How Did We Get Here? ... Debt ... Plain and Simple
Political Timetable – No Political Party is righteous all are guilty
1. 1912 – Titanic sinks and Americans are free
2. 1913 – Federal Reserve is created to enrich the elite by money printing
3. 1913 – 16th Amendment enslaves Americans with income tax
4. 1935 - FDR makes the Government responsible for all, forever
5. 1935 – 2007 Government grow unchecked
6. 1971 – President Richard M. Nixon guarantees demise with removal of US gold standard
7. 1988 - US elects a globalist as President: George H. W. Bush
8. 1992 - US elects an opportunistic scoundrel as President: William J. Clinton
9. 2000 - US elects a well-meaning globalist as President: George W. Bush
10. 2008 - US elects socialistic, narcissistic as President : Name withheld
11. 2012 - US elects socialistic, narcissistic as President : Name withheld
Economic Timetable – From Boom to Gloom in 20 year and counting
1. 1991 – American the greatest creditor nation in world history
2. 1991 - 1999 Economy surges as Reagan Tax Reductions stimulate growth
3. 1996 – Greenspan foretells of bubbles as irrational exuberance
4. 1999 – Black Day; Glass-Steagall is repealed (Republican Congress + Clinton)
5. 2000 – Investment banks congeal with mutant depository banks
6. 2000 – Derivatives metastasizes like stage 4 melanoma
7. 2000 – Nasdaq tops 5000 and S&P earnings hits $50
8. 2002 – Nasdaq collapses to 1100 and recession settles in
9. 2001-2004 Greenspan cuts Funds Rate from 6 to 1 to save Wall Street
10. 2004-2007 Unprecedented rise in housing values with orgy of borrowing
11. 2008 – Collapse with a TARP response to save Bankers
12. 2009 – Wall Street collapses
13. 2009- 2012 – Bernanke prints 2 trillion to save Banksters and Wall Streeters
14. 2009-2012 – Bernanke QE1, QE2, Operation Twist
15. 2008-2012 No one tells the truth about the economy
16. 2010 – American becomes the greatest debtor nation in world history
17. 2012 - QE3 with 80 Billion a month to bail out insolvent banks and we descend further
1. 1912 – Titanic sinks and Americans are free
2. 1913 – Federal Reserve is created to enrich the elite by money printing
3. 1913 – 16th Amendment enslaves Americans with income tax
4. 1935 - FDR makes the Government responsible for all, forever
5. 1935 – 2007 Government grow unchecked
6. 1971 – President Richard M. Nixon guarantees demise with removal of US gold standard
7. 1988 - US elects a globalist as President: George H. W. Bush
8. 1992 - US elects an opportunistic scoundrel as President: William J. Clinton
9. 2000 - US elects a well-meaning globalist as President: George W. Bush
10. 2008 - US elects socialistic, narcissistic as President : Name withheld
11. 2012 - US elects socialistic, narcissistic as President : Name withheld
Economic Timetable – From Boom to Gloom in 20 year and counting
1. 1991 – American the greatest creditor nation in world history
2. 1991 - 1999 Economy surges as Reagan Tax Reductions stimulate growth
3. 1996 – Greenspan foretells of bubbles as irrational exuberance
4. 1999 – Black Day; Glass-Steagall is repealed (Republican Congress + Clinton)
5. 2000 – Investment banks congeal with mutant depository banks
6. 2000 – Derivatives metastasizes like stage 4 melanoma
7. 2000 – Nasdaq tops 5000 and S&P earnings hits $50
8. 2002 – Nasdaq collapses to 1100 and recession settles in
9. 2001-2004 Greenspan cuts Funds Rate from 6 to 1 to save Wall Street
10. 2004-2007 Unprecedented rise in housing values with orgy of borrowing
11. 2008 – Collapse with a TARP response to save Bankers
12. 2009 – Wall Street collapses
13. 2009- 2012 – Bernanke prints 2 trillion to save Banksters and Wall Streeters
14. 2009-2012 – Bernanke QE1, QE2, Operation Twist
15. 2008-2012 No one tells the truth about the economy
16. 2010 – American becomes the greatest debtor nation in world history
17. 2012 - QE3 with 80 Billion a month to bail out insolvent banks and we descend further
Published on Thursday, November 12, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Reflections on Glass-Steagall and Maniacal Deregulation
by Robert Weissman
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and related legislation. It is an anniversary worth noting for what it teaches us about forestalling financial crises, the consequences of maniacal deregulation, and the out-of-control political power of the megafinancial institutions.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall removed the legal prohibition on combinations between commercial banks on the one hand, and investment banks and other financial services companies on the other. Glass-Steagall's strict rules originated in the U.S. government's response to the Depression and reflected the learned experience of the severe dangers to consumers and the overall financial system of permitting giant financial institutions to combine commercial banking with other financial operations.
