November 7, 2009
Ben Bernanke
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is not a politician in the general sense of the word. He’s also not a young man looking to make his fortune or a name for himself. As such, he often comes up with excellent ideas that actually does have the common good of all Americans, not just a select, elite few. His latest is, I believe, an attempt to reign in Wall Street by establishing laws rather than self-policing.
The one thing I have held against Bernanke is his shoving money out the back door to Wall Street Bankers. I have made that painfully clear in as many as a dozen post. And he has kept all of that a very close secret. Both of these go against the principles of democracy and responsibility. However, both the previous and current White House administrations, as well as both sides of the isle in Congress, have push and/or supported Bernanke’s action of opening the taxpayers vaults to Wall Street. In essence, Bernanke hasn’t really had a whole lot of choice in the matter.
The Washington Post recently published an article reporting that Bernanke was putting pressure on Congress to come up with meaningful financial reform. The Post points out that “seven months after the Obama administration laid out its blueprint for reforming financial regulation, the gears of the legislative process have moved slowly, particularly in the Senate”. This is because the Republicans as a whole are solidly against any reform regulations, and a large group of powerful Democrats seem to be standing with them — and Bernanke has recognized that. He says “regulators and supervisors can do a great deal, but comprehensive financial reform requires action by the Congress. Large, complex financial firms that do not own a bank, but that nonetheless pose risks to the overall financial system, must not be permitted to avoid comprehensive and effective supervisory oversight”.
As unpopular as he may be with many, Democrat Rep. Barney Frank is trying to take steps in the right direction, but with only one of the many requirements. He’s trying to initiate legislation that will prevent taxpayer money being used in the future to bail out failing banks. Although I disagree with his alternate method of saving “too big to fail” banks, I certainly support his efforts to prevent the future use taxpayer money. His alternate method is to establish a slush fund, paid for by the financial industry, for that future eventuality. However, if banks know there’s a fund of any kind to save their butts, they are not going to be responsible bankers. The only way to solve this problem is to break the banks up so they are not too big to fail, just as Great Britain is doing, and let them fail when they don‘t behave them selves. The British is asking the U.S. to do the same thing they‘ve done. But with our arrogant corruption, I don’t see that happening.
Bankers are spending tens of millions of dollars to prevent Congress from passing any sort of legislation to control their greed. As pointed out here, the bankers want to be left alone. After costing taxpayers more than $3 trillion and investors & households $15 trillion in value, they expect us to suddenly believe they are moral, responsible business people and continue to let them “police” them selves.
What bankers want to do is to keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. By doing so, they can keep up their Ponzi scheme just long enough to get their personal riches before moving on and leaving the cleanup to the taxpayers. Then they will move on to their next victims.
There was more than $5 billion spent on the last presidential campaign. The average Congressmen spends anywhere from $5 - $10 million in their bid for (re)election. Politicians don’t personally have that kind of money, and simple taxpayers certainly can’t come up with that much. So that leaves the business world, mostly Wall Streeter’s, to supply the money. Therefore, it is that group our politicians cater to rather than the majority of Americans, so they are going to tread lightly on them. So don’t expect too much restraint being place on the financial world, if any at all. It will most likely end up being more of what Congress does best: A lot of mumbo-jumbo that amounts to absolutely nothing and usually ends up costing citizens a lot more money.
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