Fundamental Refounding

~ Where the Sun Will Never Set on Our liberty ~

A Colossal Mistake

From the 1970s until recently, Congress allowed and encouraged a great deal of financial market deregulation – allowing big banks to become larger, to expand their scope, and to take on more risks. This legislative agenda was largely bipartisan, up to and including the effective repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act at the end of the 1990s. After due legislative consideration, the way was cleared for megabanks to combine commercial and investment banking on a complex global scale. The scene was set for the 2008 financial crisis – and the awful recession from which we are only now beginning to emerge.

With the so-called JOBS bill, on which the Senate is due to vote today, Congress is about to make the same kind of mistake again – this time abandoning much of the 1930s-era securities legislation that both served investors well and helped make the US one of the best places in the world to raise capital. We find ourselves again on a bipartisan route to disaster.

The Senate needs to slow down and do its job... To pass this legislation today would be a grave mistake.

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Comment by Patricia Baber on March 20, 2012 at 11:46am: Thank you for your suggestion. Having been a Financial Analyst for 20 years, I have witnessed the de-regulations and the impact it has on every aspect on the financial world. I agree with you on the Federal Reserve and the international bankstes. Many of my financial colleagues have agreed for many years that the Federal Reserve,just as the UN, should be abolished..

Comment by RNhunter on March 20, 2012 at 1:25pm: I do not agree that the banks were solely responsible for the 2008 recession. The bailouts to Fannie and Freddie, both of whom were created by Washington, were far higher than the bailouts to most banks and unlike the banks, Fannie and Freddie also never paid back. And what was the goal of Fannie and Freddie? Their names are acronyms of their real names, but their goal was to give out sub prime mortgages - in other words - their goal was the exact problem that we ran into. And in 1968, the US Government created a law near the founding of Freddie in 1970 that allowed mortgages to be bundled and sold - another item that the lying politicians blamed solely on the banks.

I do not think the banks were blameless, but I think we should look closer into "who was in the business of sub-prime mortgages" - and who today is being asked to do the very same thing. If you are worried about regulations, there are and were regulations on banks. There are no regulations on Fannie and Freddie. There are no regulations on the politicians such as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who control them and told them to give out bad mortgages. We talk about a level playing field. Before we smash the banks who have been smashed, perhaps we should at least yell a little at the far bigger problem - Fannie and Freddie and the politicians who hold them totally blameless.
As for a new problem - here is what I would worry about. Obama spending $1500 billion a year more than he takes in is creating a new crisis. That amount is so high it cannot be covered by loans. And so the US is printing money. It will cause inflation which will then cause interest rates to go up. The Fed is trying to arbitrarily keep inflation low and interest rates low. But when they go up, then the $454 billion a year the US pays yearly on its debt could more than double to over $1 trillion a year. Yes, the first $1 trillion of our taxes will go to rich people in the world financing our debt. Interest rates going up can cause homeowners with variable rate interest loans to lose homes and again we have a brand new housing crises. This will cause mortgage failures again at Fannie and Freddie and also the banks. And then Obama will bail them out again ... and of course then we go down the rabbit hole to hell in one vicious circle. We need to mostly stop Fannie and Freddie and the government at this time. The banks are quite frankly, a red herring to get us to look into the wrong place. They were duped as we were duped. Fannie and Freddie and politicians are the ones that have zero regulations and ensure they never get any.