Frankly, It's Doddering

How to kill the lumbering piece of faux financial reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank in three easy steps.


1. Allow the banks to help write the bill and make it so complicated and long (848 cyber-pages) that nobody will ever read it, let alone understand it.


2. Forget to add how you're going to pay for the actual implementation of all the new rules and regulations. Make sure that you cut funding right away for such already-cozy and inept groups as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission so they can't even enforce what's already on the books.


3. Make sure that the real stringent parts -- such as forcing banks to have enough capital on hand to back all their risky bets -- won't take effect for years and years and years. This will allow plenty of time for the financial lobbyists to meet with the Congress critters to whittle away the bill even more, conveniently enabling even more bribery in the form of legal campaign contributions, insider trading tips and other stuff we don't know about yet. (It also allows plenty of time for the too big to exist banks to crash again, but that's another story.)


Dodd-Frank was conceived as an empty threat to the Wall Street mafia. It is/was a PR stunt to appease the ravening Main Street masses thirsty for revenge against the miscreants who crashed an entire economy. It's one more instance of the defacto government policy of being perceived as doing the right thing while doing exactly the opposite behind closed doors. 


Big as it was, Dodd-Frank ironically developed a lethal case of anorexia from the moment it was born, suffering from what is known in medical parlance as Failure to Thrive Syndrome. Less than a third of its increasingly emaciated body is actually functioning two years after it squeezed out of the Congressional birth canal. The other two-thirds are either stuck in a constipated clump of corruption, or just poof! disappeared into wherever it is that legislation protecting the hoi polloi goes to die. So I suppose it's all the more pleasantly serendipitous that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau survived against the lobbying onslaught. Even though its founder (Elizabeth Warren) played the part of sacrificial lamb to get it going.

You can read the entire two-year progress report on Dodd-Frank from the Davis Polk law firm here.

According to the watchdog group Sunlight Foundation, there have already been hundreds of meetings held between the big banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase, and financial regulators on how best to "improve" or otherwise de-fang and de-fund Dodd-Frank.

Since July 21, 2010 (when the president signed Dodd-Frank), regulators at the three major banking regulatory agencies – Treasury, the Fed and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – have reported meeting with 20 big banks and banking associations on average a combined 12.5 times per week – as compared to on average just 2.3 meetings with reform-oriented groups. The top 20 banks show up 1,298 times in meeting logs at the three agencies, while groups favoring tighter regulations of the financial markets show up just 242 times.

 CNN Money quotes former FDIC Commissioner Sheila Bair on the ongoing assault by the banker wankers: "All the lobbyists come in and they want this exception or that exception, and [regulators] are accommodating that and they shouldn't during the financial crisis and its aftermath. They need to just tell these folks no."


Hmmm.... since the "Just Say No" campaign worked so well for the anti-drug movement, I can just imagine how effective it will combating the incurable addiction of insatiable greed. The so-called regulators are nothing more than what used to be called "co-dependents" and what the latest TV ads refer to as addicted enablers. (parents who peer into their kids' room and pretend not to notice the glazed eyes and stashes of pill bottles and rolling papers.)


As a matter of fact, the politicians running for election  desperately need what was once touted as "sweeping financial reform" swept right under the rug, because they desperately need the money from the opponents of Dodd-Frank. Take the so-called Volcker Rule, named after former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. It's gone south, following in the footsteps of the man himself, who was banished from President Obama's economic team at the behest of Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner. The Rule would prohibit banks from making risky bets with customers' money. Had it been implemented, it might have prevented the collapse of MF Global and "loss" of millions of dollars in life savings and pensions of ordinary people.


Meh. The unindicted chief of MF Global is still a major bundler for the Obama Victory Fund. Jon Corzine's main job these days is collecting campaign cash from hedge fund managers who also hate the idea of the Volcker Rule. The plutocratic confidence men need to feel confidence in the unfettered and freely corrupt markets, and there is no politician alive who dares bite the hand that feeds him.


The Volcker Rule, as Sheila Bair so cogently notes, is just one more needlessly complex rule within the doddering Dodd-Frank bundle of complexities: "easy to game and hard to enforce."


