get a true conservative that craphole they call a state. conservatives have to elect 5-6 senators to make up for the 3 rhinos republicans have. that's the only way to fix some of this stuff.

 

[volfanjustin]

scott brown is from the peoples republic of mass. you're not going to get a true conservative that craphole they call a state. conservatives have to elect 5-6 senators to make up for the 3 rhinos republicans have. that's the only way to fix some of this stuff.

Only 3? You are being very generous with that number.

 

[Arclight]

1. More New Deal FDR Programs aimed at controling.
2. Dem-Libs trying to blame businesses and Wall Street when Dems caused the problem.
3. Stock market nose-dives.

Another program of the:

 

[J-P]

Today's stock market drop is Bush's fault! :wacko:

Just ask LG. :neener2:

 

[tigervol9802]

Today's stock market drop is Bush's fault! :wacko:

Just ask LG. :neener2:

Obviously.

Because the government had to step in and take care of issues caused by Bush's stupidity/evil genius mentality that let the boys on Wall Street run amuck with everyone's money.

Duh.

 

[gsvol]

scott brown is from the peoples republic of mass. you're not going to get a true conservative that craphole they call a state. conservatives have to elect 5-6 senators to make up for the 3 rhinos republicans have. that's the only way to fix some of this stuff.

Don't mean to discourage you but saying we have only 3 rinos is a vast understatement. According to the issue, there are several more. Even Alexander and Corker were among six Republican senators, any one of whom could have killed the 'pedophile protection act' which makes it a hate crime offense to harm a heinz 57 varietiies of perverts and also includes all muslims.

How could they have killed it? By voting for the Grassley amendment that ensured the first amendment wouldn't be infringed upon by this heineous hate crime amendment stuck in the volumnous defense spending bill. (and if Kagan is confirmed and if we lose even one conservative or possibly even if not, they will pick some case for them to hear and this unconstitutional piece of crap law will be enfranchised into our rules of jurisprudence.)

Both Alexander and Corker did not vote on the Grassley amendment, it fell short by one vote, if it had passed then the democrats would have pulled their whole amendment because what they really want to govern what we can or cannot say in public, in the name of the rules political correctness.

When Eric Holder was first nominated by Clinton to a DOJ position, he won a unanimous senate vote. As a matter of fact Reagan was the first to appoint Holder to a judgeship.

Ruth Bader-Ginsberg was confirmed by a vote of 97-3

Nine republicans voted to seat Sotomayor. (Including Lamar Alexander, for which I didn't vote for him in the last election, I just didn't register a vote, I swear if he also votes for Kagan I'll vote for his opponent next time, I don't care if it's Pee Wee Herman running against him, enough is enough.)

Meanwhile back at the ranch house:

Dodd-Frank: Why Government is Like Cancer [Reader Post]

The Department of Education was formed in 1980. The proposed budget for FY 2011 is $77.8 billion and it doesn’t educate a single kid. What it does do well is spend money without return. Actually, there’s really no way to measure the ROI on the DOE. And education really hasn’t changed much since then. What has happened? Education is getting worse. This agency is a failure.

The Department of Energy was formed in 1977 with the purpose of ending dependence on foreign oil. In 1979 the US imported 38% of its oil. In 2009 that number grew to 57%. This agency is another failure.

The Dodd-Frank bill, making its way through Congress, is 2300 pages long and pretty much incomprehensible, even to its authors.
------------------------------

It counts 13 new bank agencies:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;

Financial Stability Oversight Council;

Federal Insurance Office;

New Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion;

Investor Advisory Committee;

Office of Investor Advocate;

Office of Credit Ratings;

Credit Rating Agency Board;

Office of Financial Literacy;

Office of Financial Research;

Office of Housing Counseling;

Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity;
and the
Office of Financial Protection for Older Americans.

This loopy bill will create 13 new government agencies and need thousands of new employees.

Has the federal government ever terminated even one federal agency in our entire history???

