Given the wide public support for reform, this seems like a losing strategy, unless public be damned, we’re helping our friends is the only concern. If you like reform but not this bill, how would you change it?
Republicans voted unanimously Monday to block an effort to overhaul financial regulations from reaching the Senate floor, pledging to hold out for significant changes to the bill even as they acknowledged the political risk of appearing to obstruct a popular cause.
The 57 to 41 vote in favor of beginning debate, short of the 60 needed, was expected, although Democrats did suffer an unanticipated defection when Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.) joined Republicans as a no. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) was prepared to call further votes Tuesday, Wednesday and beyond.
“We need to keep the pressure on to get a deal as quickly as possible,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said.
About two-thirds of Americans supported stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Majorities also backed two main components of pending Senate bill: greater federal oversight of consumer loans, and a proposed fund paid for by the financial industry that would go toward dismantling failed firms that put the broader economy at risk.
Given the public support for tougher Wall Street rules, the unanimity that Republicans demonstrated Monday may not endure.
I’m bored, so I will remove but one card from Cranky’s house of Cards.
He says: “First off, I took time to look up and present facts and figures that some people may not know, but I find interesting and very relevant to this debate.” // Yes, #55–lots of facts and figures regarding the income tax rates over the years==all having nothing to do with the posted topic nor my repeated challenge.
Then you start whining, equiocating, lying, and spinning: “#59–but don’t act like my posts ’spin’ or somehow avoiding the topic . . . . As for your question – you never directed that at me so don’t act like I am avoiding it. ” /// Gee Whiz. You argue just like Hannity. At least you got a sentence or two inbetween your hypocrisy. What a dope.
Sadly, you do write with a strong knowledge base and good structural skills. Too bad you can’t answer a direct question. Let me ask you a second direct question: Is it spin or stupidity?
If’ an organization wishes FEDERAL protections, they MUST BE REGULATED, so as NOT to fail.
IF you wish to NOT be regulated, then you will NOT GET THE PROTECTION from the FEDS.
They should have ALL FAILED. That way those that were LEFT, would have been STRONGER and learned the lessons of what HAD happened.
ALSO those JUNK contracts would have disappeared and been WORTHLESS, and it would have solved 90% of the problem.
#63 or anyone who agrees with the concept of ‘too big to fail must be broken up’. Does this apply only to large companies? Is it because huge bureaucracies become naturally corrupt somehow? What about huge government bureaucracies? Should they be broken up too or is there some special protection the government has against corruption.
I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make, gooddebate.
If a single company has so much power and influence in the marketplace that one misstep can cause not the just themselves but the entire world economy to come crashing down, then yes steps should be taken.
#65–baddebate==think of checks and balances and the election cycle (true, we do need some tinkering there). Then compare apples to BS and you’ll have your answer.
By this analysis, you will see that “all” governments are two big and need constant checks.
See the light at the end of the tunnel?
Why I am a Rebublican.
by Buzz.
I used to think a lot. In fact, too much, and it brought me many rewards, but it also brought a lot of heartaches. Because I was always thinking, analyzing and pondering, I made money, acquired patents and recognition, but I outgrew relationships and was never really satisfied.
Then I discovered the best “ism” of all; Republicanism.
Every morning, I get an email that tells me what to think. Quickly, I discovered that if I just went along with the email, my life would be a lot simpler.
I had an instant network of friends, an advancement path that didn’t depend on talent or effort and a stream of meaningless physical relationships that didn’t need deep attachment.
Now I am happy.
Republicanism. It’s not just for business any more.
.
p
65,
“who agrees with the concept of ‘too big to fail must be broken up’. Does this apply only to large companies? ”
well the little ones fail, and FALL DOWN, go boom. let the BIG ones do it also. it TEACHES the old lessons they should have learned in BUSINESS SCHOOL.
“What about huge government bureaucracies? ”
Thats EASY..
to many forget a few OLD tales/rules..
They live on term..we should LIMIT THOSE.
Once they were allowed to vote their OWN wages, they should have all been taken out and SHOT in the foot.
They Changed the rules, from the 70’s forward. LETS go back to the way it WAS.
A stipend system, an allowance for TIME served and room/board/travel. THEN they go home to WORK.
The last idea works very well. YOU DONT HIRE THE RICH OR POOR to govern you. THEY FAVOR their own groups. its the middle Income person that wants for the POOR(so he can make more) and a BALANCE for the RICH(they they dont advance FASTER then he does).
>> Should The GOP Be Blocking The Finance Reform Bill?
