Today, Obama promoted another government takeover bill, this time the financial sector is the target. The bill is basically a sweetheart deal for the banking industry, much like how ObamaCare was a bailout for the insurance companies. The 1,408 page bill includes many provisions like the creation of a permanent and unlimited bailout authority for Wall Street and has the potential for making it difficult for small businesses to succeed.
Obama claims the bill will “put a stop to tax-payer-funded bailouts” when in reality the bill will create a permanent and unlimited bailout mechanism for the big banks and companies that are ‘too big to fail’. “If you liked the bailouts in 2008, you’ll love the Dodd bill,” said Republican Senator David Vitter. “Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration want to create a permanent bailout mechanism all while spouting their rhetoric of getting tough on Wall Street, but if you look at who is already lining up to support their ‘reform’ measure it’s a who’s who of the big banks that have already received the taxpayer bailout the first time.”
Democrat Congressman Brad Sherman agrees: “There are serious problems with the Dodd bill. The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for.”
The rhetoric by Obama today is just another example of how he slaps the hands of Wall Street to only make sure they prosper on tax-payer-funded bailouts by giving them complete authority. Not only that, but this bill will break the back of small business by placing restrictions on venture capital investing making it harder for small startup businesses to succeed.
Here are a few quotes from a Venture Beat article:
“First, Dodd’s bill would require startups raising funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing. A second provision raises the wealth requirements for an “accredited investor” who can invest in startups – if the bill passes, investors would need assets of more than $2.3 million (up from $1 million) or income of more than $450,000 (up from $250,000). The third restriction removes the federal pre-emption allowing angel and venture financing in the United States to follow federal regulations, rather than face different rules between states.”
“Obviously, I’m deeply concerned about Senator Dodd’s proposal to place these restrictions on angel investing. I think angel investing is undeniably one of the largest engines for job creation as well as innovation and competitiveness on the global scale for the United States. There’s no doubt about it that the restrictions that he’s proposing would absolutely chill investing.
“Specifically, one of the things we need to take into account is while 10 years ago it may have taken years to build a company, companies are now built in a matter of weeks. So this 120-day waiting period is frankly ridiculous. I have companies with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of users that are built in a matter of weeks. They’re generating actual dollars of revenue, creating jobs, investing in real estate office space, capital equipment, etc. If they had to wait 120 days to actually apply for the ability to obtain financing it would absolutely just crush that market.”
Obama is one of the biggest puppets for Wall Street, despite all the rhetoric he uses against them. Obama’s greatest allies are the big banks and most of his important constituents are wall street financiers. In 2008, Obama’s campaign was mostly funded by Wall Street, banks like AIG, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs all played a major financial role for his presidency taking in $15 million from securities and investment firms, $3 million from commercial banks, and $6 million from other financial institutions.
Obama and the Democrats in Congress will try to rush this bill in before the American people have the chance to find out what’s in it. Just like ObamaCare, they will use non-transparent and secretive tactics to make sure it becomes law. The bill is likely to hit the floor of the Senate as early as next week.
The Dodd Bill Will Kill America’s Job Creation Engine
In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Merrill Lynch.
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, in granting AIG’s request for confidential treatment, said the “excluded information” will not be made public until Nov. 25, 2018, according to a copy of the agency’s May 22 order.
The SEC said the insurer had demonstrated the information in the exhibit, called Schedule A, “qualifies as confidential commercial or financial information.” More
By then, Wall Street will have significantly recycled many people (and probably some more firms) and perhaps the American public just won’t care about how Tim Geithner helped bail out a gigantic black hole of a firm, upon which so many ostensibly rock solid firms had their foundation.
Bankergate: Emails Expose Criminal Financial Dictatorship At Work
Billion dollar fund manager David Tice says that the Federal Reserve’s ceaseless printing of dollars could cause gold to surge past $2,000 an ounce, while the Dow could fall below 5,000.
Tice, who manages the $1.1 billion Prudent Bear Mutual Funds from the Virgin Islands, told Bloomberg TV anchor Carol Massar yesterday that the time scale of his forecast will be determined by how quickly foreigners lose confidence in the dollar.
“Bernanke has essentially been known as, you know, possessing the printing press, etc. and, you know, it depends a lot on foreigners as far as how quickly they lose confidence in the dollar and what happens throughout the world as well,” Tice said.
“Our currency’s going to be diminished even though gold has been very, very volatile – down $250 just over a few months,” he added. “I think it’s going to head to $2,000 eventually and it will protect you. And I do think less equity investments make sense,” said Tice, advising that owning precious metals was a way of reducing equity exposure.
Warning that the pain was far from over, Tice said, “We think that we’re going to have to pay for the excesses of really the last five to 10 years of this excessive credit growth with a dramatic slowdown in the economy, dramatically lower markets. We’re still above 10,000. We think we’re going to, you know, fall below 5- or- 6,000 on the Dow and we think we’re going to have to readjust the U.S. economy towards less consumption – where we pay for goods with goods.”
Despite a recent SEC ban on the short selling of nearly 800 financial stocks, Tice advised that traders should still short the market, arguing that it’s a legitimate trading practice.
The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.
“He’s asking for a huge amount of power,” said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. “He’s saying, `Trust me, I’m going to do it right if you give me absolute control.’ This is not a monarchy.”
Paulson is seeking an expansion of federal influence over markets that hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression, said Charles Geisst, author of “100 Years of Wall Street” and a finance professor at Manhattan College in New York.
“This is going to be a big package because it’s a big problem,” Bush said following a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the White House. “We need to get this done quickly, and the cleaner the better.”
