Republicans Tap Leading Foe of Wall Street Reform to Oversee New Rules
Last year as the fight to rein-in Wall Street excesses—such as the mysterious and risky derivatives market—raged in Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was leading the corporate charge against reform.
Big Business couldn’t kill Wall Street reform then, but with Republicans taking control of the U.S. House next week, don’t think that battle is over. Think Progress reports the Chamber’s senior director of its division dedicated to de-regulating the complex derivatives market will now play a major role in overseeing how the new law that regulates derivates is implemented.
Ryan McKee has been hired by the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), as senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Writes Think Progress’s Lee Fang:
In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market. Read the rest of this entry »
The Past Decade the Worst for America’s Workers
Whoa. This from the Washington Post:
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times…
WaPo is the kind of newspaper that leans heavily toward emphasizing happy economic news, even in the face of 10 percent unemployment. So its coverage of the decade of disaster means the stuation must really be bad. How bad?
There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.
How bad?
Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999–and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.
How bad?
It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers.
But not for the CEOs of the corporations who fueled the nation’s growing economic inequality. Take AIG, which taxpayers bailed out at a cost of $182.3 billion. When one of its execs balked at a salary cut required by the Obama administration because AIG was surviving on taxpayer funds, the corporation paid her $3.8 million in severance.
The cataclysmic widening of the income gap between the obscenely rich and the rest of us is the very definition of the decade of disaster.
Chamber Pot of Commerce
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The day after Barack Obama was elected president, we at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., draped the front of our building with a massive banner: “We’re Turning Around America.” In January, we added another banner supporting passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
The AFL-CIO building is just around the corner from the Chamber of Commerce. So apparently after stewing lo these many months, the Chamber decided to drape itself in its own banner, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
The banner proclaims the ludicrous—yet at an estimated $100 million, massively funded—campaign the Chamber announced yesterday to shore up free enterprise and create jobs. Or, as Politics Daily puts it:
Chamber of Commerce Relaunches Capitalism.
Chamber President Tom Donohue, who last week was battling Apple Inc. and other corporations about their decisions to leave the Chamber over its antediluvian climate change stance, had this to say about the campaign:
The free enterprise system, which has done so much for so many, is facing great challenges.
Contracts Can’t Be Broken—Unless They Involve Union Workers
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Contracts can’t be broken. We learned that lesson well over the past few days when AIG honchos swore that despite being bailed out by $173 billion in taxpayer funds, they couldn’t break the sacrosanct contractual bond that guaranteed billions in bonuses to the same top executives who brought the insurance giant to its knees.
But we also were taught another lesson in these months of financial chaos: Contacts can’t be changed—unless they involve unionized autoworkers.
Tim Rutten at the Los Angeles Times really hits the mark today when he writes:
What we’re essentially being asked to believe is that employment contracts involving hardworking men and women on Detroit’s assembly lines are somehow less legally binding—less “sacred” in the current rhetorical argot—than those protecting a bunch of cowboy securities traders living in Connecticut. [snip]
For years, the smart guys on Wall Street have convinced a growing number of Americans that organized labor is an impediment to economic progress, an unacceptable “cost” in a globalized system of production, a quaint social fossil from the era of mills and smokestacks. If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from the current crisis, however, it’s that when the chips are down, organized labor is a far more responsible social actor than the snatch-and-run characters who fancy themselves financiers.
AIG, CNBC: Poster Demons for a Bigger Problem
It took awhile, but now the public is angry—reeaaalllly angry—over the economic wreckage Wall Street has wrought on our nation. Much of the outrage is directed toward AIG, the insurance giant that’s giving billions in taxpayer money in the form of bonuses to the same egregiously overpaid wretches who brought the company to its knees. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just revealed that AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of $1 million or more; 11 of whom are no longer there.
But the “messenger” also is getting its comeuppance, with questions now raised about why CNBC acted as cheerleader for major financial wizards even as they were summoning chaos in our financial markets.
Treasury Dept. Not Looking After Taxpayer Money
President-elect Barack Obama has a laundry list of Bush disasters to clean up after he gets in office, and he says fixing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is among his first priorities. Good thing, too, because the congressional oversight committee charged with examining how the first $350 billion of our taxpayer money was spent finds the U.S. Treasury Department isn’t exactly looking after our money. The oversight committee released its second report in recent days, and The Washington Post sums up the findings as follows:
The report says the department has not articulated a plan for restoring lending to consumers. It asks again why the Treasury has refused to spend any money on foreclosure prevention programs. And it says the department is sowing confusion in the financial markets, undermining the stated purpose of the rescue program, by failing to require companies to report how they are spending federal investments of taxpayer dollars.
10 Reasons to Support the U.S. Auto Industry
Chances are the upcoming holiday get-togethers will provide plenty of encounters with relatives and friends who are against helping out the auto industry. Opponents of a bridge loan have plenty to say. And we should, too. Here’s a quick list of reasons for countering arguments by Uncle CEO and Cousin It.
1. Unlike the taxpayer giveaway to Wall Street, the funds for the auto industry are loans. These loans have to be paid back. The Big Banks who got our $700 billion get to keep it.
2. It’s cheaper to support the auto industry than to let it die. Anderson Economic Group and BBK Ltd. determined that over a two-year period, a $30 billion bridge loan with only half of the amount repaid would result in a $16.4 billion cost to taxpayers in lost sales, taxes and jobs, while a bankruptcy would cost $65.9 billion when costs for pensions, unemployment insurance, loan losses and professional and other fees are added.
