“Given this Congress and the power of the banks, it’s somewhat remarkable that the bill is as good as it is, even though that’s not saying very much.”

It sure is a marvel. But, here comes the fucking un-blinkered moment; who is going to enforce this shit? Let me guess: Nobody!

Mike Ross (AR),
Where have I read that name before?
Where, oh where?
Could be it Health Care?

Well, after having read a summary of the bill, it seems evident that it will be Wall Street business as usual. There doesn’t appear to be much for the common man in this one,and whatever is left will be quickly circumvented by the corporations. So basically, there is little to cheer about in this so-called “regulatory legislation.”

He’s the snake under every rock. Unfortunately much of the time his AR Blue Dog counterpart Marrion Berry… escapes scorn and ridicule for the same actions.

No, really, seriously. As Spitzer is repeating over and over; we’ve got plenty of regulation on the books as we speak to severely constrain the Wall Street Casino. Do we have regulatory enforcement mechanisms?

How and when will the Fed Audit take place? Is a time window attached, or is it something that will ultimately wilt in the Justice Department’s holding cell, not seeing the light of day until Obama is safely out of office and the Fed will have long before run out of Printer’s Ink ?

Damn Harry Mitchell!

I know him personally from way back in the early ’80s when he was Mayor of Tempe and I was going to ASU. He was actually cool then. Back then as college kids we loved Harry. He’d hang out at the Music and Art goings-on, and was really supportive of us besides the damn football program. That was a really good period for Tempe.

I’ve lost track of a bunch of AZ politicians since the early ’90s, but it’s obvious even the former good guys become corrupt the more they get exposed to power and money.

Arrrghh! It’s maddening. I bet Rahm got to him somehow.

Wasn’t Eric Massa a Blue America candidate? If so, he should be taken to the woodshed. (If not, forget this comment.)

Or maybe simply that power corrupts.

Can you get back in touch with him & find out what changed?

On another post I noted an earlier prediction of mine about the healthcare debate—when the debate was just getting started.

To wit:

“Based on my assumptions about the role crony capitalism [Wall Street money] plays in ‘getting things done’ in Washington, there is no way in hell the healthcare industrial complex will allow legislation that is not in their own best interest to pass.”

Then I went on to say:

“Same with finance ‘reform’…”

Over at AP today they are talking about a “sweeping” finance reform bill in the House.

Right.

Let’s follow this through the Congress like we followed healthcare “reform”. See how “sweeping” it is 6 to 9 months from now. See how “sweeping” is is when [if] Obama actually signs it into law.

The bill is riddled with loopholes, but does include some laudatory elements, including a proviso to audit the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, leverage limits for banks, shareholder limits for derivative clearinghouses, provisions that would eliminate “too big to fail,” and more

Okay, let’s follow the “progress” through “the system” and see how rank this sausage is when they serve it to us down the road.

Nelson (FL) sez something about HCR bill will be “too costly.” I’ll drop dead of a heart attack if I ever hear that phrase applied to a U.S. war.

Eric Massa on fire against the Afghanistan escalation. Fiscally ???

Doesn’t the bill have to go through the Senate? If so, they will screw it up until it’s unrecognizable.

wow, that’s a fucking deflationary moment.

The D script was written by Clinton, and it worked so well that it could only be followed more vigorously. There is nothing new about the process of HCR or FR, only the surprise at the novelty of how they screwed the voters on any particular day.

Didn’t follow Massa so I don’t know if your comment is sarcastic or not.

No. I was just a college kid, one among many, and it’s over 25 years ago.

I really did like his wife though, trying to remember her name. Maria, Mary, it’s not quite coming to me. But I think it ’84 was when he won the 2nd run at the Mayor and there was this big party at Monti’s La Casa Vieja and the whole place was raucous, because there was at least a little sanity in our part of the world (Tempe) even though the despised Reagan had won his 2nd time too. We had a Real Democrat.

Anyway, the point is as you say, power corrupts.

Kucinich planing to do some fuckery on the Wall Street’s pay masters:

“Kucinich To Introduce Legislation To Mirror UK Banker Bonuses”

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/kucinich-introduce-legisltation-mirror-uk-banker-bonuses

I’m serious, he was on ED one day fuming and tearing the biggest one in a long time, in some neocon’s boot.

I envision an fawning email, saying how enamored you were of him back then when you were a young and impressionable student, and how important it would be to reestablish contact. Or not, depending on your chutzpah.

Jeez. My guy. Senator Lost In Space.

Hmmm. I was thinkin’ that too. Or was it SCHIP? Or was it the stimulus? Or was he trashing EFCWA. nah. He couldn’t have done all those things. He’s a Democrat. Right?

By the way. I lurked some today and couldn’t post all day. So here goes.

Harry Reid is a fucking dickhead!

Not a bad idea.

But locally I am PISSED about Betsy Markey! She’s one district up north from me; replaced Musgrave, remember that vile creature? She was Colorado’s Michelle Bachman.

Anyway, we snag that seat from Musgrave and Markey voted bad on Cap & Trade, and she voted bad on the Minnick amendment! She voted for the underlying bill, but she needs a lesson!

heh!

Interesting. So he’s gonna give me a heart attack, re my 10, but voting against financial reform. Seems strange given his district and navy background. According to his website, small biz is complaining about financial reform. Wonder why they think reigning in Wall St. will negatively affect community banks.

Wish Nelson were lost in space.

hey Fuck. what up? i hated you when you first came ’round. agreein with him more & more.

just checking in to speak my piece about harry. gotta go watch some ball. catch yuz later

Oh dear, I thought I could recognize most senators, until Obama caused a spate of replacements. But as for reps, 2/3 a continent away, not so much.

