When the dust settles a bit from this week’s epic events – the Democrats’ Massachusetts ass-kicking, the Supreme Court’s toppling of a century-old, commonsense restriction on corporate political spending, and President Obama’s push for stricter regulation of the banking industry – guess which one will seem the most important in Charlotte? Hint: the city is sometimes called Bank Town. And guess who could wind up on a political hot seat? It’d be nice if the answer to that question was “the Bank of America CEO,” but you and I know that’s not how this town works. That’s right, it’s gonna be Mayor Anthony Foxx who is already being asked, in the conservative Meck Deck website, whether he will follow the lead of New York City Mayor Bloomberg, who has condemned Obama’s move.
Foxx isn’t as beholden to bankers as say, oh, the city’s past few exciting mayors, Republicans all, but he did run on a platform of job creation; if Obama’s mean old regulations are as potentially ruinous to banks as they claim (and we all believe what banks tell us these days, right?), Foxx could be forced to show some nimble political dance moves in the near future.
As for your humble blogger, my only question for Obama is, “What took you so damned long?” One of my current heroes is Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who is Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. She was MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show last night and gave a clear, pretty eloquent explanation and defense of Obama’s moves to rein in the excessive powers of the banking industry. Watch Warren’s interview here.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2010.
I can see both sides of this situation so I will not be unhappy either way it goes. I would say, let the recession end before we do something that will cost jobs and such. Obama wants to rush rush rush when we really need to wait wait wait, even if we agree with the cure.
Harping on the most power in 100 years BS is kinda stupid. It means that banks used to have this much power so it is not unprecidented. We have all kinds of stupid laws on the books from 100 years ago that need to be wiped out.
I also do not agree with the woman on the clip that saysbanks were selling deceptive products. I think most of them were straight forward. The people buying them lied to themselves or were wanting something for nothing or were speculating that they could flip the home in a few years. I think most were in the third group.
If we simply get rid of the players (mainly Dems) that caused this failure by allowing food stanps to count as income to buy a house we will fix 90% of the problem. Without stupid policies and regulations like this we would not we worried about this symptom. I think we will just pass the buck since Obama is still to this day loaning money to people to buy houses they cannot afford. This will result in the same exact collapse that we are currently suffering from due to curing a symptom instead of the cause.
I’ve read that Obama’s rules will only 1% of the banks’ business. He’s trying to appear tough on banks but he really isnt.
We do need really fast change now.
Obama should use his executive order powers to do the following:
End the FDIC
End the Federal Reserve
End Fannie, Freddie and HUD.
Restrict the SEC.
Most of the big banks definitely wont like that because it will end their Ponzi schemes and will open the floodgates of competition.
These are all unconstitutional entities that can be erased with the stroke of a pen.