Don't expect real reform from the Wall Street Democrats. Or Republicans.
By Christopher Caldwell
"Now, the Senate Republican leader, he paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago," said President Obama at a California fundraiser for Barbara Boxer in mid-April, putting on a mocking, homespun voice. "He took along the chairman of their campaign committee. He met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform."
To judge from the guffawing that followed, few in attendance realized that Obama is more dependent on "movers and shakers" in the financial sector than any president of our time, although the files of the Federal Election Commission make this clear as day. The movers at Goldman Sachs, whose top employees were grilled before the Senate Banking Committe last week, gave Obama's party three times as much money in the last cycle ($4.5 million) as they gave to Mitch McConnell's ($1.5 million). The shakers at Citicorp gave Democrats almost twice as much ($3.1 million) as they gave Republicans ($1.8 million).
So every time the president accuses Republicans of trying to "block progress" or of defying "common sense," as he did that night, he is executing a dangerous tightrope walk. His party's electoral fortunes depend on his making forceful calls for reform of our banking laws. His party's fundraising fortunes depend on his ensuring that no serious reform--of the kind that endangers the big banks' size and power--ever happens. That may be why the Democrats' strategy of painting the Republicans as obstructionists on finance reform has gained little traction. By the same token, if Republicans ever did get serious about reforming the banks--and even about breaking up an industry that has turned into a Democratic war chest--they would put Democrats in mortal peril. There seems no chance of this. Obama's taunts show a confidence, verging on certitude, that Republicans' hypocrisy is as deep as his own.
What does it mean, the inability or unwillingness of either party to change or discipline the big banks in any way, even after all the havoc they have lately caused? In the year and a half since the implosion of Lehman Brothers, Simon Johnson, who was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund in 2007 and 2008, is the only person to have come up with a plausible explanation. He has done so by examining the United States as an IMF analyst would examine some bankrupt basket-case of a country in what used to be called the Third World. Johnson believes that the leaders of the American finance industry have turned into the sort of oligarchy more typical of the developing world, and that they have "captured" the government and its regulatory functions. Johnson laid out this bombshell thesis in the Atlantic a year ago.
There are many ways for countries to blunder their way into big economic trouble: Kleptocracy, capital flight, or a commodity-price crash can all spark a panic or collapse. Nevertheless, Johnson wrote, "to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work." In a gripping new book, 13 Bankers (Pantheon, 304 pages, $26.95), written with his brother-in-law James Kwak, Johnson explains why those changes aren't happening in the United States. Pg 1of 5
Posted by: ed ||
05/03/2010 00:05 ||
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#1
The game is rigged.
There will be no meaningful reform.
We've been sold out boys.
#4
Gr(o)m, I think earlier you used the phrase "The New Class" for something or other. Perhaps it's applicable here.
It looks to me like we have a semi-capitalist economy being run by all the same people who couldn't run a communist economy back in Russia.
Each day they wake up in the morning and tell themselves that the Russian economy collapsed back in the late 80's because the Russians were too stupid to make it work, but they personally are smarter than that and can make it work.
#6
It's primary season here in Ohio. If there's competition in your area as there is in mine, some incumbents can be put on notice if they lose their primary, and so they won't even be running in the general election in November. The Cincinnati Enquirer has a cute little interactive gizmo that allows one to mark a sample ballot -- with side-by-side comparisons of the candidates ticked.
#8
It's a stark illustration of the inequities of capitalism that organized labor can only afford to buy one political party, but Wall Street can buy both of them. ...Mickey Kaus
#1
So it was all very innocent? Only just church sermons? He slept through them? BO was in it for the scintillating philosophical debates and coffee klatches?
President Obama's likely containment/deterrence strategy will feature security assurances to neighboring countries and promises of American retaliation if Iran uses its nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for this seemingly muscular rhetoric, the simple fact of Iran possessing nuclear weapons would alone dramatically and irreparably alter the Middle East balance of power. Iran does not actually have to use its capabilities to enhance either its regional or global leverage.
Nuclear proliferation doesn't stop with Tehran. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and perhaps others will surely seek, and very swiftly, their own nuclear weapons in response. Thus, we would imminently face a multipolar nuclear Middle East waiting only for someone to launch first or transfer weapons to terrorists. Ironically, such an attack might well involve Israel only as an innocent bystander, at least initially.
#1
The MSM-Net + IRAN per se had given many indications oer the years that IRAN is already a NUCSTATE as per seeking or procuring Nuctehcs + NUCENERGY. WHEN MOUD = IRAN SAYS THAT THEY DESIRE + SHOULD BE TO BE A [formal]MEMBER OF THE "NUCLEAR CLUB", WHAT THEY MEAN IS NUCLEAR MILITARY "GREAT POWER" IFF NOT DE FACTO
"SUPERPOWER" WID NUCWEAPONS.
* 2012 > comes down to IRAN formally declaring it possesses any type of NUCWEAPONS [includ LR WMDS/NBC-CBRNE techs].
* POST-2012 = 2013? > RADICAL ISLAM + MILTERR GROUPS DECLARE THEY POSSESS OR HAVE DIRECT ACCESS TO SAME.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
