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An Inside Outsider Takes on Wall Street
OK, presumably their mommas do, and possibly their pet dogs, but that's it. The general public loathes them and would be delighted to see the whole bunch tarred, feathered and deported to a barren atoll, where their punishment would be living with themselves.
These preening, narcissistic elites turned America's financial system into a rigged casino game that paid off big-time for them. Then it crashed, wrecking our real economy and making life miserable for millions of people. Yet, there they are, still on their exalted thrones, still playing casino games (now with our bailout funds) and still lavishing obscene bonuses on themselves.
Despite their perfidy, they've not been made to pay any price by our public officials. Americans of all political stripes have watched in dismay as both Democratic and Republican leaders rushed to pat the hands and soothe the fevered brows not of us aggrieved parties, but of the banksters.
(Democrats at least publicly scolded the Wall Street chieftains, while such Republican bosses as Rep. John Boehner of Ohio and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas have turned public dismay into disgust by openly blowing kisses to the disgraced bankers. Boehner and Cornyn have been pledging that their party will keep fending off legislative restrictions on executive pay if Wall Street would only show a little return love in the form of more campaign cash for GOP coffers.)
Good grief, is there no sanity, no smidgen of integrity? Are no public officials on our side?
Meet Elizabeth Warren. She heads an independent agency that Congress set up in 2008 to monitor and report on the government bailout of Wall Street — and the main thing you need to know about her is that the big-shots of finance despise her. Now that's refreshing!
Warren doesn't play the smooth insider game of Bohner, Cornyn, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. She doesn't because she's not a Wall Street insider. "Dang gummit," she says in her native Oklahoma twang, "somebody has got to stand up on behalf of middle-class families."
While she doesn't have the power to reform the Street's ingrained culture of greed, she can shine a light on it — and she has been a fearless and tenacious griller of Gucci-clad bankers and weak-willed regulators.
Her admiring husband describes her as a grandmother who can make grown men cry.
Coming from a working-class family, Warren knows first-hand what it is to face financial crisis (including foreclosure) and to feel the crushing power of uncaring banks. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people," she told The New York Times last month. At age 16, she won a debate scholarship to college, then worked her way into law school and ultimately became a leading authority on bankruptcy.
Despite her success as a lawyer, she hasn't forgotten her populist roots and purpose. Warren is Wall Street's worst nightmare: a middle-class champion who gives a damn about workaday people, is smart and tenacious — and can't be bought.
She is now bringing her background, legal expertise and moral outrage to bear on a proposal that she conceived and developed: a new agency with real regulatory teeth that would exist solely to protect consumers against banker deceit, scams and greed. Big bankers keel over in a dead faint at the very mention of Warren's proposal for a totally independent Consumer Financial Regulatory Agency, and they're lobbying ferociously to kill it ... and to demonize her.
However, the Wall Street reform package already passed by the House does include the independent CFPA she proposed. The Senate bill also includes a CFPA, but wimps out by putting it in the soft, banker-coddling hands of the Federal Reserve. The fight rages on, and its hard to have much faith that Washington would really go against Wall Street — but Warren's a real fighter, and she has strong progressive supporters both inside and outside the Capital City.
She gives us someone to cheer for — and to back. To join Elizabeth Warren's gutsy push on our behalf, contact the grass-roots coalition called Americans for Financial Reform: ourfinancialsecurity.org, (202) 263-4533.
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33 Comments so far
Show Allthanks, jim, for beating the e.warren drum. one can only hope she does not lose her tenacity. she is, apparently, the one shining light in a room full of dim bulbs.
Our only hope is to have non-elected bureaucrats save us from the elected politicians.
We owe Elizabeth Warren our profound gratitude.
But let's not forget Brooksley Born and Marcy Kaptur.
Jim Shea
marcy kaptur voted against reproductive choice. otherwise, she has made sense.
for peace and sustainability
Elizabeth Warren needs more legal authority to regulate Wall Street and out of control greed.
"deported to a barren atoll, where their punishment would be living with themselves".
Reminds me of a comment an old farmer/neighbor of ours used to use,"put 'em all on a small island and let 'em root hog or die"
"Good grief, is there no sanity, no smidgen of integrity? Are no public officials on our side?"
I'll answer that with a, NO, NO, and not enough to matter.
NC-Tom -- I thought I would repost the link you offered yesterday on another thread. Maybe, someone who takes part in the discussion today will want to watch William Black's lecture:
ttps://webdisk.lclark.edu/econ/steinhardt2010/steinhardt2010.html
Thanks, again.
This is the person that I'd like to see become the next Sec Treas. In fact, I'd like to see her physically kick Giethner's a$$ out of his office and throw his desk junk after him.
The system has became so Corrupt and dominated by the Bankers that an Elizabeth Warren is like the Dutch Boy putting his finger in the dike. For every extra regulation put in to restrain the Bankers, they find another 10 loopholes to exploit.
An example.