But isn't that the whole point? Learn from the resounding half-century of success of all 30 pages of Glass Steagall, and replace it with legislation that is too big to succeed -- ensuring that banks are still too big to fail. Make sure that small banks are unfairly punished for the sins of the big casinos, further paving the way for the gutting of the whole kit and caboodle. It's like the hall of mirrors in a fun house. The result, of course, is that too many people are trapped in the very unfunny chamber of horrors constructed by the rapacious Dr. Moreaus of the financial world -- with continuing maintenance provided by the simpering sycophants in the political sphere. And don't forget the carnival barkers of CNBC and the rest of the corporate media.

The Morning After

Like a lot of people, I was glued to the tube Friday for the latest news on the atrocity in Aurora. In a depraved sort of way, I was somewhat relieved to see the corporate media covering actual news and debating substantive issues for a change, rather than the latest gaffes and attacks in the presidential horserace. I was somewhat impressed when the campaigns announced they'd be pulling their ads out of respect for the victims.

Only, that was a lie.

After almost every CNN scene of tears, anguish and anger came the usual:

"I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message. 'God bless Ame-e--e-rica'......"

This ad is already being lauded as the most effective attack ad ever in the history of presidential politics. Better than the iconic "Daisy" commercial. More hard-hitting than Michael Dukakis in a tank.

And it's being run over, and over, and over again. On CNN, I counted seven times in one hour. On the day of the worst shooting attack in American history, when all the attack ads were supposedly being pulled.

I guess I heard wrong. The ad blackout would only be effective in the one square mile radius surrounding Aurora, Col. And since Colorado is a battleground state, look for the same old politics as usual to return soon to a TV screen near you. Hurry up and bury your dead so the horserace can continue, so the fundraisers can rake in the cash, so the NRA can skip the phony condolences and forge ahead with its quest to arm every man, woman and child with an assault rifle while it writes more laws to making it easier to buy a gun than it is to register to vote.

President Obama needn't have bothered to order flags lowered to half-staff. All he needed to do was replace the American flag with a white flag, signalling total surrender to right wing nutjobs and the shadow government known as the National Rifle Association.

****************************************************************

There's been some fantastic writing in the aftermath of this most recent act of domestic terrorism:

Brady Campaign Director President Dan Gross tells Obama that we don't need his phony sympathy.

Roger Ebert says our gun laws are just as insane as the craziest shooter and that nothing will likely change just because a dozen more innocents lost their lives yesterday.

Gail Collins writes about the long hard slog of the loyal opposition -- the tiny groups of activists who quixotically never quit striving for justice in the face of the all-powerful gun lobby. Accompanied by some fine readers' comments as well as those from the usual suspects equating gun ownership with freedom.

The New York Daily News showcases its editorial in a front-page banner headline: "Colombine, Virginia Tech and now Aurora: How Many More Must Die, Mr. President?"

And E.J. Dionne Jr. calls bullshit on the political canard that talking about gun control so soon after the latest atrocity is somehow disrespecting the victims. 

Friday Open Thread/Another Massacre

Another horrific mass shooting, this time in a Colorado movie theater showing the new Batman film. At least a dozen killed, 50 wounded, some critically. The gunman is reportedly in custody.


This will be another moment of great national mourning and one or two politicians calling for some modest legislation, such as a temporary ban on assault rifle clips. But look for it to be a glaring non-issue in this election year. Issue platitudes, go on TV, make a speech, memorial photo-ops, rinse lather repeat and move on.

And in this age of automated internet advertising, practically every headline blaring about the shootings is also generating a hyped-up violence-soaked commercial for the Batman movie. Somebody human who is in charge should really look into that.

Developing.....

Dueling Duopolists

The botta-in-tempo between the two swaggerers of the One Percent continues unabated this week. Both presidential candidates continue to helplessly reveal themselves as the willing puppets of the aristocracy, even as they frantically try to shove their Louis Vuitton political baggage under their Aubusson carpets. They brazenly position themselves as champions of the middle class at the same time they grovel at the feet of hedge fund managers at $75,000-a-plate fundraisers, jetting hither and yon to the international playgrounds of the rich. 

Mitt partied in the Hamptons with the VIPs a few weekends ago, and will be feted by a panoply of Libor banksters in London later this month. George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Obama in Switzerland, that rarefied land of secret bank accounts. Meanwhile, Barry himself jetted down to Palm Beach today, greased palms at the ready.

