FINANCIAL REFORM--THE SPECTACLE

    By Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 10:22am |

    Watching Elizabeth Warren on Maddow last night I was uplifted by the power of her demeanor and her spectacular delivery--"they lost". She showed more backbone in those two words than the whole Obama team did in two years of pontificating.

    The President has the high ground on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It is time to use his leverage in a confirmation hearing spectacle which will rival the Clarence Thomas hearings. The stage is set perfectly. The Republicans can't wait to flex their muscles. And they will overreach themselves. What better environment to draw the distinction between Democrats and the bought and paid for Republicans. The Tea rabble are populists. Right? Actually, no.

    The name of Melissa Bean has been floated to head the new agency. Good nominee? Check David Frum's website, he's touting her--"..a regulator Wall Streeet can accept". She would be the mother of all milk toast nominees. She would deprive Democrats of a grand opportunity to out the Republicans.

    The President needs to send a firebrand populist nominee to the Hill to take on Republicans in a financial reform battle to the finish. I'm tired of this faux intimidation from the Right. It's time to find the right spokesperson. This is a teaching opportunity for the public. The goal is not to rush a compromise nominee through the confirmation hearings in order to get the Agency up and running. The goal is to take their intimidation and false posturing and dish it back to them in clear terms of what Democrats are all about and how this Agency will protect consumers from the predatory financial industry.

    I think the President should double down on the CFPB hearings by replacing Geithner and sending the second nominee up to the Hill simultaneously. Geithner is the face of Wall St. favoritism in the Obama administration. He is a terrible spokesperson. He couldn't sell covered dish dinners to starving congregations of Baptists. What does it matter that these confirmation hearings take six months? In fact that's the goal. Realistically, much of the financial engineering has been completed and staff is in place. Isn't the spectacle more important than the mechanics? And aren't the right nominees more important than another round of hurried compromises in the name of progress? And wouldn't I be glued to C-Span?

     

     

      

    Comments

    SPECTACLE, dammit.


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 10:31am

    I fixed it for you. You know that you can edit your own post, right? Just click the tab at the top that says "Edit." Nice post.

    PS I also added the video.


    by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 10:58am

    Genghis, thanks very much, didn't see the edit button.

    And while you were assisting me in the above, so help me this is the truth, I was at a Borders in the Dallas burbs buying your book. Fabulous, read the first chapter. Very significant game changer here. My own daughter is a "cultural" voter who told me how scary Obama is--I'm glad to have more insight into this phenomenon.

    As the information lady was looking up your book, "I said, it's on the liberal side, I know I'm in a foreign land here--I'm a Democrat." She said, "So is my husband". Your  book was under "politics and government". She said, "we have books both on the far left and the far right" to which I answered, "I read writers who are intelligent".

    I'm going to be buying more of your books for a couple of readers' groups and also will be participating in the on-line discussion here.


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 12:58pm

    Thank you, Oxy. This promotional period has been stressful, and I really appreciate all the support that I've been getting from you and the other dag folks. The feedback I've been getting on the book has been great (excluding occasional threats from right-wing nuts), but it's been an uphill road to get the word out, so I deeply appreciate the help that you folks have been offering to promote the book.


    by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 1:46pm

    On that topic - I told some of my friends about your signing ... it was kind too short-notice for them by the time we connected, but they were interested. Do you have a schecule of any sort?


    by kgb999 on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 3:12am

    Bean has been anti-CFPB, in fact.  And anti-other fin-reg as well.  The Cow.

    Clip and paste portions at will, OM.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/dem-infighting-over-wall_n_321481.html

     

     


    by we are stardust on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 12:51pm

    Star, thanks. Bean would be a disaster. Let's hope Obama takes the offensive. I really don't understand the "cooperation" stance--unless it is stealth prelude. Which I doubt.


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 1:19pm

    Not sure if I should say this because I really have not paid that much attention to this aspect of the financial crisis.  I do admire Elizabeth Warren for her efforts on behalf of all of us.  I just think the new CFPB will probably just be a new briar patch for brer bankers. 

