I watched President Obama's speech Thursday on Wall Street reform, but once again, I failed to hear what I was waiting to hear...that he was ready and willing to 'get down, get dirty and get very specific' issues about what he will accept and what he will not accept' from the Senate regarding Financial Reform.
It has taken me most of my lifetime to pay more attention to not what our leaders or politicians say, as to 'what they are not saying' and I am wondering now....what exactly did President Obama mean today in his speech when he said these words:
"Ultimately, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street."
What I failed to hear in President Obama's speech was 'that specific dividing line' because in fact, every single American knows there has in fact been a 'dividing line' between the Middle Class who bailed out Wall Street during their continuing 'Crime Wave' and I was waiting, all during this speech, to hear the words I most wanted to hear, that I have, in fact heard, in my lifetime other Presidents say:
'I will Veto this Bill if it does not.........................'
That did not occur in President Obama's speech. There was no moment of 'this is where I draw the line' or was there once single comment on what he, as our leader, our President thought about the current legislation, and what it lacked or needed. Nor did I hear any kind of true 'specifics' or about accountability. I heard a lot of 'irresponsible talk'....I heard a lot of 'get on board Wall Street talk,' I heard a lot of talk about 'responsibility' but not one word about 'accountability.'
For instance, he said this:
It was that failure of responsibility that I spoke about when I came to New York more than two years ago -- before the worst of the crisis had unfolded. It was back in 2007. And I take no satisfaction in noting that my comments then have largely been borne out by the events that followed. But I repeat what I said then because it is essential that we learn the lessons from this crisis so we don't doom ourselves to repeat it. And make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we allow this moment to pass -- and that's an outcome that is unacceptable to me and it's unacceptable to you, the American people.
What, exactly is 'unacceptable' to you Mr. President?
My point being, with the word, 'responsibility' comes the same words 'accountability, repercussions, consequences, and reparation.' To try to separate these basic concepts of what has occurred in our nation, leads to nothing less than 'empty pretty speeches' that are meaningless to the million of Americans who have paid with their very homes, their jobs, their savings, their retirements, while they were 'literally' forced into bailing out those that President Obama is pointing his finger at: The 'responsible parties.'
It is only half of the equation, and that is exactly the "dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street."
How can that be construed other than to mean that 'Wall Street was and is the so called 'responsible' parties for this disaster we find ourselves in now, and were rewarded for that disaster, with no consequences what so ever, but Americans are paying for those consequences? Can anyone explain that to me?
Sorry Mr. President, but in my book, 'responsibility' also means 'accountability and reparation.' Otherwise, what you are really telling the American people, is that the 'Wall Street Crime Wave' that ruined our nation's economy was just some 'accident' that we all have to just learn to 'suck up' after over $4.6 Trillion has been pissed out the window, and no one is going to held to account for the loss of jobs, homes, lives, and the virtual ruination of our entire economy.
That doesn't cut it in my book, and I seriously doubt that it it does the same for most middle class Americans.
President Obama in his speech said to Wall Street:
Join us, (what does that even mean?)
Join whom Mr. President, and for what?
The same group of criminals who engineered the faulty system in the first place? The enablers of moral hazard who pimp their wares at every opportunity with securitization and insurance?
Meanwhile, out in the 'real world' what is really going on 'behind our backs' that the 'fake media' is failing to report:
The wealth transfer continues: another $118 Billion in coupon issuance is coming up, the bulk of which will be bought up by Primary Dealers, repoed back to the Fed, and the resulting cash used to ramp stocks to new all time highs, generating short-term profits for the banks and another year of record bonuses as future US generations will experience the kinds of riots caused by debt mismanagement as Greece does today. Another $49 billion Bills will see the same fate. Also, with the first auction of 5 year TIPS since 2009, is someone telling us something? The Obama plan: Dow 36,000 by the mid-terms or else. In other news, the most recent unmanageable debt load per the DTS is $12,808,961,000,000. This is money that will not be repaid, and includes Trust Fund balances that are amortizing ever faster as America's entitlement state dream joins that of Greece.
http://www.zerohedge.com/...
Join Us? Join Who President Obama? And exactly what it is that you are going to 'Veto' in this 'shitty so called bi-partisan bill' that does nothing to protect Americans?
Thus far I heard a 'vague' statement from President Obama a few weeks ago that he would 'veto' any legislation in the financial reform bill that did not seek 'transparencies for derivatives' yet the current legislation as presently written most certainly does not provide that transparency, and in fact provides more 'tricks of the trade' that Wall Street can 'use' to get around.
What about the rest of the financial reform bill, Mr. President, what parts of the present bill are 'you willing to veto?'
