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Rand Paul (R-KY)
Within one week Republicans are going to grab the national spotlight on two huge issues that should be the realm of the party who stands up for the little guy. That party used to be the Democratic party. How can they let this happen?
On Friday, at the CPAC convention, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher is going to call for breaking up the big banks in the wake of a failed Dodd-Frank bill.
This is mind blowing. First a Republican, Rand Paul, filibusters to get answers about the targeted killing program and now at CPAC, a speech calling for breaking up the TBTF banks. Where are the Democrats?? The last thing we heard from the party was that the executives can’t be held criminally liable, via Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer.
End “Too Big to Fail” Once and for All
In advance of his speech on Friday to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher writes with Harvey Rosenblum about the failure of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to adequately address financial institutions that are “too big to fail.”
[...]
“Third, we recommend that the largest financial holding companies be restructured so that every one of their corporate entities is subject to a speedy bankruptcy process, and in the case of banking entities themselves, that they be of a size that is ‘too small to save.’”[Emphasis added]
Oh, and they’ve come up with a really good meme too. They want to make changes that lead to banks that are “too small to save”. TSTS.
Last week in the Wall Street Journal, an Op-ed by Richard Fisher and Harvey Rosenblum (Executive Vice President and Director of Research Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas):
Fisher and Rosenblum: How to Shrink the ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Banks
Dodd-Frank isn’t working. Time for a better, simpler approach to reducing risk. Call it ‘too small to save.’It also emboldens a sense of immunity from the law. As Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to the Senate on March 6, when banks are considered too big to fail it is “difficult to prosecute them . . . if we do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy.”
[...]
This is patently unfair. It makes for an uneven playing field, tilted to the advantage of Wall Street against Main Street, and it places the financial system and the economy in constant jeopardy. It also undermines citizens’ faith in the rule of law and representative democracy.
[...]
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was a well-intentioned response to the problem. Its stated promise—to end “too big to fail”—rings hollow. With a law that runs 849 pages and more than 9,000 pages of regulations written so far to implement it,
Dodd-Frank is long on process and complexity but short on results. Regulators cannot enforce rules that aren’t easily understood.
[...]
The return of marketplace discipline and effective due diligence of banking behemoths is long overdue. We offer a modest proposal to level the playing field:
Those are a few excerpts, but it is an excellent Op-ed and well worth reading their proposal in full.
It looks like Fisher has a history with the Democratic party, but lately he has been opposing Ben Bernanke’s policies and now he’s denouncing the Dodd-Frank bill (rightly so). And he is taking this proposition to CPAC. Why?
I’m shocked that the Democrats are leaving these huge vacuums on issues that are very important to the American people and that will, no doubt, be wildly popular. But I am not surprised that Republicans would start to look for ways to fill those vacuums. Just the other day my fiance and I were talking about how if they had half a brain, this is exactly what they would do because the prize is just sitting there for the taking. These are politicians, after all, and they fear the extinction of their party. Popular issues are just sitting there waiting. And we damned well know that a little hypocrisy never bothered them a bit. So what’s next? Will they do a complete turnaround on Social Security and Medicare right after the president gets his Grand Bargain and the Democrats dutifully provide the votes to cut it?
This is political suicide. It’s political malpractice.
They really need to get on this train and quickly. It would be a big mistake to remain silent as they did during the Rand Paul filibuster while people from across the political spectrum supported his stance on an issue in a very public way.
Hat tip to David Dayen.
On Friday, we’re going to see a major speech on breaking up the banks and ending Too Big to Fail… at CPAC. wonkwire.rollcall.com/2013/03/11/end…
David Dayen (@ddayen) March 11, 2013
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
62 Comments
Thanks for reading.
When will rank and file Democrats realize how often R’s outflank them on the left, lol? What next, they’ll call for a Wall Street transaction tax and a Fat Cat tax?
Seriously, though, old style conservatives and the left sometimes meet on practical fiscal issues. Fischer (as did Sandy Weil) called for breaking up the Bigs back in Nov. Yeah, Citigroup Weil, creepy, eh?
