I know that we live in a post-factual political environment, but optics still matter. That’s why it didn’t make a ton of sense for the Trump administration to send out Gary Cohn, (until two weeks ago) the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, to explain that “President Donald Trump on Friday plans to sign an executive action to scale back the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law, in a sweeping plan to dismantle much of the regulatory system put in place after the financial crisis.” In his new job, Cohn serves as Trump’s chief economic advisor and the Director of the National Economic Council.
Hillary Clinton was pilloried for given paid speeches in the foxes’ den. Donald Trump unlocked the door and shoved the foxes in the henhouse. In addition to Cohn, he also tapped Goldman Sachs veteran Steve Mnuchin to run the Treasury Department. Mnuchin is best known for his post-Goldman career where he oversaw a scheme to foreclose on people without having the proper documentation, in some cases for being behind in their payments by less than a dollar. All told, during the financial crisis, Mnuchin was responsible for throwing roughly 35,000 people out of their homes.
Gutting the consumer friendly Dodd-Frank law isn’t the only thing on today’s agenda. Trump also plans to sign an executive order “aimed at rolling back a controversial regulation scheduled to take effect in April that critics have said would upend the retirement-account advisory business.” In this case, the optics are about as bad as they can get.
Mr. Trump will use a memorandum to ask the labor secretary to consider rescinding a rule set to go into effect in April that orders retirement advisers, overseeing about $3 trillion in assets, to act in the best interest of their clients, Mr. Cohn said in the White House interview. He said the rule limits consumer choice.
No organization in the country has a worse reputation for failing to act in the best interests of their clients than Goldman Sachs.
Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on securities that they believed were solid investments, according to former Goldman employees with direct knowledge of the deals who asked not to be identified because they have confidentiality agreements with the firm.
Goldman was not the only firm that peddled these complex securities — known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s — and then made financial bets against them, called selling short in Wall Street parlance…
…Some securities packaged by Goldman and Tricadia ended up being so vulnerable that they soured within months of being created…
…Goldman and other firms eventually used the C.D.O.’s to place unusually large negative bets that were not mainly for hedging purposes, and investors and industry experts say that put the firms at odds with their own clients’ interests.
“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”
For Trump to hire the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs as his chief economic adviser is bad enough, but to actually make him the man to announce the rollback of a regulation aimed at preventing investment advisers from betting against the investments that they recommend, that takes real chutzpah. And to cast the change as beneficial to consumers is beyond risible.
“‘Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we’re not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year,’ White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. ‘The banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers.’
There are a lot of people who voted for Trump specifically because they were wounded financially by the collapse of the housing market. I’m thinking of people like Teena Colebrook who was featured in an Associated Press article back in December.
When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.
She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury — Steven Mnuchin — all too well.
OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.
“I just wish that I had not voted,” said Colebrook, 59. “I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in.”
It was supposed to be a giant tyrannical Kenyan/communist conspiracy every time President Obama attempted to get around an obstructive Congress by issuing executive orders, but it doesn’t seem to bother the Republicans that Trump is issuing a flood of executive orders even when he has a friendly Congress willing to do his bidding. Hypocrisy isn’t the only problem here, though, because these orders are (and should be perceived to be) violations of the trust a lot of working people put in him to look out for their interests.
The Dodd-Frank reforms are primarily designed to prevent another economic meltdown arising from widespread bank failures. The economic advisor regulation is aimed at preventing big investment banks from destroying people’s savings by recommending that brokers handling individual retirement and 401(k) accounts invest in products they are secretly betting will decline disastrously in value.
This is not economic populism in any sense. It’s every bit as lopsided to the interests of big banks as anything that Mitt Romney or any of Trump’s eleventy billion rivals for the Republican nomination would have devised.
When Trump flip-flopped from bashing Clinton for her cozy relationship with Wall Street to filling out his own economic team with some of the most guilty actors, that signaled there was a problem. But now we can see the details. It’s not just that we’re treating Goldman Sachs (sometimes unfairly) as a dirty word. We can see the actual consequences of having these folks in charge and how immediate and brutal the impact is for average American workers.
Maybe this will get lost (for now) in the flurry of more compelling news stories, but it will come back to bite Trump, and it will bite him because people are going to get screwed and they’re going to (rightly) blame him.
So we were screwed either way back in November. Clinton or Trump? Cyanide or Arsenic?
More like Mountain Dew or Arsenic, but some of us equate unappetizing and unhealthful with deadly poisonous.
Clinton would have kept Dodd-Frank and would have let the regulation take effect.
Silly man. How easily you forget, Boo. Remember last year??? All we were given in November was a Hobson’s choice.
Right?
You don’t know that. No evidence in the public arena that Clinton’s financial backers like those regulations anymore than the Trumpsters. But we could guess that they would be much more sophisticated in how they would have gone about doing away with both.
No, we never saw a transcript of those quarter million dollar speeches. So, there is no actual record of what she promised.
The speeches have been released and they say no such thing. They’re barely different from what’s said at a Brookings Institute conference.
