Senate passes landmark financial reform bill

Another stake into the heart of this economy. Way to go Marxists.

Oh, and for you “little people?” Good luck getting a loan.

As usual, we are very grateful for Dennis’ profoundly helpful insights. NOT!

There is a movement now underway where people fed up with the “too big to fail” banks are transferring all assets to smaller banks and credit unions.

Move Your Money
http://moveyourmoney.info/

Well Lane, since small banks are dropping like flies around here, I’d hold off on that if I were you.

Russ Feingold is right.. We didn’t go far enough.. It’s sort of like fluffing the pillows on a dirty bed.. We should smash Goldman Sachs out of existence. In the same process throwing bank CEO’s in jail for the economic terror they have unleashed on this country(and the World).. Osama Bin Laden would be proud of BP, Sachs and the “Bagger” movement..

Lane,
Go to a smaller bank and I wish you luck if you ever need assistance with your credit card at 3am when you are on a trip. Just sayin’.

As best I can determine, a total of thirteen banks failed in Minnesota for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. While each bank failure is not to be treated lightly, the scale of such in Minnesota hardly approaches that of “small banks … dropping like flies around here.”

http://portalseven.com/banks/Failed_Banks_State_Wise.jsp?state=MN

Additionally, each depositor insured to at least $250,000 per FDIC-insured bank through 12/31/2013.

“Like banks, credit unions are insured up to $100,000 for each account by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which guarantees solvency for credit unions in the same manner that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protects the banking industry. Certain retirement accounts, such as IRAs may even be insured for up to $250,000, depending on state and local regulations.”

“Another stake into the heart of this economy. Way to go Marxists.Oh, and for you “little people?” Good luck getting a loan.”

And how’s that financial deregulation been working for you? Financial deregulation has bipartisan roots but it was the Reagan right wing that took the idea and ran away with it. With feckless Democratic help of course. But the free market zealots are, every one of them, right wing Republicans. They (and you, Dennis, being one of them) own the 2008 financial melt-down and all of the consequences, lock, stock and barrel.

And can we pleases top using “Democratic” and “liberal” or “progressive” interchangeably. These words mean different things. The reason we have to have a “filibuster proof majority” to get anything done is because Democrats, as a rule, are neither “liberal” or “progressive.”

There is some truth to what Dano says as far as the available services that small banks and credit unions can offer compared to the “too big to fail” banks.

But then as a Deaf man who enjoys traveling, my far more serious concern is the lack of accessibility to telecommunication and online services; this must be overcome before I can begin to worry about seeking help with my bankcard at 3:00 in the morning.

Finally, I’ve been in situations where I called that big bank in the middle of the night where I’ve been put on hold, then transferred, put on another long hold, then transferred again ad nauseum. Just because you can call anytime doesn’t guarantee excellent service.

Lane, I wasn’t suggesting you’d lose your money. I simply meant that if your small bank closes, and they do this without much warning, it’d be a pain in the butt to deal with getting your money, finding a new bank, etc.

Denise Bachmann^^You appear to be an authority on everything and an expert on nothing.In other words YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT!!!

Silly me. I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t be a big pain in the butt to deal with getting my money back from that failed “too big to fail” bank, finding a new bank, ad nauseum.

What would a discussion on this site be without someone cursing me or calling me a name? You people need better arguments.

Robert Creamer has is about right:

“Over the course of eight short years — between 2000 and 2008 — the Republicans methodically executed their plan to transform American society. They systematically transferred wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest two percent of Americans — slashing taxes for the wealthy. They eviscerated the rules that held Wall Street, Big Oil and private insurance companies accountable to the public. They allowed and encouraged the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks that ultimately collapsed the economy and cost eight million Americans their jobs. They ignored exploding health care costs, tried to privatize Social Security, gave the drug companies open season to gouge American consumers and presided over a decline in real incomes averaging $2,000 per family. They entangled America in an enormously costly, unnecessary war in Iraq, pursued a directionless policy that left Afghanistan to fester, and sullied America’s good name throughout the world.”

It is pretty hard to say Democrats are ruining the economy when you have already ruined it.

The average unemployment rate during George Bush’s two terms in office, even including the recession caused by the terrorist attack, was 5.27%

Chew on that for awhile.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

We all know that the unemployment rate started to soar towards the end of 2008 – well before Obama’s inauguration on January 19, 2009. By then, the economy was already in shambles.

Nice try, Dennis, but a pathetic FAIL!

I simply point out the fallacy that the economy was in the tank during the “eight years” of the Bush presidency, when in fact the economy was just fine for most of his two terms.