It’s hard to see it actually happening, but I remember a section of Frontline’s one financial scandal programs in which a load of peeps including Volcker and Simon Johnson sitting around a conference table trying to write the unwind protocols. So…there may be a template, but as I remember it, it all depended on Stress Tests, which gollee, they always seem to pass. ;o)
Rec’d, but not in hope, really.
“I’m shocked that the Democrats are leaving these huge vacuums on issues that are very important to the American people and that will, no doubt, be wildly popular. But I am not surprised that Republicans would start to look for ways to fill those vacuums.”
I tend to think of the Democrats as ‘the smart ones’, the politicians who at least are in touch with reality, as opposed to the climate-change-denying, evolution-denying Republicans. But when you think about it, the Dems are as self-limited in their worldview as the Fox-viewing Repubs are. They’ve accepted the DLC mind-meld and cannot think outside that box. That’s why the TPP is accepted unquestioningly, all-of-the-above energy is accepted unquestioningly, too-big-to-fail is accepted unquestioningly. They can’t adopt populist positions because that’s not how their mindset works, so they lose out on ‘opportunities’ like this one.
Fuck the democrats. They are hopeless. Same thing here in France with the Socialists, who are implementing ‘reforms’ that are worse than the ones they opposed when Sarkozy was in power. I heard a Socialist hack (maybe he was a Minister or a deputy) on France Culture this morning waxing eloquent about how the cuts were needed to restore ‘confidence.’ The reporters held his feet to the fire, but he sailed off just the same. It reminded me of nothing so much of Mitterand’s supporters at the time France was having a referendum over the adoption of the Euro (now seen to have been a catastrophe). No one could give a straight answer how this was going to help the local economy. I was all dreams and high-flown rhetoric. The US dems are doing the same thing.
I’m not sure about their “mindset” but I’m pretty sure they’re all bought and paid for since TARP at the least.
and just because the R’s SAY they’re going to do something doesn’t mean they’ll do it, anymore than Obama means what he says in populist terms.
IF they had really wanted out of the gridlock, Reid could have done it. Now, he sez he’s “considering” reopening the issue. IF they’d wanted this government to work, it would be working. the template is there. Just channel FDR a little and put people to work.
They know the people are against the banks and against drone strikes in America. So they up their popularity “fighting” the man. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Very nice.
Wait until little Rand runs for prez before you judge his rhetoric. Costs a lot of bucks to finance a prez campaign.
Obama and his “New Democrats”, and the Blue Dogs don’t value what traditional Democrats value. They’re DINOs.
Obama had a choice in 2009. Republicans had failed so miserably that Our Betters were ready to consider abandoning them. Obama could have chosen to side with the people and swing the pendulum back where it needed to be – the banks expected and were willing to accept severe restrictions – or try to win the love of the PTB. He chose the latter, and has never slackened in this pursuit. I am sure that he feels that he is completing the strategic change begun by Bill Clinton of winning Wall Street over to the Democratic side permanently.
Of course, as they showed in 2012, the PTB feel more comfortable supporting the GOP, but with a guy as persistently and abjectly offering himself and his constituents for a thoroughly brutal reaming as Obama, the issue has not yet been decided. So, we have a two party democracy where each side is trying as hard as it can to prove that it will sell out the demos more cheaply than the other. That simply leaves the advantage with the side with the better rhetoric and strategic thinking. We all know which side that is.
Naaah. Republicans just finally realize that appearing populist sells well, and you never have to act on the things you say.
Sen. Paul seems to be the designated bird feeder, here. Holding on to the libertarian wing is tough so they’ve upped the crumb allotment to the pigeons, this month. Since the Dems were all in 3 years ago with Geitner and Co. they look flatfooted and gullible. Which they are, here. Talk is cheap but it takes real money to buy whiskey. If you’re Wall Street you control the supply of both and life is good.
Exactly. That’s what I was trying to say.
The democrats have abandoned even the notion of core principles and stand for nothing except their own re-election.
