Each of the reasons he writes has a descriptive explanation. Here is a list of the reasons. To view them all and read the full article click the link below.
We believed in Obama's campaign slogan, "Change we can believe in" but obviously we can't. He may have believed it when he spoke it but at that point he must have believed that as President he would have the power to do so. But as Mr. Farrell points out and as I have said on many occasions, "it matters not who is elected President". The real power and force in this nation has been ruling for many years, possibly since 1913 when The Federal Reserve came into being. Even Woodrow Wilson, after signing the bill creating the Fed said afterwords that this haction has set the stage to destroy this country.
Read the full article and the detail on each of the reasons below.
Commentary: Why his fat-cat bankers are destroying capitalism and democracy
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- An open letter to President Obama: You are failing us. Many now question voting for you.
A year ago, millions of Americans -- investors, taxpayers, consumers, voters -- came together uplifted by the "audacity of hope," inspired by a vision of "change we can believe in," by "bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world."
"Yes, we can" was the rallying cheer. You were the game-changer after the Bush-Cheney fiasco. What happened? Today we just don't see, or expect to see, any real change we can believe in. America is more polarized than under Bush's GOP, dysfunctional as both parties tragically undermine our great nation.
1. Failing to grasp John Adams' warning: All democracies commit suicide
2. Failing to sense the psychological impact of being an aging democracy
3. Failing to demand sacrifices, instead adding to Bush's massive war debt
4. Failing to lead with 'once-in-a-lifetime' systemic financial reforms
5. Failing to pick a cast of characters that could have changed history
6. Failing to stand up to our 100 senatorial assassins and 261,000 lobbyists
7. Failing to act presidential, while fat-cat bankers hijack your presidency
8. Failing to protect 95 million investors, letting Wall Street loot America
9. Failing to avoid the 'hubris virus' disease killing America's leaders
10. Failing to see the ticking time-bomb scenario, the next big meltdown
10 reasons why Obama is failing investors Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch...click herePosted using ShareThis
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Isn't it amazing that the administration can't help the average joe but seems very good at looking the other way when miscreants do less than honorable deals to enrich themselves:
ReplyDeleteShort Sale 'Fraud', SoCal Home Sales, FHA to Tighten Standards
This alleged activity by banks - paying 2nd lien holders without proper disclosure - appears outrageous. Based on Olick's reporting, this practice appears to be widespread. Kudos to Olick and hopefully the regulators are reading.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/01/short-sale-fraud-socal-home-sales-fha.html
Hey Obama lets going with this....what is everyone afraid of....that they'll be cures....I'll sign a waiver..............think about how much $ is thrown at banks..meanwhile scientists are scrounging for funding....hey if this works all those healthcare lobbyists that shoved pork in the bill might not be able to collect if cures are realized!
ReplyDeleteGrant money could speed stem cell cures
State money from 2004's Proposition 71 is being channeled toward research with the most potential for near-term benefits.
"People are curing mice right and left," said the City of Hope neuroscientist. The real challenge is convincing the Food and Drug Administration to let her try this on people with brain tumors.
Reams of safety data must be amassed to satisfy the FDA. Scientists struggle to navigate all that red tape. Many don't even try.
Now the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has stepped in -- with an $18-million grant financed by state taxpayers, courtesy of 2004's Proposition 71, which created the state agency.
http://tinyurl.com/yb6lsah
Why Scott Brown won
ReplyDeleteOver-played the traditional role of the Democratic Party as better representing the interests of the middle class than the Republican Party. If that is true, then why did Obama administration hire Goldman Sachs executives to rescue Wall Street and run the economy? The hypocrisy is not lost on voters.
If you are currently registered as either Republican or Democrat, re-register as an Independent. Why? This keeps the political machines on both parties guessing and forces the debate away from party lines and onto the issues that matter to you. It worked here in Massachusetts by accident. Maybe it can be made to work on purpose on a national scale.
http://tinyurl.com/y8kug2h
Elizabeth Warren issues warning to American people
ReplyDeleteChristopher Dodd is considering scrapping the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.. Warren thinks that leaves the taxpayers with no protection from the banks.
http://tinyurl.com/y8wp7j2
This would be a change.
