Maher: American is the land of get nothing done

Bill Maher is distressed about America's lack of capacity to do good things and stop doing bad things. Our mechanism for meaningful change is completely broken.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States! We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016.
What do we need?
a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.
I find Bill Maher to be especially insightful--he cuts right through the BS over and over. This particular article by Maher was especially well written.

Continue ReadingMaher: American is the land of get nothing done

More corruption exposed at the FDA

Remember Vioxx? There's a lot more where that came from. Remember According to the NYT, more corruption has been uncovered at the FDA. According to the unanimous conclusion of FDA's scientists, a medical device called the Menaflex was unsafe. But after receiving what an F.D.A. report described as “extreme,” “unusual” and persistent pressure from four Democrats from New Jersey — Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg and Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. and Steven R. Rothman — agency managers overruled the scientists and approved the device for sale in December. According to the story, the members of Congress each received significant campaign contributions from the manufacturer. The FDA is now considering rescinding approval for the device. All of this raises an interesting question: Who would be more qualified to determine whether a medical device should go to market, A) a medically trained scientist or B) members of Congress who receive campaign contributions from the manufacturer of the device? Easy call, right? Anyone with a high school education should know that politicians shouldn't override scientists on matters of science. If this were a just world, one or more people would be going to prison for this corruption which has endangered (and potentially, injured) many of those people purchasing the defective device.

Continue ReadingMore corruption exposed at the FDA

Huffington: Capitalism isn’t evil, but this isn’t capitalism

In her review of Michael Moore new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," Arianna Huffington had this to say about the current state of economic affairs:

In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.

In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.

Continue ReadingHuffington: Capitalism isn’t evil, but this isn’t capitalism

Dark days and “Green Shoots”

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.” --Supreme Court Justice Lous D. Brandeis
For all the discussion of "green shoots" and an economy on the mend, there's plenty of data and commentary to the contrary. What's interesting to me, is that recent developments only highlight the extent to which Main Street economics have become irrelevant to Wall Street. The administration is claiming that the crisis is largely over, and that it's time to breathe a sigh of relief. President Obama yesterday argued that "we can be confident that the storms of the past two years are beginning to break." Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner discussed last week beginning to wind down some of the programs that were implemented in the heat of the crisis late last year. The value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from its July low of 8146, and is now trading around 9600. Everything seems well and good in the world of high-finance. But others see it differently. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argued this week that nothing has been done to address the underlying banking problems that created the mess in the first place, adding that "the problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis." Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, echoes that sentiment, and points out that the real issues underlying the crisis have not been addressed at all. He lays out 4 areas of concern:
  1. The big banks need to be made to be dramatically smaller.
  2. Executives need to have a great deal of their personal wealth tied up in their banks to prevent a reckless focus on short-term results.
  3. An end to the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, DC. "There is no way people should be able to go directly (or even overnight) from a failing bank to designing bailout packages to benefit such banks. In any other industry, in any other country, and at any other time in American history, this would have been seen as an unconscionable conflict of interest. "
  4. The financial elite is aware that they are able to exploit the Federal Reserve and use it as a "bailout machine".

Continue ReadingDark days and “Green Shoots”

Elizabeth Warren faces fierce resistance to regulation of non-bank lenders

Elizabeth Warren is one of my heroes. Barack Obama appointed her to be Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created, which was established to oversee the banking bailouts. For many years, Warren has fought tough battles on behalf of consumers. [See the related posts to this post; and here's a video of Warren being interviewed by Jon Stewart that will give you an idea of what she is about (and especially consider Part II)]. Warren is now facing an incredibly tough uphill battle. Her main weapon is common sense. She wants to regulate banks and non-bank lenders, to stop them from defrauding consumers with their fine print, their outlandish fees and their arithmetical hocus-pocus. In a fair fight, her position should easily win the day. But it's not a fair fight, because the financial services industry owns much of Congress. Therefore, Warren has spent much time advocating for the need for a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). Here's what Warren has to say about the need to regulate non-bank lenders:

There is more that we can do to deal with non-bank lenders, but only if Congress creates a strong CFPA. If we stick with the status quo -- which treats loans differently depending on who issues them and places consumer protection in agencies that consider it an afterthought - we know what will happen because we have seen it happen before. Lenders will continue their tricks and traps business model, the mega-banks will exploit regulatory loopholes, and the non-banks will continue to sell deceptive products. In that world, small banks will need to choose between lowering standards or losing market share, and they will still get too much attention from regulators while the non-banks and big banks get too little. Dangerous loans will destabilize both families and the economy, and we'll all remain at risk for the next trillion-dollar bailout. Regulating the non-banks hasn't been tried in any serious way. The CFPA offers a real chance to level the playing field, to add balance to the system, and to change the consumer lending landscape forever.

Continue ReadingElizabeth Warren faces fierce resistance to regulation of non-bank lenders