"Consumer Protection Act" authorizes Fed to provide up to $4 trillion in "emergency funding"
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Submitted by captain nemo (not verified) on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 3:30am
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Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:
– For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.
– Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.
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Comments
Barney Frank got rolled? or, this is his actual position? Did BO
work to get him hamstrung by getting the Dem majority to fill the Banking Committee with Blue Dog ConservoDems?
I feared Obama would destroy the Democratic brand...seems well on the way to doing it and getting help on steroids from ostensible progressive Dem Congress members.
How did so many get so cowed? Or, again, is this endemic to pols, even prog/liberal Dems, in the age of the Corporate Plutocrats? Money, money, money--it's a rich man's game.
"Where ya gonna go, sweeties?" seems to be the attitude of most Dems. Seems they assume we'll take quite a bit and not react against the abuse.
How about a National Week (or Month) of Deregistration from the Democratic Party? Even then, would they get the message?
Depends
On how many we could de-register.
been there, done that
I switched to independent the day after the RBC debacle, and sent Dr. Dean several angry but carefully worded letters as well explaining why. Or maybe it was 2 days later -- wasn't the RBC meeting on a weekend?
Many others (yes, many of them PUMAs as then-constituted) did the same. I don't know whether it made any impact in the larger scheme (although, interestingly, the town clerk who answered by call to find out how to switch seemed awfully eager and chirpy to help me go Indie, I wondered if she hadn't had a lot of requests that day.)
Obviously, there weren't enough defections to change the course of Versailles in any material way. They just don't care. But I do think that the party resignations combined with the activism to have a ballot taken vote for Clinton at the convention was successful, in the sense that it forced the DNC to 1) have a vote; 2) pour resources into scurrying around behind the curtains to re-stage manage the whole event. The discontent which culminated with the RBC meeting did prompt the DNC to respond (at long last, once it was too late); thus Dean's famous "Misogyny? What misogyny? I don't have cable" remark*.
* my paraphrase
For people in states where registering unaffiliated doesn't prevent them from voting in primaries, why not? It can't hurt.
I thought it would be sad; I'd been a registered Democrat since I turned 18 (in fact the presidential primary that year was just a few days after my birthday; I couldn't wait to vote). But it was remarkably freeing; I no longer feel at all responsible to explain/defend the idiotic, counter-populist sorry excuses for actions of the Democrats anymore.
I don't know about Barney
I don't know about Barney Frank or not. I'm presuming this is his actual position.
Last month he voted against an audit of the Fed. Pretty gross if you ask me.
I wish there were an alternative electoral system
Thus, rather than not voting, voting -- just not for the usual suspects.
I'm planning on doing some
I'm planning on doing some stuff locally. Next election I'm planning on getting together with some friends I've met through meetup and other groups and running for city office with them. That means there would be six people or so working all together, pounding the pavement.
I think there are some really simple things people can do locally to make city life, or wherever, a lot better: put every last dollar of the town budget on a website (no "miscellaneous" like we have down here); give people the ability to directly vote on a law if petition signatures reach a certain threshold; hire a doctor and dentist to give people cheap basic medical care; construct a huge grid to share energy from solar panels; use empty buildings, or wherever, for urban farming. There are so many things that could be done that people just don't seem to do.
Viva la revolucion!
Now that sounds cool.
Good luck with that.
no!!!!!!!!!!!!
give people the ability to directly vote on a law if petition signatures reach a certain threshold;
that is how California was destroyed. You are just inviting plutocrats to hire a petition expert and get the mob to overturn your decisions if you win.
otherwise sounds like an excellent program. good luck!
A Thousand Time "No"
You're right on, DC.
I've heard about that. I
I've heard about that. I need to take a closer look at it, but it seems like such a good idea (and so fair) that I can't write it off right now.
Ah, see that you caught this
But my headline is better ;-)
;) Guess so.
;) Guess so.