Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
Maybe you have seen some news stories that you think are not receiving enough attention and you'd like to post links to them. Maybe you'd like to just chat among friends about your life, your health, your family or social circle, your pets, etc. You can also post links to your own writings here on dkos or elsewhere. Perhaps you want to share some pictures or music or links to other things. This is your kind of place to talk about what's happening.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. If that is what you want, find another place to do it. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact. This diary series is produced by the TeamDFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is welcome.
|
Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, January, 2012, © joanneleon
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
― Thomas Jefferson
News
CFTC May Vote on Derivative Rules for Munis
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission may complete rules designed to curb the abuses of banks that sell derivatives to municipalities as it moves to impose new Wall Street regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act.
CFTC commissioners are scheduled to vote today on final regulations, first proposed a year ago, that would set business conduct standards between swap dealers and clients, including pension funds, endowments and state and local governments.
[ ... ]
Municipalities faced unforeseen fees during the crisis to escape from derivative contracts pitched by banks as a way to save money. The CFTC regulation to be weighed today marks Washington’s broadest effort to rein in a segment of the derivatives industry that flourished during the past decade, only to cost taxpayers billions when the deals collapsed.
Is Jack Lew's Bank Background Bad News For Financial Reform?
As President Barack Obama's new White House chief of staff, ex-banker Jacob Lew assumes a powerful position at the height of a Washington battle over the future of bank trading divisions like the one he used to run.
For most of his three-decade career, Lew has worked in government, most recently as head of the Office of Management and Budget, where he was praised by both parties. But he took a three-year break from public service during one of the most calamitous economic stretches in modern U.S. history at Citigroup, where in 2008 he ran Citi Alternative Investments, the bank's then-$54 billion proprietary trading, hedge fund and private equity unit.
Those types of bank units are now an endangered species on Wall Street. The "Volcker Rule," a signature piece of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, curtails trading that banks do for their own accounts. It also prevents banks that take customer deposits from owning private equity and hedge funds. Former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker advocated for such limits as a way to reduce risk-taking at the nation's largest financial institutions.
Like with so much else in the sprawling piece of legislation, Congress left most details to Washington regulators. Lew will step into his new job as Washington lobbyists are furiously trying to influence how the Volker Rule is implemented. At stake, potentially, are billions in bank profits.
Bill Black: More Proof of Obama Policy of Covering Up for Elite Financial Criminals
This column addresses a more general point, the charge that Obama’s financial regulatory leaders actively oppose the prosecution of elite financial criminals and the regulators who conspired with them (to use the term the article quotes Professor Kane as insisting upon).
Some longtime lawyers go further and say the overall scarcity of cases related to the financial crisis might be in part because regulators want to avoid scrutiny of their own kind.
“It’s not just one 30-year-old wunderkind who was responsible for the financial crisis,” said Dennis C. Vacco, who was the New York State attorney general in the 1990s and now is a lawyer at Lippes Mathias Wexler & Friedman. “Once you start pulling the string through in these complex cases, you might be surprised what you find at the other end.”
Mr. Vacco continued: “What’s at the end of the string? The defense may be that ‘at the highest echelons of the financial institutions, we were in regular contact with the government.’”
These charges are exceptionally severe. Senior former regulators are willing to be quoted by name asserting that Obama’s (not Bush’s) financial regulatory leaders are blocking lawsuits against fraudulent financial elites and their anti-regulatory co-conspirators because they fear embarrassment.
The Book of Jobs
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Forget monetary policy. Re-examining the cause of the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work—the author argues that the U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years ago.
It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.
[ ... ]
The banks got their bailout. Some of the money went to bonuses. Little of it went to lending. And the economy didn’t really recover—output is barely greater than it was before the crisis, and the job situation is bleak. The diagnosis of our condition and the prescription that followed from it were incorrect. First, it was wrong to think that the bankers would mend their ways—that they would start to lend, if only they were treated nicely enough. We were told, in effect: “Don’t put conditions on the banks to require them to restructure the mortgages or to behave more honestly in their foreclosures. Don’t force them to use the money to lend. Such conditions will upset our delicate markets.” In the end, bank managers looked out for themselves and did what they are accustomed to doing.