And the spouses are no longer immune from the Marie Antoinette syndrome, either. As Michelle Obama was headed for the posh summer digs of the Massachusetts Governor/former board member of the subprime mortgage fraudster Ameriquest, Gov.Deval Patrick has ordered the road to his Berkshires mansion in a cash-strapped county freshly paved for the First Lady's motorcade. The Republicans are dubbing the $20,000-a-head fundraiser "The Princess and the Potholes."

Michelle's fundraising stump speech never fails to mention that she grew up in a cramped working class apartment in which her mother still lives. Even though her mother now resides on her own private floor in the White House. 

Ann Romney. who always reminds us she doesn't "feel rich", took some time out from her dueling Cadillac schedule today to lambast "you people" for daring to ask for more tax returns and more of their untaxable millions. The Democrats started running ads making fun of her dressage horse, until somebody mentioned M.S. Then they remembered the Hilary Rosen "never worked a day in her life" debacle and reined in that particular attack. For now.

This is all so silly. Why can't people listen when these women assure us they are just like everybody else?

As I wrote a few days ago, fully 90% of all the Rombama TV ads are negative. It's a nonstop bash-a-thon, and the cable giants are laughing all the way to the bank. In the latest round of "Who's the Biggest Hypocrite?", the Romney campaign asks whatever happened to Barry's White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (which in reality is nothing more than an in-house deregulation lobby of big business leaders and one or two  trade unionists.) The group has not formally met since January, when the Obama re-election campaign officially got underway. The White House claims the president has just had way too much on his (fundraising) plate lately to schmooze with the likes of tax-evading G.E. honcho Jeff Immelt and union-busting hotel heiress Penny Pritzker.  According to Politico's Josh Gerstein,

To cap it all off, several of the companies whose CEOs serve on the panel are involved to some extent in outsourcing — a fact that could undercut the ferocious attack Obama and his campaign are mounting on Romney over his alleged ties to the practice.

One former administration official said the current political atmosphere could be prompting the CEOs and other business leaders to lie low.

“The thing is supposed to be bipartisan, so a lot of times they don’t want to get into things that could be used by either side in the election,” said the former aide, who asked not to be named. “The businesspeople, for the most part, don’t want to get into the middle of political fighting.”

The business people don't want to get their hands dirty, and the politicians can't wash the dirt from their own hands. 

Oh bountiful for specious smiles, for ample wads of green. For purple-wearing majesties, who fawn and bribe and preen. America, America. Who took our jobs from thee? They stole the goods, those Wall Street hoods! From sea to oil-sheened sea.

Your Daily Dose of Righteous Indignation

How do we become outraged today? Let us count the ways:


George Zimmerman says it was all part of God's plan that he killed Trayvon Martin. And Trayvon's parents wonder what kind of God he worships.


Ann Romney has huffily given "all you people need to know". Another variation on the entitled "it's our turn" theme.


Barack Obama is sending squads of sleuths out into the Florida Foreclosure Desert to try and locate victims of the great mortgage fraud massacre. He wants to find out where all the nouveau-homeless went -- so they can register to vote.... for him. It seems the campaign has lost track of thousands of his potential supporters since the banksters summarily kicked them out of their houses. Not only have Obama's bankster pals defected to Mitt, the victims of his bankster pals have disappeared from phone directories and email lists. Oh my. Here's a helpful hint for Barry: just have his operatives peer into every basement window in America. Chances are there will a refugee from the middle class esconced therein. Chances are increasingly good it will be an older person.

The Complicit Media and the Censored Message

If there is ever a time when the politicians need the press more than the press needs the politicians, it's during campaign season. How else are the sleazebags going to get their lies out to the public if not through newspapers and TV? Media coverage is free, unlike the expensive ads.


So I was kind of (but not really) surprised to learn that our current crop of professional journalists is so cowed by the presidential candidates and their operatives that they have pretty much agreed to let the campaigns vet all quotes before they get published! You read that right. The media, upon whom we rely to present the unvarnished truth, lies and colorful language of those seeking public office, are ready, willing and able stenographers. And, in a piece by Jeremy Peters published in yesterday's New York Times, they ruefully admit that they are nothing but craven shills. And just like the unnamed government sources they are so fond of appeasing and enabling, they themselves would only make their admissions anonymously.

Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.

The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.

This is pretty shocking. Do these so-called reporters really believe that they will be denied access if they refuse to go along with this ridiculous censorship? When I was a reporter a long time ago and covering Hugh Carey's New York gubernatorial campaign, one of his sons came up to the press gaggle with "instructions" about what paragraph of Daddy's speech to put in our leads. We just laughed in his face. We had the power of the pen, and there wasn't a damn thing the pols could do about it. Once they win their elections, of course, media manipulation becomes de rigeur. But while they're desperately trying to win? The press should own these clowns.


But according to Peters, it's only getting worse. The campaign control freaks are freaking out over every last swear word and gaffe. If Obama farts while telling dirty jokes on Air Force One, or Romney lets loose with an F-bombing tirade, we the people will never find out about it. The journos' lips are sealed. Peters' article continues:

Those who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, ‘Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ ” said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal. “There are times when this feels like I’m dealing with some of my editors. It’s like, ‘You just changed this because you could!’ ”

It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.

“We don’t like the practice,” said Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at The New York Times. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.”

The Obama campaign declined to make Mr. Plouffe or Mr. Messina available to explain their media practices. “We are not putting anyone on the record for this story,” said Katie Hogan, an Obama spokeswoman, without a hint of irony. She pointed to the many unrestricted interviews with campaign officials every day on television and when the press corps travels with the president.

Jim Naurekas of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) scathingly calls the campaign press corps a bunch of "brain-picking zombies." He takes the Times article a giant step forward, noting that

He (Peters) doesn't spell out the implication, which is that journalists are thereby serving as PR agents, packaging the messages of political professionals at their direction rather than independently reporting the news.

(snip)

Responsible journalists shouldn't have to be told that it's wrong to allow your sources to edit their quotes, but apparently the sort of journalists who work for national news outlets do need to be told that. In fact, they need to be told that by their editors, so that when their sources propose such a deal, they can say–sorry, we're not allowed to do that.

At which point, the political strategists can respond in one of two ways: Maybe they'll realize that they need the press more than the press needs them, and they'll allow journalists to do their jobs without interference.

The only thing worse than covering Rotary Club lunches is covering campaign season. The operatives will try to spin you in a thousand different directions. The trick is to Just Say No. The candidates are desperate, people! This reminds me of another time when I was working the graveyard shift at the local rag and the guy trailing in the polls in the State Assembly race showed up at the locked office, banging frantically on the door and waving yet another press release. Begging, begging, begging for an interview. Now the roles are reversed and reporters are the ones begging and maybe even banging for access. Fourth estate, my ass.

But that was then and this is now. I guess since corporations and billionaires are allowed to contribute anonymously and without limits to the campaigns, the candidates themselves are smugly secure in their own new-found anonymous corrupt miasmas. The Disclose Act, which would have forced political donors to reveal their identities, has just died a filibustered death in Congress.

So -- candidates and their PACs don't need no stinking reporters when they have millions of anonymous dollars to spend on TV attack ads. According to Bloomberg News, just about nine out of every ten political ads now being run are negative. Instead of getting unspun information and substantive policy discussions, we're getting caught in the middle of an unfettered food fight, a non-stop bash-o-rama gone wild. Even the fact-checking organizations are getting attacked for daring to disclose their inconvenient facts.

And just think, only sixteen more weeks of this to go. All we can do is shut off the TV, and try to stay sane.

Jaws

Attacking Mitt Romney is like shooting caviar in a barrel. The Obama campaign TV ads chewing him up and spitting him out are a hoot to watch and satisfy our great national craving for plutocratic blood. But let's face it. Picking apart one little rotten fish larva out of the whole slimy pile is not enough, when there are schools and schools of sharks circling in churned-up waters, waiting their voracious turn in the continuing feeding frenzy on what's left of our democracy.


Just because President Obama is going full-bore Captain Ahab on Mitt the Minnow does not mean he intends to harpoon the Moby Dicks of free market global capitalism. To the contrary, he is their keeper and protector. Look no further than his Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, described as "NAFTA on steroids". Actually, you can't look further because the negotiations are being conducted in so much murky secrecy that even United States senators are not allowed access to the details.



