Are we ever going to see financial reform?

By Arianna Huffington
Posted: September 14, 2009 06:05 PM
Why Obama Won't Be Able to Reform Wall Street


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/why-obama-wont-be-able-to_b_286408.html

“Listening to President Obama's heartfelt, well-intentioned, but ultimately naïve speech on financial reform today, my mind kept flashing on a story I heard the last time Washington, in the wake of the Enron scandal, promised to reform Wall Street. The story came from a friend who took a family trip on a cruise ship. Her 10-year-old son kept pestering the crew, begging for a chance to drive the massive ocean liner. The captain finally invited the family up to the bridge, whereupon the boy grabbed hold of the wheel and began vigorously turning it. My friend panicked -- until the captain leaned over and told her not to worry, that the ship was on autopilot, and that her son's maneuvers would have no effect. And that's the way it is with our leaders. They stand on the bridge making theatrical gestures they claim will steer us in a new direction while, down in the control room, the autopilot, programmed by politicians in the pocket of special interests, continues to guide the ship of state along its predetermined course. Standing on the deck at historic Federal Hall, the president said all the right things, eloquently pointing out how American taxpayers had "shouldered the burden of the bailout" and are "still bearing the burden of the fallout -- in lost jobs, lost homes, and lost opportunities." And I don't dispute for a minute that his heart is in the right place, and that he means it when he says "the old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand" and touts "the need for change and change now." But we've been hearing similarly great sentiments for months now -- and they've had the same impact as my friend's ten year-old yanking on the cruise ship wheel. None. President Obama won't be able to change the course our financial system is on unless he goes down into the boiler room and disengages the autopilot -- which means taking on the bankers and their hordes of lobbyists who continue to dictate policy in DC. To do that, the president will have to do more than deliver great speeches. He'll need to stand firm when the lobbyists, working behind the scenes, work to gut real reform, leaving only the appearance of reform in its place. This is exactly what he failed to do when the banking lobbying killed cramdown legislation back in April. But instead of telling the Wall Street power players watching him today that he was going to insist on making cramdown a part of his financial reform package, he tried to appeal to their better angels, reminding them that they didn't have to wait for Congress to pass new laws... they could just start acting better on their own. It was shockingly naïve. Wall Street has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars, doing everything in its power to kill things like cramdown legislation, derivatives regulation, and the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and the president is asking them to be nicer people. That's like tossing a wounded seal into the middle of a school of Great White sharks and hoping the beasts will nurse it back to health. There was a moment in the speech that spoke volumes about the high hurdle financial reform is facing. The White House had sent a copy of the president's remarks to reporters and I was underlining key parts of it as he spoke. Near the end of the speech, Obama movingly exhorted his audience to demonstrate that they have taken to heart their obligation to help "families who need their mortgages modified," "small business owners who desperately need loans," and "communities that would benefit from the financing [they] could provide." In the speech as written, he was supposed to end this run by calling on Wall Street "to embrace serious financial reform, not fight it." But when the president actually delivered the line, he edited it, saying instead that Wall Street should "embrace serious reform, not resist it." That one-word change says everything you need to know about why all the president's well-intentioned pronouncements won't actually lead to fundamental reform. The president is utterly misreading the opponents of reform. They are not passively resisting; they are aggressively fighting against reform with every weapon they have in their extremely well-funded arsenal. As a result, Obama's rhetoric has not been matched by reality. In his speech today, the president claimed that the actions of his administration have "spurred lending" and "helped responsible homeowners refinance to stem the tide of lost homes and lost home values." But, in truth, credit for Main Street is still very hard to come by, and only 12 percent of eligible homeowners have had their mortgages modified by the president's home ownership plan. Meanwhile cramdown legislation remains lobbyist roadkill (though Barney Frank is vowing to revive it this fall) and mandatory mediation between homeowners and lenders prior to foreclosure is going nowhere on a national level. That's why I could picture all the heads of the big banks sitting there today, listening to Obama and smiling -- knowing that, in the end, his claim that his administration is "proposing the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression" won't mean anything as long as Wall Street's relentless lobbying and contributing continue to hold sway in the control room of the S.S. America.” I am not going to say that it was President Bush who thought of it or initiated it because I don’t think the son of a bitch has enough intelligence to read a book above 3rd grade level. But the reality here is that towards the end of his administration, in the weeks that followed the Stock Market crash, the Bush Administration came to Congress to request a gargantuan bail out package for the banks and insurance companies. This they did with the urgency of a 911 call, it had to be done and it had to be done right now. The proposal was little more than a few typewritten pages that could just as well be written on a napkin. There were no provisions, no guarantees and even less accountability as to what the money was for, how it was to be used or even if it would be paid back. The urgency of the situation, the way it was presented to Congress and the American people left little doubt that it was something that needed to be done. We all bought into it and even now President Obama thought it was in the best interest of the country. We should have learned our lessons from all the lies the Bush Administration told the people before embarking on a war against Iraq. If we take into consideration that it was presented as a case of extreme urgency, because if we didn’t go to war, Iraq was going to attack America with WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. Now, in retrospect, we see it all a bit more clear. The bailout for the banks and insurance companies was meant as a gratuitous, bailout that would reward the very people who were responsible for the mess they created, to leave their CEO positions with tons of money in the form of severance packages and bonuses. We still don’t know who got what and why. I have suggested before that if you have a contract with your employer and it is your job to keep the company solvent, but if you don’t you will still leave your job with millions of dollars, you will opt to precipitate the demise of that business in order to leave right away rich and without having to work for the next couple of decades. One more thing that this bailout has made crystal clear: the United States has become A WELFARE SYSTEM FOR THE VERY RICH and the CORPORATIONS. The redistribution of wealth has already happened and it went from the poor and the middle class to the top one percent of our society. SHAME ON YOU, FUCKING REPUBLICANS! Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously observed that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but everyone is not entitled to their own facts. But the remnant of the conservative movement has retreated into some kind of bizarre alternate reality, utterly impenetrable to facts, logic or the truth. I first noticed this trend in the 1990’s, when Bill Clinton-haters (and I mean haters, not people who disapproved of his policies, but those who loathed the very mention of his name) insisted that he was guilty of everything from drug-running to murder. There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back up these ludicrous fantasies, but it didn’t matter. Republicans would tell me with a straight face, “You can’t prove he didn’t kill all those people!” leaving me to sputter incoherently about logic and not being able to prove a negative. And now, as I look back to those Clinton years and remember the very vigorous Clinton-Lewinsky investigations headed by closeted gay Ken Star, I can’t help but speculate if Mr. Star would be available to investigate Bush-Cheney with the same earnest enthusiasm. I can still hear it ringing in my ears: “but Clinton lied”. And what the fuck did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice and Gonzales, to name but a few, did? Are their lies less punishable? Are the thousands of lives not as meaningful as Clinton getting a blow job?"