We will be saddled with these socialistic agencies manned by adle brained bureaucrats who rubber stamp what the higher ups dictate from now on.

Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, Vadimir Lenin and thier ilk would certainly be proud of this bill.

The Politboro was never this efficient.

As a matter of fact, although we the taxpayers will be paying the salaries of all these red tape wonks, they will really mostly be controlled by those who own the central banks, 60% of which aren't even American.

Generally most Americans don't really appreciate the words of Rosary Joe Biden.

"As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C. as the 'capital of the free world,' but it seems to me that in this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title."

Dopey Joe Biden (he isn't kidding, thinks of the USSA as a republic within the world government system, he sold out the American people a long long time ago.)

As me about his visit to Nashville, Tennessee today!

 

[gsvol]

I agree, I had high hopes for him. As many conservatives I was dupped. I would have rather the dem won up there. I am coming to realize that any R that wins in the Northeast is just dem light.

Romney would be no different as president.

As a matter of fact Huckabee is drunk on global warming kool aid and would make a sorry president.

Both Bushes were northeastern elitists at heart and no better than Clinton lite in many respects.

They both set the stage for naked power grabs by the leftist dimwitrats.

Clinton lost his democrat congreesional majorities but then blamed the republicans for being obstructionists for two years and won a second term on that issue.

I think this is Obama's stategy also.

One of the most important things about making Obama a one termer is that I think after six years as a government bureaucrat it is almost impossible to be fired.

Obama's extreme leftist appointees are now hiring all the radical left leaning government employees they can, if the worst thing happens and he should win a second term, we will be saddled with these nitwits for at least thirty years.

 

[distrovol]

When I was younger, I used to think that de-regulation was the answer to all the problems. Now that many sectors of commodities and services we use have been or were de-regulated, I believe I was wrong. I can not think of one thing that has gotten better or cheaper as a result of de-regulation. Energy, airline travel, name it. Can anyone think of any?
So what's the answer? Many people here have made very compelling arguements to dissuade more regulation. If no one wants more regulation, and these industries have shown they can not police themselves, do you want to maintain the status quo?

 

[KentheOrange]

You obviously didn't travel by air before deregulation. Can't say it's better, but it's much cheaper.

 

[gsvol]

Dodd-Frank Already Having Unintended Consequences? You Don't Say! - Stephen Spruiell - The Corner on National Review Online

Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are all refusing to allow their ratings to be used in documentation for new bond sales, each said in statements in recent days. Each says it fears being exposed to new legal liability created by the landmark (read quicksand) Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Everything about the Dudd/Fwank bill is bad, bad, bad.

It's like turning a sack of weasels loose in the henhouse, nothing good is going to come of this and all those nice sounding sound bites issued by Obama on an hourly basis are just more outright lies.

Respectable and solid companies like Catipillar and Proctor and Gamble who sell derivatives in order to protect themselves against market fluctuations will just sell overseas to foreign banks.

Foreign slight of hand experts who produce nothing but paper will flock to NY like buzzards to a dead carrion and many other companies with long standing records of integrity and profitiability will go offshore.

A Fake Financial Fix | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary

That is, the Obama plan guarantees increased concentration of our financial markets: We'll have fewer banks, but larger ones — insulated from market pressures.

In short, the Obama plan puts the entire safety of financial system on hoping that regulators at the Fed get everything right.

Meanwhile, the plan barely mentions two institutions at the very heart of the mortgage-market meltdown — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead, the administration tells us that it will study the issue and come back with alternatives at a later date.
-----------------------------

Combined taxpayer losses from Fannie and Freddie could well exceed $300 billion — twice the expected cost of bailing out AIG. Any reform plan that leaves out Fannie and Freddie can't be taken seriously.
---------------------------------

.....the Obama plan guarantees increased concentration of our financial markets: We'll have fewer banks, but larger ones — insulated from market pressures.