Glass-Steagall protected depositors and prevented the banking system from taking on too much risk by defining industry structure: Commercial banks could not maintain investment banking or insurance affiliates (nor affiliates in non-financial commercial activity).
As banks eyed the higher profits in higher risk activity, however, they began in the 1970s to breach the regulatory walls between commercial banking and other financial services. Starting in the 1980s, responding to a steady drumbeat of requests, regulators began to weaken the strict prohibition on cross-ownership.
Despite herculean efforts by Wall Street throughout the 1990s, Glass-Steagall remained law because of intra-industry and intra-regulatory agency disagreements.
Then, in 1998, in an act of corporate civil disobedience, Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging. Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup's co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut. But as the deal-making on the bill moved into its final phase in Fall 1999, fears ran high that the entire exercise would collapse. (Reed now says repeal of Glass-Steagall was a mistake.)
Robert Rubin stepped into the breach. Having recently stepped aside as Treasury Secretary, Rubin was at the time negotiating the terms of his next job as an executive without portfolio at Citigroup. But this was not public knowledge at the time. Deploying the credibility built up as part of what the media had labeled "The Committee to Save the World" (Rubin, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, so named for their interventions in addressing the Asian financial crisis in 1997), Rubin helped broker the final deal.
The Financial Services Modernization Act, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, formally repealed Glass-Steagall. Among a long list of deregulatory moves large and small over the last two decades, Gramm-Leach-Bliley was the signal piece of financial deregulation.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall had many important direct effects but the most important was to change the culture of commercial banking to emulate Wall Street's high-risk speculative betting approach.
"Commercial banks are not supposed to be high-risk ventures; they are supposed to manage other people's money very conservatively," writes Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. "It is with this understanding that the government agrees to pick up the tab should they fail. Investment banks, on the other hand, have traditionally managed rich people's money -- people who can take bigger risks in order to get bigger returns. When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risk-taking."
This is a very important part of the story of what created the financial crisis.
What lessons should be learned from the 10-year debacle?
First, Glass-Steagall's key insight was in the need to treat regulation from an industry structure point of view. Glass-Steagall's authors did not set out to establish a regulatory system to oversee companies that combined commercial banking and investment banking. They simply banned the combination of these enterprises. Cleaning up the current mess, we need strategies that focus on industry structure -- meaning, especially, that we must break up the big banks -- as well as more traditional regulation.
Second, we need to return to Glass-Steagall's more particular understanding: depository institutions backed by federal insurance protection cannot be involved in the risky, speculative betting of the investment banking world. (Notably, the Glass-Steagall problem is now worse than it was before the financial crisis, following JP Morgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns, and Bank of America's takeover of Merrill Lynch.) Moreover, we need not just to reinstate Glass-Steagall, but infuse its underlying principles throughout the financial regulatory scheme. Commercial banks should not be in the business of speculation. They have a job to do in providing credit to the real economy. They should do that. Their job is not to engage in betting on derivatives and other exotic financial instruments.