Corporate Feeding Frenzy -- Exposed!


But thanks to the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group shining a light into the murky depths, we are learning anew that although President Obama is attacking the offshoring and outsourcing of the man who wants his job, he is not attacking offshoring and outsourcing in general. In fact, he is a champion of sending our jobs overseas. We already got a hint of that when he signed the South Korean trade deal last year. That measure is estimated to cost 159,000 American manufacturing jobs. And the Panama part of the deal actually makes it easier for tax evaders like Romney to hide their millions offshore. And the Colombia part of the package allows us to ignore the worst record of labor and human rights violations on the entire planet. In effect, Obama has helped destroy more American jobs than Romney ever imagined in his most vivid vulture capitalist dreams. As a matter of fact, Obama got so much criticism from his base over his capitulation to transational corporations that he signed the final bill in secret. Only a few applauding oligarchs attended the Oval Office ceremony, as this noir-ish AP photo of the event attests:



Barry and the Barracudas

Ironically, the Obama camp's Mitt attacks are having the unintended consequence of attracting a lot more needed attention to the latest ongoing trade negotiations. There were demonstrations at last week's round of private talks in San Diego, along with petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures and letters of protest from legislators and activist groups in all 50 states. According to Public Citizen's Lori Wallach,

U.S. negotiators have tried to keep TPP negotiations totally below the radar, but even so opposition to the current "NAFTA-on-steroids-with-Asia" approach is escalating, which is good news for the public but a serious complication for the Obama campaign’s attack on Romney as a U.S. job offshorer.... President Obama is facing a growing chorus of opposition to what his trade negotiators are up to on the TPP from his base and from other Democratic elected officials, and given that his campaign seems to be honing in on job offshoring as a winning theme, he needs to redirect his negotiators from their current TPP agenda of NAFTA-on-steroids with all of Asia.

The TPP is a lot more than the usual government give-away to the oligarchs. If passed, it will free the global banking Mafia from even the limited oversight they currently enjoy, severely limit access to medicines by the countries that need them the most, make it easier for unsafe products and chemicals to flood into the United States, and absolve multinationals from adhering to domestic environmental and health policies. Even the legal system will be subverted by star chambers run by corporate judges. According to Public Citizen, it's nothing but a global corporate coup, a power tool for the One Percent. (h/t Kat.)

You obviously won't be seeing any Rombama attack ads about TPP on your TV, from either side. That's because Mitt Romney wants this deal as much as Barack Obama does. It's one more indication of it not really mattering, in the long term, which one of these apparatchiks of the Duopoly wins the election. For another great overview of what TPP means for regular people, do read this Truthout piece by Brian Moench, titled "America the Beautiful: A Fire Sale for Corporations." If this doesn't send a chill right down your spine, nothing will. An excerpt:

TPP is much worse than NAFTA, which eviscerated middle-class jobs and wealth in the US. And this sellout to foreign corporations is not just a rogue brain cramp of President Obama. Mitt Romney demanded this agreement be signed months ago, and the notorious "climate change denying" US Chamber of Commerce can't get it signed fast enough. Romney has called Obama's the most hostile administration to business in recent history. If the TPP trade agreement is "hostile" to business, god help us if we have an administration, presumably Romney's, "friendly" to business.

If you thought that with Citizens United we had hit rock bottom in surrendering our democracy to the power of money, this TPP "trade agreement" would throw our democracy into free fall. Foreign corporations will be allowed to feast like termites upon America's natural resources, trash our environment and public health, violate our rights as American citizens and make us pay them if we try to protect ourselves.

With enough public outcry, maybe we can buy some time. Although TPP had been scheduled to go into effect this year, it looks like it might be delayed until 2013 because of... you guessed it... the feeding frenzy of the presidential campaign. Plus, the Japanese are not yet part of the talks, and the plutocrats want them to get on board the corporate gravy train too. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ever the mega-lobby of unfettered capitalism, is keeping its fingers crossed. The elites are couching their crime against humanity in spin designed to foment fear of Chinese competition, making it easier for the gullible hoi polloi to swallow their poisoned bait -- hook, line and sinker.