This. Straight from the Obama/DLC playbook, mouth populist rhetoric then once in a position to implement it, do the exact opposite of what you talked about while being lavishly rewarded for so doing. You can be evil as you please as long as you can convince dim witted partisans predisposed to believe anything you say that you are a “lesser” evil. Democrats like to make fun of anti-science Republicans but is there really anything stupider than a Obamabot that self identifies as “progressive”? Anything?
My thought also, since already running for 2016 the tbtf will buy him out.
heh… the Kabuki Show today is rather entertaining, for a change.
Bingo…most people seem to forget that once this creep got elected prez,he then openly flaunted how he was a “NEW DEMOCRAT”,he wasn’t interested in FIGHTING the battles of the past.
Anyone know,if Van Jones,Thom Hartmann & Norman Solomon were making this known to voters the 2ND-time around ???
Well hell, if the GOP follows through on breaking up the big banks, I just might vote Republican next time around. And I am serious!
Nope!
Don’t hold your breath.
Don’t do it.
Don’t vote for either bought-and-paid-for party.
Neither the Ds or the Rs will do any of the populist shit they say to get elected.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
x2
“Sen. Paul seems to be the designated bird feeder, here”
Nahh, if Paul’s filibuster was part of some master plan, McCain and Graham would not have blown their bridges to the rest of the GOP the next day.
I tend to agree. They can lie through their teeth about anything. We’ve seen it from both parties now. How about both charades get down to brass tacks and do the things that need to get done instead of being able to blame the other half for what doesn’t happen.
That could indeed make the kabuki interesting.
Shoulders to the wheel, guys, and get your mouths out of the way – we pretty much have done your homework for you – we know what’s wrong and what would fix things, just hire Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala to crack the whip!
The Democratic Party won’t touch TBTF on a national level. The heart of the party was scooped out and tossed aside, replaced by corporatist, globalism worshiping robots.
The Republicans may be playing populist politics, but they’d never actually implement any sort of those policies. But it plays when they need to win an election.
The Dems are trying to lose in 2014 with the way they’re running things.
It’s about time to start secretly passing around Common Sense again isn’t it. That is a great quote BTW.
First of all, I think you are making far too much out of one speech by a Federal Reserve guy making a speech to a conservative meet-up. Sure, the Democrats are worthless, but the Republicans in Congress have been ferociously opposed to new banking regulations of any kind.
As has been pointed out by others commenting, both parties are in the pockets of Wall Street. I’d love to be wrong about this, but we will not get any meaningful financial regulations in the foreseeable future. The big banks will not be broken up before another, bigger financial meltdown/mega-theft of the country’s wealth takes place. And then? I don’t know what happens then, but it won’t be pretty.
It’s called following the Obama playbook to the Presidency.
The R / D divide is a distraction created by the 1% (i.e. Holder).
I’m *guessing* that Rand Paul feels similarly about ending TBTF. Though he’d probably tackle it in a fashion suggested by his father:
1) End fiat money, restore sound money.
2) Deleverage the robber barons and their banks. Increase capitalization rates, moving from (tiny) fractional reserve banking to full reserve banking.
3) End the Federal Reserve.
4) Repeal legal tender laws and legalize competing currencies.
5) Prosecute fraud.
If the USG acted as such, TBTF would go extinct.
It’s mindboggling and painful to see how anti-populist, pro-Authoritarian Obama is in his hear.
Good luck to any elected official (D or R) who is willing to take the Grover Cleveland mantle and run with it!
TPaine is da bomb!!!
Yes, just remember that it was the White House that tanked every single meaningful proposed amendment to fin-reg until we were left with the Dodd-Frank dreck, and the derivatives laws (protocols would be a better term) haven’t been fully written YET!
Some of you may enjoy Michael Brenner’s ‘Democrats: Masters of Self-Delusion‘.
All Democrats in the Senate need to do is ask Rand for his requirements for the bill so it can be drafted and sponsored by Rand and Democrats and introduced for an up or down vote in the Senate.
Maybe the conservatives will actually support such a bill and the bank lobby will be out to defeat them in 2014.
Your evidence for Obama “tanking every meaningful aspect” of a bill THAT WOULD PASS is what exactly.
