Our options: criminals who will blow our brains out ór simply rape us

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Welke keuzen zijn er in werkelijkheid?
Voortdurend kijken of er iets niet goed gaat óf zorgen dat het niet (op
die manier) scheef KAN gaan.

Menige deskundige zegt dat de intrekking van de Glass-Steagall Act
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act) tot de huidige
problemen hebben geleid.

Een soortgelijke ontwikkeling bij ons was de wetsverandering in 1991 om
het samengaan van Nationale Nederlanden en NMB/Postbank (De Nationale
Levensverzekering Bank en De Nederlanden van 1845 met de De
Rijkspostspaarbank, De Postcheque- and Girodienst en de Nederlandsche
Middenstands Bank) mogelijk te maken.

De banken kregen toen de beschikking over de (voor hun goedkope)
premiereserve van de verzekeringen en pensioenen (vergelijk met het
bedrijf van Warren Buffett, de rijkste man van de USA).

Groet / Cees

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/business/12regulate.html
December 12, 2009
House Approves Tougher Rules on Wall Street
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON — The House approved a Democratic plan on Friday to tighten
federal regulation of Wall Street and banks, advancing a far-reaching
Congressional response to the financial crisis that rocked the economy.

After three days of floor debate, the House voted 223 to 202 to approve
the measure. It would create an agency to protect consumers from abusive
lending practices, set rules for the trading of some of the
sophisticated financial instruments that fueled the crisis, and take
steps to reduce the threat that the failure of one or two huge banks or
investment firms could topple the entire economy.

Whether all of those measures will become law, however, is uncertain
because the Obama administration wants certain revisions and the Senate
will not take up its version of the legislation until next year.

The Democratic authors of the House legislation hailed the bill as the
biggest change in oversight of Wall Street since the Great Depression,
and said they believed they had struck a careful balance between
protecting the public and the economy while not stifling economic growth
and market forces.

“We have a set of rules in place that will allow the most productive
parts of the free market economy, and particularly the financial system,
to play the role they should play, but with much less chance of abuse,”
Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and a main
architect of the measure, said after the vote.

The approval of the bill is the most significant step lawmakers have
taken to confront the financial crisis since the $700 billion bailout
package was rammed through Congress at the peak of the emergency more
than a year ago. The bill represents an attempt to address
comprehensively what many of its supporters have called the underlying
causes of the collapse — reckless risk-taking unrestrained by
regulation.

No Republican voted for the measure, and 27 Democrats, most from more
conservative districts, broke ranks with their party. Republicans
strongly criticized the Democratic legislation, saying it could restrict
the availability of credit, cause job loss and lead to future bailouts
of failing businesses.

“The array of new regulations and taxes on consumers, investors and
businesses will destroy jobs and further undermine the fragile economy,”
Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the senior Republican on the
Financial Services Committee, said.

The bill would create, at a cost that could run into the billions, a
Consumer Financial Protection Agency in an attempt to head off the kinds
of lending practices that led many homeowners to take on mortgages they
could not afford.

The bill would bring regulation for the first time to a portion of the
over-the-counter market for derivatives. It would create a process for
dealing with troubles at very large financial institutions that might
pose a risk to the financial system and the economy, and require large
firms to contribute to a fund to help with an orderly dissolution of
those institutions if they are in danger of failing.

And the bill includes a number of other provisions to address executive
compensation, investor protections and regulation of hedge funds.

Before approving the measure, House Democrats held off an attempt led by
Representative Walt Minnick, Democrat of Idaho, to replace the proposed
new consumer protection agency with a council made up of existing
regulators.

He and other moderate Democrats, joined by Republicans and much of the
banking industry, argued the new agency — a central element of the
overhaul — represented an unnecessary bureaucratic approach that would
give the federal government excessive control over mortgages, credit
cards and other financial products.

“How many new government agencies are necessary to accomplish this
task?” asked Representative Dan Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma. Their
effort was defeated on a vote of 223 to 208, removing a final obstacle
to the measure.

In other important preliminary votes, lawmakers slightly scaled back the
bill’s ambitions to address objections from powerful financial
interests.

Heeding complaints from banks, the House rejected an effort to allow
bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgage payments, a plan that has
passed the House before but not the Senate.

House members also agreed to relax some of the proposed new controls on
trading in derivatives. Rather than subject all over-the-counter
derivatives to open trading, the bill would subject such derivatives
only if they were traded between Wall Street firms, or with a major
player like the American International Group. But the transactions
between dealers and customers will remain largely hidden, so customers
will not be able to compare the prices they are being charged with the
prices charged to other customers.