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in a radio address that he “fully supports” Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to stabilize the financial system. The plan, however, should benefit both main street and Wall Street, he said.
Republican Presidential nominee John McCain “looks forward” to reviewing the proposal while focusing at least in part on “minimizing the burden on the taxpayer,” said Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for the McCain campaign.
The Bush administration seeks “dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis,” said Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington. “We are taking a huge leap of faith.”
Cramer: Black Monday Could Have Been “Financial Terrorism” CNBC host compares crash to pre-9/11 short-selling of airline stocks as SEC enforces ban to fight “market manipulation”
CNBC host Jim Cramer says that financial terrorism could have been behind Monday’s stock market crash as part of a conspiracy to “bring down capitalism,” as the SEC this morning announced a ban on short-selling in an effort to fight market manipulation.
“Traditional people who are allegedly shorting are not….it could be financial terrorism, what a great way to take down America….maybe they want to find out who is doing this shorting like in 9/11, remember the airlines went down first and people thought it was Bin Laden,” said Cramer.
A record number of ‘put’ options, speculation that the stock of a company will fall, were placed on American and United Airlines in the days preceding 9/11. This despite a September 10th Reuters report headlined ‘Airline stocks set to fly.’
Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls.
However, independent investigators that looked into who benefited from advance knowledge of the terrorist attack found a trail not to Bin Laden, but to Alex Brown/Deutsche Bank – chaired up until 1997 by executive director of the CIA, Buzzy Krongard.
Cramer encouraged authorities to look at who was behind short selling stocks this week because the situation represented a “financial national emergency.”
“I think the FSA needs to find out….whether this is someone who wants to bring down capitalism,” added the host, noting that Hank Paulson himself was accused of helping to bring down capitalism when the government seized control of Fannie Mae.
“Obviously the financial terrorism thing for me has to be put on the table because the regular short sellers are not doing this, they’re not doing this,” stated Cramer.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced this morning that investors would be temporarily prevented from making bets on stock declines on 799 financial stocks. The ban will remain in place for 10 days and could be extended for up to 30 days.
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said, “The Commission is committed to using every weapon in its arsenal to combat market manipulation that threatens investors and capital markets. The emergency order temporarily banning short selling of financial stocks will restore equilibrium to markets. This action, which would not be necessary in a well-functioning market, is temporary in nature and part of the comprehensive set of steps being taken by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the Congress.”
Cramer disagreed with the move, stating, “To ban short selling is wrong, unless you had reason to believe that it was a force you would normally use physical terrorism that is using financial terrorism.”
The Bush administration proposed a $700-billion taxpayer-funded plan on Saturday to buy up toxic mortgage-related securities in an urgent effort to calm financial markets and attack the nation’s housing crisis.
Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department would buy, or commit to buy, “mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States,” said a copy of the Treasury Department’s draft legislation obtained by Reuters.
The department could hire asset managers to handle the securities, which could include residential or commercial mortgages and related instruments that were originated or issued on or before September 17, 2008, the draft said.
Congressional committees were to be briefed on Saturday on the legislation, which could be considered by the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate as early as next week.
The plan also calls for raising the federal government’s borrowing authority to $11.315 trillion. The debt limit is currently $10.615 trillion.
The government is moving aggressively to soak up billions of dollars of hard-to-sell mortgage-backed securities and related assets that have been choking world capital markets since the bursting of a historic U.S. home price bubble.
We Have DAYS To Stop the $700 Billion Stick-Up (and Fascist Power Grab)
Congress hopes to pass the $700 Billion bailout bill by Friday, according to an article in Bloomberg.
In case you haven’t heard, the bill would not only stick up American taxpayers for an additional $700 billion, but would literally give Paulson and the government fascist powers.
Don’t believe me?
Well, as the Bloomberg article notes: “The bill would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.”
Bloomberg includes the following quotes by people who understand the significance of the bill:
It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time,” said historian John Steele Gordon . . . .
***
The Bush administration seeks “dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis,” said Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington. “We are taking a huge leap of faith.”
This power grab is so serious that investigative reporter Larisa Alexandrovna calls it “the final stages of the coup“.
We have days to stop this bill. March on Congress. Educate and motivate everyone around you. Do everything you can to prevent this disaster before it is too late.
Krugman: ’Look, this is really scary. This is really bad, This could be 1931’
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest mortgage finance companies, “don’t have any net worth,’’ billionaire investor Warren Buffett said.
“The game is over’’ as independent companies said Buffett, the 77-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in an interview on CNBC today. “They were able to borrow without any of the normal restraints. They had a blank check from the federal government.’’
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae touched 20-year lows yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange on speculation a government bailout will leave the stocks worthless. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson won approval from Congress last month to pump emergency capital into the companies, which account for more than half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market.
Fannie and Freddie mispriced their products and “kept existing because they had the federal government behind them,’’ Buffett said. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire had been among the largest holders of Freddie until about 2001, when it became apparent the company wasn’t being run well, he said.
ABC News has learned that two former administration officials for President George W. Bush will appear with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, at an economic meeting today, having signed up to be Obama economic advisers.
Donaldson’s tenure at the SEC was notable for his attempts to work with the Democratic Commissioners, for angering the US Chamber of Commerce and Republican legislators, and for abandoning an effort for shareholder proxy access.
O’Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa, had a stormy tenure as Bush’s Treasury Secretary, and revealed his frustrations with the Bush administration — especially over the war in Iraq, economic policy, and the President’s leadership style — in a book written by Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill.