Yes, unlike what was sold to us about Dodd Frank, there are in effect already backdoor bailouts before our very eyes if we care to look. This one involves the most important regulator of our entire financial system, the New York Fed, intervening to let Bank of America off the hook for its residential mortgage backed securities fraud.
Today's show is on comprehensive immigration reform, raising the minimum wage and pegging it to inflation, and universal pre-K in regard to the recent SOTU.
Harry Reid shot filibuster reform in the face. Therefore more kids will get shot. #Uppers
After all, it was at the SOTU merely just a year ago that President Obama assured us that something was going to be done about the Wall St. perpetrators of our mortgage and foreclosure crisis. This was a crisis in which they defrauded consumers with sub-prime NINJA loans pumping up the housing bubble and then dumping the private debt overhang onto the economy destroying over 10 trillion in housing wealth. This left consumers with massive loads of private debt and everyone else jobless like this recovery.
This White House's DOJ has made a complete mockery of the concept of Justice in and of itself. That illusion of Justice is perpetuated to this day and normal people are devastated because of it. Let President Obama know you are not amused. I have.
This is an older essay of mine from Daily Kos posted on Thursday February 02, 2012.
It was referenced by Yves Smith which I am proud of. It's worth posting now because it's been a year later and in Yves Smith's words, Quelle Surprise! The Mortgage/Financial Fraud task force put together by the foreclosure fraud sham of a "settlement" has done nothing.
President Obama got NY AG Eric Schneiderman, DE AG Beau Biden and the other Justice Democrats to sell out and give up on real justice. It is a sham that continues to this day. Let President Obama know you are not amused.
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Sometimes, once in a blue moon, there comes a time when important events unfold that I then must trust my own judgment. And in doing so, I also sometimes have to part ways with people I admire. It doesn't feel good to do so, but I think NY AG Eric Schneiderman is possibly making a mistake, and I very much agree with David Dayen’s take on these events.
Taibbi has kind of bought the argument that the robo-signing was a smaller part of a bigger fraud in the securitization markets, which is true. That doesn’t mean that a settlement that allows you to go after that poisoned tree by only giving up the fruit is in any way equitable. That’s the point of California Rep. George Miller, a key ally to Nancy Pelosi:
Democratic Congressman George Miller of the East San Francisco Bay area says he’s “proud” of Harris for leaving negotiations that aren’t in the state’s best interest. And he says any agreement has to be transparent.
“Whatever settlement they have has to go out to the public for a week, for a period of time, where it can be commented on,” Miller said, “because this represents the largest decisions about people’s homes, their equity, their assets and their worth.”
As you might have heard the economy is contracting while unemployment remains high inching higher especially in real terms again while Washington is too stupid or corrupt across the board to notice. I can't say I didn't see this coming even as just an above average layman. All this focus on austerity is detrimental. After all, spending is actually income and so are deficits which are the life blood of the private sector in the economy when it comes to those sectoral balances you hear me always harping about.
I have to thank NY brit expat for introducing me to John whom is not only a brilliant economist, but an all around cool guy who is very approachable and has an awesome taste in music. He stresses that the economics discipline hasn't made economics very understandable to the general public and he's right; however, you wouldn't know that by reading his many excellent pieces on why everything people think they know about debt and deficits is absolutely wrong. As John points out, it's not only wrong, it pervades this entire ignorant and corrupt political debate happening right now over this stupid sequester that was a creation of the White House and Congress.
As you will read down below, this horrible self induced debt ceiling pro austerity political show where never is heard an encouraging word like full employment, but instead for Peter Peterson's enjoyment, idiotic words praising deficit terrorism(budget balance and cutting our safety net) rules the day. It only amounts to economic decay and a likely recession on the way depending on how much deficit spending is cut in the coming days.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has long been a favorite target of conservatives. Their primary complaints about the organization generally revolve around the fact that the employees are unionized, make a living wage and enjoy actual benefits such as retirement and healthcare. Today, the USPS announced that beginning in August of this year, Saturday residential mail delivery will end. Will this have any effect at all on the economy? It is unlikely that this will be the last service reduction implemented by the USPS.