ReplyDeleteNow here is a novel idea. Put people in jail for crimes rather than allowing them to buy their way out of it.
Top Chinese judge jailed for life for graft
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hlZKnWHo87TXxW7TAydpujc4beHg
Mr.President I know you don't care about polls....but from what happened last night your fellow party members might...do you think this had something to do with it?
ReplyDeleteWhat Wall Street Really Fears
The hearings into the roots of the recession aren’t scaring Wall Street. What’s really frightening is public anger at the industry shows no signs of abating, and Lloyd Blankfein, the man leading the charge to turn that around, is only making matters worse—and possibly putting his job at risk.
The least appealing CEO on Wall Street is leading the effort to change the public perception that the system is rigged against the little guy suffering through 10 percent unemployment while the big banks party on.
If the hearings proved one thing, it’s just how much of a liability Goldman and Blankfein are to Wall Street’s attempt to massage its rotten image as an organization that feasts off government subsidies while Main Street suffers. Goldman is making bundles of money, which will make its shareholders happy. But it’s also emerged as a lightning rod because of its obvious manifold ties to government (former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, also a former Goldman CEO, gave his old firm $10 billion during the height of the meltdown, but let Lehman Brothers fry) and because Blankfein has spent most of the past six months on a high-profile charm offensive, clumsily trying to explain how his firm deserves to hand out the $20 billion in bonus money it accumulated since the 2008 bailout.
But when pressed, Blankfein conceded that the same firm that hoarded all this cash, that had all these hedges and guarantees to protect itself from AIG failing, didn’t think twice about taking its full share of the money AIG owed it—100 cents on the dollar—once Paulson & Co. decided to bail out the insurer on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-18/what-wall-street-really-fears/
20 January 2010
Morgan Paying Out 62% of Revenues in Bonuses and Pay
The lavish payouts are likely to anger taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic, who will have to pay for the cost of the mammoth banking bailout for many years to come.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/morgan-paying-out-62-of-revenues-in.html
The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
ReplyDeleteand credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government
and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these
principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest.
Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.
-Abraham Lincoln
It seems the average investor knows no friend from any institutionalized entity.....
ReplyDeleteTheft! Were the US & UK central banks complicit in robbing the middle classes?
by Albert Edwards, Societe Generale
Mr Bernanke’s in-house Fed economists have found that the Fed wasn’t responsible for the boom which subsequently turned into the biggest bust since the 1930s. Are those the same Fed staffers whose research led Mr Bernanke to assert in Oct. 2005 that “there was no housing bubble to go bust”? The reasons for the US and the UK central banks inflating the bubble range from incompetence and negligence to just plain spinelessness. Let me propose an alternative thesis. Did the US and UK central banks collude with the politicians to ‘steal’ their nations’ income growth from the middle classes and hand it to the very rich?
Ben Bernanke?s recent speech at the American Economic Association made me feel sick. Like Alan Greenspan, he is still in denial. The pigmies that populate the political and monetary elites prefer to genuflect to the court of public opinion in a pathetic attempt to deflect blame from their own gross and unforgivable incompetence
Some recent reading has got me thinking as to whether the US and UK central banks were actively complicit in an aggressive re-distributive policy benefiting the very rich. Indeed, it has been amazing how little political backlash there has been against the stagnation of ordinary people?s earnings in the US and UK. Did central banks, in creating housing bubbles, help distract middle class attention from this re-distributive policy by allowing them to keep consuming via equity extraction? The emergence of extreme inequality might never otherwise have been tolerated by the electorate (see chart below). And now the bubbles have burst, along with central banks? credibility, what now?
http://tinyurl.com/y9s2cbv
More talk or are we going to get action for a CHANGE:
ReplyDeleteObama Proposes to Restrain the Banks from Speculation
Let the threats, whining, tales of doom, financial media spin, and an army of lobbyists now go forth from Wall Street to try and stop this very basic reform.