Megan Carpentier’s shoddy smear attempt on Glenn Greenwald
Raw Story’s executive editor Megan Carpentier has a column out today calling Glenn Greenwald one of “Ron Paul’s useful idiots” on the left. In the column, she proceeds to wildly misrepresented and inaccurately paraphrase Greenwald’s words, twisting it to make it seem he is endorsing Paul:
[ ... ]
Greenwald, unlike many his fellow progressives, is unafraid to voice important critiques against the Obama administration especially with regards to foreign policy, the national security state, and President Barack Obama’s self-serving shielding of powerful financial elites. Greenwald’s point all along is that Paul’s presence in this campaign is an important one as currently his candidacy is the sole platform voicing opposition to the expensive foreign wars, the domestic war on drugs, and a whole host of awful policies that has since become part of the bipartisan consensus from indefinite detention, torture, NDAA, and SOPA to the bank bailouts and immunity for the financial elites responsible for the recession.
[ ... ]
Paul makes partisans uncomfortable because it forces them to acknowledge that their party is pro-war, pro-torture, pro-indefinite detention, pro-racist drug war, and pro-death penalty. The truth, it hurts.
Super Bowl Viewers Will See Graphic Anti-Abortion Ads Featuring Aborted Fetuses
Anti-abortion ads showing graphic images of aborted fetuses covered in blood and surrounded by religious icons will air during the Super Bowl in February, courtesy of Democratic Presidential candidate Randall Terry. Terry, who has spent a year in jail and been arrested 50 times for his anti-abortion efforts, is using a Federal Election Commission loophole that ensures ads for political candidates cannot be prohibited within 45 days of an election. Apparently, primaries count, so Terry will be running ads on local stations during Super Bowl XLVI February 5.
Randall Terry’s website features four of the ads he is trying to raise money to run. While we could embed them here, they are intensely graphic and we have chosen to not run them. Please exercise caution if you choose to view them.
Tim Tebow, The Abortion Gang, Randall Terry for President, and Pro-life Super Bowl Ad Converge
Tim Tebow leads Broncos to "miracle victory" over Steelers. The Abortion Gang raises money to kill unborn babies in Tim Tebow's name. Pro-lifers encouraged to "fight fire with fire" and give contributions to 2012 pro-life Super Bowl Ad for Terry for President.
To Avoid All-Out War Give Iran One Last Chance: Jeffrey Goldberg
Obama would have to convince the Iranians that he is offering one final chance at real dialogue -- not out of weakness, but because, as a peace-loving person, he doesn’t want to order the destruction of Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure. And he could offer material prospects for normalized relations with the West, which might be more meaningful now that he has demonstrated his commitment to isolating the regime economically (IAGDPYOY).
The chance for success is slim. Anti-Americanism is a pillar of the Iranian regime’s faith, and the case of Muammar Qaddafi, who gave up his weapons of mass destruction and then saw the U.S. aid the rebels who eventually did him in, is on the minds of Iran’s leaders. And Israel, along with the U.S.’s Arab allies, would have to be convinced that this is a time-limited offer.
A war with Iran could be a disaster for everyone involved, and even those uninvolved. A last attempt at dialogue -- a last attempt to build an offramp for the Iranians -- seems to have fewer downsides than a rush to war.
Pakistan army warns of consequences to leader's accusation
Tensions between the army and the government of President Asif Ali Zardari have soared since a scandal involving a memo sent to Washington asking for its help in reining in the army broke late last year. The memo outraged the army, and the Supreme Court ordered a probe to establish whether it had been sanctioned by Zardari.
As part of the investigation, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and the head of the main spy agency, Lt Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, submitted statements to the court in which they suggested the memo was part of a conspiracy against the army.
This week, Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani said in an interview to a Chinese newspaper that Kayani and Pasha had violated the constitution by doing this. The interview was also published by Pakistan's state-run news agency.