New and better Democrats? Is it all right if we stop using that big pile of bullshit yet, because this is the guy that we Democrats threw under the bus along with Russ Feingold.
As I watch the systematically destruction of the working poor of our nation along with our own party, by this insane delusion, that the Democrats are caving (no, they are not caving at all, they just don't give a shit about the working people of this nation), then I am reminded again of a great fighter, who was designated by the Republican Party, as Public Enemy number one, and that is why they spend 20 percent of their entire RNC reelection budget to get rid of him. What you may not realize is that Grayson was a threat to both parties, because he went right after Wall St./the Banks.
This is what a new and better Democrat looks like, and this is who we threw under the bus:
Yes, I know. He's not perfect, he doesn't speak the 'in the loop beltway talk,' but Grayson knew this from the beginning:
The rules of Engagement have changed in our country, and it is the rest of our own party, that hasn't caught up with that reality. The more cynical of that reality is not only do those in our own party know the rules of engagement have changed, but like so many Blue Dogs, are all working for the same efforts:
The systematic destruction of the working poor of our nation, and of our own party. You decide that for yourself. I can see the handwriting on the wall.
I've been watching this total farce going on in order to keep the FRAUD TO COVER UP THE FRAUD, going in the foreclosure gate scandal:
A top Treasury department official said Thursday that the government has still not imposed any fines on banks that do not comply with the Obama administration's mortgage modification program. In testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of Treasury's Homeownership Preservation Office, said her department has pursued "non-monetary remedies" but has not actually imposed any fines on banks for not complying with the administration's flagship $50 billion foreclosure prevention program. Even in the midst of a growing controversy over allegedly fraudulent foreclosure paperwork, Treasury has not imposed any penalties on banks.
By many estimates, the Home Affordable Modification Program, which was launched last year, has been a failure. Although about 1.5 million borrowers were encouraged to sign up during its first year, 40 percent of those were kicked out of the program after initiating "trial" modifications, HuffPost's Shahien Nasiripour and Arthur Delaney reported. The program was intended to help up to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure.
In his latest report to Congress, the special inspector general for TARP Neil Barofsky said the mortgage-modification program can actually cause borrowers to go into foreclosure, due to extra fees that can accumulate on modified loans. The Government Accountability Office reported in March and in June not only that Treasury has not levied any fines on mortgage companies, but also that it hasn't even finalized guidelines for doing so. After bank officials admitted that they had employed people who approved foreclosure documents without reading them, big banks including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America last month temporarily halted their foreclosures. A Federal task force is investigating whether there has been criminal activity in the mortgage industry, and Bank of America faces a Federal racketeering lawsuit over its allegedly shoddy paperwork. Still, Treasury has not yet punished these banks in any significant way. "To date we have not gone back to take back incentives that have already been paid, but we have pursued many of the non-monetary remedies, including further actions and evaluations, and re-evaluations," Caldwell told Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, after Waters repeatedly asked her if she had "levied any penalties or sanctions."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The only reason that we are not watching 24/7 daily proceedings of just how Wall St./the Banks (that would make the old OJ trial or even the Watergate trail pale in comparison) is because our own party, and our own President signed on to this fact:
Keep it all covered up, even if we have to bring our entire nation down, and drag the working poor over the cliff with us, and destroy our entire national public trust in our key financial sectors, none of that matters, as long as the ruling elite and the Oligarchy can rule in the end. That is the brutal horrifying truth, and as we all keep losing whatever equity is left in our homes, our jobs, and are throw into deep, deep despair, as the Republicans have now blocked any hope for the extended unemployment benefits, remember how we got here and why we got here:
Before I get to the bailouts, I have to remind you that in:
• 1999, you passed the Financial Services Modernization Act. This repealed Glass-Steagall, the law that had successfully kept main street banking safely separated from Wall Street for seven decades. Even the 1987 market crash had no impact on Main Street credit availability, thanks to Glass-Steagall.