A Whistle Blower in London wrote to the Group in the USA that is responsible for oversight of trading in precious metals. (the CTFC). He claimed that major Banks in the USA such as JP Morgan were openly manipulating the price of precious metals. What they would do is amass a poistion in the same and then send a signal to traders to dump their own. Prior to this signal, they would sell silver short "betting" the price would drop.
When it did in fact drop due to this collusion they made hundreds of millions of dollars.
The CTFC did nothing to investigate. The man and his wife were run off the road shortly after that and both hospitalized. Witnesses surrounded the car in question which then drove right through the crowd and fled striking a number of parked cars as it did so. The Police claimed they appreheded the supsect but to this point the suspects name not released nor have charges been made.
According to claims made JP Morgan is leveraged over 100 to one on silver futures alone. This is not limited to JP Morgan but includes other banking instituions as well.
What this means is for every ounce of silver that Physically exists, one HUNDRED silver certificates for an ounce each are issued.
If you own such certificates SELL Them or get real silver. There is not enough silver in all the world in Physical form to fulfill these Contracts.
Back in the 1970s the USA ran into the same sort of problem with their Gold backed dollar. Foreign Governmnets could turn US dollars in for physical Gold. Due to the Vietnam war the US was printing up more dollars then they had gold so unilateraly abandoned the Gold Standard.
JP Morgan will have to do the same at one point. They are making money selling stuff they DO NOT OWN. It is a massive and complete fraud. The total value of Gold/Silver certificates being sold by these institutions which they DO NOT OWN and which can never be physically accumulated because it larger then all reserves in the world, is in the TRILLIONS of dollars.
How the heck can you sell stuff you do NOT OWN or possess? It is nuts. The whole system is rotten and a regulation here and there will not turn that around. These institutions have to be nationalized, the executives imprisoned and the whole system rebuilt.
GwNorth: Thanks for your very provocative post! I recall the issues with gold. However, I have not read the story you relate about the whistleblowers and silver!
Do you have a link to the story? I would be very interested in reading more about it. The Casino is still open for business -- and still, we have no serious regulatory reform in the works.
Kay,
zerohedge.com has been following this, have also seen articles on informationclearinghouse.info. If you look at almost any gold bug or precious metals web site, this has been a big story there too. I also believe Matt Taibbi (sp?) has been writing about this too.
Thanks, Redpill for taking the time to reply -- I have been meaning to look for Matt Taibbi's most recent article, but I had forgotten. I'll go to zerohedge.com.
Here is the link from zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/whistleblower-exposes-jp-morgans-silver-manipulation-scheme
Poor dogs!
It is absolutely no surprise that Wall Street is fighting like mad to keep her from getting the sort of authority they fear: regulatory combined with law enforcement. Wall Street douche bags fear one thing most of all...jail.
"Wall Street banksters — who could possibly love them?"
For one, my stupid family and relatives who lecture me about the need to read the Wall Street Journal as "the fountain of knowledge" and tell me that "paying off your car faster is not important compared to growing your money" ! Jim, we who rightfully detest Wall Street hucksters are a small minority. How can we convince even the nicest people who still believe that "single payer means putting your money to grow" ? I am told that I should be a "good boy" and put my money in 401k to grow. 401ks have been shrinking but I'm not supposed to fear that. I should be a "good boy" and buy some Exxon and Mcdonalds stocks so that money "grows" instead of paying off the rest of my car payments sooner. Elizabeth Warren will only get the support she needs when Main Street stops looking to Wall Street as the financial messiah.
I am not contributing to my 401k. Think about this, the 401k contributions are not taxed until it is withdrawn. With all the deficit and war spending, taxes are only going up in the future. When you cash out the 401k in the future, you'll have to pay the tax rate at that time. You're better off paying off your house or car sooner, so you have something tangible to show for it, rather then flushing it down the toilet that Wall Street has become.
The trick that the 401k supporters use is the procrastination faith based trick of saying "You'll pay less taxes when you retire and withdraw". I don't know what the rosy assumptions for that basis are but in this last decade, 401ks have been shrinking faster. Like health care, like money. For some people, faith based no guarantees trump tangible guarantees. 401k is just another method of socializing the risks and losses.
Same thing for the RRSP here in Canada. When we pay into the RRSP, we do not pay taxes on that part of our income. I get a paltry 1% interest on my "savings", and when I withdraw my severely deflated "savings", I have to pay 15-20% tax on it. What it does is rely on the fact that when you retire, you make less income and have to pay relatively less taxes when you take it out.
It's not a good bargain at all, considering the bank has use of my money (equivalent of my lending to them) but paying only 1%; and when I want to borrow my money back, it costs me 5-8%.
The other element is the safety of the dwindling "savings". Here, the money is safe from employers, as they do not contribute to it. Are you in the US vulnerable to having your employers raid your 401K? That would really suck.
"Are you in the US vulnerable to having your employers raid your 401K? That would really suck."
