Archive for category Credit Card Industry
President Obama: Yes! It’s The Economy, Stupid.
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Campaigns, Capitalism, Congress, Conservatives, Credit Card Industry, Dick Cheney, Economics, Financial Crisis, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Media & Communication, Politics, Sarah Palin, Senate, Show Them the $$$, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on January 22nd, 2010
President Obama has been beyond a huge disappointment.
The reasons for his significant failure in the first year of his Presidency are varied, and yesterday I read a very insightful essay on MSN Money by Paul B. Farrell of the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch that hones in on a number of opportunities Obama could have seized upon as a result of the financial collapse that would have allowed him to increase the already significant political capital that he possessed on the day of his inauguration.
In the simplest parlance - he blew it!
This writer will have more to say on the specifics of those issues, but that is for another entry posted here on this blog. More importantly for purposes of today’s entry, I offer a humble mea culpa for my idealistic beliefs that this man was really different from all the others. I pride myself on being intellectually honest enough to admit that I was wrong about Obama’s willingness to effectuate any substantial change in this country with acumen and finesse. How stupid of me to believe that he would really first focus on the one issue that was at the forefront of every voter’s mind since November, 2007 - one year before the 2008 election – and has continuously been the leading issue for the past two years.
In the words of James Carville’s famous political mantra for the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s The Economy Stupid!”
Suddenly this week, the President finally has this incredible revelation that he needs to place the issue of the economy, as well as attend to financial system reform, at the top if his agenda? President Obama – how could you and all of these ostensibly intelligent people you surrounded yourself with have possibly missed that most salient and readily available information? Why did you not immediately address the failure of our economic system in it’s present form to serve the interests of its citizens, and redress the ongoing transgressions by the men who were responsible for single-handedly wrecking the underpinnings of American Capitalism? Why did you not implement substantial changes in how our economy is managed by imposing strict accountability, transparency and limitations on how the banking industry operated? Why did you trust that these financial terrorists would not not rob the national treasury for their own personal gain, instead turning a blind eye to their obvious avarice and indifference to the economic welfare of the country? Why did you not instruct Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department to direct the lending institutions to focus all of that available financial capital at shoring-up businesses and home values in order to preserve the essential assets so critical to the future of the American people, instead of bailing out these corrupt and incompetent financial giants? Why did you not utilize the available “bully pulpit” to chastise both your party and the Republicans for their unwillingness to use their legislative powers to immediately reign in these predatory financial giants, because of the “river of dirty money” (campaign contributions) running through Washington, D.C.?
Instead, you choose to ignore the over-arching importance of these matters, and wasted all of your hard-earned political capital by rubber-stamping the bailouts, and then embarking on an agenda of reforming an equally complex and failed health care system – a pathway that was historically fraught with political pitfalls and epic battles against powerful wealthy corporate interests. Anyone studying the history of American health care reform would know that simple fact.
Now, before any of you Conservatives start hooting and hollering in celebration of my criticism of the President, or my ”concession” regarding his obvious failures, let me inform you that your intellectual dishonesty for the past decade has been nothing short of shameful. Lest you think you are blameless, your willful ignorance of, as well as refusal to admit, the abysmal failure of your leaders, party, spokespersons, and Conservative media to improve the status of this country and its people - particularly Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. - is completely reprehensible, and gives you no standing to believe that you have something to crow about.
You don’t.
In fact, part and parcel of Obama’s inability to effectuate change has been due to the ”political noise” you either countenenced or participated in during the election campaign in the Fall of 2008 as a substitute for reasoned and measured dialogue about what was wrong with this country. Labeling him a Muslim – when nothing is further from the truth, and cheering on those who claimed that he was “palling around with terrorists“, willfully distracted the American public from what was really at stake for the future of our country. Many of you continued to increase the sound of that chorus to a deafening roar after he was elected with the most utter nonsense – first claiming he was not a citizen in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as well as charging that he is a Socialist, hellbent on destroying the foundations of this nation, when in fact his predecessors that you supported, as well as their corrupt political business cronies, had already virtually accomplished that objective.
In so much as you have fostered and perpetuated these opinions by either expressed belief or passive silence as to the truth, you are partially responsible for the demise of this republic. Your behavior is utterly Un-American. It is an absolute certainty that history will be far less kind to you than it will be to President Obama.
Shame on you.
And if you happen to choke to death on your teabags, oh well . . .
Fighting both the Islamic Terrorists, as well as the Financial Terrorists with Terror
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Credit Card Industry, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, National Security, Politics, United States, Wall Street, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, al Qaida, financial industry, foreign policy on January 15th, 2010
Al Qaida and Wall Street understand how to use terror!