It's a beginning. Barney Frank is already talking about putting a five year transition period on the change. Ludicrous really considering the banks that just grabbed their charters. Barney is part of the problem. A bigger part than most people probably suspect.
A good next step would be fire Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, and to permit Bernanke to gracefully step aside and go back to grading term papers. Obama needs to nominate someone with a stronger practical experience profile in that job. Volcker could do quite well.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/01/obama-proposes-to-restrain-banks-from.html
10 Ways to say No, the Banks Have Not Paid Back Their Bailout from the Taxpayer!
ReplyDeleteSo, running down the list, the banks paid back TARP. That's a +, but....
1. What was the value for bank charter, to get cheap access to the Fed's funds? did they pay back this value yet? No!
2. How about the payment of interest on the banks' excess reserves at the Fed. Have the banks repaid that yet? No!
3. The Fed and the Treasury have purchased hundreds of billions of dollars of Agency debt, Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and related securities through Treasury purchase programs. Have the banks paid back the capital behind those purchases yet? No!
4. How about the Term Auction Facility? Has the capital behind the benefits of that program been paid back? No!
5. Then there is the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), has this been paid back? No!
6. Do you remember the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF)? Have the funds behind that been paid back? No!
7. What about the PPIP? No!
8. Hey, there's the Foreign Exchange Swap programs (the currency swap lines, that saved not only our banks but out banks facing counterparties who were short on dollars), has that been paid back? No!
9. There's the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), have the funds behind that been paid back? No!
10. Most importantly, the opportunity cost of ZIRP, which hurts those who do not speculate (or have not speculated) with near free money! How do you pay that back to grandma and her .017% CDs?
http://tinyurl.com/yb7scnc
Maybe the President can help some of us with incomes restructure our lives to adapt to a brutally competitive market for our reduced wages in an unending high fixed cost structure?
ReplyDeleteBlackRock Proposes New Consumer Bankruptcy Option, Novick Says
Consumers need a new type of bankruptcy that would better aid homeowners and be fairer for mortgage-bond investors than the existing U.S. loan-modification program, BlackRock Inc. Vice Chairman Barbara Novick said.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, proposes creating a bankruptcy option under which terms of a consumer’s mortgage can be eased, though only after other debts are eliminated, Novick said in a telephone interview. Judges would need to follow a formulaic approach, she said.
“There’s Chapter 7, Chapter 11, Chapter 13 -- we need a special chapter for the Great Recession,” Novick said, referring to the various bankruptcy codes through which consumers and companies get debt discharged or reworked.
Under existing bankruptcy rules, judges can’t alter terms on mortgages on primary residences, though they can change those on vacation homes or investment properties. Since 2007, lawmakers have several times considered so-called cram-down legislation that would give the court power to lengthen mortgage terms, cut interest rates and reduce balances amid the worst U.S. housing and economic slumps since the Great Depression.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7wj7oPG.2K8&pos=6
Are you tired of banks loading you up with fees while taking taxpayer money and giving executives huge bonuses? Send a final notice -- payment is past due and it's time for the government to rein in the banks.
ReplyDeleteWall Street banks threw our economy into crisis. Bailing them out cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, with unemployment at 10 percent, those same Wall Street banks are planning to give six- and even seven-figure bonuses to the executives who created this mess.
Join our Partners at Working America and send the banks a final notice. Payment is past due on the harm they've done to the economy. Payment is past due on all the ways they've mistreated their customers -- from excessive credit card fees to risky mortgages.
We're letting the bankers know: Since they won't rein themselves in, the government is going to have to do it. And we're letting our Senators know we want the banks to face consequences for their actions.
President Obama's proposed financial crisis responsibility fee on the largest banks will help get back the taxpayer money that bailed out those same banks, without penalizing community banks and small firms.
We need a consumer financial protection agency to provide strong oversight so banks can't play Russian roulette with our economy again, and to protect customers from being bled dry.