The irony, of course, is that if there is a correlation regarding political leadership and the economy being in shambles, the timeline that works is when the democrats took over congress – January 2007 – and the steep decline that the economy has taken since then.

So, Robert Creamer, whoever that is, is wrong obviously.

So, Dennis, whoever that is, is being disingenuous obviously.

By citing unemployment rates during the Bush years does not take into account the complex picture going back at least twenty years that led to the housing bubble and its subsequent subprime mortgage crisis that started to manifest itself in mid-2006 which led to the economic meltdown not only in the United States but also world-wide. The only reason Dennis chose to mention those figures at this time is to cast uncalled-for aspersions on Obama who had very little, if anything at all, to do with all that had happened, and whose administration along with the Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to fix despite the childishly obstructionist tactics of the Republicans.

If McCain/Palin won, who is to know how things would have been handled? I do know deep down that we would have seen more of the same self-serving polarizing agenda (as succintly described by Robert Creamer) that characterized the Bush years.

No matter what spin Dennis attempts, the fact remains that the history books will always mention the economic collapse towards the end of his second term as one of the many low points of George W. Bush’s presidency. He was a lousy president.

If McCain/Palin won, think about this. Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat-controlled House. President of the Senate Palin with the Democrat-controlled Senate. We’d have seen more partisan gridlock than collaborative progress on so many fronts. And I doubt McCain would be as aggressive towards BP as Obama has been.

We’d have bombed Iran already and started another unpaid-for war for nothing, don’t forget that.

Obama gave that BP platform a safety award last year, so I don’t get why you think he’s been tough on them other than shaking them down for $20 billion in Chicago thugacracy style.

If we had a real president, Iran would no longer exist.

Explain this:
http://cdn.crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2010/07/wages-productivity_d111a.gif

“shaking them down for $20 billion”

Having to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund to assist the victims of the biggest oil disaster in American history is a shakedown ??

Put down the crack pipe.

“Obama gave that BP platform a safety award last year”

That would be the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, not the President himself, continuing an award program that BP last won in 1992.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/the-buzz-is-all-about-bp-at-oil-drillers-conference/

This article indicates that BP was one of the three finalists for the SAFE award in the high activity drilling category (10 million+ barrels a year) from the Minerals Management Service to be handed out at the Offshore Technology Conference held in Houston TX on May 3-6, 2010. The awards presentation was cancelled due to “the need to focus on the Deepwater Horizon rig collapse that happened on April 20.”

This awards lunch and program was never re-scheduled, therefore no SAFE award was given this year.

As for the Mineral Management Service, Obama took decisive action by appointing Michael R. Bromwich on June 15 to lead a sweeping overhaul of the corrupt agency.

From what little I know about the Iranian people, society and culture, it’s just as well we don’t have a “real” president even as I am not keen on the current Iranian leadership. I also am not keen on Dennis either.

Dennis is partly correct re: the 2009 SAFE award which was given to Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded under BP’s management. BP was also a finalist. Again, Obama had nothing to do with that award.

“I simply point out the fallacy that the economy was in the tank during the “eight years” of the Bush presidency, when in fact the economy was just fine for most of his two terms.”

That’s if you get all your news and information from Faux News and Rush Limbaugh. Look how right wingers feel good about having an average unemployment rate of “only 5.27%.” Have you ever been unemployed, Dennis? Or are you like the other wingers who feel that unemployment is only another name for vacation?

Let’s take a snapshot peek at the Bush legacy from a less (but not totally unright-wing) source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ayRiTqF7A5Ag

Here’s a quote:

“During President George W. Bush’s two terms in office, the economy generated a net 3 million jobs, compared with 22.8 million created during the eight years when Bill Clinton was president.

Bush leaves office with unemployment at 7.2 percent, compared with the 4.2 percent rate he inherited from Clinton in January 2001. Unemployment was 7.3 percent when Clinton took office in January 1993, the last month that the jobless rate was higher than now.”

Plus, as Nouriel Roubini pointed out in 2008, a third of jobs created during the Bush years were in the housing related industries. In other words, the numbers were goosed by the free market fundamentalism of Alan Greenspan and the Bush administration.