First, you place American citizens in deep fear of some unimaginable catastrophe by destroying two very tall skyscrapers full of people, or by sending the global economy into an almost irreversible tailspin. Second, you continually remind them through repetitive conditioning (suicide bombers on planes or wide-spread bankruptcies and unemployment) that it could happen again tomorrow. Finally, you then reap the results of their irrational behavior from the resulting Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): 1) two debt-laden wars, with the associated horrific physical deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of innocent young soldiers; 2) financial system-breaking bailouts, with huge profits for a select group of well-connected banks, as well as obscene bonuses for the well-heeled financial terrorist executives who reside at the top of those businesses.
The answer to the problem?
Well on the first front, President Obama and his advisers seem to understand that General McChrystal’s “urge to surge” in Afghanistan was only an appeasement to military strategists, and simply moves more targets (soldiers) into closer proximity for the Islamic terrorists to attack. More importantly, Obama and company also understand that terrorizing the Islamic Terrorists is a far more effective and efficient use of resources.
This strategy was first articulated in Obama’s campaign for President, wherein he declared that he would not hesitate to send large numbers of drones into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to bring the fight to our enemies in their own backyard. Guess what? It is working.
As one resident of the region was recently quoted, “[w]e have become used to the drone attacks, but now people are scared as they are coming every night.” Israr Khan Dawar, a 17-year-old student in Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan which is controlled by Islamic militants, said “more noise means they are flying lower, and that means an attack is more likely.” Sadly, these civilians are collateral damage in an unfortunate war that they have been drawn into as a result of the reckless behavior of those around them.
As for the second front (the Financial Terrorists), we need a scorched-earth strategy like Colonel Kurtz employed in the movie Apocalypse Now, and not some lame federal “banking fee“. Obama should temporarily nationalize the ten largest U.S. banks, starting with Goldman Sachs, throw their management out, replacing them with people who will act without reckless abandon in search of profits and then make money the old-fashioned way – loaning it out at reasonable rates of interest.
Now THAT would sufficiently terrorize Wall Street.
Unfortunately, it is likely far too late. The time to have moved on this would have been one year ago, when they were at the mercy of the Feds. They won that war, and now we ARE screwed.
P.S. For all you “Capitalists” out there who would label such a drastic measure as “Socialism” – that’s what we have been doing for the past year - you better find a more cogent response. Besides, as Nouriel Roubini (“Dr. Doom”)suggested in the Wall Street Journal inteview, we would only ”nationalize” this sector of our financial system temporarily. It would seem prudent at that point to break up these banks into smaller entities, impose moderate regulations on them (especially with usury rates of 18% on credit cards), and spin off the trading and investment side of the firms - regulating them in move inventive ways. We would have then re-privatized them all within twelve months.
President Obama, that would have sufficiently vanquished the Financial Terrorists, and further given pause to Wall Street’s minions, forcing them to rethink how they are going to conduct business going forward.
Obama Meeting With Fat Cat Bankers Elicits Call for Guaranteed Loans?
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Credit Card Industry, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Lobbyists & Lobbying, Politics, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on December 16th, 2009
So President Obama chides the bankers on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday night, referring to them as “fat cats”. On Monday morning he meets with them – at least the ones who showed up – to tell them they need to step-up their lending. What was their response?
Some of those in attendance said the government should “cut the red tape” in lending requirements for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans.
WTF?
We just gave these guys trillions of dollars interest-free in March of this year to lend back to Americans in order to prop up the economy. Then they hoard the money, investing it in everything from bonds (very conservative returns), to credit card holders (then turned around and raised interest rates to all-time highs), to high-risk derivatives – you know, those insane and arcane financial instruments that broke the casino the last go around. Thereafter, they paid themselves handsome bonuses for their genius (listen, give me a boatload of $$$ interest free and I can make a profit on it investing in high-grade bonds – the “spread” of 2% interest is a no-brainer; let’s see, 2% of $35 Billion – wow, nice freakin’ bonus, Lance; you are such a genius).
Now when pressed to lend the money, they have the audacity to suggest that the government-backed SBA loans are the way to go about fixing this mess. Let’s see. I will loan the money you just gave me interest free to small businesses. You guarantee 80% of the loan. I get the borrower to pledge his business as an asset to back up the remaining 20%, of course, making sure that the appraised fire-sale value of the “hard assets” – real estate, equipment, etc, far exceeds the other 20% of the total loan. Even if the deal goes South, the government pays me 80% of the money back (which they gave to me interest free, anyway), and I sell the business for 20 cents on the dollar and recover the other 20%.
What a deal! I take NO risk, and get all of the rewards. Isn’t Capitalism great?
Mr. President. Wake up!!! These guys are sandbagging us. Good will has left the building. The last remnants of Capitalism are gone, buried along side Adam Smith, who is rolling over in his grave as I speak.
P.S. For those not familiar with Adam Smith, he was the author of Wealth of Nations – the book written in 1776 where he first forwarded the economic theory of Capitalism.