Not completely but most employers who do offer 401k don't match up much with their employees. My company only matches 50% of the first 2% contributed but that doesn't stop my friends and family from uttering stupid remarks like "Do 20% already !". I try to explain to them that employers are backing away because they know that something is wrong with the current 401k system only to get another retarded reply "Oh Ranjit, you're a big boy and employers matching contributions was a thing of the past. Your little sister is putting more money into annuities and 401k to make that money grow. You're just being penny wise pound foolish !" They haven't said much about annuities after my sister took a big loss on it so they aren't nagging me into getting into annuities but despite 401ks having slowly shrunk in the past, they still won't budge. From what I understand about 401ks, it's all market based growth and Wall Street can easily steal away.
the employers can't raid the savings plans (401 k's), but the taxability of the payout will depend on the rest of your income when you retire. since i expect poverty income then, i'm glad i have something for then.
one more point: i have enough.
for peace and sustainability
Well my dear, i get to face people like that too and sometimes find it useless to even discuss anything with them because they are so deeply socked in the mess. It has taken centuries to social engineer the US public therefore we cannot expect change to come fast. However with the availability of internet information spreads much faster and the younger generation has a easier way of getting at the truths. It is amazing how the ordinary Americans not only don't react to the abuses but rather don't want to rock the boat.
There is a slave mentality embedded in the American psyche. I am not sure about the roots of it but i have an idea that it goes back to England and the abuses they tolerated after the industrial revolution in the shoe and textile factories and the same thing happened later in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the USA. In the south they had the blacks to abuse.
There is a fundamental flaw in the Darwinian thought process and philosophy which i feel tramps religion and all else in America. Americans have perfected the act of selfish living, "individualism" and do whatever they must to ensure their own survival. I feel also that mothering, nursing a baby and raising a child in a loving environment has been lacking in this country. Families are broken, fractured, fighting and the casualties are the innocent children who become bitter as grown ups. Number of incarcerated and mentally ill in America are staggering with respect to the rest of the world including China and Russia, explain that?
I think Darwin might have meant it for the wild life but here in America it has been exercised on people. Take what you can now and make your escape like a bandit unaffected by any consequence of their action. It is pure self preservation at cost to others and the environment. This thought process must be replaced because as you know nature has placed limits on everything. We cannot add to the size of the earth, so the capitalist idea of limitless growth is just bill shit and a veil to hide the stupid hungry dog like greed. Eat all you can now because there may not be a tomorrow mentality? This mindset is destructive and totally unsustainable, something the white America and especially the GOP does not understand.
In a recent conversation with a pious person it was said that money was not the root of all evil, but that love of money was the root of all evil.
I disagree. It is the assumption that money is the answer. Money is a SYMBOL for valuation of human activity.
Mammon is the mind-set that a symbol of valuation bears the same weight as the living activities it was created to represent -(dys)functioning in much the sense of surrealist painter René Magritte in the 1940s.
Inscribed across the bottom of a canvas: "C'nest pas une pipe" This is not a pipe - - a painting of a pipe.
I just love Elizabeth Warren. She's a real fighter for what is good.
Money Split the I & We empirePIe
Money split the I and We,
cushioned by the big... ‘to be’;
nurtured on the big TV,
while iPad yuppies gloat with glee.
The black hole sucks the split of me
the Union of the we that failed to be.
For it's money that splits the I and We
This all sounds really great, except her agency has minimal funding to take on these giants, so her work isn't going to amount to much of anything in terms of reigning these criminals in.
Does anybody remember Brooksley Born?
Look for her agency to be defunded, her reputation sullied, and her efforts marginalized soon. Hopefully it won't happen until after she's done some good.
All this talk about helping the middle class. Not one word about the poor, the people that need help the most.
Capitalist wanna be's
sierra7
Wed, Thurs, Friday C-Span 2 has the "Commission Inquiry into the Financial Crisis (report due 12-15-10).
All day those days.
It's instructive; today, Greenspan and two other panels with CitiCrooks "testifying."
Brooksley Born is one of the Commission members and she had a chance to get back at Greenspan who terribly embarrassed her in the 1090's when he and other panel members, Rubin, Summers and Levitt (who since recanted his position) mocked her efforts to regulate derivatives which are at the crux of the mess.
The hearings will probably be repeated at night and over the weekend.
Just think what condition we would be in today if we had let the gangsters privatize Social Security???????
I think we would have had riots by now.....and appropriately so.
After these Bankers and Brokers Osama and Omar are chump change.
Hightower sez: "(Warren) is now bringing her background, legal expertise and moral outrage to bear on a proposal that she conceived and developed: a new agency with real regulatory teeth that would exist solely to protect consumers against banker deceit, scams and greed.
***
And Warren deserves credit for this proposal as well as her other work on behalf of the citizenry.
But ... this still has to pass CONgress, which will render the "real regulatory teeth" function of the putative agency DOA. Its members answer to the banksters, not to Warren or The People.
Ha, why would the government do anything to punish their buddies?
Americans, if you can handle the truth of your country, check this out.
http://americathegrimtruth.wordpress.com/
Elizabeth Warren can't possibly expect to hang around much longer in an Obama administration. How long until she goes the way of Van Jones?