She promised them cupcake reach arounds and unlimited access to the treasury. Thank god we dodged that bullet.
I guess you missed the part where the Russians stole the transcripts from John Podesta and gave them to WikiLeaks who published them to the great enthusiasm of the American press who dutifully printed all the most damaging parts of them with no effort to balance their characterization of the speeches as a whole.
Thx for the link … had just scanned the news excerpts during the election campaign.
○ Aide Planted Anti-Bank Comments in One Paid Clinton Speech to Throw Reporters Off the Scent | The Intercept |
“commonwealth” heresy!!!
from voice, who then slinks away leaving its wrongness unretracted, unacknowledged even, after it’s been factually refuted by others.
Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren both blast Republican Dodd-Frank repeal plan
Hillary Clinton: How I’d Rein In Wall Street:
Yes, but she (Clinton) doesn’t really mean it. You can just tell.
There is no evidence that Clinton would have done anything different in a financial crisis than Bush or Obama did.
She would have left these institutions too big to fail, and history tells us they would find ways around regulations.
Nobody trusts a prosecutor who takes money from the people they are supposed to police
Are we going to fight the 2010 election over and over? How long do you have to make this asinine argument before you learn the costs?
There’s also no evidence that she would shit can dodd/frank and she most certainly wouldn’t have rushed out an executive order killing the fiduciary rule.
Actually Kaine wanted to roll back part of Dodd-Frank, but it is clear no one on Wall Street was threatened by her.
Riiight, but there is no evidence that HRC would shit can Dodd/Frank and kill the fiduciary rule. Now if Kaine was at the top of the ticket, you might have a claim here.
In fact, Hillary ran on strengthening Dodd-Frank and defending the fiduciary rule. People just want to claim any damn thing about her.
Meanwhile, Trump ran on killing Dodd-Frank and the rule. Yet we have furious “progressives” arguing with us today that Hillary and Democrats lost largely because of the positions of the candidates on this issue.
Propaganda, it’s a helluva drug.
Congress really needs to address the abuse of last minute amendments hung on “must-pass” legislation. Sometimes without even a vote. Staggering.
The political equivalent of the Darwin Awards.
Is there any evidence that a meaningful number of Trump voters will blame him so much that they actually change their political behavior?
“Is there any evidence that a meaningful number of Trump voters will blame him so much that they actually change their political behavior?“
I would hope so, but like you I have some doubts. Even in the example that Martin links to:
I’d like to see more evidence that anyone in the rust belt has changed their mind.
On the other hand… We’ve been so outraged by all the crazy stuff that Trump has been doing, but that’s playing to his base; it makes him look like an outsider. Basically, Trump is willing to risk war, terrorism, and a complete abandonment by our allies to keep up this charade that he’s not a beltway insider. The choice of Mnuchin and Cohn defy that narrative, and maybe we do need to emphasize that more.
areyousorryyet.com
Trump regrets [courtesy marduk]
Anecdotal, sure.
Seems striking also how willing — even eager — so many Trump voters are to announce their stupidity to the world.
I actually don’t think this one will get lost in the shuffle.
The hypocrisy of the Executive Orders, yes — that’s procedural; people don’t pay attention. But reversing the “anti-bank” position, no. Especially as (God forbid) the dire consequences manifest themselves.
Be even MOAR dire with what has been “normalized” in the last 8 yrs.
It’s not just that we’re treating Goldman Sachs (sometimes unfairly) as a dirty word.
Unfairly? Really? Is it because you went to school with some of them? You do realize the Democrats are screwed if they don’t harness some of that anti-Wall Street energy and reduce their power, right?
Remember when Pat Buchanan used to bash Brandeis University because it was less transparently anti-Semitic than saying he hates Jews?
That same thing is done with Goldman Sachs, all the time.
But it’s not just the way that attacks on Wall Street (and Hollywood) get conflated with anti-Semitism, it’s also that the financial industry isn’t all bad, all the time.
It has been the engine of a very prosperous country, and we can lose sight of that by focusing solely on what happens when they have too much power.
Poor misunderstood Wall Street.
Good point about coded anti-Semitism.
Im not sure calling the industry an engine is accurate. There is a lot of uninvested money sloshing around there and the financial industry as we understand it produces limited real value, hence the constant bubbles. The past engine you refer to existed but it was very different owing to both regulations and technology.
“Im not sure calling the industry an engine is accurate.”
To your point, saw this in the comments at NC today and I pretty much see agreement on most economic blogs:
“Big companies access the capital markets and to the extent they’ve been borrowing, it has overwhelmingly been to fund buybacks. Small business can’t get loans save for secured loans (against real estate, against equipment purchases) because banks pretty much exited small business lending in the early 1990s, since small business lending requires individual assessment. They’d quit training credit officers and turned retail branches into “stores” that only dispensed loans of the sort you could do based on FICO scores. Plus since the crisis, there isn’t much evidence that small businesses have found lack of lending to hinder their growth. Surveys show owners regularly citing lack of confidence in demand. (Naked Capitalism)
… it’s also that the financial industry isn’t all bad, all the time.
Except it is. Who wanted the fiduciary duty rule repealed? If Wall Street, and finance, didn’t want to be so hated maybe they should stop being the vampire squid, or whatever it was Matt Taibbi called them.
Well look at his confirmation hearing Mnuchin looked at the IRS and told Congress they should have 1/3rd more staff to do their jobs. In otherwords regardless of the policies he’d follow or want to pursue he actually wanted a functioning agency.
That doesnt mean I’d vote for him and its a low bar, but at least its a realistic assesment. And yes, I agree with you regarding the response and that unfairly is so rare as to be non existent.
“I just wish that I had not voted,” said Colebrook, 59.
Or, she could have voted for Clinton and these protections would have remained in place. Oh wait, making America great again. And the emails.
California.
Dream on!
The only way this will come back to bite Trump is if Dems campaign in such a way as to point it out…constantly.
If they don’t, the uneven media playing field will deflect a crapton of blame that would otherwise fall on Twitler.
The above assumes no economic downturn. If we have a recession, and by historical timelines we should during the next 4 years, then it’s possible the amplifying effects of the Popular Vote Loser’s policies would rebound onto him and stick.
We already know the only Dems that will do this are the Warren/Sanders wing. The others will not because they’re in bed with Gold in Sacks too.
However, I don’t believe that is the ONLY way. Many of the people that voted for Trump did so more or less because they hate Goldman Sachs. And not because they are anti-semites either. I am a card-carrying Semite myself, and I hate Goldman Sachs as much as they do. Am I supposed to love Goldman Sachs because I am a Semite?
They don’t need Democrats to remind them that the Trump maladministration is full of Goldman retreads any more than I do. They will notice and not be happy.
A lot of people voted for Trump not because they liked him but because they thought he would get away from these people. Instead he’s surrounded himself with them. Or they’ve surrounded him, what’s the difference? The guy’s clueless and he owes a lot of bankers bigly.
wrt both the likelihood that “they will notice” and the rationality of any response if/when they do.
Jus’ sayin’.
On Thursday, only two days into February, the coroner’s office in Dayton, Ohio, had already handled 25 deaths — 18 caused by drug overdoses. In January, the office processed 145 cases in which the victims’ bodies had been destroyed by opioids.
Now, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office is so crammed with corpses that it has asked a local funeral parlor to take in four bodies for “temporary storage,” the first time it has had to make such a request.
The number of bodies from accidental overdoses that have come to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office in the first 33 days of the year — 163 — is already more than half the yearly totals for the past two years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/ohio-overdose-deaths-coroners-office.html
Hmm, wonder what an economic downturn might make worse?
A total drag. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Ha-ha, yes, it’s too “burdensome” to require bank investment advisors to “act in the best interest of their client”! That’s “populism!” The satire pretty much writes itself.
And always the phony rightwing gassing on about “more choice!” as the ultimate good–as though it’s the “consumer” who’s really benefiting here and not the bankers.
Forget about the fact that people psychologically actually dislike too many choices, especially on very important purchases. What’s the consumer’s “lost choice” here? Not being able to buy a “product” (more satire) that the advisor actually has no faith in, and whose bank has placed financial bets against? “Yes, indeed, I demand the right to buy such a product!”
Again, Monty Python couldn’t satirize this sort of “conservative” charade. Hopefully Warren mops the floor with this Trumpist corruption and has an epic tirade.
Yeah, the narrative from the financial industry is: “oh, but advisors won’t service small clients anymore” Yes, that’s the point! We need more people in low-fee index funds for their retirements.
“If we can’t rob you it’s not worth our time to deal with you.”
At least they’re honest about their dishonesty.
wrt DOL rule change on retirement accounts: Fact Sheet: DOL. It took seven years to study and craft a rule revision and then not effective for another year. So, how many billions of dollars per year were lost by middle-class savers during those eight years while a change was put on the really slow track?
Maybe as many hourly workers who never saw a penny of the promised overtime, because rules were “slow tracked”? But now Perez is some kind of hero? Can some centrist explain this to me?
Whatever. Perez did a fine job at both justice and labor. What the fuck did he do to earn your scorn? Did he bang your girlfriend or something?
LOL and then you wonder why so many nurse’s unions supported Sanders. Hint: hourly wage workers
OK. So? That’s not what I asked. What did Perez do to earn your scorn? (Besides supporting HRC I mean)
Exactly what I mentioned in my original post. Took 4 farking yrs to change ADMINISTRATIVE overtime rules for millions of hourly wage workers (iow, Republicans could not stop them). And could not manage to get it implemented before Obama left office.
That was political malpractice, if nothing else. The Republican killed it with no necessity for taking something AWAY from folks who had just got a significant raise.
So bait and don’t deliver AND missed opportunity to make Republicans look evil.
“So bait and don’t deliver.” That sounds like he did it that way on purpose. I guess that completely undoes the good he did in the Verizon strike, the fiduciary rule (recently flushed, THANKS OBAMA) and the home care rule.
To be clear, I don’t think he’s a “hero” I don’t believe any exist in politics, but he is most definitely not a neoliberal piece of shit either.
“…Took 4 farking yrs to change ADMINISTRATIVE overtime rules for millions of hourly wage workers (iow, Republicans could not stop them). And could not manage to get it implemented before Obama left office…”.
This claim does violence to the factual record. The Obama Administration’s planned implementation date for the overtime rule was before President Obama left office, but the Chamber of Commerce and others got a Federal judge to block the implementation. Here, read about the facts of the case. Do you think the judicial outcome would have been better if Obama’s Labor Department had tried to move the rules change earlier, when Obama had not appointed as many Federal judges and the unemployment rate was still high?
Please don’t attempt to mislead this community’s understanding of the facts.
The business interests which bankroll GOP campaigns also bankrolled the many lawsuits which were filed against the rule. You can easily join us in making Republicans look evil over this. Why don’t you?
Did you happen to notice the date of that decision? Nov 23. The election was over. The injunction was kinda overkill. But it did let Republican off the hook for taking OT away again after having it for a month.
“Even if a court reverses Judge Mazzant’s injunction, the incoming Congress likely can use the Congressional Review Act to eliminate the overtime rule. That act gives Congress the power to reverse executive branch regulations that were handed down within 60 “session days” — a deadline the Republican-controlled Congress is watching closely as the year comes to a close.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2016/11/23/congress-can-kill-overtime-rule-for-good-but-cou
rt-might-revive-it-in-the-meantime/2/#283da13f161d
I found a timeline for Elaine Chao, who did the original work for Bush–1yr + a 6(?) months delay to take effect which seems to be built in.
Perez began the process in 2014–about 2 yrs ago. It was to officially go into effect Dec 1.
I leave it to you to explain why it took 6 yrs to think of doing it. 2 yrs of Perez’s leadership.
Allow me to repeat:
Do you think the judicial outcome would have been better if Obama’s Labor Department had tried to move the rules change earlier, when Obama had not appointed as many Federal judges and the unemployment rate was still high?
We can easily paint the GOP as evil over this. Why don’t you join us in doing so? Instead of doing what you are doing, which is attacking President Obama and the Democrats in a factually evasive way which forwards a destructive narrative and divides us going forward.
Perez took office July 2013. So it took him a year to get after that. Or less. And he did a lot of other things too. Most good, and also at Justice.
Thank you for the correction on his term.
yourself here [italics, underline emphasis mine]:
So, which of you is wrong?
Perez was in office 3 1/2 yrs. Plenty of time to get it done and in effect if it had been a priority, no? Bush’s people got it done in about 18 months. Workers might have enjoyed a year or more of the benefit. Our limping economy might have benefited from an injection of demand from people who SPEND their wages. Republicans would be seen as penalizing the workers directly if they decided to re-regulate the rules.
So what is your problem with my statement?
Er . . . that they’re mutually contradictory? (How could that not have been clear?)
The mystery is that/why you DON’T seem to have any “problem” with that.
You are assuming the injunction would not be overturned. I am not.
OK. I will recap in simple sentences.
Because Perez left it so late in his term to start this work, it was very easy for Republicans to block its Dec 1 implementation. First with a flimsy injunction and then, finally, killing it with the 60-day rule.
Malpractice because his tardiness allowed Republicans to do it with no fingerprints–never in effect, so no loss to workers of something they NEVER had. Not for 1 month (which the injunction spiked), not for the 18 months that might have been possible if it had been a priority to the department. And likely even longer, since it is an 18+mo process, even for Republicans.
If this does not parse for you, I give up.
::SIGH::
I remember the good old days, when if I needed/wanted to trash democrats all I had to do was show up at the Pond and there were at least five diaries devoted to Hillery Hate. All a person had to do was join in the fun.
Now days it’s harder…the new POTUS has taken the fun out of critiquing Clinton’s health by being unable to walk down stairs, it’s tougher to make fun of Chelsea’s political ambitions now that Ivanka is a power player. It used to be so easy Togo after Clinton and her Goldman Sachs speeches, but Trump has put them in his cabinet and made them advisers. I used to so enjoy playing the guessing game of which country Clinton would start a war with, but Trump has taken all the fun out of that.
Demoralizing democrats has become much harder.
.
.
I think you probably would be more comfortable with an echo chamber here.
But at least I seem to have managed to make my meaning clear.
You you seem to have missed altogether why Perez’z organizational and political skills might might be pertinent for discussion at a time when he is running for head of DNC. All of his record, not just the good parts should be examined and thought about.
But I think you will get your candidate, from what I am reading elsewhere.
“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing
.
So in the end we see the motivation for this days-long dispute between mino and multiple community members.
mino wants to scuttle Perez’s campaign for DNC Chair. In order to do so, mino is attempting to re-characterize a good thing Perez and the Administration did and make it something bad, perhaps even sinister.
mino has been given rational strategic reasons why the overtime rule was not put forward earlier, but that is unhelpful to mino’s argument, so mino is unwilling to grapple with them. Let’s try this again.