For instance these 'gaping loopholes:'
Banks Still Rule -- Ten Ways Dems and Dodd Are Failing on Financial Reform
AlterNet / By Nomi Prins
April 14, 2010
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's financial "reform" proposal (Barney Frank's wasn't much better) won't change the nature of anything Wall Street does. Dodd's needless watering down of a proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency has been well-documented, so here is a list of 10 other problems Dodd's bill will not fix:
- It won't make the biggest most "systemically important" banks (read: systemically destructive) any smaller...
- It won't reduce the economic danger from rampant, over leveraged trading activities...
3) It won't change the nature, transparency, size, complexity or usage of the most heinous derivatives...
- It won't prevent the creation of new toxic assets...
- It won't contain the risk to the shadow banking system from hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capital funds...
- It won't remove the conflicts of interest between banks that issue securities and rating agencies that rate them, and get paid a fee for doing so...
- It won't contain systemic risk...
- It won't wrest control of our economic future from the banks the Fed couldn't regulate over the past decade...
- It won't constrain the Fed's future bailout operations...
- It won't prevent bank failures by separating speculative banking from deposit-insured commercial banking a la Glass Steagall, but instead contains plans for resolving them, after the fact...
Indeed, when even representatives from the Federal Reserve are all saying the same things, as are most experts in the field, that the current legislation is full of enough 'loopholes' to please and even silence the 'fake Republican filibuster' then you know, damn well, that what we have here is not 'real reform at all.' This is nothing more than the new 'Fake Health Care Bill' Redux on Steroids:
Regional Federal Reserve bank presidents from Philadelphia to Kansas City argue the bill doesn't really end Too Big To Fail, and still leaves too much discretion to politicians to save failing firms the next time a crisis comes -- which will surely come again, experts agree. If the bill doesn't end that, then it will be for naught, some say. Nobel Prize winning economists say the bill doesn't go far enough on taking out the excessive risk that still hangs over the financial system. Others argue the bill doesn't rein in megabanks far enough -- the bill doesn't force them to shrink, nor does it compel financial actors from reducing their interconnectedness. If anything, experts say, the bill allows megabanks to continue to dominate the market.
Yeah, yeah yeah...I can hear it now....'we'll fix it later.' OMG.
There 'will be no next time,' Mr. President, and perhaps that is where this deep disconnect between Wall Street, Main Street and the White House is nothing more than not understanding why the deep sense of 'civil unrest' keeps growing and is reaching epidemic 'militia madness' on the Washington DC Mall moments.
Naturally, I do not agree with these kind of 'tea bagger right wing gun crazies' that are taking to the streets of America, but I can certainly see why the 'disconnect is happening.' So much of this is indeed racist, but the other reason has to do with the disconnect between President Obama throwing out the word........'RESPONSIBILITY' by not stepping up to the plate and demanding 'ACCOUNTABILITY.' They are one in the same, and will always be in a Democracy.
It is as if our government is saying to us: 'We ruined your economy, you bailed us all out by the 'Hank Paulson' the former Treasurer/Goldman Sachs King, threatening 'Martial Law' if you didn't pay up........Give us the money and no one gets hurt' Bank Robber talk....and then allowing all of these 'Mafia Banking Cartel Ass Hats, who knew exactly what they were doing' to walk away, with smiles on their faces as they put their 'guns away' laughing all the way to the Bank....
'Responsibility?' What does that even mean, when there are no consequences and when the current financial reform bill is a sham to begin with?
As William K. Black disclosed in his testimony the other day, the regulators always had the power to shut down the frauds, and to resolve the financial crisis without having to give away billions. They lacked the will, and the motivation. You want to wipe that smirk off Lloyd Blankfein's face? Nominate Eliot Spitzer or Elizabeth Warren to be the head of the SEC, or the CFTC, and provide them with a adequate budget and a staff of financial experts and a few experienced prosecutors.
Even with strong regulations, unless you have capable and motivated regulators, there are always ways to evade the rules, especially if they are complex and provide exceptions. The simpler they are, the stronger the regulations will be, provided they are flexible enough to be amended and expanded efficiently to match the changing and dynamic nature of the industry that they are overseeing.
This is not that difficult, and these jokers are not that smart, although part of their con is to paint themselves as the smartest, the best, and practically unstoppable. The root of the US financial crisis is always and everywhere regulatory capture, political cronyism, and fraud. It really is that simple.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...
The cost is and was enormous....the cost, is not yet paid. There is a new wave of foreclosures coming........there is the new wave of Commercial foreclosures coming, there are no jobs on the horizon, there is the new 'Deficit Hawk Commission' now coming after Social Security and Medicare' to pay off the 'Toxic Debts' that the Banks/Wall Street/Federal Reserve have left us......and people in America are supposed to some how believe that there is no line between:
'Main Street and Wall Street'? Right now, President Obama 'the line between Main Street and Wall Street is wider than the Grand Canyon and it is getting wider by the day. But that, of course if the 'political moral hazard' of the utter disconnect between 'reality and meaningless rhetoric' that is simply reprehensible at this point we find our nation in now.