A bill that fails to pass the House and Senate does nothing.
Hell, you have done nothing to get the consumer protection agency going because Republicans have blocked approving a head for that and multiple other agencies. This has been going on for two election cycles so you could have solved the problem in the Senate by replacing 25 to 35 Republicans with Democrats or independents, but you have failed.
Why do you blame Obama for your failure to reshape the Senate to reflect your political views? There ain’t no gerrymandering in the Senate elections.
As long as the Democratic Party supports gay rights, it seems like a whole lot of Democratic voters couldn’t care less about war crimes, financial fraud, drones, executive murder lists, fracking, economic inequality…
For a large number of Americans, on the right and left, our national politics have been reduced to a single social issue.
Perhaps you’re ignorant of the facts, but reference the Republicans blocking appointments, yes, that is on the Democrats.
They could end that practice today, if they wanted. Every day since January 23, 2009, the Democrats could’ve had any and all votes be simple majority if they wanted.
That they didn’t shows that they didn’t want that.
Now why would they want the Republicans to be able to block appointments and legislation???
When you realize the answer to that, then you understand that what Obama and Democrats SAY they want, and what they ACTUALLY want, are two completely different. Because if they really wanted whay they SAID they wanted, they could’ve had it. And still could. They can end the filibuster today if they want to. Or tomorrow. Or the day after. Etc.
KC FRB President Hoenig. Four years ago…
http://www.kc.frb.org/speechbio/HoenigPDF/Omaha.03.06.09.pdf
phoney intra mural tag team.
They’ll change nothing until something or someone forces change.
Why should they.
Things are as good as it gets, up there in the eliteosphere.
They own almost everything, and they want what’s left.
Joe Bageant said it best …
Aside from your straw man ‘legislation that would pass’, you wouldn’t even begin to pass the simplest test on the sausage-making of financial regs, and you apparently slide over the fact that O’s form of a Pecora Commission was the made-for-shit Angelides group that wrapped up in no time, with nuttin’ to show for it.
It could have been televized, with a lion-hearted chairman, ready to breathe fire and recommend prosecutions, then craft something that would save taxpayers from Lemon Socialism.
If there were ONE thing on the domestic front that he’ll be remembered for it’s that. And creating a mandatory health insurance policy in aid of Big Insurance.
Joe’s death was a great loss to us, Hooker Jay; thanks for the great page and reminder.
Aside from the phoney filibuster issue, that WendyDavis addressed, that leaves aside the fact things such as:
a)that we had 52 Senators on record (Chris Bowers) to support the public option. The reason why we didn’t get it was that *Obama* didn’t want it and manuvered it away;
b) The president’s powers are considerable. There are lots of things Obama could have done by executive decree with no involvement by Congress at all. There’s even more if he’d been willing to push the envelope. Heck, FDR even created the WPA by executive decree!
What is Obama had declared a national emergency and said “Until Congress works it out, everyone is eligible for Medicare and to go to VA health providers?” You think a Democratic Congress is going to impeach him over that in 2009? You’d have put enormous pressure on the health-industrial complex to accede to real reform to order to avoid the catastrophic loss of all their business.
Instead of a ‘can do’ president, Obama is the ‘can’t do’ president–well, unless it’s claiming to have the right to kill American citizens anywhere sans due process. It’s not that Obama doesn’t want power, he just doesn’t want power that would enable him not to have excuses to actually fulfill his rhetoric. Lookie at the rounds of debt ceiling crises and fiscal cliff crises and sequester crises–Obama time and time again *threw away* cards that respected legal scholars said he had the perfect power to use–like standing on the 14th amendment, or minting the platinum trillion-dollar coin, or other tactics, nor did he just stand firm on the fiscal cliff and let things hit then. No, Obama *threw away* all his advantages to be put seemingly at the mercy of that very Republican obstructionism.
You can’t help but wonder after this has happened for the umpteenth time that it’s because Obama *wants* his “Republican friends” (his words) to have that power over him, to appear to “force” him to do things that he really wanted to do all along (like gut the social safety net). To see him claim far-reaching presidential powers on national security and yet eschew more modest powers when it comes to domestic politics can’t lead to any other conclusion.