If the overtime rule had been moved during a time of higher unemployment, it would have been more vulnerable to both political and legal attack. Even more importantly, if the overtime rule had been moved at a time when President Obama had placed fewer judges on the Federal bench, it would have been heard by a more conservative Judiciary. Even under the most liberal Federal judiciary we will see for many years the rule failed to sustain initial judicial examination, so mino’s inferred claim that the rule would have been successfully implemented if the Labor Department had moved it earlier is a claim which is hard to sustain.
mino could join us in pointing out that Congressional Republicans repealed this rule and they are to blame for taking away any chance of its implementation. This can and should be used as a political weapon against Trump, McConnell and Ryan. mino insists Perez denied us the opportunity to do that. mino is wrong, stubbornly wrong.
There are valid reasons to oppose Perez’s campaign for DNC Chair which do not involve torching one’s credibility by issuing futile attacks on a good part of Perez’s record.
You know, if you look you can find several posts from me around the time the VP was being discussed and I was a fan of Perez. Vastly preferred him over Kaine.
Until I realized the maladroitness of his handling of overtime for hourly workers.
All your defensive sputtering does not make it any better. As far as how bad that Texas’s judge’s ruling was, maybe you need to do some looking? Find me a neutral source that approves it. All I saw was mocking.
P.S. STILL prefer Perez to Kaine for VP, but that takes a different skill set than head of DNC organization, no?
Of the candidates running for DNC Chair, I want Keith Ellison to win it.
However, attacking Perez for doing a good thing which our movement wants is a morally weak, intellectually bankrupt thing to do. It debases the case against Perez and reduces the credibility of those who posit the argument. Community members have explained the reasons we believe this. I concede this is a matter of opinion.
In the end, each of us will decide if we win the fight against the fascist/racist/nationalist movement that Trump has harnessed. The eventual outcome of the DNC Chair election exhibits zero control over our own will to learn and fight and organize effectively. Let’s fight and win together.
“morally weak, intellectually bankrupt”
Well, since you opened that front and keep making it personal attacks…what is indefensible is your kitchen sink defense of our letting down a large contingent of the least of our citizens. But your version of the party does not put them first any more. Look at what you chose to champion…the market!!!!!!!!!!!! A true DNC dem.
By changing a Labor Department rule so that more Americans could access overtime pay protections, Secretary Perez was “letting down a large contingent of the least of our citizens.” That’s your position. You don’t want to hold the Judiciary and the GOP-controlled Congress responsible for blocking and killing the rule, even though that is what actually happened.
This rhetoric is not just demoralizing and divisive to our coalition, it actually undermines our fight to get these workers the pay they need and deserve by giving Ryan and McConnell cover. Why is this a point you want to insist on? Why don’t you want to hold Ryan and McConnell primarily responsible? They are. Why don’t you want to help us point out to workers that Ryan and McConnell took income from them? They did. These are not matters of opinion. It’s the factual record.
Here is a joint letter from a large group of people who are showing great bravery and organizing their political activity effectively:
Letter to the Senate HELP Committee
Dear Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions,
We are a collection of current and former career civil servants at the U.S. Department of Labor (the “Department”). We write in our capacity as private citizens to express our serious concerns about Mr. Andrew Puzder’s nomination to serve as the Secretary of Labor, and to request that the Committee vote against Mr. Puzder’s nomination. None of us has joined a letter like this one before; we feel compelled to do so now because of our serious concerns as to whether Mr. Puzder would be able or willing to serve as a conscientious steward of the statutes that the Department is charged with enforcing and the precious rights that the Department is responsible for protecting. We believe that three specific factors disqualify Mr. Puzder from serving as the head of an agency whose primary mission is to protect America’s workforce: (1) Mr. Puzder’s own business practices; (2) his derisive public comments about his restaurants’ employees and other low-wage workers; and (3) his equally troubling public comments and behavior towards women…
(dozens of documented charges later)
…Because of his business practices and his degrading public comments about low-wage workers and women, we strongly urge the Committee to vote against Mr. Puzder’s nomination as Secretary of Labor. Our concerns about Mr. Puzder are not premised on any policy disagreements some of us may have with him. Rather, we firmly believe that this nominee has not demonstrated a sufficient commitment to, or faith in, the laws that the Department is charged with enforcing. We do not take this step lightly; we take it because America’s workers deserve better. We thank you for considering our views.
Notably absent in their list of concerns is the timing of Secretary Perez’s issuing of the overtime rule.
Yes, I well recognize the pattern of supporting a democrat….until he/she is actually chosen for something. Then they are not quite good enough.
It’s been a common attribute around here with a certain cohort.
.
But he got a lot of good stuff done. Surely you know this. That must’ve taken some of the skillz you mention here. Is he supposed to be perfect?
I think it reflects his orientation. He was quite concerned with settling strikes that involved industry–iow, the market.
