Ya ??? Bull Biscuits !! Tell this to the people who still cannot
find employment. Tell this to those who still face loosing their homes.
Tell this to those who are still homeless.

The only place this is true is on Wall Street.

Thanks loads...Washington.....NOT !!

C

Which is what I figured would happen. Here's the low down on it.

The House bill is designed to remove the burden from
taxpayers, proposing instead that shareholders -- as
well as financial institutions with assets exceeding
$10 billion -- ultimately pick up the tab when the
government is forced to bail out a company for the sake
of stabilizing the financial system on the whole.
Still, that taxpayer safeguard does nothing to tackle
the issue of moral hazard. That is, the nation's
largest financial institutions would still be insulated
from certain risks, critics say, leaving them with
distinct business advantages over smaller competitors.

David Min, financial markets expert at the Center for
American Progress, said the resolution authority, by
definition, has to be unlimited in order to maintain
the government's credibility as an effective backstop.
But such a system, he added, will lower the capital
costs for the largest institutions, making it more
difficult for smaller banks to compete.

"The whole scheme of systemic stability really favors
larger institutions and encourages them to become too
big to fail," Min said.

Sherman agrees. "That is a huge gravy train to the top
20 [financial institutions] because it allows them to
borrow money at a lower rate," Sherman said by phone
last week. "Think of what this does to moral hazard."

No stranger to taking on the finance industry, Sherman
was a lonely voice in the push earlier in the year to
apply more stringent executive compensation limits to
bailed out Wall Street firms -- a push that went
precisely nowhere in the face of White House
opposition.

Some economists, notably Paul Volcker, former chairman
of the Federal Reserve and now head of the White House
Economic Recovery Advisory Board, have an alternative
solution to the too-big-to-fail problem. They want to
put back the firewalls between commercial and
investment banking -- firewalls dismantled in 1999 with
the repeal of the Glass-Steagle Act. But that proposal
has gained little traction on Capitol Hill, where the
finance industry remains a hugely influential player
despite its role igniting the recent recession. Min
said the Obama administration took a look through its
"political lens" and decided the tackle finance reforms
without reinstalling Glass-Steagle.

Frank's panel will hold a hearing on the House
legislation Thursday, with Treasury Secretary Tim
Geithner testifying.

Expect some fireworks. At a Financial Services hearing
last month, Sherman pressed Geithner to apply some
limits to his request for new bailout powers. "Would
great harm be done to this statute," Sherman asked, "if
we limited the executive branch's authority to a mere
$1 trillion?"

An annoyed Geithner eluded the question before reaching
the conclusion that Sherman was "fundamentally
mischaracterizing" the provision. The Treasury
Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Sherman said he intends to offer a series of amendments
addressing the issue during the Financial Services
panel's markup of the bill, which has yet to be
scheduled. Included will be a provision to cap the
president's bailout authority at $1 trillion, and
another to strip out the resolution authority language
entirely. A potential third proposal -- to create an
oversight panel like that monitoring TARP funds -- is
one he's leaning against.

"I'm not looking for a TARP on steroids with
oversight," Sherman said. "I'm looking for an end of
TARP."

Aren't we all, Congressman.  I do not know if Obama is in the pockets
of these people or just naive as hell. But either way this kowtowing
to Wall Street has to end. 

Maybe it's time that the progressives start having some Tea Parties
of their own.

C
 

As Frank Schaeffer points out in this essay on Alternet, this
can come to no good.

According to the "Tea Party" website, Tea
Party Express II: Countdown To Judgment Day"
is underway. Here's how their website
describes it:

    All throughout the recent Tea Party
Express national bus tour we kept receiving
calls from people around the nation who lived
far away from the route our buses took across
America. We vowed at the time to keep the Tea
Party Express effort alive -- and that's
exactly what we are doing.Join us from October
25th to November 11th, 2009 as we tell
Congress and the White House: "Enough!" Let's
stand up and stop the bailouts, cap and trade,
out-of-control spending, government-run health
care, and higher taxes! We're back and
determined to take our country back!

What will happen on their predicted "Judgment
Day"?

If you buy the biblical spin of the Religious
Right folks -- that make up the bulk of the
Tea Party movement -- the implication is
clear: Jesus will soon return, send all
Democrats, gays, blacks, progressives,
liberals, college-educated unbelievers, etc.,
to Hell, while saving what Sarah Palin calls
"us" "Real Americans" -- in other words
unreconstructed frightened and resentful white
lower middle class Americans.

(As a former right wing evangelical
anti-abortion leader who built a good career
from these folks -- until I quit in disgust
with myself, the anti-American nature of the
movement and the takeover the Republican Party
by extremists -- I know of what I speak.)

If you put the secular/right's
"tree-of-Liberty-must-be-watered-by-the-blood-of-tyrants-
Timothy McVeigh spin on the Judgment Day scenario;
then there will soon be a hoped for bloody day
of reckoning for the occupant of the White
House.

This could easily get out of control. I can tell you this - hopped up
rage-full people do not care one bit about the consequences of their
actions. And knowing that any violence on their part would get
a violent response from the powers that be is poor consolation
when one is pushing up daisies.


C