According to the “Atlantic Monthly” Sept. 11, 2009 issue:

“On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/09/closing-the-book-on-the-bush-legacy/26402/

Plus, income and wealth disparity grew during the GW Bush Presidency. I hate to quote Wikipedia but it’s as good as any:

“Many economists are critical of the Bush administration’s policies and argue that the economy is only benefiting the wealthy, increasing inequality between the top 1% and the rest of society.[79] Economists Aviva Aron-Dine and Richard Sherman point to recent data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), showing that “the average after-tax income of the richest one percent of households rose from $722,000 in 2003 to $868,000 in 2004, after adjusting for inflation, a one-year increase of nearly $146,000, or 20 percent. This increase was the largest increase in 15 years, measured both in percentage terms and in real dollars.”

A lot of right-wingers dismiss the whole concern with disparity in income and wealth as being “leftist” or “liberal”. Most people, even right-wingers, intuitively know that a nation which is controlled by a wealthy few separated from a relatively poor majority cannot honestly call itself a democracy or even a republic. Intuitive is the wrong word, because we know from historical example that this is so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

and

“Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.” -

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk. 1, Ch.8

Well that was certainly intersting, jonerik, but why compare the economy while Bush was in office to when Clinton was in office? What’s that have to do with Obama?

“Look how right wingers feel good about having an average unemployment rate of “only 5.27%.””

Economists will tell you that an unemployment rate of 5% is essentially full employment. So since this was about somebody’s claim that the economy “tanked” during the 8 years of the Bush administration, I’m simply pointing out that during Bush years, the average unemployment rate was essentially one of full employment, putting to rest the nonsense that times were bad and more to the point, that his policies were responsible for a tanking economy when nothing could be further from the truth.

Granted, one measure of economic success is low unemployment. But look at the quote above:

“Bush leaves office with unemployment at 7.2 percent, . . .” The recession you wish to hang on Obama was in full swing under Bush. And he inherited an unemployment rate of 4.2% from Clinton. You can’t give Bush credit unless you are also willing to recognize how completely he mismanaged the economy in other areas where it counts. He had help from Greenspan and Cheney but the tax cuts were Bush’s idea and so was his complete deregulation of the financial sector. Executive compensation and bonuses?

Answer me this? Why is the right so very, very concerned with the plight of the wealthy? You obviously recognize that they have robbed this country for the past ten years in broad daylight culminating in the big bailouts which even allowed these thieves to pay themselves billions in bonuses to boot. And you are opposed to raising their taxes? If his tax cuts had any validity, Bush should have been leaving office with a growing economy and no recession.

It does no good responding to Dennis’ little distractions because he is unwilling to respond to large and clear facts. The Bush administration promoted an ideology that has been discredited by events, not arguments. Lesser regulation did not result in a better economy (as promised) but promoted multiple disasters. Bush did not balance the budget, as Clinton did, but rather continued the conservative trend of spending (on subsidies and the military) without taxing.

You simply can’t blame Obama for current unemployment rates that are the result of Bush, Jr. policies any more than Bush can take credit for the economic advance of the Clinton administration. Dennis simply is employing anything he can to obfuscate.

“Answer me this? Why is the right so very, very concerned with the plight of the wealthy?”

Why is the Left so concerned about other people and their money? It’s none of your business! In a free society, people have a right to the fruits of their labor. Their earnings do not belong to the government and it shouldn’t matter to you how much money they have. They pay most of the taxes already, what more do you want?

If someone could wave a magic wand and the emotions of envy and jealousy were to vanish from the face of the earth, the democrats would never win another election. Seriously.

All that matters in this discussion is that when Obama is finished two and half years from now, he’ll have replaced Jimmy Carter as the worst president in history. All Mitt Romney will have to ask is “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and the election will be over.

Chew on this information for a long while, then throw up.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-wealth-inequality-2010-7#the-gap-between-the-top-001-and-everyone-else-hasnt-been-this-bad-since-the-roaring-twenties-1

And Rob C, the balanced budget that Clinton signed was drafted by Newt Gingrich.

Bill Clinton’s success was from signing republican legislation after the republicans took over in ’94. We’re seeing deja vu all over again.

Re: “the gap”

The only ones who would be concerned about that and want to change it are communists.

“The only ones who would be concerned about that and want to change it are communists.”

So, I guess communists created the middle class, then, with wealth stolen from the wealthy.

Those communist middle class people should just shut up and get used to work only to make someone else rich, be the proletariat, like a good teabagger would.

“Why is the Left so concerned about other people and their money? It’s none of your business! In a free society, people have a right to the fruits of their labor. Their earnings do not belong to the government and it shouldn’t matter to you how much money they have. They pay most of the taxes already, what more do you want?”