You do remember card check’s history? And now this. Not the way to endear your party to the working classes. Not the way to get voters to the polls.
So between Perez and Lujan, 2018 appears ready to be a rerun as far as DNC candidates are concerned.
BTW, Perez has said all donations are good. Ellison has said he will TRY to use small dollars to build but does not rule out corporates. Be curious to see if all this protest translates into small dollars.
Toomey in Pa has been very quickly and effectively punked on DeVos with a “buy his vote” crowdfund. lol
In office 3 1/2 years, one thing to do and he Didn’t.Even.Try. I guess just ignore the good he did because, fuck it, he didn’t do this one thing which I think is the most important thing.
“A total drag.” All those expectations…
You know, I remember being absolutely furious when Bush did that number on hourly workers… Stupid me, I just assumed that Obama would reverse it as a matter of course.
So when I saw the big headlines about the issue popping up–and they did get a lot of good press from it–my first thought was…wtf, it’s taken them 7 yrs to do this????
BTW, I am reading that he’s got the job. So the DNC prevails. With Lujan rehiring all those familiar faces at the local level to find House candidates, the usual is back in the saddle.
Wonder how this will impact the dwindling hedgies?
I would hope that big pension administrators will look for more secure investments than WS–say utilities?? And 401K’s, well, they are pretty useless already.
And remember, per Dem’s 2014 budget deal, banks get to use FDIC taxpayer money for derivative speculation.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/spending-bill-992-derivatives-citigroup-lobbyists
And that banks may be able to confiscate your deposits in the event of a crash and give you bank stock in exchange(?) The 2005 bankruptcy reforms made derivatives counterparties senior to unsecured lenders.
The language of Dodd-Frank seemingly confirmed that status for individual bank accounts.
http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/a_crisis_worse_than_isis_bail_ins_begin
It is disappointing to see the usual suspects here provide effective support for Trump’s agenda.
Following the advice and taking in the worldview of these community members would make it more difficult to defend progressive governance in the years ahead. I find their advice and worldview spectacularly misguided, and I encourage community members to reject demoralization.
You either want to fight the Trump agenda together, or you don’t. Organizing for anything else at the moment seems actively destructive to me.
I want to be clear about one thing: it is necessary to organize opposition to Democrats and Republicans who cooperate with the Administration and Congressional majority leaders. It is not necessary, and is actively destructive, to tell people not to bother organizing and fighting because you claim “Generic Congressional Democrat Did A Bad Thing In 2014”.
Well, you might want to reorganize your private banking with those conditions in mind, if you were unaware of them.
Like transfer your accounts out of the merchant banker class.
OK.
Would you care to summarize, in long or short form, the many laws and regulatory rulings passed and issued during the Obama Administration which have provided real protections for consumers and taxpayers?
Do you care at all about what Trump and Congressional Republicans are doing, and what more they will do unless we organize effective opposition? If you do, why is that missing from your side of the conversations here?
Why don’t you do it for the Pond? You must have a copy/paste somewhere…
Well, this tells us where you stand, what you know, and what you don’t know.
No, but it tells me you totally misread my purpose for posting those facts and links to authenticate.
Why are you so comfortable projecting your interpretation of other’s intentions? You do realize you do it all the time?
How could relentless attacks on the record of President Obama and Congressional Democrats, attacks which lack all historical and political perspective, be purposed to do anything but demoralize and divide this community? Under the last Administration we enjoyed the highest quality set of progressive achievements of your lifetime, and you discount those achievements wholly. This simply isn’t trustworthy analysis. It doesn’t build a damn thing.
If the Obama Era reforms were so worthless, why have the money men screamed like stuck pigs about them? Why is the Trump Administration hosting the CEO’s today as they happily plan how to continue to carve up these reforms? On this thread, we get inferences that Clinton might be doing some of the things Trump is doing if she had won in November. It’s a goddamn hateful, delusional display, totally disrespectful to a rational discussion here.
Do you think you’re helping us wage the fight we are in today? If you think the things you share here and the ultra-cynical tone which which you deliver them will help this community wage today’s fight, I believe you are failing to meet your intentions. You may choose to proceed as you are, but do so knowingly.
Have you called one member of Congress or showed up at one rally since Election Day? If you have, tell us about those experiences, and let us know of any organized actions which are happening which can help us beat back this fascistic nationalist political movement.
This is a winnable fight. Let’s win it together.
I just have to applaud every word of this comment.
Bank of America
2/1/09: 3.95
10/16/16: 21.12
Goldman Sachs
2/1/09: 91.08
10/31/2016 231
Citibank
2/1/09 15
10/31/16 56
J P Morgan
2/1/09 22.85
10/31/16 86.17
All but JP Morgan would have gone broke but for the bailouts. Nobody went to jail, and all of them have made more money since the bailouts.
What do you stand for?
Here is the political price that was paid:
2010 exit poll:
And after all of this you think Dodd-Frank means Wall Street has been brought to a heel.
Do you think for one goddam second that anyone on Wall Street took Clinton seriously, or that they worried they might be prosecuted?
