Well "the banks own the place" is certainly turning out to be true.
That's the only explanation for what just happened. Our beloved House of Representatives, where we have a Democratic majority led by a popular Democratic President, just handed Wall Street a nice little Christmas present at the expense of the American people and the World Economy:
House eases restrictions on derivatives trades
What's almost damn funny about this is that they're supposed to be making things more difficult for Wall Street to destroy the economy of the world rather than easier.
But no. Wall Street is hell-bent on ripping everybody off. Again. And why not? It's their job to make money, and they just proved to the world that no matter how much money they lose, even trillions, Big Daddy Government will bail them out.
And we used to make fun of what kind of welfare queens?
Oh yeah, these are the rich and powerful welfare queens who actually have enough money and power to get what they want in Congress!
WASHINGTON – A bipartisan coalition in the House voted late Thursday to make it easier for corporations to engage in complex derivatives trades without government restrictions, eroding the reach of proposed regulations to govern Wall Street.
And here just a few minutes ago I thought this article, below, might be a bit on the hyperbolic side. But apparently not:
Effort to Reform Finance Instead Turning into a Coup by Banksters
Here's another good one:
“Financial Reform, or, Rearranging Chairs on the Titanic”
Congress is nearing completion of its financial reform bill HR 4173 (Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009), which appears to amount to shifting chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic. The monstrous legislation is too big and too complex to analyze in a short blog. Instead I will discuss three areas in which Congress is failing to address the real issues: dangers posed by derivatives, the folly of bailing-out troubled “systemically important” institutions, and reformation of credit ratings agencies.
Title III of the Act would attempt to get derivatives trade onto formal exchanges. However, as Mike Konczal demonstrates, there are enough loopholes in the draft to drive Goldman Sachs right through it. In truth, it won’t make that much difference whether derivatives are exposed to the standardization and daylight that exchanges could bring. Note that a large portion of commodities futures are run through formal exchanges without dampening the speculation that is driving yet another commodities boom that will go bust next year. Yes, there are loopholes that allow commodities traders sitting in front of computers in the US to escape exchange rules by pretending they are offshore, and it is likely that the majority of futures contracts trades go unreported. But it is virtually certain that the same will be true of derivatives markets even if HR 4173 passes. In short, the problem is not really opaque and unregulated derivatives trading, but rather the fact that we allow protected and regulated institutions to gamble with house money. They put down a dollar of their own funds and place bets of $30 or more that interest rates or prices will move in a favorable direction. Congress has proposed nothing that will change this — and putting derivatives onto exchanges will make little difference.
Ha, Funny it's worse than even this guy thought.
I urge everyone to watch this Frontline documentary on the making of the financial crisis, and how Alan Greenspan, Summers, and Geithner were deeply involved with it. It makes it quite clear that the same people who caused the disaster were tapped by Obama to fix it, something that is quite likely impossible and at the very least extremely ill advised. If you can still support Obama's so-called "leadership" on these issues after watching this, well, I don't know what to say.
And this isn't a Dem vs. Repub issue. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Trade in these bullshit "derivatives" needs to be completely banned. Even Paul Volcker thinks so, and tried to warn the world about them today.
Here is Volcker back in September.
And here is Volcker now, addressing the very banksters who caused this mess.
They didn't listen. Neither did Congress. And neither did Obama.
Amid throngs of bankers arguing that new regulations should not impede on financial "innovation," Volcker pushed back, blasting Wall Street's increasingly complex financial products as useless to economic growth. In what seems to have been a shot at exotic securities, he named the ATM cash machine as the most successful financial innovation in the past 20 years, the Times reported.
Volcker is one of a number of financial luminaries calling for at least a partial return to Glass-Steagall -- a Depression-era law that separated Wall Street investment banking from Main Street commercial banking. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page also endorsed the concept in a recent editorial as a way to "reduce moral hazard" and "limit certain kinds of risk-taking by institutions that hold taxpayer-insured deposits."
At the UK conference, Volcker criticized complex financial products that helped lead to economic ruin, such as credit default swaps. He challenged the industry to provide "one shred of evidence" that these financial products are socially useful.
As Washington's Blog points out, Volcker backs the views of billionaire George Soros and "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who both want banks to be treated as public utilities.
So let me get this straight. If you nearly destroy the economy of the world you not only get bailed out, so you can pay yourself millions of dollars in bonuses, you ALSO get Congress to make it easier for you to destroy the economy of the world AGAIN.
Nice work if you can get it.
Glad we have a President and politicians who are going out of their way to actually promote the destruction of the world economy by people who have done it before.
Talk about rewarding incompetence. This must take the cake.
I can't wait for 7 more years of the Obama administration. It's just gonna be GREAT.