    However, if you want to foster opposition to Ms. Bean with tea partiers, just point out that she is a Democrat, represents a district of Chicago and strongly imply that she is part of Obama's 'Chicago Machine'.

    JK.  Sort of.  ;-/


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 2:48pm

    Thanks. That's an interesting bank shot and I'm sure she would be shot down on the basis you suggest. Many think that the best strategy is to send the weak candidate in first--well, it worked for Bush. But I'm thinking--isn't there a really tough person to nominate, or is that character trait inconsistent with being a cooperative Democrat? Maybe the nominee could bring a base ball bat to the hearings, a la Carl Paladino.   


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 3:12pm

    I doubt Paladino is the sort of person you are looking for.  He's a real estate developer and would no doubt love to build the briar patch, maybe settle a couple of scores against select bankers but in the end would really like to be one of them.

    For that you need a real grassroots tea partier, not one of Koch's astroturf ones.  Someone along the lines of Andrew Jackson or Huey Long.  In other words, someone no progressive in good standing could stand. :-{


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 5:27pm

    I like your phrase "someone no progressive in good standing could stand".--which I take one aspect of to be a certain "indelicate" sort, out of Appalachia perhaps, someone with antennae for bull shit, right or left. A showman who would gag an intellectual. And someone the opposition would underestimate. Is that your thought, or am I off target.   


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 6:06pm

    Yeah, you got it.  Someone genuinely misunderestimated.  Not a pretender like W but someone to the manner born.

     

    Addendum:  Only pseudo-intellectuals would gag.  True intellectuals would recognize the genius despite appearances.


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 7:36pm

    I like your thinking, Oxy Mora.


    by AmericanDreamer on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 8:33pm

    Thanks, Dreamer. I appreciate your posts as well.


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 8:46pm

    Would be great, yet we are stuck with the real Obama, not the Obama who really shakes things up, from the movie by the same name, staring Denzel Washington.

    According to David Corn, Melissa Bean is a leading contender for the job:

    Bean, a member of the House financial services and small business committees, has a long history as a favorite of Wall Street. Her top donors hail from the finance, insurance, and real estate industries...

    Could Wall Street's Favorite Dem Head Obama's Consumer Bureau?


    by NCD on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 10:53am

    We shall fight on the beaches

    We shall fight on the landing grounds

    We shall fight in the fields and on the streets...

     

    Oh, forget that. Send in Neville Chamberlain, throw them a bone or two, they'll settle down.


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 11:33am

    Ah but Stiglitz gets it.

    And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. See this, this and this.

    Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz just agreed. As Stiglitz told Yahoo’s Daily Finance on October 20th:

    This is a really important point to understand from the point of view of our society. The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding. And that’s really the problem that’s going on.

    ***

    A lot of the predatory practices in automobile loans are going to be able to be continued. Why is it OK to engage in bad lending in automobiles and not in the mortgage market? Is there any principle? We all know the answer to that. No, there’s no principle. It’s money. It’s campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door, all of those kinds of things


    From the man himself.

    by cmaukonen on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 3:42pm

    Thanks for those references. They got me worked up all over again.

    I don't like it but I can understand that Obama's leniency with financial executives during the first two years was geared to making sure the system itself didn't fail. We are now past the point of systemic failure. But the fact that financial fraud perpetuators got off scott free remains in our society like ingrown shrapnel. Like Stiglitz said, they consider a few fines akin to a parking ticket--it's the cost of conducting business. Move on to the next consumer scam.

    Why doesn't Obama take a more punitive stance toward the banks? Doesn't he have any sense of what Stiglitz is saying about the continued erosion of confidence resulting from the universal knowledge that this privileged class cheated and got away with it? And individual borrowers, investors and consumers were made to pay the price? And that ordinary people are still angry and think he should have done something to call the perps to account? And might be a reason Democrats got their shins kicked in?  Isn't every discussion on the state of the economy about consumer "confidence"? And what possible downside is there at this point in throwing the book at banks? What, they won't help the recovery? They'll continue not to lend?

    It has been said that Wall St. is a central source of funding for Obama and Democrats and is the reason Obama is going easy on them. God help us if that is true.  


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 7:09pm

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