Is the GOP even blocking a bill? I think they are blocking even DEBATE on the subject.
bobbo, corruption so deep, I gotta wear waders said, on April 27th, 2010 at 5:31 am
The ONLY WAY Repugs can show their good will, as opposed to their total corruption, is to introduce a more effective bill, which they won’t do because they are TOTALLY CORRUPT. ((The Dems only mostly corrupt–big difference.))
Bobbo, there is no way to back up that statement. I maintain that Ds and Rs are about equally corrupt and stupid. You must be a liberal. Don’t tell me – your heroes are FDR and LBJ. Right, the “New Deal” and the “Great Society.” Both of which had some of the most deleterious effects on this nation, just as Odumba is doing.
I don’t admire but a very few men who were President, but I respect the office. It’s tough to find one that did a lot more good than harm. I would guess that anyone who would make a great president is too smart to take the job.
The prize for actual factual content goes to Misanthropic Scott and aslightlycrankgeek; thank you, gentlemen.
I’d like to add a couple of points.
First, about the widely touted figure that approximately 47% of the population pay no taxes: about that many end up paying no net _federal_income_tax_. All of them with jobs (lucky stiffs!) still pay FICA, the Social Security tax, and their employers pay an equal amount. They also still pay all the state, local, excise, sales and all the other taxes that come with buying/renting food, drink, clothing, shelter, electricity, telephone, transportation, etc.
Second, while it’s true that the world economy (and especially America’s) boomed in the 50s and 60s while the top tax rates were quite high, a lot of that has to do with WWII spending. The U.S. in particular went deep, deep into deficit spending to finance the war effort (a deficit much, much larger in proportion to the entire economy than today’s deficits), and a lot of the money went into hugely building up America’s industrial capacity. A lot of the economic boom came from that capacity being freed from war production, making it available for peacetime products. At the same time, tax rates needed to remain high in order to pay down the unprecedented federal debt.
So the economic boom was largely the result of huge federal deficit spending, as were the high tax rates. We need to be careful and not believe the high rates were the cause of the economic boom, though it is plain that they did not seriously hamper it.
Citi and Goldman Sachs like this bill a lot. What else needs to be said?
Financial “reform” bill – over 1000 pages.
Glass-Steagall Bank Act passed from what we learned in Great Depression #1 which would have prevented most of the problems we’ve just had and continue to have – 17 pages.
So, why no pressure whatsoever to bring back Glass-Steagall? Simple, because “your” government’s owned, but not by you.
About Goldman Sachs and all that is needed to bring them and other firms like them to heel – reenact Glass-Steagall!!!!!!! What GS did, what was revealed in the Senate testimony thus far, and Glass-Steagall:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wvx7ws3TtiI
You guys are doing exactly as Obama intended. He directly avoided a bipartisan bill so he could get his base to complain about Republican obstruction. A deal was on the table being worked out, he made the call, and pulled the Democratic Senators back.
Sen Johanns says a key point is the required spinoff by banks of derivatives trading.
So its Obama’s fault that Corker and Shelby stopped negotiating on a bill they helped craft?
Which high level party officials “made the call” to which lapdogs? You can paint the conspiracy the other way too.
I love how nothing is bipartisan unless the minority party gets every single provision they ask for.
#72–Bubba==who is more corrupt? Thats cutting the baloney pretty thin. My formulation was Repugs==Totally Corrupt, Dems only mostly Corrupt. You say they are “about equally corrupt.” How much difference are we talking about?
But I rise to your challenge. And I am happy to rest on the example at bar: Repugs are against financial reform–it will inhibit Wallstreet from continuing to make their fraudulent Billions putting the world economy at risk while they do it=====equals===totally corrupt.
Dems wanting to regulate rather than outlaw high risk trading in private by banks.====equals====mostly corrupt.
Pure Sweet Innocence—REINSTATE GLASS-SEAGALL. Require total transparency. Require issuers to keep 25% of their transactions. Strictly reduce leveraging. Put incentives in place to have the regulators benefit by finding fraud. Make it illegal for regulators to later be employed by those they regulate. Require CEO salaries to be but a multiple of average firm salaries.
Lots of ways to address corruption, unless you are totally corrupt. At least that much of the equation is transparent.
First of all, government needs to get out of regulation, period. Second, this bill is only going to suppress small banks and car dealerships and other small loan institutions. The big boys, the ones on wall street who got the bail outs, they won’t get touched. They’ll find ways around this bill and any other bill that gets passed. Instead of being allowed to fail, they were bailed out, and they used that money to buy up smaller banks, and even though they were too big to fail before, they’re getting even bigger now! The corruption between washington and wall street is so blatantly obvious you’d have to be blind not to see it, yet so many in america and on this blog have their heads buried in the sand hoping and praying Congress does the right thing this time (as opposed to all the other times). Try reading Ludwig Von Mises if you really want to have any idea of how economics really works.
