Friday Open Thread
Welcome to the Friday edition of your open thread. I’m back in Delaware today where the ground stays where it’s supposed to be, thank you very much!
The House & Senate conference on the financial reform bill reached a compromise last night. According the WSJ the bill is stronger than expected in two ways:
Lawmakers agreed to a provision known as the “Volcker” rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, which prohibits banks from making risky bets with their own funds. To win support from Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.), Democrats agreed to allow financial companies to make limited investments in areas such as hedge funds and private-equity funds.
The move could require some big banks to spin off divisions, known as proprietary-trading desks, which make bets with the firms’ money.
The bill also includes a provision, authored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark), which would limit the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives. This provision almost derailed the bill following vehement objections from New York Democrats. Ms. Lincoln worked out a deal in the early hours of Friday morning that would allow banks to trade interest-rate swaps, certain credit derivatives and others—in other words the kind of standard safeguards a bank would take to hedge its own risk.
Banks, however, would have to set up separately capitalized affiliates to trade derivatives in areas lawmakers perceived as riskier, including metals, energy swaps, and agriculture commodities, among other things.
Tea Party and Club for Growth darling Marco Rubio seems a bit confused about what he meant when he signed the Club for Growth pledge to repeal the health care reform law.
Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio, once a strong advocate for repealing the entire health care law and replacing it with “real reforms,” is now telling reporters that he would not repeal the law’s pre-existing conditions exclusions and the provisions that allow children to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26. From National Review’s Jim Geraghty:
A small group of reporters in a D.C. coffee shop, chatting with Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio. He just mentioned that there are two parts within the Obamacare legislation that he doesn’t want repealed. The first is the ban on insurance companies denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and the second is that he thinks that children up to age 26 should be allowed to “buy into” their parents’ coverage.
The Florida Senate race is going to be fascinating. Charlie Crist is running as the de facto Democrat. I have no doubt that if Crist caucuses with the Democrats he’ll be a huge PITA like Joe Lieberman.
Tags: Open Thread
Financial Reform bled dry of nearly every meaningful protection – Arthur Levitt former SEC Chairman
If the banks like it, I guess it is pretty weak.
You should have seen this coming….before he was elected.
Obama Disavows July 2011 Afghan Drawdown Date
Joan McCarter at dkos details the win/losses/draws on the financial reform bill.
Afghan drawdown? Another Obomba lie. Another broken promise. This one leading to more deaths and human misery. Must be part of THE REVEAL.
Russell Mokhiber, reporter for Corporate Crimes Report in DC, is calling on Delaware Legislators to revoke BP’s Corporate Charter in Delaware. Last week, he sent everyDelaware legislator and Attorney General Biden a letter laying out how and why it must be done.
Delaware AG’s is empowered to ask the Del. Court of Chancery to revoke the Charter.
Russell says as far as he knows, “no for profit corporation has ever had their charter revoked in Delaware, but it has happened many times in other states”.
BP has admitted they are absolutely responsible. Why is there such support in the US for individuals to receive the death penalty but rarely do we see the Death Penalty for Corporations.
If BP is put into receivership, the company will find it harder to advocate for its own interests, as the company will not exist anymore. Its assets will be sold to pay the “creditors” the people of the Gulf Coast Region.
Now lets see if there is ONE legislator in the Corporate State who has the courage, the integrity to answer the call.
Common Dreams has a full article or go to: Corporate Crimes Report and see the report in its entirety.
“Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden’s former chief of staff, Jennifer D. Oliva, is facing drunken driving charges in Rehoboth Beach following a June 6 arrest, making her the fourth attorney with the Department of Justice to face DUI charges in the past three years and the second in three months.”
Party at the AG’s!!!
When,oh Lord,are we going to wake up and face the fact that we can no longer afford to spend our treasure in money and lives trying to maintain the FACADE that we ARE the #1 SUPERPOWER.
Let’s get OUT of that corrupt,ungovernable shit-hole where there is no longer an al-Qada presence and abandon nation building in a place where there hasn’t been a nation for 3 fucking thousand years.
IF al-Qada comes back,use drones to grease ’em.DON’T put our boys in HARM’S WAY!!!!!!!
Orszag Resigns Over Inability To Persuade Summers And Obama Keynesianism Leads To Suffering
ZeroHedge.com 6/25/10 Tyler Durden
As we speculated previously, the sudden and unprecedented departure of Peter Orszag, the day prior to the US Budget’s formalization (which incidentally never happened as now the US will likely not have a 2010 budget at all, for fear of disclosing to most Americans just how broke the country is ahead of mid-terms) was due to Orszag’s disagreement with the administration’s, and particularly Larry Summer’s, inability to fathom that reckless spending is a recipe for bankruptcy. As the FT reports: “Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, resigned this week partly in frustration over his lack of success in persuading the Obama administration to tackle the fiscal deficit more aggressively, according to sources inside and outside the White House.” And so, as any remaining voices of reason realize they are dealing with a group of deranged Keynesians, soon there will be nobody left in the administration who dares to oppose the destructive course upon which this country has so resolutely embarked, which ends in one of two ways: debt repudiation, or war. And with the only remaining economic “advisers” being the trio of Summers, Romer and Geithner, you know America will somehow hit both of these mutually exclusive targets.
“Machine-gun Sammy” Alito will be writing the McDonald ruling for SCOTUS.
Suck on it, Brady Campaign!