How long are we going to make absurd excuses for this shit. Our connections to Wall Street – which are undeniable, hurt us in both 2010 and 2016, and you want to double down on the greatness that is Dodd Frank.
The markets are laughing at you. The people who work in these institutions think it is a joke.
And no Booman calls them the engines of growth.
8 years after these people brought down the world economy, he trots out some anti-semitic argument.
Which is an insult to the those who are real victims of anti-semitism.
What utter absurdity.
How many elections are we going to lose until Democrats wake up.
Indeed, it is my impression that D-F has been so monkey wrenched by lobbist-led amendments that there might actually be sections that banks want to KEEP. Like the bankruptcy designation of personal deposits as unsecured “loans” to banks. I don’t think Wm Black thinks much of it as it stands.
“Is it(Dodd-Frank) adequate to prevent another financial market crash? Hillary Clinton seems to be clutching to that notion.
BILL BLACK: Well, she didn’t say it was the most effective. She just said it was the most important. And it is important, in terms of lost opportunity. It’s only after a crisis like this that you can get fundamental reform. And as we all know, the president didn’t–expressly excluded the idea of fundamental reform, expressly rejected modeling himself after Franklin Delano Roosevelt in any form of modern New Deal.” (Real News interview)
There is real stuff in D-F – but pretending that on the whole Obama didn’t let Wall Street off the hook is just indefensible.
And some just refuse to see the political cost, even when you site the evidence from the exit poll.
This bit of news from the WaPo will not encourage you.
“Democrats are moving urgently to harness the wave of grass-roots protests that have greeted President Trump in his first weeks in office to reclaim the House majority in next year’s midterm elections” [WaPo]. “The DCCC’s organizing push is aimed at turning that activism into votes come November 2018. The new field operatives, Luján said, will be hired in most cases from within the targeted districts and who have previously worked on House campaigns there.”
Why not keep doing what has failed so spectacularly?
I guess they are leaving the younger activists to be hired by the outside groups looking for new blood to primary DCCC’s typical candidate. Giving the DCCC a few bloody noses might get their attention? Or not. And they will be running on small dollar donations from what I am reading. We’ll see if that method holds down ballot. It will take a lot to remove Wall Street from under the hood of the party. It may not even be doable. Most centrist BELIEVE in market solutions.
What on earth does this have to do with what happened today? You want to waste the narrative that Trump brought Goldman Sachs executives into his Administration and hosted CEO’s in his office today so that could plan together the dismantling of financial regulatory laws and agencies?
If the public is going to be screwed over by Trump, we need to make that politically damaging to him and his fellow Republicans. We don’t accomplish that by saying “Yeah, Trump did away with the most substantial set of consumer protections since the 1930’s, but whatever, they weren’t worth a damn anyway.” You stress the need for campaigns to tell stories. I agree with you on that big time, yet you want to abandon a factually accurate narrative here.
You seem to want to claim consumers have not been helped by Dodd-Frank. You would be wrong. None of the figures you provide here make the case that consumers have not been helped by Dodd-Frank.
And Trump and the Republicans are preparing to further increase economic inequality by providing massive tax cuts for rich people and corporations in multiple areas of the tax code. I’m disinclined to campaign against that with the narrative “Well, Obama and Democrats didn’t increase taxes enough when they were in power, so we can’t say much, really.”
I do not know what you think the response from Democrat and the progressive movement should be to today’s news. Burning Hillary at the stake, perhaps? Schumer resigning from leadership and flagellating himself on the steps of the Capitol?
The President of the United States, when confronted with the greatest financial crime in human history, a crime with hundreds of millions of victims all over the world, held no one criminally accountable.
The institutions that committed these crimes prospered once they had been bailed out.
And after all of this happened, and after the enormous institutions at the heart of the crime were allowed to grow bigger, you want to talk about Dodd-Frank?
Why are you defending the people that let the crooks get away with it?
Who exactly do you think was behind the money that funded David Brock’s recent weekend?
How do you not see that no one gives a good goddam about Dodd-Frank?
Until the Party is led by people who can say the truth, no one cares what we say.
Because we are every bit as corrupt as the GOP. It was on OUR watch that no indictments were brought.
It was on OUR watch that the banks were bailed out.
It was on OUR watch that those same banks doubled and tripled their market cap while working people suffered.
You make excuses, and in doing so you destroy the credibility with the party.
You need to wake the fuck up, and stop making absurd arguments.
Go ahead and make excuses for these assholes who let the criminals go free, and in doing so destroyed the Democratic Party.
I want Schumer nowhere near the leadership of the Party.
So the progressive movement should busy ourselves flagellating the Democratic Party for what its Federal leaders did and did not do in 2009-10 instead of fighting Trump/Bannon/Ryan/McConnell.
I think this is a misguided and dangerous response to this precarious moment. If I’m misinterpreting what you think we should do, please inform us what we should do to stop Trump and his minions today.