• 1997-2010, you allowed the Credit Rating Agencies to change their business model, from Investor pays to Underwriter pays — a business structure known as Payola. This change effectively allowed banks to purchase their AAA ratings, and was ignored by the SEC and other regulators.
• 2000, you passed the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. It allowed the shadow banking industry to develop without any oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the SEC, or the state insurance regulators. This led to rampant creation of credit-default swaps, CDOs, and other financial weapons of mass destruction — and the demise of AIG.
• 2001-04, the Fed, under Alan Greenspan, irresponsibly dropped fund rates to 1%. This set off an inflationary spiral in housing, commodities, and in most assets priced in dollars or credit.
• 1999-07, the Federal Reserve failed to use its supervisory and regulatory authority over banks, mortgage underwriters and other lenders, who abandoned such standards as employment history, income, down payments, credit rating, assets, property loan-to-value ratio and debt-servicing ability.
• 2004, the SEC waived its leverage rules, allowing the 5 biggest Wall Street firms to go from 12 to 1 to 20, 30 and even 40 to 1. Ironically, this rule was called the Bear Stearns exemption.
http://www.ritholtz.com/...
And then what? When we get a new and better Democrat, who knew exactly what was going on, and went after Wall St/the Banks like the new Eliot Ness, a fire raged ferret on overdrive...what did we do?
We threw him under the bus, and we have let the FRAUD TO COVER UP THE FRAUD continue, didn't we? And then on top of that, we continue to give out this horrifying new meme: The Democrats are caving.
Here is a clue people: They ARE NOT CAVING, at all. The are part and parcel of the continued cover up, so let's all stop for a second, and take a reality check here ok?
Where is the new Jobs Commission Project?
Why is the transparency in our government, when the opposite is happening, most esp. in our financial sectors?
Why do you think they 'our beloved leaders' are all willing to take us down, rather than face what is right in front of our faces? That we are losing our homes, our jobs, our pension funds, at the expense of the fucking cowards that will not face the truth, that we all know? America is bankrupt and we the people are paying for the Corporate take over of our nation, to make certain that, no matter who they drag down in the end, they are all willing to drag us down in the end rather than face the deep systemic corruption and cover up.
That is what foreclosure gate has brought to us front and center.
This is not about the 'deficit' it never was about the deficit, to believe that is an utter lie, and a delusion. This is not about pretending the Obama Cat Food Commission had anything other in mind, than continuing to keep the Great Heist of 2008 hidden, or the extended Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent in check.
To believe those lies, is to believe the same way we got lied into the wars for oil and blood on the 19 year old soldiers who have no other jobs left to go to in our nation, produced by Bush and Co., or to believe that Bush/Paulson, somehow did not see this all coming up in front of us.
These actions and rule changes were requested by the banking industry. Rather than behave as adult supervision, you indulged the reckless kiddies, looking the other way as they acted out. You were the grand enabler of the finance sector’s misbehavior. Hence, you helped create the mess by allowing the banking sector to run roughshod over decades of successful constraints. (Kudos again on that). There were voices warning about the upcoming crisis, but you managed to turn a deaf ear to them: Warnings about subprime lending, problems with securitization, against the false claim that residential real estate never went down in value, or that the models forecasting VAR were wildly understating risk. An economy driven by growth dependent upon credit fueled consumption was unsustainable, and yet you encouraged that reckless credit consumption. The compensation schemes for Wall Street were hilariously short term (ignored by you); the crony capitalism of Boards of Directors that undercut market discipline was similarly ignored. You encouraged the hollowing out of the US economy, allowing it to become increasingly "Financialized" at the expense of industry and manufacturing. What was once a small but important part of the economy became dominant, yet unproductive, with your blessing.