Third, giant financial institutions exercise too much political power, and for that reason alone must be broken up.
Fourth, we need broad reform in the area of money and politics. We need public financing of Congressional regulations, even stronger lobbyist reforms, and tight restrictions to close the revolving door through which individuals spin as they travel between positions in government and industry.
A year ago, as the financial crisis was unfolding, it seemed very plausible that these reforms would be seriously debated in Congress. Three months ago, it appeared that Wall Street had successfully maneuvered to keep them off the table. But in Congress a recognition is now settling in that regulatory reforms on the table are failing to deal with the problems of size and industry structure -- and that there may be a severe political price to be paid for such failure. Suddenly, it seems that common sense may again be politically viable.
Killing Fields in America the Elites vs. US
Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
“Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X.”
So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise.
It was the Cleveland Governors Conference of 1964.
Sen. Barry Goldwater had just defeated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in the final and decisive winner-take-all primary in California.
As the story is told, Stu Spencer, Rocky’s man in California, had come to his candidate and said, “Governor, I think it’s time to call in the Eastern establishment.”
To which Rocky replied, “You’re looking at it, buddy. I’m all that’s left!”
Rocky was cooked. But then the panicked Republican governors gathered in Cleveland — Rockefeller, George Romney of Michigan, William Scranton of Pennsylvania — to plot a path to deny Goldwater the nomination he and his conservative insurgents had won.
Nixon was invited, and, according to Romney, privately urged him to get into the race. Nixon denied it.
The governors, and Goldwater himself, suspected Nixon was pushing Romney onto the tracks to derail his bandwagon. And, presumably, after Romney had been run over, the convention, to heal the bleeding wound, would turn to a centrist compromise candidate — Nixon.
“Nixon is sounding more and more like Harold Stassen every day,” said Goldwater. Nixon pivoted swiftly to repair the damage, offered to introduce Goldwater to the convention, did so in a brilliant speech, then campaigned harder for Mr. Conservative than did Barry himself.
And while Nixon enlisted in Goldwater’s campaign, Rockefeller, Romney and Scranton, arrogantly refusing to accept defeat graciously, crippled any chance Goldwater might have had by demanding that the platform condemn the John Birch Society as equally extreme as the Communist Party and Ku Klux Klan.
The party said no. And the establishment cut Barry dead in the fall.
Thus did the GOP establishment earn the eternal enmity of the right.
And thus did Richard Nixon emerge in 1968 as the first choice of Barry Goldwater and the centrist Republican most acceptable to the conservative movement. The rest, as they say, is history.
* * *
Which brings us to that dinner last week at The Source on Capitol Hill where Republican Party elites discussed how Donald Trump, even if he wins the lion’s share of votes and delegates, might be denied the nomination in a “brokered convention.”
The absurdity of such a conspiracy would be matched only by its stupidity.
Has the GOP establishment learned nothing from history?
Deadlocked conventions — like the 1924 Democratic convention, which went on for 104 ballots — virtually ended with the elimination, by FDR’s party in 1936, of the two-thirds rule for nomination.
That rule kept ex-President Martin Van Buren, who could not muster 67 percent of the delegates, from capturing the nomination in 1844.
After eight deadlocked ballots in a three-way contest, that Baltimore convention turned to a “dark horse,” Speaker James K. Polk, who promised immediate annexation of Texas by the United States and that he would take us to war with Mexico to guarantee it.
With the two-thirds rule dead, the only way to have a convention without a nominee on the first ballot is a three- or four-way split in delegates.
But assume at the GOP convention in Cleveland that Trump runs first, Ted Cruz second, Marco Rubio third and Ben Carson fourth.
Rather than wait for Karl Rove & Co. to tell us whom the party shall nominate, Trump would phone Cruz, offer him second spot on the ticket in return for his delegates, and if Cruz declined, ask for Rubio’s phone number.
Candidates who have gone through a yearlong campaign, and sustained the defeats and suffered the abuse, are not going to let a Beltway cabal decide the nominee.