Click here to let the bankers know this is their final notice. Your message also will go to your Senators, to urge them to rein in the banks.
http://tinyurl.com/ycuhspd
Max Keiser on Intelligence Arbitrage--
ReplyDeleteWatch..........
http://maxkeiser.com/2010/01/21/kr10-keiser-report-markets-finance-scandal-debtors-revolt/
Destruction of democracy---this will do it...
ReplyDeleteRep Alan Grayson ~ If this Decision Stands, You Can Kiss this Country Goodbye
http://inpoints.blogspot.com/2010/01/rep-alan-grayson-if-this-decision.html
Get back on track Obama...put Warren in the game
ReplyDeleteWarren, a Harvard professor and the chief of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, told Maddow that she's encouraged not only by the new proposals to limit banks, but also by the president's renewed commitment to an independent consumer financial protection agency. Warren:
"I feel better than I've felt in a long time. Because what I've heard the president saying on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is, 'It's not going down. I'm here, I'm not giving up on it. There is not going to be a compromise to cave in on it.' I heard him say that we're going to tax those large financial institutions, and we're going to make them pay back all of the money under TARP. And then today, I heard him say we're gonna break apart too-big-to-fail. And we're going to have an answer, so that every financial institution, if it makes big enough mistakes, if it takes big enough risks and loses, every one of them, can in the end, die.... And what I hear in that is that... the financial institutions have pushed him hard... [Obama] is pushing right back."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34985877#34985877
Show Bernanke and Geithner the Door
ReplyDeleteWhat has the financial crisis taught us? Among other things, we should show Bernanke and Geithner, enablers from the previous administration, the door. Paul Volcker is right to ask for a return to Glass-Steagall. It worked until it was eroded over several decades by bank lobbying. Banking and speculative trading activities--even when done for "customers"--don't mix.
"Financial innovation" must be limited, since much of it in recent years was the financial equivalent of card cheating. Banks should not be allowed to sponsor hedge funds and private equity funds, and furthermore, they should not be allowed to lend to them through prime brokerage units or other means. Financial institutions must be allowed to fail. Hedge funds require regulation. Malfeasance should be investigated and prosecuted. Credit derivatives should be traded and cleared through exchanges and made transparent. Compensation and financial incentives at banks must change. Bank employees cannot continue to reap huge rewards at no personal risk while shoving risk into the global financial system.
President Obama promised us change, and he should seize this opportunity to demand sweeping financial reform.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/show-bernanke-and-geithne_b_432897.html
Wednesday - January 20
ReplyDeleteMassachusetts Repeats the Message... Louder
http://www.deanlebaron.com/index.html
Follow your Senator:
ReplyDeleteBernanke Senate Support Roll Call
A recent Senate poll of Bernanke support indicates the following (partial) results: of 34 senators polled, 5 (all democrats) are still undecided, 17 support Bernanke (13 Democrats, 4 Republicans), while 12 support the Pink Slip (7 Republicans, 5 Democrats/Indeps). 41 are needed for Bernanke to take a hike.
A full breakdown is provided on the following table:
http://tinyurl.com/yak222p
Taxing Wall Street Down to Size
ReplyDeleteMake no mistake. The banking system has become an agent of destruction for the gross domestic product and of impoverishment for the middle class. To be sure, it was lured into these unsavory missions by a truly insane monetary policy under which, most recently, the Federal Reserve purchased $1.5 trillion of longer-dated Treasury bonds and housing agency securities in less than a year. It was an unprecedented exercise in market-rigging with printing-press money, and it gave a sharp boost to the price of bonds and other securities held by banks, permitting them to book huge revenues from trading and bookkeeping gains.
Meanwhile, by fixing short-term interest rates at near zero, the Fed planted its heavy boot squarely in the face of depositors, as it shrank the banks’ cost of production — their interest expense on depositor funds — to the vanishing point.
The resulting ultrasteep yield curve for banks is heralded, by a certain breed of Wall Street tout, as a financial miracle cure. Soon, it is claimed, a prodigious upwelling of profitability will repair bank balance sheets and bury toxic waste from the last bubble’s collapse. But will it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/opinion/20stockman.html?scp=1&sq=Taxing%20Wall%20Street%20Down%20to%20Size&st=cse