In short, the Obama plan puts the entire safety of financial system on hoping that regulators at the Fed get everything right.

Instead of doing the right thing and gaining oversight over the privately owned federal reserve, this bill gives the privately owned federal reserve exclusive control over American financial markets.

Instead of putting an end to bank bailouts, the plan makes bailouts a permanent feature of our regulatory landscape. In fact, it extends the possibility of taxpayer-funded bailouts to any company choosing to become a financial-holding company. This will likely include every large insurer, as well as major consumer-finance companies like GMAC.

Right on que, government motors takes a flying leap back into the risky loan business.

GM to pay $3.5B for auto financing company - Yahoo! News

The automaker says that its partner, Ally Financial — formerly known as GMAC Financial Services Inc. — will continue to finance GM's dealer inventory and make loans to buyers with good credit. GM says it is not considering a purchase of Ally's auto financing unit. GM sold controlling interest in GMAC in 2006. The company eventually had to be bailed out by the U.S. government because of problems with its home mortgage loan unit.

Financial Reform Meets First Huge Unintended Consequence As Ford Halts Bond Offering

Whenever you get new laws and "reform," unintended consequences are sure to follow.

Usually they take awhile.

Not so with Dodd-Frank.

WSJ reports that Ford has already yanked a bond deal, because the ratings agencies, fearing legal liability, won't let the automaker puts their ratings in the prospectus, making a sale impossible.

So did Dodd-Frank just kill the bond market? Well, probably not.. Regulators will likely find some way around this impasse, but it's still amusing to see the bill INSTANTLY slow down the gears of capitalism (or at least capital raising) as its fiercest critics might have suggested.

Frank's solution is to therefore transfer the Fed's consumer duties to a new regulator. However, the Dodd-Frank bill clearly states in Section 1064 that "all employees of the Board of Governors identified ... shall be transferred to the Bureau for employment."

If one believes that such employees have "a terrible record," then what exactly is the rationale for keeping said employees?

Such transfers are not limited to consumer protection. Although there is little evidence that the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) performed any worse, or better, than other bank regulators, the Dodd-Frank bill eliminates the OTS, moving its powers to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

But Section 322 of the bill guarantees that "all employees of the Office of Thrift Supervision shall be transferred to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency" or to the FDIC. Once again, if the OTC is a failed regulator, then why are we not firing its employees? Or at least making them re-apply for their jobs.
--------------------------------------------

Not only do bank regulators get to keep their jobs regardless of their performance, they are rewarded with six-figure salaries. One of the most harmful aspects of the bank bailouts was the rewarding of irresponsible private-sector behavior. Ultimately more damaging, however, will be the continued rewarding of failure on the part of government.

Mark A. Calabria is director of financial regulatory studies at the Cato Institute.

More by Mark A. CalabriaThere is probably no regulator who was more asleep at the wheel than the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Yet, in what must be a new twist on the Peter Principle, the New York Fed's leadership during the crisis, Timothy Geithner, was promoted to Treasury secretary and placed in charge of Obama's financial reform efforts.
-----------------------------------

The sad truth is that the Dodd-Frank bill is in keeping with a long tradition: that government exists to serve special interests rather than provide for the common good. And when it comes to special interests, there is perhaps no more powerful special interest than government employees.

In addition to ignoring the government policies that drove the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank bill places protecting government employees over protecting both the taxpayer and our financial system. At a time when millions of Americans have lost their jobs, generally by no fault of their own, protecting the jobs of failed bank regulators only adds insult to injury.

Why Can't We Fire Failed Regulators? | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Dodd-Frank bill claims to address this failure by eliminating agencies, such as the Office of Thrift Supervision, or transferring regulatory responsibilities, such as consumer protection, from existing agencies. What the press releases leave out is that all of the same bureaucrats behind the failures also move to the new agencies along with their previous responsibilities.

Alltogether now, let's rearrange the deck chairs, and the band played on.