I’m not talking about people who “labored” for anything. I’m talking about the greedy pigs like Lloyd Blankfein to name one of dozens who paid themselves and their ilk million dollar bonuses after wrecking the economy and getting the taxpayers to bail them out. Blankfein paid himself $69 million in bonuses in 2008. The AIG unit which wrote billions in worthless credit dedault swaps paid themselves about $100 million in bonuses. Or are you saying that they earned those millions of dollars of bonuses? Do you have a problem with taxing those bonuses, which amount to embezzled funds, at 90%?

Why do I care about other people and their money?

1) They use their money to buy politicians to destroy democracy and engross power to their class and rig the ways of making money to themselves, to buy favors and power and send the country into pointless wars.

2) They don’t pay nearly their fair share of the system which they have already rigged to redistribute the wealth from people who do labor and can’t afford to pay for their kids’ educations, for health care, for decent housing, for decent, wholesome food, etc.

3) the “gap” in wealth is not just of concern to “communists” but to all people who have any concern for their fellow sufferers on this planet. Read the Adam Smith quote above. Was Adam Smith a communist? million paid out just before getting bailed out?

4)the “gap” in wealth reflects how much purchasing power people have. A country with wide disparities in wealth between the richest and poorest is overall a poorer country. Adam Smith was not talking about making some people rich and others poor. He was talking about an economy where the nation or commonwealth was richer where the wealth, the means of production, were widely distributed and not concentrated in the hands of a relative few, as we have today in the USA.

@jonerik

I enjoyed reading EVERYTHING that you just said.. A.) Because it’s ALL true.. And B.) the right wing has very difficult time wrapping their diminished brain around reality.. It AMAZES me to think that ANY human being can disagree with you on EVERY issue 1oo% of the time.. But!! When you think of the Republican brain this stuff all makes sense..

The Republican brain is like a ‘storage tank’… That has a DIRECT PIPELINE to Glen Beck’s Toilet Bowl.. There are a lot of metaphorical references here..

A.. The Brain is a storage tank..
B.. The “Pipeline” is Fox News
C.. EVERYTHING that comes out of Glenn Becks mouth is Sh!t!!

Good luck on convincing someone so filled with SH!T that everything you say is Wrong!!

Well, I think Republicans and the wealthy seem pretty concerned with other people’s money, too–an how they can get their hands on it. So far, they are doing a fine job.

Of course money and its distribution is everyone’s concern. It is NOT wealthy people’s money, the wealth of a society belongs to the people of that society. How they divide it up is up to them (i.e., ALL the people, it is called democracy). You act as if wealthy people somehow deserve or have a god-given right to all the wealth–as if, (hardy har) they have earned it. Where did you get that idea? (I suggest from the people with most of the wealth.) The contents of a culture belong to the culture, not a few individuals. The rich would not have their money if it wasn’t for the culture and for other people in the culture. A person who owns a company uses roads, mail, relies on works, must be defended, etc. etc. Even capitalist have to use other people’s money. How a society divides up its wealth should not be based on some obscure and screwy idea that defines freedom as some people’s right to all the wealth, but one that the society decides is best. Note that there is no freedom from those with insufficient wealth, so a society that allow only very very few to have all the wealth is not a free on for most of its people.

You need to move your thinking (if I can call it that) beyond vague, almost mythical concepts like “freedom” and “socialism” to a more critical analysis. Too bad most American seem unable to act in their own interest. Too much bad TV, I guess.

“Note that there is no freedom (for) those with insufficient wealth”

It’s called wage slavery. Conservatives find nothing wrong with having the majority of U.S. citizens live that way, another reason they tend to only talk about defending taxpayer’s interests, as if wage slaves pay no taxes.

In simplest terms, conservative policies take so much wealth out of the economy that it becomes unstable. This makes recession an inevitable result of conservative principles.

As we are already in a holding pattern between recession and recovery, returning to conservative policies will send us into depression or economic collapse. Their policies are just not sustainable, and there is no more margin for error.

“It is NOT wealthy people’s money, the wealth of a society belongs to the people of that society. How they divide it up is up to them (i.e., ALL the people, it is called democracy).”

Holy crap. Karl Marx has nothing on you. I bet your union boss taught you all that.

Zera Lee, you have no idea what conservative principles are. The economy is based on capitalism, the act of buying and selling goods and services. Government impedes that process with taxation, regulation and litigation.

The reason the economy is in the tank is because conservative principles are being impeded by the marxists who control this government.

The capitalists have halted the economy until Obama and his band of government thieves are out of power. Then and only then will you see them open up new jobs. You better hope the republicans win in November so the process can begin.