Shocker, right? Ron Suskind’s book spells out all the infighting that made sure the Dodd-Frank bill was regulation in name only:
Regulation and other oversight measures have not been strengthened enough to avoid another financial company failure the size of Lehman Brothers Holdings, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Anton R. Valukas, examiner of the Lehman downfall, told the conference of the Council of Institutional Investors in Boston.
“I don’t see that things have changed greatly, and we cannot have another Lehman Brothers,” Mr. Valukas said Tuesday.
“The lesson we learned form Lehman is we have not yet learned that lesson,” said Mr. Valukas, chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block firm and, as examiner appointed by the U.S. trustee to the Lehman Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, author of a 2010 report on the company’s demise.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and other regulatory changes have not been enough to prevent such a massive failure, he said.
I’m reading a book that thoroughly describes the growth and extent of offshore money, since after WWII. It is one of those books I think of as frame-changers of my cognitive landscape, if you know what I mean. The offshore money is monster and nothing we say about economics or national politics makes sense without factoring it in. How to stop it or what to do about it? Frankly I despair. This morning I was thinking about what it did for England when Elizabeth I stopped the power of the Catholic Church in her day. Something like that needs to happen to free our governments from the banks. But, maybe it’s just because I’m Southern so the people around me have their head where the sun don’t shine even more than other Americans, but honestly I think it’s gonna take something horrible – war, pestilence – to knock the rocks out of our heads. Exceptionalism indeed. Can I haz passport plse?
i wanna borrow that book when you’re done Susie.
Chris Dodd and Barney Frank? Could there possibly be a more convoluted pair of twisted corporation-fellating tools to blow smoke and create toothless, imaginary change or regulations? I’m thinking no.
The only sure and immediate solution is to re-enact Glass-Steagal Act, plus some. May Phil Gramm rot in hell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
And remember that “Global Bill” Clinton signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law in November 1999.
TPTB are selling that it is really everyone else who are the wreckless gamblers. Meanwhile, teh everyone else is either a) trying to figure out the who’s who and the m.o. of motus and b) find out who still technically can and does give a whoop. Fact: teh everyone else already knows sometime you have to lose a little face to gain a little knowledge. Meanwhile TPTB are keeping the invulnerability charade going because they’re too vain to admit that they cannot interpret the data correctly w/o the input of teh everyone else. Sure, they have their own language. But it’s not the only language. Missing a few data points?
Fact: Bill Clinton faced an veto-override if he vetoed Gramm-Leach-Bliley and did work to ameliorate some of its worst features.
Yes, he signed it. Had he not, his veto would have been overridden, the number of Congress Critters supporting it was so large. Had he not worked with Congress, it would have had other, very odious provisions.
Just sayin’.
“Had he not worked with Congress, it would have had other, very odious provisions.”
I thought he didn’t have a choice? He either did or he didn’t.
Sorry, I once liked Big Dawg. But it slowly began to occur to me that he’s just a front man for global bankster capitalism. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore can explain the presence of climate change thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels (all of 150 years ago) and not include the words, “investors” or “capital” or “carbon credits” I will begin to take them seriously.