Jim Hightower: Grinning Bankers

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by Creators.com
Grinning Bankers

by Jim Hightower


Like ugly on a toad, banker greed just can't be rinsed off, no matter how much regulatory soap you use.

Last week, Congress enacted new rules to govern America's huge banks, thus completing Washington's response to the unbridled Wall Street greed that crashed the financial system and crushed our economy. The regulatory reforms were hailed by Democrats as possessing powerful cleansing power, while Republicans wailed that the new rules were overly caustic, imposing such a heavy-handed governmental scrub that the delicate layers of Wall Street innovation, competitiveness and profitability will be rubbed away.

Meanwhile, the big bankers were grinning from ear to ear, for the bill requires no restructuring and decentralizing of the monopolistic grip that these giants have on America's credit system. Thus, they still retain the power to rip off consumers, gamble with depositors' money, haul in exorbitant profits and pay themselves ungodly bonuses - all while remaining "too big to fail."

Yes, the banking barons now have to adjust to stricter regulations, many of which are good and long overdue. But these guys are experts at slipping out of governmental leashes. Indeed, JPMorgan Chase alone has had 90 "project teams" at work for months, plotting end runs around new regulations long before they were even passed.

For example, the law restricts those infuriating overdraft fees that banks have been sneaking into our debit card accounts. A victory, right? Yes, but bankers didn't miss a beat in finding another way to pick our pockets - they're already imposing new "maintenance fees" for basic checking accounts. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/21-3

...of an announcement that property is now theft is going to make Jim happy. That's just the way he is.

Jim Hightower is one of the best, the very best political commentators that our side has. He is always well reasoned.

Yes he is a firebrand. God knows we could use more, not fewer, firebrands talking up our side of these issues.

nt

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8762888&mesg_id=8762888

The Guardian, Saturday 17 July 2010

Wall Street: The banks are still boss

Goldman Sachs' $550m fine is as much as the bank takes in trading revenue in just one week



Even after the final full stop is affixed to the last piece on the great banking crisis of 2007-10, one phrase about one bank will sum up the entire episode. It comes from a Rolling Stone profile last year of Goldman Sachs. The second and most quoted sentence of Matt Taibbi's piece describes the world's number-one investment bank as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". As pithy descriptions go, this had it all: the power of the leading firm in an all-conquering financial industry, and how that could be used to print money and to plunge the world into a financial firestorm.

Well, the bottom line at the end of this week is that the vampire squid is doing just fine, thank you. It may not look that way. After all, Goldmans shelled out $550m on Thursday night to Wall Street watchdogs. And it now faces a slew of regulation, thanks to the passage of the financial reform bill through the US senate. Yet in both cases the Masters of the Universe are getting off lightly – showing yet again how the bankers who triggered an economic crisis, which is now turning into a social crisis (as governments across the rich world make all those spending cuts), are ducking their fair share of the bill for the mess.

First, the fine. In paying the biggest ever penalty in a regulatory case, Goldman Sachs is admitting that it wrongly marketed a $1bn deal to investors – a big blow for a firm that prides itself on a good name, and a hefty dent in the balance sheet. Or so you might think. But $550m is as much as the bank takes in trading revenue in just one week. And it is a tiny sliver of the $16bn it paid in bonuses to its bankers last year. More to the point, set against the enormity of the charges it faced, Goldmans has got off lightly. After all, the bank stood accused of creating and flogging a package of dodgy home loans – without telling investors that one of its biggest hedge-fund clients had hand-picked the loans that went into the package, and had bet that they would fall in value. Cut through all the fancy terminology and this was an old-fashioned fraud case, in which Wall Street's finest were charged with screwing over their own business partners (including, naturally enough, our own financial sink-estate, RBS). The regulators have now binned their case in return for some loose change from Wall Street.

Then there is the US reform bill, which last night passed its final hurdle. Indeed, for Mr Obama to pull off another big bill (following on from healthcare and the $787bn economic stimulus), let alone one that has not been eviscerated by the Republicans, is a triumph. The coming mid-term elections may be bloody for the Democrats, but Mr Obama is using his political capital rather than hoarding it. The bill has plenty of sensible (albeit vaguely worded) proposals: a single Financial Stability Oversight Council to monitor markets more closely, more derivatives to be traded in clear sight of the regulators, and financial firms to be quickly wound up. All this is so practical that it simply shows up how bad financial regulation was before Lehman Brothers. Depending on which American papers you read, this is either "another landmark legislative victory" for Barack Obama or simply a "stunning success" for the president.

..more..

Not Mr. Hightower...wonderful man, says it just like it is.

Banksters are gangsters that hate capitalism but love the free market, otherwise there would be no such things as 'too big to fail'. We call those monopolies and at one time they were illegal...which they still are, but through legal/govt trickery (like bank fees being reorganized with sneaky verbage) can now stay in business forever. Even after causing our economy to crash and holding the working class hostage. Banks should never be allowed to own such a huge market of their own industry. I think Well Fargo and Wachovia are the frontrunners of what banksters will become in the next few years.

Nuff said.