We were warned back in Feb. when the Wall Street Journal reported:
“Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street”
The Journal continues:
“In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.”
I have been puzzled many times by the various ideas that Republicans campaign for, but running for office as the protector’s of Wall Street Executives and lobbyists is mind boggling. It is mind boggling that ANY politician would champion this cause so this quote from Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) REALLY freaks me out:
"I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of buyer's remorse on Wall Street,"
Two things regarding this statement; first - Cantor implies that Democrats were purchased by Wall Street. Cantor, a United States Representative is not offended by the idea that an elected official could be purchased and is rather matter of fact about it. Second – Cantor is just pissed that he wasn’t the politician that got bought off and now he and his party leaders are trying to convince Wall Street Executives that they will be a much better investment. WTF!!
Moving ahead to April 8th, 2010 from Fox Business Network:
About 25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers, sat down for a private meeting Thursday afternoon with two of the most powerful Republican lawmakers in Congress: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and John Cornyn, the senior senator from Texas who runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, one of the primary fundraising arms of the Republican Party.
What was the result of the meeting you ask? We move ahead to April 13, 2010 – from the N.Y. Times:
Drawing the lines for a fierce election-year battle over regulating the nation’s financial system, Senate Republicans on Tuesday insisted that legislation proposed by Democrats and the White House would only encourage future taxpayer bailouts of big banks.
First I will point out the obvious – McConnell’s translation of the financial reform bill:
“We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts,”
And
“The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes pay for them, We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”
Is wrong! Larry Kudlow, a former Reagan economic advisor had this to say:
"Sen. Chris Dodd's financial-regulation proposal raises the possibility of substantial progress on the road to ending "too big to fail" (TBTF) and bailout nation for banks and other financial institutions."
And
"with the Dodd plan, the possibility remains that a true bankruptcy process will replace government bailouts.
This is vital, since TBTF and government bailouts are among the root causes of the banking crisis, where large financial companies have a moral hazard to take too much risk at taxpayer expense."
And
"Chris Dodd conceivably may have opened the door to ending TBTF and bailout nation."
Go to the link above for a very detailed analysis of the bill, section by section of mostly praise for the bill.
Back to Mitch - I would also like to point out that despite the hyper-partisan, Wall Street financed rhetoric from Mitch McConnell we should remember that more than half of the Senate Republicans voted for president Bush’s TARP bill. (Including McConnell) of course this type of fake vitriol from Sen. McConnell has been well orchestrated as TIME magazine’s political blog “Swampland” points out (writing about McConnell’s floor speech against Wall Street Reform):
"If the outline of his speech sounds familiar, it's because it is the exact argument pollster Frank Luntz urged Republicans to make earlier this year in a widely publicized memo.
Compare the excerpts below (emphasis mine):
Luntz: "The single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout."
McConnell: "We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks. And that's why we must not pass the financial reform bill that's about to hit the floor."
Luntz: "Taxpayers should not be held responsible for the failure of big business any longer. If a business is going to fail, not matter how big, let it fail."
McConnell: "[The Dodd bill] gives the government a new backdoor mechanism for propping up failing or failed institutions.... We won't solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail."
Luntz: "Government policies caused the bubble and its ultimate crash. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, and the Community Reinvestment Act all had a role in the catastrophe. The government inflated economic bubbles with easy credit policies."
McConnell: “It also directs the Fed to oversee 35 to 50 of the biggest firms, replicating on an even larger scale the same distortions that plagued the housing market and helped trigger a massive bubble we'll be suffering from for years. If you thought Fannie and Freddie were dangerous, how about 35 to 50 of them?""
A scathing summary of Republican leadership behavior from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says:
"Do you believe that Wall Street and McConnell came to a meeting of the minds? Do you think The Street is truly cool with “letting the people who make the mistakes pay for them” and allowing the biggest banks to fail without government intervention, as McConnell claims to advocate?
I certainly don’t, not for a New York minute. Less than two years ago, remember, most of those same independent-minded, free-market Wall Street folks were on their knees begging for Washington’s help, pleading with them not to let the big banks fail. Henry Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs chairman, literally went down on one knee to beseech House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for help.
In fact, when crunch time came on Oct. 1, 2008, that bold free-marketer Mitch McConnell and 31 of his fellow Republican senators voted in favor of the TARP bailout to save Wall Street. That was their chance to prove just how deeply this supposed free-market purity ran in their souls, and they folded."
The full article is REALLY worth the read!
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