 | « on: Today at 04:48:28 PM » |  Quote |
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/18/the-missed-opportunity-on-financial-reform/
If UEBO stays in the banking bill, THE USA IS DOOMED. It gives Barry Soetoro the power to bail out more banks if necessary and whatever else they want to bailout. They will make Mussolini look like an amateur.
FASCISM ON WARP SPEED!!
The missed opportunity on financial reform
By Sam Zamarripa
Senators ought to know they shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.
Yet, that hasn’t stopped financial reform’s chief architect, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., from declaring his legislation is needed “to make sure what happened (with the financial meltdown in 2008) can never happen again.”
Never happen again? The one thing this legislation almost guarantees is that a future financial crisis will lead to another massive taxpayer bailout. Why? Because up to this moment, it has failed to deal with the crux of the problem – having institutions that are too big for government to allow them to fail.
Federal Reserve presidents clearly get that point. They may not offer the same prescription, but almost everyone of them who has spoken up about the financial reform package passed by the House and being promulgated in the Senate has warned the actions don’t do enough to prevent the kind of risky behavior that has cost millions of Americans their jobs and trimmed trillions of dollars from household wealth.
For example, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota noted that the bills “significantly understate the extreme economic forces that lead to bailouts during financial crises. Indeed, the opening language of the Senate bill actually declares that it will end taxpayer bailouts. … I do not believe that better resolution mechanisms will end bailouts.” Kocherlakota has suggested the best that might be done is to levy a tax on banks with an uncapped fund for the level of risk to discourage bad. Dodd’s bill initially would have levied a tax without regard to risk and capped it, a sure inducement to take more risk, and subsequently put unwinding big financial firms in the hands of the FDIC, with the Treasury to raise money after the fact to cover their cost.
James Bullard, President of the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank, questioned whether such an authority would pass the Citigroup test. Would it let Citigroup fail? He doubted it. And he noted that a proposal to require banks to plan how they would be wound up “is not credible. I think they will draw up something, and put it on the shelf, and five years later there’s a crisis, and it will be ignored.”
Jeffrey Lacker, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, worried about that likelihood while also noting that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae “that securitize and guarantee the bulk of U.S. mortgage debt grew their businesses under an ambiguous regime that led most market participants to view them as implicitly guaranteed. Housing finance cannot achieve a sustainable configuration without a final determination of the status of these companies and of whether and how we deliver government subsidies to mortgage finance.” The bill has left Fannie and Freddie unreformed and intact.
As Dennis P. Lockhart, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, put it: “Uncomfortable as it may be, a responsible working assumption is that another crisis will occur at some point in the future. This assumption is not intended to be a forecast; rather, it’s an anchoring statement to bring a cautionary perspective to the task of regulatory reform.”
There are some bits and pieces in the legislation that are worthwhile, such as separating derivatives from support from insured deposits as has become the case in the biggest financial firms.
But as Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pointed out, “The social costs associated with these big financial institutions are much greater than any benefits they may provide. We need to find some international convention to limit their size. …It takes an enormous amount of political courage to say we are going to limit size and limit leverage. But to me it makes the ultimate sense. The misuse of leverage is always the root cause of every financial crisis. Why should you have a small group of institutions get an advantage simply because they have grown too large? It’s un-American; it’s not what makes this country great.”
Until there is legislation that limits the size of these financial institutions, the promises of reformers that their efforts will ensure against a recurrence of such devastating crises will remain empty.
Indeed, rather than a mission accomplished, the current reform effort leaves real protection for our finances and jobs a task yet to be done.
Sam Zamarripa, a former Georgia State Senator and chairman and co-founder of Stop Too Big to Fail, serves as president and founder of private equity firm Zamarripa Capital and as founding director of United Americas Bank of Atlanta
GREAT WEBSITE DEALING WITH THIS TOO BIG TO FAIL. IT IS A FLAWED CONCEPT.
http://stoptoobigtofail.com/stop/
Video of an ad dealing with this unlimited executive bailout authority concept. http://stoptoobigtofail.com/stop/unlimited_bailout_authority/ |
http://www.fascismusa.com/
- Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism -
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
The above fourteen point definition of fascism clearly describes the current state of the United States of America, particularly under the second Bush Administration - a regime awash in corruption, secrecy, theocracy, militarism and election fraud. Never before in the history of this country have the people as a whole been rendered so powerless by a ruling, corporate, elite and gang of "Project For a New Century" imperialists.