Carson has already warned he will walk away from the party if such a decision were imposed upon the convention.
Moreover, the old establishments are dead. Conservatives killed the GOP establishment in 1964. The Vietnam War and George McGovern killed the Democratic establishment in 1972.
What is left are elites, collectives of officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads.
What the Republican collectivity has to realize is that it is they and the policies they produced that are the reason Trump, Carson and Cruz currently hold an overwhelming majority of Republican votes.
It was the elites of both parties who failed to secure our borders and brokered the trade deals that have de-industrialized America and eviscerated our middle class.
It was the elites of both parties who got us into these idiotic wars that have blown up the Middle East, cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of dead, and tens of thousands of wounded among our best and bravest.
That Republican elites would sit around a dinner table on Capitol Hill and discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America, and decide among themselves who shall lead us, is astonishing.
To borrow from the Gipper, they are not the solution to our problems. They are the problem.
Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
“Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X.”
So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise.
It was the Cleveland Governors Conference of 1964.
Sen. Barry Goldwater had just defeated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in the final and decisive winner-take-all primary in California.
As the story is told, Stu Spencer, Rocky’s man in California, had come to his candidate and said, “Governor, I think it’s time to call in the Eastern establishment.”
To which Rocky replied, “You’re looking at it, buddy. I’m all that’s left!”
Rocky was cooked. But then the panicked Republican governors gathered in Cleveland — Rockefeller, George Romney of Michigan, William Scranton of Pennsylvania — to plot a path to deny Goldwater the nomination he and his conservative insurgents had won.
Nixon was invited, and, according to Romney, privately urged him to get into the race. Nixon denied it.
The governors, and Goldwater himself, suspected Nixon was pushing Romney onto the tracks to derail his bandwagon. And, presumably, after Romney had been run over, the convention, to heal the bleeding wound, would turn to a centrist compromise candidate — Nixon.
“Nixon is sounding more and more like Harold Stassen every day,” said Goldwater. Nixon pivoted swiftly to repair the damage, offered to introduce Goldwater to the convention, did so in a brilliant speech, then campaigned harder for Mr. Conservative than did Barry himself.
And while Nixon enlisted in Goldwater’s campaign, Rockefeller, Romney and Scranton, arrogantly refusing to accept defeat graciously, crippled any chance Goldwater might have had by demanding that the platform condemn the John Birch Society as equally extreme as the Communist Party and Ku Klux Klan.
The party said no. And the establishment cut Barry dead in the fall.
Thus did the GOP establishment earn the eternal enmity of the right.
And thus did Richard Nixon emerge in 1968 as the first choice of Barry Goldwater and the centrist Republican most acceptable to the conservative movement. The rest, as they say, is history.
* * *
Which brings us to that dinner last week at The Source on Capitol Hill where Republican Party elites discussed how Donald Trump, even if he wins the lion’s share of votes and delegates, might be denied the nomination in a “brokered convention.”
The absurdity of such a conspiracy would be matched only by its stupidity.
Has the GOP establishment learned nothing from history?
Deadlocked conventions — like the 1924 Democratic convention, which went on for 104 ballots — virtually ended with the elimination, by FDR’s party in 1936, of the two-thirds rule for nomination.
That rule kept ex-President Martin Van Buren, who could not muster 67 percent of the delegates, from capturing the nomination in 1844.
After eight deadlocked ballots in a three-way contest, that Baltimore convention turned to a “dark horse,” Speaker James K. Polk, who promised immediate annexation of Texas by the United States and that he would take us to war with Mexico to guarantee it.
With the two-thirds rule dead, the only way to have a convention without a nominee on the first ballot is a three- or four-way split in delegates.
But assume at the GOP convention in Cleveland that Trump runs first, Ted Cruz second, Marco Rubio third and Ben Carson fourth.
Rather than wait for Karl Rove & Co. to tell us whom the party shall nominate, Trump would phone Cruz, offer him second spot on the ticket in return for his delegates, and if Cruz declined, ask for Rubio’s phone number.