The overhaul of Wall Street regulation is a top domestic priority of the
Obama administration, which supported the House bill and applauded its
approval. But Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner signaled that the
administration would seek changes in any final measure.

Despite the House action, final legislation is not imminent. The Senate
is still developing its own measure for debate early next year and any
Senate bill is likely to differ substantially from the House measure,
necessitating further negotiations.

Most Democrats agreed that stiffened regulation of the financial
services industry was warranted by the events leading up to the
financial crisis. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House
majority leader, cited what many considered a lack of adequate
regulation during the administration of President George W. Bush as a
central reason for the economic collapse.

“This bill puts the referees back on the field,” Mr. Hoyer said.

The chief argument in the House centered on the Democratic proposal that
would assess large financial companies a fee to create a $150 billion
fund to cover the costs of dissolving companies that pose a threat to
the economy.

Democrats said the fund did not amount to a reserve for bailouts since
it would not be used to keep companies afloat but would instead lead to
a more orderly shutdown and would be paid for by large companies, not
taxpayers.

Republicans, trying to capitalize on public frustration with financial
bailouts, said that failing firms should instead go through normal
bankruptcy proceedings.

“We just think at the end of the day that $150 billion in a permanent
bailout fund is not the direction the American people want this nation
to go,” said Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican
in the House.

Both sides saw the vote as a political opening in the coming midterm
elections. Republicans sought to turn the issue on dozens of potentially
vulnerable Democrats in swing districts, noting that they had opposed a
Republican procedural move that would have shut down the bailout fund
and put the money toward paying off the national debt.




16.
MsS W MA December 11th, 2009 3:33 pm
Or they could simply reinstate Glass-Steagall.
3.
ConcernedCitizen Venice, FL December 11th, 2009 3:32 pm
It is interesting that the Republican Members of Congress who gleefully
accepted campaign contributions from the financial services sector while
they supported the financial sector criminal business activities
underway until the financial debacle of September 2008 that almost
destroyed our economy are now concerned about the costs of preventing it
from happening again.
24.
nancy mich. December 11th, 2009 3:50 pm
How about reinstating Glass-Steagall? That's too simple, instead set up
an agency to police the financial institutions. That way the big money
folks can payoff the regulators. Once again our representatives can pass
meaningless legislation that the ill read and duped voters think is
meaningful. Did I say think?
23.
DlphcOracl Chicago, Illinois December 11th, 2009 3:33 pm
By the time the entrenched, deep-pocketed lobbyists from Wall St. and
the financial industry finish twisting the arms of their senatorial
puppets, the House version of the financial reform and regulation bill
will be unrecognizable. This is the same tried and true
pseudo-democratic process that has prevented meaningful reform of health
care and the health insurance conglomerate in the U.S., without passage
of a public option similar to what the rest of the industrialized world
takes for granted. The largest and saddest myth the American public is
laboring under is that our country is still a democracy in which the
collective voice of the American citizenry is reflected by subsequent
Congressional policy and legislation. The reality is that it is bought
on the cheap by entrenched corporate interests who bribe legislators
whose sole concern is getting re-elected with campaign contributions to
buy their votes, almost always counter to the public interest and
mandate.

When this piece of legislation emerges from the other side of the
Senate's sausage maker it will be toothless and irrelevant.
87.
Dim Texas December 11th, 2009 5:56 pm
The big question I have is: did Mr. Obama go to bed with Wall Street
before or right after the election? In fact, the answer is kind of
obvious, turns out Mr. Obama was the Manchurian candidate. Only instead
of some "OMG, I'm so afraid!" country like Russia or, Allah forbid,
Islamic Caliphate, he turned out to be the Property of Wall Street. The
speed with which he threw all his progressive economic advisors under
the bus and replaced them with the super-elitist team of Wall St.
bottom-licking former employees of Goldman Sachs and Citibank (half of
whom daily shine the shoes of that sleazeball Bob Rubin) is simply
amazing! The sheer size of gifts that he gave out to his Wall St.
masters is astounding! The consistency of his obedience to Wall St.
wishes, which can be clearly seen in the current gutting of the
regulatory reform, would make Cesar Millan's of the Goldman Sachs
boardroom proud!

I hope people realize, Obama is not the president of the people he
pretended so well to inspire to be during his campaign. He is a
brilliant politician who honed his talent to say just the right things
with the smile on his face to match that of a japanese robot. Oh Lord...
looking at the Republican lunacy on the other side, our options of our
politicians seem to be limited to criminals who will blow our brains out
or simply rape us.

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