Given the media control by a handful of powerful and unelected few, never before has the need for radical reforms been so necessary, and yet so difficult to mount.
As for the fourteen points, the only point which is no longer quite so applicable and defining today is that of economic Nationalism. While the flags may still wave, the country is being economically dismantled by a forced trade regime - i.e., an undemocratic, GATT-NAFTA, scheme written by and for mega-corporate interests. Forced interdependence, reward of the greater slave, giving away our industrial base to undemocratic powers, a war to divert our attention from the destruction of freedom, privacy and democracy at home is the order of the day. Added to this is the deliberate ruin of our currency to achieve a semblance of trade balance... an impossible feat once you no longer domestically manufacture goods to export and your service sector is also being decimated by outsourcing.
In short, preemptive wars and imperialism aside, the fascism we see today is not one aimed at strengthening the country but, rather, in reducing it to second and third-world status via a process of "harmonization" the people no longer control, and via interest-bearing debt ruin. It is only our remaining freedom, independence, wealth, Constitution and Internet democracy which stand in the way of a completed "Trilateralism" - i.e., a well-known, decades-old, ruling elite, scheme to reduce nation states to pawns in a corporate, controlled, global, fascist state and secure the neo-enclosures of the 21st century.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy
"If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The next step in a fascist government is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other." - Bertrand Russell
"Without exhaustive debate, even heated debate, of ideas and programs, free government would weaken and wither. But if we allow ourselves to be persuaded that every individual or party that takes issue with our own convictions is necessarily wicked or treasonous then, indeed, we are approaching the end of freedom's road." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing... My own take is this: the Republican takeover of the presidency combined with an unrelenting state of war, has supplied all the levers necessary to convert a burgeoning libertarian movement into a statist one." - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"Today's Conservatives Are Fascists: Torture, dictatorship, phony `elections,' and endless war - it's fascism with a `democratic' face" - Justin Raimondo
http://www.fascismusa.com/
- Economic Fascism -
"When most people hear the word `fascism' they naturally think of its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," that was an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler.
So- called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a "model" by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. A version of economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day...
So-called "corporatism"... stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal idea that individuals have natural rights that pre-exist government; that government derives its "just powers" only through the consent of the governed; and that the principal function of government is to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of its citizens, not to aggrandize the state.
Mussolini viewed these liberal ideas (in the European sense of the word "liberal") as the antithesis of fascism: "The Fascist conception of life," Mussolini wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: "The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans." "If classical liberalism spells individualism," Mussolini continued, "Fascism spells government."
Another result of the close "collaboration" between business and government in Italy was `a continual interchange of personnel between the. . . civil service and private business.' Because of this `revolving door' between business and government, Mussolini had `created a state within the state to serve private interests which are not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation.' Mussolini's `revolving door' swung far and wide...
The whole idea behind collectivism in general and fascism in particular is to make citizens subservient to the state and to place power over resource allocation in the hands of a small elite... Such decisions should be made by a "dominant class" he labeled "the elite." - Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"It remains to be seen whether the world will revert to fascism. But there are certainly signs that a planet well-stocked with authoritarian capitalist regimes is in the cards. Liberal capitalist nations are becoming more authoritarian under the threat of terrorist attacks... Meanwhile, the globe is well furnished with capitalist setups that were never liberal in the first place, as well as with regimes whose former colonial proprietors exported market forces to their shores while forgetting to include democratic institutions in the cargo. The assumption that the free market and political democracy go together naturally was always pretty dubious, and fascism is one refutation of it." - Terry Eagleton
"Perhaps the most serious threat of `galloping conservatism' is that in a time of crisis it could easily be transformed into full-blown fascism. When people are afraid they are susceptible to trading away their civil liberties to protect their `things.' One of the arch apostles of conservative economics, Milton Freidman, has already said that, given the choice between preserving American constitutional freedoms and the economic freedom to make a dollar without interference, he would choose economic freedom hands down... how tragically ironic if conservative Americans bartered away their constitutional liberties to preserve their affluent lifestyles." - Tom Sine
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