I had hoped, that President Obama was ready, finally to give a fire and brimstone 'fired up and ready to go' speech to Wall Street. I wanted so badly to once again watch Candidate Obama reappear and give Wall Street a real piece of his mind, for the sake of the American people who voted for him and believed so deeply in his promises to once again 'lift up Main Street.' I was more than disheartened to find none of that 'old Candidate Obama' surface even for one moment during this speech. This was a speech in which President Obama should have taken Wall Street to the 'Wood Shed' and openly called them out on not just their 'profound irresponsibility, but also that he would expect and remind them that it was their duty as American businessmen and citizens to 'give back to the nation, that which they had abused by way off helping to turn our country around and rebuild businesses and invest in America once again, not just because Wall Street and the Banks owe this to their nation as reparation to it's citizens, but because it is the right thing to do as loyal Americans who can repay the same citizens who came to their aid in their time of need. One hand washes the other in our nation and that is how 'civilized societies survive.'
Mr. Obama's speech at the Cooper Union today was remarkably unsatisfying. It seemed to be given from weakness, and almost obsequious as the American President politely asked his largest campaign contributors to please stop flouting the law, defrauding the people and their customers, and spending millions per day lobbying the Congress to buy changes in the reform legislation to provide them with the 'right regulators' of their choice and convenient loopholes to render it ineffective.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...
Obama's call for a more cooperative relationship stands in sharp contrast to another presidential address to financial executives in New York a few years removed from a financial crisis.
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in a 1936 speech. "They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
"They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Now those words...FDR's words are the ones we need so desperately now. Inside of those words, what you will find is this:
ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY, REPARATION, A LINE IN THE SAND, REAL LEADERSHIP, CALLING THE ORGANIZED CRIME WAVE OF WALL STREET FOR WHAT IT IS, WHICH IS JUST AS DANGEROUS AS AN ORGANIZED MOB, AND THE WILLINGNESS TO TAKE A STAND ON THE SIDE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Sorry for all the CAP's, but not really. For President Obama to somehow pretend that there is no line between Main Street and Wall Street at this point in time, is not only laughable, it is like a slap in the face.
The people of the United States are not, indeed a 'mere appendage' as FDR states, to the hands of Wall Street Mafia Economic Terrorists. They deserve, after everything our nation has been through, and will continue to go through, more than just, 'business as usual' and another 'Max Baucus/Cris Dodd' bullshit bill.
At this point in time 'we' deserve a President who will stand up for 'real reform' and not only draw a line in the sand, but will say the words loudly and clearly:
I will veto this bill if it does not.....................(what...what President Obama what are you willing, finally to 'veto' and send back to Congress? Please I'm waiting.....we are all waiting...can you actually stand on principal for anything that actually 'protects Americans'?)
Where was that in the speech? Where were the words 'accountability' and why isn't the President discussing the specifics of this bill?
Now that the 'truth' if finally coming out as Senator Levin produced the emails from Goldman Sachs, we find the 'Big Short' was not our imagination....these 'immoral acts that are technically legal,' are in fact FRAUD. These Investment Banks literally came after their 'very own countrymen/women,' they came after the very homes we live in, where we raise our families, which for most Americans' is the single most important investment they will ever make, that holds equity and 'dreams' of a better life to come. How could these sleazy bunch of sharks come after their very own people in the nation that gave them the opportunity to become productive, successful Americans? It was FRAUD, plain and simple.
"There it is, in their own words: Goldman Sachs taking 'the big short' against the mortgage market," subcommittee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the internal emails.
"Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis," Levin said. "They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients."
Levin's panel points out that in the firm's 2009 annual report, Goldman Sachs stated that the firm "did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products." "These e-mails show that, in fact, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market," Levin said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
It is not what our leaders say, it it more what they do not say, that in the end matters the most to all of us.
What I got from this 'speech' was that 'Wall Street will skate, you will pay, for their sins' and there will be no accountability.
What did you take away from this speech?
Again, to fully understand what this bill does and does not do, then study the bill, find the loopholes, and ask yourself, why President Obama did not address these loopholes in his speech.
Here is Nomi Prins 'link' to know what this bill does, and does not do:
http://www.alternet.org/...
And, please spare me the 'bill will be fixed later bullshit' .....I've had enough of that after 'paying the tab' for these crooks, thieves and liars' to last me a life time.
Again, what exactly is it that President Obama is going to 'veto' in this bill? What exactly is unacceptable to President Obama in this bill?
Does anyone know? If you do know, can you please tell the rest of America, because thus far I've yet to hear from President Obama on one single specific that he will either 'veto' or whatever he may mean by 'unacceptable.'
What I find unacceptable is this notion that there is no difference between Main Street and Wall Street, when President Obama uses the word 'irresponsible' towards Wall Street, yet has failed to hold them accountable, or produce one single 'specific' set of agenda items that he will 'veto.'
Thanks.
B.