Congratulations, Obama fans! He finally scored on the Barbarian's tally! He proposed legislation to ban military-style assault rifles, limit the size of magazines, and expand background checks to close the notorious gun show loophole. He might even be serious. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Well done, Mr President. Push hard, and some of this will actually be enacted, even by this Congress, into law.
Then, today, Republican Governor John Kasich of Ohio came out with his proposed budget. He scored with me by proposing the following:
1. A real small business income tax cut. Half of the first $750, 000 of business income, or $375,000 is exempt from the state income tax. As a Socialist, I'm not totally in favor of this, but it is progressive in its way. It clearly helps out local merchants and start ups, green grocers and farmer's markets and repair shops and bookstores and the like. And it definitely does not give away the store to large corporations.
That's right. I don't know in what world some people are living in, but they should pay attention. Yes they should actually pay attention to what Grover Norquist is saying and how much these stupid debt ceiling crisis I predicted are playing into his hands. (h/t Addison)
The Republican-led House today passed a bill to "suspend" the nation's debt limit until May, which if passed by the Senate and signed into law, would stave off for a few months the risk of letting the U.S. government default on its loans.
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House Democrats, meanwhile, grumbled that the short-term bill amounts to political gimmickry that keeps Washington in crisis mode.
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"The premise here is pretty simple," House Speaker John Boehner said on the House floor. "It says there should be no long-term increase in the debt limit until there's a long term plan to deal with the fiscal crisis that faces our country. Every hardworking taxpayer in America knows that they have to do a budget. Every hardworking taxpayer understands that you can't continue to spend money that you don't have."
{........}
House Democrats also complained that the bill prolonged the debate over the debt limit rather than solving it.
"The good news is that our Republican colleagues finally realized that America should pay its bills and dropped their condition that that be matched by cuts," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said in a news conference. "The bad news is they've decided that America only needs to pay its bills for three more months."
Yes, even when that 3 month suspension becomes a raise only every few months more down the line it won't be close to normal standard procedure as some have tried to claim. This is true for a number of reasons; past raises of debt ceilings were never crisis showdowns and always were routine until Obama put them on the table as something to be negotiated. So given the completely different context comparing past debt ceiling raises to now I needn't go any further, but I will. What happened in 2011 was unprecedented and we are still dealing with the fallout right here and right now. It almost happened to former President Bill Clinton in the 90s but even Jonathan Chait admits Clinton was much more politically savvy in dealing with it than Obama so it was averted.
There seems to be a lot of celebrating without actually understanding much of what has happened as of late. One reason is that it looks like House Republicans will agree to raise the debt ceiling but only for 3 months until the budget gimmick of all Congressmen supposedly either passing a budget or denying their own pay as if that will ever happen. There will be infighting on whether there should be heavy or light deficit terrorism terrorizing the unemployed as usual, but now we can expect these dysfunctional austerity celebrating battles to go on and on. And as I pointed out when I predicted all of this 3 years ago, when this is the debate in Washington DC we have already lost.
This budget gimmick fight is already on top of what the last debt ceiling fight created with the negotiations coming up over the self induced sequester on the basis that 4 trillion bipartisan austerity is awesome. That is the problem for all debates and all fake "progressive" political rhetoric in DC we heard at the Inauguration even though it was a great speech.
The plans to kick this austerity shit can down the road continually every few months is not a victory; it's also not even a clean debt ceiling raise because it's not even going to be for a fiscal year. It also means the White House was really posturing as I said they were when they claimed they wouldn't negotiate on the debt ceiling; this shows that all this so called new-found post reelection "strength for progress" is a myth. That also means that all the hyp being bandied about, about the low-balled 60 billion to merely 9 billion Sandy relief bill passing weeks late and 51 billion dollars short breaking the Hastert rule did not have the significance of the spin behind it at all. It's simple: John Boehner was looking out for his own ass as speaker(shocking!). That's it.
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