In fact, I now thing his recent pivot on gun control nothing more than a strategy of his to guarantee the rabid among the Republican base to show up in droves in the low-turnout 2014 midterms so his “Republican friends” will hold ALL Congressional power and thereby “force” him to do even more safety-net slashing. If so, he’s not only a traitor to the Democratic party of FDR, he’s even a traitor to its shadow of today.
-stewart
Priceless!
> A gay marriage license hanging in your cubicle in the
> global labor gulag doesn’t mean much.
What is WRONG with you people? That’s why President Obama ALSO historically achieved Lilly Ledbetter for His subjects. It’s a 1-2 punch, and there ain’t no 3!
Dude, I “wondered” after the second time. By the third time, I was sure. By now, I just want to laugh at anyone who thinks Obama is anything other than a willing serial killer trying to destroy any vestige of economic equality. (Not anyone here, I’m sure. Just the Kossacks and folks at DU and other O-bot factories.)
Isn’t politics simple when you just have to root for “the good guys”? Thinking is hard, yo! Sigh.
Clinton >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Obomba, courtesy of the DLC and multinational campaign funders. Fuck the neolibrul assholes and the Trojan Horses they rode in on.
Liberal fascists in the service of Empire and Profit.
Many of the comments on this post are like Red State with weed, and more homophobic.
Awesome!
In the categories of ‘Wish I’d written it, goddam’, and ‘and satisfaction brought him back’, please, please read Charles Davis’s piece: ‘Drone Court Advantage‘… all the way to the end. It won’t disappoint, seriously.
WTF?? Homophobic? What, mentioning or saying the word gay means one is homophobic??
Let’s look at one example.
Homophobic???
What if we changed just a couple of words…
Just because the social issue used as an example that makes the statement homophobic??
Joe Bageant is a homophobe?
And those are the only examples I saw that even mentioned the word “gay”.
I hope this doesn’t end up like the term anti-semite being used everytime someone criticizes the government of Israel.
If I’ve offended you, it wasn’t my intention. Just thought your labelling anything in this thread as homophobic, or, especially, more hobophic than Red State, that it was an unfair hit.
YMMV
Wow, what an incredible piece of writing. It should be read on video, like the Howard Zinn “Voices of the People,etc”.
I’m so glad that you read it, openhope. The visceral reaction to anyone of serious moral/ethical conviction and appreciative of satire gone wild…should be not soon forgotten, eh?
The voice would have to be perfect; can’t even imagine whose, except none of the voices on our teevees, lol.
Y’all have the topics well covered, from Randian sincerity through to the left of the DLC (all 10 degrees).
Oh man, that was B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L !!!!
Especially the end. She’s just been droned by Obama but laments over how mean Romney was to drive around with his dog on his car.
I almost lost it at the very end.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING IT. I hadn’t seen that one.
He didn’t give any examples, just executed a fabricated, fact-free drive-by smear. Awesomely typical!
Clinton is one of the neoliberal fascist assholes you decry, too.
Yes, AshenLight; that’s why I started the calculation with him: as one of their biggest success stories in ratcheting the party rightward. Welfare ‘Reform’, Rubinomics, financial deregulation, NAFTA, and tra la la. He screwed us, the peasants in Mexico, Haiti bigtime, and more…and is a global rockstar. Asshole.
‘His name was probably Mohammed’; ‘he wanted me to call his daughter Lily Ledbetter’… doesn’t get any better ‘n that, OFG.
I don’t care about the messenger’s motives, as long as the message is the right one. Rand Paul was right. Fisher, who will speak at CPAC, is right. What strikes me is the glaring lack of an important message from the Democrats and a Democratic messenger who has the guts to speak out.
Margaret Kimberly at BAR has it right:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-rand-paul-exposes-democrats
Thank you for proving my point.
Awesome!
My mistake. I thought you were proclaiming him as much greater (>>>) than Obama, when in fact we’re in absolute agreement.