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Sen. Scott Brown provides 41st vote to kill Wall Street Reform
By Anonymous on Tue, 04/27/2010 - 12:43am
Was this what Scott Brown had in mind when he claimed he would be independent voting for what serves his constituents in Massachusetts as opposed to voting the Republican party line? Scott Brown joined 40 other Republican senators to filibuster the Wall Street reform bill. In fact, the bill is not dead but Republicans stand in the way of allowing it to come to the Senate floor for debate. It seems they would prefer back room deals rather than public, open debate, recorded on C-Span available for all to watch.
Once again, Scott Brown has chosen to vote Republican party line instead of for financial regulatory reform that would protect taxpayers from systemic risk that should be limited to the business who are engaged in the risky business.
How's your 401K? Your job? The value of your home? Want to go through a boom and bust economy two or three more times and taxpayer bilouts of financial institutions? If yes deregulate. If no regulate financial markets for system risk.
From the PBS NewsHour, "Could Financial Reform Make Bailouts, 'Too Big to Fail' Less Likely?"
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Comments
You don't understand the business cycle.
Anonymous - the business cycle (or the boom and bust economy, as you call it) has nothing to do with a lack of regulations, but rather with monetary policy. The business cycle is created by the artificial expansion of credit beyond the level supported by increases in savings. The phenomenon is primarily caused by the Federal Reserve, and its artificial lowering of interest rates. Do you want to know where the housing bubble came from? Take a look at the Federal Funds rate from July 2003 to June 2004...1% - WAY lower than the rate the market would have determined were it not for the interference of the Fed. If you want to know where the next boom (and subsequent bust) is coming from, look at the current Federal Funds rate...0% since January of 2009. And since the intervention of the central bank is even more dramatic this time, look for the next crisis to be even worse than the current one.
This "reform" bill will not solve the problem. Only a sound currency and interest rates set by the market (instead of by the FOMC, a central economic planning committee) will free us from cyclical depressions.
http://www.moneycafe.com/library/fedfundsrate.htm
This recession was not
This recession was not cyclical but the result of a catastrophic risk assumed without the capital to cover losses. Leverage up the yazoo and tons of bad debt passed off as AAA credit risk. This was not business cycle nor a natural disaster. It was the result of deregulation, the shadow banking industry, and leveraging your and my deposits and retirements accounts by wall street banks for highly risky bets on derivatives and other synthetic securities.
You don't understand this recession either.
None of the symptoms you mention could have occurred were it not for the Federal Reserve's artificial lowering of interest rates. Where do you think sub-prime, interest-only and adjustable-rate mortgages came from? None of them would have been profitable without the Federal Funds rate being artificially lowered to 1%. Without all these suspect mortgage deals, we could not have had the real estate bubble, and we wouldn't have had the meltdown in mortgage-backed securities.
If you understand the business cycle, and are of the opinion that it is NOT caused by the cyclical easy money policies of the Fed, can you give a better explanation for its root cause?
By the way, the Fed will eventually have to sell the over 1 trillion dollars worth of "toxic" (i.e. worthless) mortgage-backed securities that it bought from the insolvent banks with newly created money. If it does not, the dollar will eventually be rocked in the currency markets. But when it does, we'll see more bank failures and the beginning of the next wave of this crisis, which is far from over.
Big business...
thy name is anon. Shouldn't you be at a Bloomberg terminal right now?
GOP obstruction
Is there a way to brand GOP obstruction on Financial Reform "The Real Shitty Deal"? - emptywheel
Scott Brown did not vote against bringing the Wall Street
reform bill to the Senate floor for debate. He and 38 other Republicans had voted in unison three successive days to block the debate. It was only when they were threatened with an all night real filibuster did they allow the bill to go to the floor for debate.
I don't see how Scott Brown can claim that he acted independently in the best interests of Mass residents on this. If anything he voted for GOP obstruction on Wall Street Reform three days in a row, and then on the fourth day, he voted with all the other Republicans to allow it on the floor. He, by himself, could have blocked it. What changed in his thinking must be the same thing that changed for all the other Republicans' thinking. That puts a lie to his claim of "independence"