Candidates who have gone through a yearlong campaign, and sustained the defeats and suffered the abuse, are not going to let a Beltway cabal decide the nominee.
Carson has already warned he will walk away from the party if such a decision were imposed upon the convention.
Moreover, the old establishments are dead. Conservatives killed the GOP establishment in 1964. The Vietnam War and George McGovern killed the Democratic establishment in 1972.
What is left are elites, collectives of officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads.
What the Republican collectivity has to realize is that it is they and the policies they produced that are the reason Trump, Carson and Cruz currently hold an overwhelming majority of Republican votes.
It was the elites of both parties who failed to secure our borders and brokered the trade deals that have de-industrialized America and eviscerated our middle class.
It was the elites of both parties who got us into these idiotic wars that have blown up the Middle East, cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of dead, and tens of thousands of wounded among our best and bravest.
That Republican elites would sit around a dinner table on Capitol Hill and discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America, and decide among themselves who shall lead us, is astonishing.
To borrow from the Gipper, they are not the solution to our problems. They are the problem.
Life: swimming through a sea of lies.
Saturday, September 19, 2009 · Posted In: Daily ColumnThere are many popular lies. All of them are widely believed and endlessly disseminated by skilled cadres of professional liars. We may consider a few of them:
1. We need “sustainable” energy. This is a marvelously complicated and profitable lie, as are most statements with the word “sustainable”. “Sustainable” energy is said to be necessary to stop Global Warming, another complicated and profitable lie. The fact is that the approved forms of “sustainable” energy are not sustainable.
When we consider that nuclear reactors produce cleaner, cheaper power than any other source of electricity, we see that the “sustainable” energy lies are twofold. First, those lies that extol the virtues of power sources that do not work well (solar and wind power costing over a dollar a kilowatt hour) are accompanied by lies that ignore or demonize the cheapest, cleanest power on earth, that from nuclear power.
2. We need “organic” food. This is one of the most preposterous of all lies. The ideal food recommended by the “food liars” is grown without artificial fertilizer, irrigation, chemical pesticides, or heavy machinery, and it is not packaged in plastic film. As a result, such food harbors dangerous bacteria and is often contaminated with fecal material. And, it costs five or six times more to produce. “But, it’s good for you!”, those who lie about food keep saying.
3. We need more regulation. Every government agency and non-government organization wants to expand personnel, power, and scope. All of them seem to be willing to tell lies to justify more. Every agency wants two things, armed enforcement agents and public relations agencies to “tell the story” of how “vital” they are. Various environmental agencies desiring to micro-manage everything from water wells to septic tanks to waste disposal are able to purchase endless “news” broadcasts proclaiming the necessity for their expansion.
4. We need more public transportation. All professional liars believe this. They are simply dumfounded by our desire to get ourselves where we want to go when we want to go there. “We know where they have to go, when they have to arrive, and how they should get there. We will take care of all that.”
5. Religion is not necessary. No government wants people believing that there is anything more powerful than itself. As a result, religions that exalt God above government are endlessly demonized.
6. All children should attend government schools. The nation’s oldest and largest Marxist organization does everything it can to force children into government schools, supporting every possible tax increase to keep young families from being able to afford private or parochial schools. Home-schooling, the cheapest, best way to provide superior educations, is endlessly attacked for the usual reasons.
7. Women should have the right to choose. Those at the left side of the hate-o-meter believe in death at the earliest possible time. They will tell endless lies to get as much of it as possible.
All these lies, taken together, make up most of what the state-run media passes off as “news”. As we become more aware that all such broadcasts, whether of ink or electrons, are frequently accompanied by the word “reform”, we become aware of what is the most common lie of all:
8. Reform is necessary. “Reform”, invariably, means that “more spending is required”, and all “right-thinking people” are in favor of it. “Reform is always the prelude to higher taxes.
