Obama's Six Points
Primary tabs
from USAToday blogs:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/200...
Update at 12:50 p.m. ET. In his speech, Obama outlines six principles for reform. From his remarks, as prepared for delivery:
"First, if you're a financial institution that can borrow from the government, you should be subject to government oversight and supervision. Taxpayers who have now been called upon to spend nearly a trillion dollars to save our economy from the excesses of Wall Street have every right to expect that financial institutions are not taking excessive risks.
"Second, we need to reform requirements on all regulated financial institutions, investigate rating agencies and potential conflicts of interest with the people they are rating, and establish transparency requirements that demand full disclosure by financial institutions to shareholders.
"Third, we need to streamline our overlapping and competing regulatory agencies that cannot oversee the large and complex institutions that dominate the financial landscape.
"Fourth, we need to regulate institutions for what they do, not what they are. Over the last few years, commercial banks and thrift institutions were subject to guidelines on subprime mortgages that did not apply to mortgage brokers and companies. This regulatory framework failed to protect homeowners, and made no sense for our financial system.
"Fifth, we need to crack down on trading activity that crosses the line to market manipulation. We need regulators that actually enforce the rules instead of overlooking them. The SEC should investigate and punish all market manipulation.
"Sixth, we must establish a process that identifies systemic risks to the financial system like the crisis that has overtaken our economy. We need a standing financial market advisory group to meet regularly and provide advice to the President, Congress, and regulators on the state of our financial markets and the risks they face. It’s time to anticipate risks before they erupt into a full-blown crisis."
Could not find any stories that discussed the actual speech.
- dupager's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
h/t to makethemaccountable sorry
saw the link in Caro's update..
(so many things to think about when posting!)
dupager
I see lettuce, some condiments, and a bun here.
But no beef.
All the principles in the world mean nothing if whatever emerges from the Congress gives the administration the unaccountable power they seek.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
The Devil Is In the (Policy) Details
Streamlining and combining agencies that have similar functions so they can better regulate a changing world was one of the rationales behind the Department of Homeland Security. It's not the principle, it's what you're going to do to see it through that matters, especially when the principles are as near meaningless as the ones Obama put forth (with the possible exception of better SEC enforcement, which sounds more concrete, although even that depends on whether it will be backed up with more bodies and doesn't address all those other regulators, the Fed, OCC, CFTC, etc.).
I don't have a problem with these principles, but who would? They don't say very much.
Obama has tried to run this entire campaign without staking a position on anything that's nailed down. Well, that time is over. You don't get that luxury when the country is falling apart. So spit it out, Barack, what exactly do you think should be done?
I Call Bullshit
This did not just happen overnight with no warning. Roubini called it two years ago. Hillary was talking about it in March. Hell, Paulson put forward his own inadequate proposal last December. Just because the President and the Congress didn't do anything, doesn't mean nobody saw this coming. Hell, I saw it coming the day a house less than 1,000 square feet sold in my neighborhood for more than $600,000. You don't need an economics degree to know that's unsustainable. You just need 1) to be paying attention and 2) political leaders who aren't either co-opted by the corrupt industry or political cowards.
If this is going to be the bipartisan story - nobody could've predicted - then we are well and truly fucked. Because almost everything that needs to be done needs to start with the premise that all of this could've been avoided, that it was all predictable and that a number of people did, in fact, predict it. We do not need some new Commission to tell the President the economy is fucked, that's what we're supposed to have the Treasury Secretary, the Fed Reserve head, the chairs of the Senate and House finance committees, and a host more people for, all of whom are already serving in government. We don't need another Commission, we need competent leaders who haven't sold their souls to Wall Street.
If he nailed down his position on this
He wouldn't be able to say, 'Like I have always said...' and claim to have had the right answer all along.
I Can Understand Obama's Need for Some Flexibility
He doesn't want to say he cannot under any circumstances agree to do some small detailed thing and then have that thing be in an otherwise good bill.
So I accept that he won't personally be releasing any legislation. But there's a long way between these big principles and detailed legislation and he needs to move more towards the details. He doesn't need to get into the nitty gritty, but he needs to be specific enough that not everybody will agree with him. Because when everyone agrees with you on something like this, you've actually said nothing.
this is worthless and vague--
will he stop the bailout if none of this is done? or is this just a wishlist if he were king?
This is the same weaseling as
his commitment to oppose FISA retroactive immunity.
"We need to .,.."???
English has perfectly good constructions for making actual commitments, like "We will ..." or "We have to ... " or "We will not accept any less than ..." or a lot of others.