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/why-obama-wont-be-able-to_b_286408.html

The Poster Boy of Conservatism, Ronald Reagan had all these people believe, even to this day that if you cut taxes on the rich, it would increase government revenues. You still hear Republicans chanting this mantra, but it simply isn’t true. The numbers do not lie. When Reagan cut the top marginal tax rates, revenues plummeted, causing the deficit to explode. The rapid expansion of Right Wing talk radio, and the utter domination of cable news punditry by ultra-conservatives, has fed this monastic trend, allowing the faithful to live in a hermetically-sealed environment where the only voices they hear are those that reinforce their beliefs. The culmination of Spiro Agnew’s crusade against the “liberal media” also helps, since any news that strays from the latest propaganda bulletins can be dismissed as “biased.” The propaganda ministry regularly cranks out pre-fabricated talking points to be faithfully regurgitated by the Right Wing Howler Monkey Media Chorus. Religious propaganda is handled by the Sanhedrin of tele-Pharisees, Dr. James Dobson, Pat Robertson, the late unlamented Jerry Falwell and others, preying on fears of evil secularists, homosexuals, pro-choice activists and feminists. On the international front, the neo-Conservatives (really just old-fashion priggish Victorian imperialists) could take the (wholly justified) public fear of radical Islamic terrorism to justify an invasion of Iraq based on completely fraudulent grounds. Republicans lied to our country and to the world to get us into that war.
You might say to me: get over it, that is past, let bygones be bygones, but I can’t. It is not in my genes. It is as if we have been fucked without Vaseline and now you expect me to say that I enjoyed it.
I can’t and won’t forget. I still have the image in my mind of the “hanging chards” and what I still believe was an election that was rigged. I accepted President Bush as our Commander in Chief, but I still question the legitimacy of both elections and the lack of a clear mandate. If it had not been for 9/11 Bush would have been a one term President.