Trump did something horrible today with his EO to undermine financial institution regulation reform, following the variety of horrible things he’s done nearly every day of his Presidency. I’m furious with you for demanding that we deny that. Dodd-Frank has helped Americans, and you demand that community members believe it didn’t. You’re furious with me that I wish to defend the truth, particularly as Trump and the Republicans begin to work with millionaires and billionaires to carve the law up. I agree to disagree with you on this.
Senators Sanders and Warren have led and are leading the fight to defend the Dodd-Frank Law in Congress. They think it is worth their time. They need our help.
By the way, the President of the United States is barred by the Constitution from holding individuals criminally accountable for anything. That would be illegal. I concede that Trump has degraded this essential political and cultural principle, but we should not dispense with it, even rhetorically. This separation of powers has survived 240 years of governance, and has served us well.
Who here is arguing that Dodd/Frank brought Wall Street to heel? I can’t find anyone making that point.
to argue against what nobody’s said often strikes me as quite remarkable.
A tactic to derail the thread when it isn’t going their way, yank it into their preferred rut.
I wonder if you saw this? Some discussion of Dodd-Frank at the time of its passage.
The Great Debate©: Will Dodd-Frank be Effective?
Bill Black makes a very perceptive remark about the architecture of neoliberal legislation in general and WHY it is done that way. It’s a Christmas tree in moar ways than one.
“An Effective Dodd-Frank Act Could Have Been Written in Three Pages….The Act’s complexity made it more opaque, which made it easier for bank lobbyists to add subtle clauses designed to undercut reform. The complexity also increased the Act’s reliance on adopting detailed implementing regulations – a lobbyist-friendly venue likely to further weaken an Act that begins weak.”
Eh, perhaps I am too hard on neoliberalism. It might be capable of parsing clear and simple legislation.
It is probably more the “criminogenic environment” of today at fault.
Halle-fucking-lejah! Glad somebody finally said this. Thank you.
You forgot about Bannon; he’s also ex-Goldman Sachs.
Booman, just as talking about Goldman Sachs can be coded anti-Semitism–or can draw out the anti-Semites–so, too, is it a brilliant way to draw out the people who will never stop hating on Hillary Clinton and denouncing Barack Obama as a failure. I keep thinking that here we are, nearly three months after the election, and two weeks into the reign of our first sociopathic president– it must be time for those folks who spent the entire election campaign denouncing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to move on. But they never will, apparently.
There is no known cure for CDS.
I understand about the coded antisemitism, sometimes that’s what it is.
But if attacks on banks is simply antisemitism, doesn’t that mean that (a) all bankers are Jews and (b) all Jews are bankers? Neither of which is the case, not even close.
And I even believe there are some decent bankers in this world, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin.
I will tell you how this banker = Jew thing got started. One day a long, long time a Christian king, or maybe it was a nobleman, who happened to be out of funds, said to a wealthy Jew, if you loan me money, and if you take the rap when I starve the peasants, I will pay you handsomely and give you protection. And the Jew said, OK it’s a deal. Very few Jews were in on that deal by the way.
Also, too: For many years, in many medieval Christian European countries, Jews were actually banned from engaging in many forms of making a living. Money-lending was allowed to them in large part because Christian doctrine prohibited charging interest on loans as usury. Since they were all damned to Hell anyway, letting those heathens lend at interest (which the rulers and the merchants knew was necessary as a practical matter) made sense.
Plus, if the debt got too big, the king could always repudiate the debt and whip up a pogrom, expel the filthy Jews, etc.
Yes, it is unfair in the extreme and surely anti-Semitic to point out Goldman-Sachs’ central role in the financial crisis that has destroyed individuals all over the world.
I find it interesting that so many focus on those who worked for Clinton but never forgot the betrayal done on behalf of Wall Street.
I went door to door for her.
But that doesn’t mean make excuses for her.
Rather I find it curious that so many want to leap to the defense of institutions that have so betrayed the working people of this county.
Why, in an election where defections among the working class where so widespread, does Booman feel the need to make excuses.
I find myself asking why it is so important to them.
You’re hilarious. I could accuse people of BSDS(Bernie Sanders Derangement Syndrome), as Peter Daou and a few others engage in it constantly on Twitter. But I don’t care about him. The point is we need a better Democratic Party. Unless what has happened over the past 8 years has been acceptable to you. Is gerrymandering to blame? Partially, but in no way is that the whole problem. Is gerrymandering to blame for running no one is districts(see Pete Sessions’) HRC won? Or for running Romney voters in districts(see Booman’s) that HRC won? What about the fact that Democrats in Massachusetts and Maryland, states with Democratic super majorities, play footsie with Republican governors?
One thing at least we can thank him for: Finally someone’s getting tough with Australia. I mean, I’m so sick and tired of Canberra leading us around by the nose all these years. Thank God we now have a president that understands he can’t be soft on koalas and their fellow-travelers.
RE:
“Populism” just means (etymologically, i.e., literally) “people-ism”, after all.
And no one can deny there exists a population of people whose interests the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief is serving . . . slavishly.
His people.
QED