Wall Street Moves in for the Kill

[Crewleader]

February 17, 2010

The War on Consumers and Labor Heats Up

Wall Street Moves in for the Kill

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, February 16 outlining how to put the U.S. economy on rations. Not in those words, of course. Just the opposite: If the government hadn’t bailed out Wall Street’s bad loans, he claims, “unemployment could have exceeded the 25 per cent level of the Great Depression.” Without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.

The reality, of course, is that bailing out casino capitalist speculators on the winning side of A.I.G.’s debt swaps and CDO derivatives didn’t save a single job. It certainly hasn’t lowered the economy’s debt overhead. But matters will soon improve, if Congress will dispel the present cloud of “uncertainty” as to whether any agency less friendly than the Federal Reserve might regulate the banks.

Paulson spelled out in step-by-step detail the strategy of “doing God’s work,” as his Goldman Sachs colleague Larry Blankfein sanctimoniously explained Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Now that pro-financial free-market doctrine is achieving the status of religion, I wonder whether this proposal violates the separation of church and state. Neoliberal economics may be a travesty of religion, but it is the closest thing to a Church that Americans have these days, replete with its Inquisition operating out of the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Columbia.

If the salvation is to give Wall Street a free hand, anathema is the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency intended to deter predatory behavior by mortgage lenders and credit-card issuers. The same day that Paulson’s op-ed appeared, the Financial Times published a report explaining that “Republicans say they are unconvinced that any regulator can even define systemic risk. … the whole concept is too vague for an immediate introduction of sweeping powers. …” Republican Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee was willing to join with the Democrats “to ensure ‘there is not some new roaming regulator out there … putting companies unbeknownst to them under its regime.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02172010.html

[pansypoo53219]

1. WHO THEN

can buy their shit?

[Goldstein1984]

3. The sad answer is...

The U.S. market is probably becoming irrelevant. We're only 300 million--5% of a world of 6.6 billion with developing markets.

The locusts have eaten their fill. Time to move on to greener fields.

Multinationals have no allegiance to any one market; not even to the market of their birth.

Multinationals are leaving for the same reason a tick, a mosquito, or a bedbug leaves.

[lyonn]

2. Frontline "Warnings" worth watching on PBS

Tells a pretty good story about the lack of oversight on banking, derivatives, etc.. It was very harsh on Greenspan, Rahm, Summers, Reuben - the list is long on culprits, in other words the true believers in letting the market take care of itself - - - is that self regulating?? You can see it online. It mentions all the relevant Presidents except the Bush's?? The hero in this story is Brooksley Born, she desperately tried to warn us then and now!

Paulson can't complete a sentence. Saw him on Book Notes and his interviewer put words in his mouth. Had to turn it off. Don't recall Paulson being mentioned in the Frontline Warnings series?? Old expression but, I truly do feel like a mushroom, being kept in the dark, then feeling competent to vote properly for our leaders. So far, I know of none other than Obama that I would have rather voted for, ok, except for Biden. Biden's verbal gaffs are nothing compared to out and out lying by far too many politicians.

[lyonn]

4. Correction, Rahm was not included in this program.

[upi402]

5. Lawrence Summers is bad enough but Obama brought Rahm back as well

He brought these Clinton Republicans back who helped cause this catastrophe. Just like Bush brought back Rumsfeld and Cheney.
I loved the doc, "Warnings". Especially when Greenspan admitted that he was wrong for worshiping at the altar of Ayn Rand. The Free Market was declared dead by the Pope, but it's true believers continue on like greedy, spoiled children.