My problem in Mahattan is that Maloney will vote progressive, unless there is higher up pressure not too. Hinchey, my mid-Hudson rep, is a pretty progressive guy, and doesn’t cave too much. Have received emails from both today and they both support the house HCR bill, but were completely unresponsive to the senate goings on.

there is a substantial and very serious disagreement regarding Cap and Trade even among serious Climate change activists breaking along C7T and Tax on hydrocarbon production @ source.

Which way did she vote?

This bill was crap. I don’t see Barney Frank, Melissa Bean, or Mel Watt’s names as voting against, and they are hands down the biggest corporate whores going.

The audit the Fed is the only aspect of this bill that is positive and it made it in despite strenuous efforts by Frank and Watt to keep it out. Bean got her pre-emption of state regulation which means weaker federal regs will now trump tougher state ones. The derivatives legislation sets up some phoney exchanges but keeps the really dangerous stuff off of them and out of the public eye. The TBTF regs are a really, really bad joke. As for leverage limits, Wall Street has been gearing up, not gearing down.

fuckno has it pretty much right. Even if there was real reform here, it wouldn’t mean a thing because the regulators didn’t regulate then and it is the same crowd now. Bernanke is still at the Fed. The SEC hired a Goldman alum to be its new head of enforcement. The New York Fed also has a Goldman alum as is Geithner’s chief of staff.

With the R’s.

It’s not a safe seat by any stretch. It was MUSGRAVE’s ferlardssake. But netroots helped her win.

What is interesting too is her district. Fire up google earth, and look at this big triangle starting a bit north of Denver, but basically the swath of land between I-27 and I-76 going north to the WY border and over to the NE border.

It happens to be the largest installed base of Wind generating capacity along I-76 in CO. 300 jobs created there last year, and more on the docket.

It was an idiotic vote.

I hear that.

Yes, and correct me if I’m wrong. The problems with C&T are that the pollution rights will be given away at too low a price at the outset, and after that the system will be easy to game.

I don’t do weeds on these issues, but I am interested in whether I am accurate about the big picture.

Doesn’t it get tiresome, repeating and repeating?

General announcement: my letter N sticks. I mostly catch it by pounding on the key, but any missing “ns” are not my fault.

Tiger Woods leaving golf for now. World’s smallest violin playing.

I don’t know how he had time for golf even before he took a leave.

Speaking of banks, I just left TD Bank, which I had loved when it was still Commerce. Now, it is nothing like it was. Customer service is not. Before whoever answered the phone could help you with your problem. Now, they have to get a supervisor, after keeping you on hold for 20-30 minutes. Last month they had a complete computer meltdown. For some reason, it was no problem to put through debits, just credits. That was really popular with customers, and I was just about ready to switch then.

It took them more than a week even to acknowledge the problem online and apologize! Really, really bad service.

I finally did something about it after last weekend when they thought there was some “unusual” activity on my debit card (I was Christmas shopping! and not much of it, either), but instead of calling to verify as Commerce would have done, they just shut me down while I was trying to buy a few grocery items.

Now, they expect me to send a half hour or more on the phone with them going over every last transaction. I’ve already done that online. I’m not using my phone minutes for that. Besides…. I’m pretty irritated.

So, I’ve joined a credit union.

Our own wonderful late Katymine, also an Arizonan, expressed the same kind of disappointment in the change in Harry Mitchell.

Heh. Do the arithmetic. How long does it take per trick?

(((Katymine)))

Spirit lives.

two general points, most importantly;

1. it will do zero to change the amount of co2 being spewed.

2. it will create instead of a CDS market a Carbon Default Swaps market, with pretty much the same outcomes.

I’m Chase, ever since they were Manufacturers Hanover. I don’t give a FF about which bank, but after no, meaning NO, contact from the bank in scores of years, suddenly my “personal banker” both in Manhattan and mid-Hudson is all over my voice mail. Sign of too much profit, courtesy of U.S. taxpayer.

The climate change crisis is really the big Kahuna here. So much so that it makes HCR seem, in terms of human misery, like a pesky zit on a black pox riddled body.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/could-cap-and-trade-cause-another-market-meltdown

Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist

Exclusive: World’s leading climate change expert says summit talks so flawed that deal would be a disaster

The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week’s Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.
James Hansen talks to Suzanne Goldenberg Link to this audio

In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means.” He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/02/copenhagen-climate-change-james-hansen

Doesn’t it get tiresome, repeating and repeating?

Yes. It’s all about memory and context. The need to repeat arises because on every story in the MSM and even a post like this one at a progressive site, the overall story gets lost.

It’s like the BS around Goldman executives not taking bonuses, but 5 year stock options instead. Goldman is making money like mad in an awful economy and not performing any useful function doing it, i.e. it is siphoning off money from an already strapped system. Blankfein et al are merely betting that they can behave as piratically and successfully in the future as they are now. Yet the MSM portrays this as some kind of a positive turn to events.

Actually, Lord Acton said Power TENDS to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We’ve gotta find candidates to the Senate who can fight that tendency.

Kelly…Mitchell’s problem is that he’s a blue dog dem in the reddest of red non-progressive states – Arizona.

Along with a lot of other long suffering progressives here in AZ we beat ol’ Harry senseless until he voted “YES” on the House HRC bill. Looks like we’re gonna have to do the same on consumer protection legislation until he “see’s the light”.

But like I said, this is AZ home to some of the biggist obstructionist ass-wipes on the hill (McCain, Kyl, Shadegg, Franks, Flake et al) so it’s gonna be an uphill slog.

In the fianl analysis though I agree with that “honest” horn-dog Spitzer – Enforce the regs & rules we already have and that alone would lead to consurmer protection improvements on Wall Street & in big banking…