Besides being wishy-washy, this focuses only on bailing out corporations - it says nothing about those who have already gone through foreclosure, it says nothing about helping those facing foreclosure, and it says nothing about how the government is going to feed and shelter me after my business fails because of the way the assholes on Wall Street and in DC fucked up the economy for their own benefit, and continue to suck up dollars for themselves.
what about the money? is he for it, or against it?
that's really all i want to know.
these are generally good ideas, and while i may have a quibble or two, of course i'd like to see them in place. but what i want to know is what he plans to do with OUR money. is he for giving it to these idiots, or not? i'm going to say he probably is, as the Wise Men have reached a concensus about this so-called "crisis" and decided that whatever other barn door shutting and regulatory reshuffling they are going to do, the first step is "pay the people who fucked all this up, and take on enormous debt that will cripple us for a generation, so that they can have money to turn around and buy back the remaining valuable parts of what they sold the taxpayers at firesale prices, while billing us for their losses."
because the rest of it is just hoo-haw. who cares about future "tighter" regulation and oversight, if the entire country is bankrupted and powerless, social program-wise, for a generation? because that's essentially what will happen if they fork this money over now. or what, am i supposed to believe that all Paulson's friends will fund the social programs we won't be able to afford in thanks? give me a fucking break.
there is no "crisis." there is no reason to spend this money. the markets can afford a correction. any other position is bullshit. utter bullshit.
yup--this is not a crisis simply bec the GOP
and money guys are whining.
Obama accepts -- and reinforces -- their framing of it entirely--like always.
Let that "free market" work-- businesses fail all the time and no one bails them out, and Wall St is already acting on its own to buy and sell pieces of each other to each other.
Oh, They're Getting The $700 Million
Absent rioting in the streets, Wall Street is getting the money. The Dems signalled that almost immediately, as Arthur Silber correctly noted when he pointed out a section of a Bloomberg article that said:
As Silber points out, there will be a check, Pelosi just said so. It just won't be blank.
So if what you're hoping for is a giant "fuck off" from Democrats, you aren't going to get it. Well, you and I are going to get it, but the banks aren't. There are other ways of solving this - HOLC for mortgages, the FDIC for banks - but that isn't what's being talked about. What's being talked about is the terms for the $700 million. So the framing is all wrong (surprise!) right off the bat.
And my own prediction is that all of the calls in the world won't matter (which doesn't mean they aren't worth doing, I'm making some myself and emailing others to make them) because Chuck Schumer said a mouthfull when he talked about banks agreeing to legislation. They get a vote. We don't. Unless, of course, enough people demand one. I'm just about desperate enough to stage a one-person protest Saturday in front of the Los Angeles Federal Reserve.
Goldman and Morgan already made changes--
statuses on their own --- from investment banks to holding companies -- they didn't wait for this CRISIS! NOW NOW NOW!!!! bailout.
-- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080922/ap_o...
Candidates likely to skip bailout vote--
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/090... --
"...Congress is poised to vote on the biggest government intervention in the financial markets since the Great Depression, but it’s unlikely that any of the three senators vying for the White House will be there – even though all three have talked of little else for over a week.
Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.) has no plans to return to Washington this week, even though on Monday he expressed discomfort with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s trillion-dollar bailout plan and has offered his own rescue proposal.
“Sen. McCain is monitoring the situation closely,” said campaign co-manager Steve Schmidt on a conference call Monday. “We will see how this unfolds this week.”
McCain “retains his rights to evaluate it as it goes along and make a final decision,” said co-manager Rick Davis.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also looks like a no-show.
Senior Obama strategist Robert Gibbs said the campaign would be monitoring the process as it unfolds this week, but as of Monday, the campaign would not commit to Obama making the trip back to Washington – even though the bailout proposal has taken a central role in Obama’s stump speeches.
..."
Obama's 6 fundraisers--
far more relevant than his six points
-- For Obama, fundraising remains a priority -- http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-o...
"... The rallies he held and local interviews he gave were important to his presidential bid, but so too were the five fundraising events he attended over four evenings in Beverly Hills, Albuquerque and the Miami area.
After deciding to opt out of the public finance system, the Democratic nominee is now spending a significant amount of campaign time raising money from wealthy donors in virtually every major city where he stops. ...
On Monday evening, the Illinois senator is scheduled to attend two more fundraisers in Chicago, tapping again into a metropolitan area that has already given him $17.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
...
The first Chicago event, with minimum admission of $1,500, will be held at The Standard Club. The second fundraiser, at a downtown restaurant, is being hosted by Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias and has a $28,500 admission price.
Obama's campaign refuses to provide exact figures, but the five fundraising events Obama attended last week likely raised millions. ..."