Bottom line: You were at a loss for understanding the many factors that led to the crisis in the first place. When the crisis struck, you did not seem to understand the role you should play. Instead of stepping up to halt the financialization, to unwind it, you gave away the shop. You failed to extract concessions from firms on the verge of bankruptcy. Your negotiating skills were embarrassing. In the face of meltdown, you panicked. You could have undone the decades of radical deregulation at that moment. You could have fired the incompetent management, wiped out the shareholders who invested in insolvent companies, gave the creditors and bond holders a major haircut for their foolish lending. Instead, you rewarded them for their gross incompetence. The solutions you ran with were ad hoc, poorly thought out, improvised. You crossed legal boundaries, putting the Fed in the position of vio0lating its charter and exceeding its mandates. You created a Moral Hazard, the impact of which may not be felt until decades in the future. Very few of your senior elected and appointed officials understood what was going on. Rather than offer an intelligent response to the crisis, you delivered brute force: Trillions of dollars were thrown at the problem, papering over its symptoms but not its underlying causes. Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered a motherload of cash. Considering the dollar sums involved, your actions were remarkably ineffective. What was left over afterwards was a wildly over-leveraged consumer whose credit limits had been reached; State and municipal budgets were heavily dependent upon that excess consumer spending, creating huge budget holes because of it. Net net: The resultant economy was in the worst recession since the Great Depression.
As a student of the Great Depression, Ben Bernanke should have had the best grasp – but his bailout of Bear Stearns revealed him to be just another banker, intent on saving the banks – banking system be damned. To give you a clue of exactly how lost Hank Paulson was, he spent his time praying, and creating documents that exempt himself personally for liability. He’s from Goldman, so we know that "team first" ain’t exactly his style. Tim Geithner, who did such a stupendous job overseeing the banks in the first place, was n way over his head. And while I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for hiding under the bed and pretty much staying out of everyone else’s way. I would call him clueless, but that wouldn’t be fair to the legions of clueless around the world.
http://www.ritholtz.com/...
I suppose in the end what bothers me most is this idea and delusion that we keep going, over and over again, despite the proof, that our leaders are somehow 'clueless.'
I reject that notion, and I honestly believe that this is what Congressman Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold understood about our government. No one is clueless about what is and what has happened to our nation.
We, the people are living it every single day. We see the corruption. We know how this happened to all of us. Plain and simple this is how we got here:
Our nation has lost all public trust in our government and financial sectors, because our nation has lost all public trust in our leaders who have refused over and over and over again, to claim what has happened to our nation:
We have continually been fucked to the ends of the earth, and we paid for it over and over again, and still, they will not own up to their own failures, and are more than willing to take us all over the cliff, to ensure that above all, they can keep the crumbing house of cards going, not for the sake of the people of this nation that give these beloved leader the great right to lead, but so that they can continue to bleed us dry, when what we needed most, was to have the rule of law upheld in our nation...to restore the public trust.
Similarly, market psychologists Richard L. Peterson M.D. and Frank Murtha, Ph.D. wrote in October:
Trust is the oil in the engine of capitalism, without it, the engine seizes up.
Confidence is like the gasoline, without it the machine won’t move.
Trust is gone: there is no longer trust between counterparties in the financial system. Furthermore, confidence is at a low. Investors have lost their confidence in the ability of shares to provide decent returns (since they haven’t).
http://www.philstockworld.com/...
Regardless of what you may think of Congressman Grayson, who is now cleaning out his desk, know this:
He knew exactly what happened to our nation, and who was responsible for it, because of his brilliant education. Long before he became an Congressman, he was going after the illegal war profiteers, and I wish I could say the same for my own President or my own party.
Sometimes, a real hero comes along, and when they do, what did we do?
Grayson has a Polynesian wife, and 5 children, he has had death threats made against his life, and still, he was such a huge treat to BOTH parties that they had to get rid of him.
New and better Democrats? Give me a fucking break? The Democrats are 'caving'? Give me a fucking break. Take a real look at the foreclosure hearings, then ask yourself this question:
With all the illicit foreclosure mills, that are continually throwing millions out of their homes, without due process, why isn't President Obama standing up for that?
I suppose in the end, that will be the answer, but I know better, I know the answer, and the answer is this:
The FRAUD TO COVER UP THE FRAUD, is continuing because if our government admits to what is going on in Foreclosure gate, then it will all come crumbling down, and we mustn't let that happen, shall we?
Thanks as always.
Ms. B.