This bill is a corporate welfare bill and an insanely expensive one.
Why are we protecting the rich’s pocketbooks?
It’s disgusting.
Let them make shitty investment and go broke like the rest of us. Let the big banks fail, their mortgages can be auctioned off in bankruptcy and life moves on.
The idea that rich people and CEOs get bills written to offer them an investment safety net is appalling.
Yes how dare we make them fund their own liquidation to keep them from bringing the entire financial system down with them.
The nerve! Corporate welfare indeed!
what we need,
is someone to spend their life reading these bills, and putting them into COMMON ENGLISH.
It is always fun to come back to a story after a few days of doing work instead of reading blogs and see bobbo with his panties in wad. bobbo, why do you care what I think about re-instating Glass-Steagal? I clearly explained my position in #59, as well as how ‘re-instate glass-steagal’ is a misnomer’. Did you stop reading after I made a comment you didn’t like? I don’t know how to make it more clear for you. It sounds like you like things to be really black and white, but my answer was as simple as I could state it without changing its meaning. If you absolutely require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to be able to sleep at night, I will say, ‘Yes – parts of it should be re-instated’. But remember, you could also write that is ‘No – not entirely.’
But I must hand it to you right after I say your posts lack substance – your comment #61 is actually good. The only other place I have heard the absurdity of the size of the derivatives market discussed was on the Alex Jones show. I would not say the derivatives market in and of itself represents corruption, but there is certainly huge bubble-bursting potential there which banks should not be dealing in, and some potential for fraud that should be investigated.
But on the other hand, think of all real estate in the US. Total value on this approaches these figures for the derivatives market. If all houses, land, and buildings in the country were put up for sale at the same time, actual sale prices of houses would be way way less than what it would even cost to build them. But that isn’t going to happen, and they are still worth whatever someone would pay for them today. The fact that their values added together are higher than our money supply or GDP doesn’t mean they aren’t really worth that much. It just means if there was ever a situation that created something like a bank run on them, values could plummet easily. I am not saying there has not been fraud in the derivatives market, I am just saying that to some extent these huge numbers are to be expected.
They’ll just battle this thing out, tooth and nail (whatever that means), until something finally gets passed. And then the Supreme Court will come along and declare it Unconstitutional. Just as they did with the infamous Line Item Veto bill. Which the Republicans all pretended they wanted, until it got passed. And then Bush was faced with actually having to use it, once. In over for the court to oppose it. Then we never heard about that again. Great piece of legislative folly. Why didn’t they determine if it was going to be unconstitutional, before hand?! It was meant to “reform” the way Congress works. Tacking extra crap onto every bill, that normally wouldn’t survive on its own merits. So how do we know now, that “reforming” Wall Street won’t also be thrown out, later?
#83–tccs==you normally post smarter than this. If a bank is too big to fail and comes to bankruptcy, the $5oB fund will be irrelevant and all the issues faced in 2008 will be there again. BREAK UP THE BIG BANKS.
#85–why thank you Cranky. You are coming along. Its best to be definitive and exact but still much better to give an answer and then quibble, rather than do nothing but quibble.
Yes, coming along quite nicely.
Bobbo, you are absolutely right. I agree that breakups are the real solution to “to big to fail”
But equating the new proposal to the ’08 bailouts is just hyperbole used to prevent any change going through at all. is it the best solution? no. Is it better than doing nothing at all? yes.
tcc3==well thats an interesting issue of realpolitik. Ordinarily it is “better” or at least a judgment call to take a half loaf when likely a full loaf is not doable. This might indeed be an exception. The closer the 50 Billion winddown provision ACTUALLY DOES NOTHING to prevent the next round of bailouts, maybe it is indeed better not to put the illusion of a half loaf out there?
If this new program is only meant to grease the skids for further regulation, then that will be just fine. We need better spin control. This program is NOT REFORM. A new process, a new fund, has been created but there is no reform at all. The voting publics response should be “Fine, but where is Glass-Steagall?
Same with all the crap about creating transparency. You don’t try to regulate that which should be illegal.
I noticed that it is so simple as they are themselves. Obama and the Democrats want it so they don’t. Personally I have not taken the time to study any of the outlines for these reforms and so far they appear to be only outlines.