Yes, Wall Street NEEDS To Change! Is It Pure Greed?

 It's refreshing to hear someone who's NOT blaming President Obama for every little thing. I've gotten so used to hearing this constant criticism that this article clearly jumped out at me. It's not as though Obama made all these decisions in a bubble. He had a team of apparently knowledgeable people helping him to decide what might possibly stop the country from going into total financial failure. Give him a break!
   .  . June


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Wall Street needs to change, not Obama:
PostPartisan   By Katrina vanden Heuvel  |  September 9, 2010; 1:43 PM ET


While no one said that reforming Wall Street would be easy for President Obama, the big-money backlash against his proposals has been surprisingly swift and screechy. In 2008, high finance donated about $40 million to Obama's campaign. As a recent editorial in The Post discusses, though, the financial sector 'is suffering a massive case of buyer's remorse.' There is a perception on Wall Street, The Post surmises, that Professor Obama doesn't have enough real-world business savvy to understand how high finance works, and the newspaper urges the president to cozy up to his one-time benefactors for the good of the nation.


But Wall Street clearly remains far more out of touch than Washington, and after reading some of the words emanating from the Masters of the Universe, one might plausibly wonder if America's lords of finance have spent the last three years living on Saturn.

Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of the private-equity firm Blackstone Group, recently compared Obama's plans to tax private-equity compensation to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. (He later apologized for the "inappropriate analogy," but he’s nonetheless going to have trouble living that one down.) And in his second quarter 2010 letter to investors, distributed on Aug. 27, Daniel S. Loeb, founder of the hedge fund Third Point LLC, wrote, "Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs.… Perhaps, too, a cloven-hoofed, bristly haired mammal will become airborne and the rosette-like marking of a certain breed of ferocious feline will become altered. In other words, we are not holding our breath." Andrew Ross Sorkin quipped that Loeb’s letter "sounded as if he were preparing to join [Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally] in Washington."

Why such hysteria and hyperbole? Shining through the ridiculous rhetoric is pure greed.

Read on . . .

Someone Passed All This Legislation! Wasn't It President Obama?

 The article below reflects very much how I feel about President Obama's accomplishments since taking office. He may not have accomplished everything on everyone's to-do list, but he certainly has tried.   And he has indeed done more than any president in memory in a very short time. Below is a list of actual accomplishments. It's pretty impressive!
   . . . June



Too much irrational thinking about President Obama
 The Jackson Sun  August 29, 2010 

  "What are the underlying motivations causing so many Americans — partisan politicos aside — to blame President Barack Obama for every problem short of indigestion? Has the guy done anything right? Has he done what he said he would do when he ran for office? Has he done anything?

Hmmm, let's see. Based on a number of media reports, I have compiled a short list:

• Passed health care reform, which millions of Americans agreed needed to be done and was a major plank in his campaign.
   
• Passed a $789 billion economic stimulus package that saved millions of jobs and has been regarded a success by many economists who generally know a lot more about the economy than you and I do.
   
• Bailed out the auto industry, which saved more than 1 million American manufacturing jobs and enabled General Motors to return to profitability.
   
• Supported a Wall Street bailout that, had it not been completed, would have led to an economic depression like the one in the 1930, according to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
   
• Passed the Wall Street reform and Consumer Protection Act to bring some order and new safeguards to the nation's financial system and consumer protection rules.
   
• Ended the U.S. combat mission in Iraq and withdrew combat troops as he promised he would do during the election.
   
• Won confirmation of two women, including the first Hispanic, to the U.S. Supreme Court with minimal political partisan bickering.
   
• Began phasing out the prison at Guantanamo Bay as he promised during the election.
   
• Deployed additional troops to Afghanistan that military leaders have been requesting for years.
   
• Removed many restrictions on embryonic stem cell research — currently stymied by a ruling from a conservative activist federal judge.

Read More . . . .

Will The Wall Street Reform Law Be Bad For Businesses?

Doyle Mitchell, CEO of D.C.-based Industrial Bank, argues that the financial reform law will discourage lending. Do you really think that it will in the long run? After all, once the law is in effect and people know what to expect, it seems to me that everything will go back to business as usual. Especially if they start having more confidence in the financial system.

Here's an article I found with a similar viewpoint.

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Experts fear financial reform law will restrict credit to businesses
Washington Business Journal - by Bryant Ruiz Switzky

The landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is meant to bring new stability to the financial system, but there’s not a lot of love for the legislation among local bankers, financial experts and business leaders, who say the law will reduce access to credit.

“The assumption lawmakers seem to have is that everybody in business is a crook, so we’re going to regulate you to death,” said Barbara Lang, CEO of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. “It’s going to have a huge impact on businesses.”

Criticized by some as too weak, others as too far-reaching, the 2,300-page law, signed July 21 by President Barack Obama, is filled with new rules on everything from consumer mortgages to bank capital and liquidity to credit card swipe fees. The full impact of the law will take years to play out as federal agencies translate lawmakers’ language into actual regulations.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear banks will have to spend a lot of money complying with the law — and they will no doubt pass those costs on to businesses and consumers. The net effect: It will probably be harder to get credit from a bank, and the cost of loans and other bank services will go up, experts say.

Read More

Do you agree with this article? Please leave a comment if you do - or if you disagree.

June

Can Obama Really Reform Wall Street?

Barack Obama did indeed sign in a very comprehensive reform bill today - but will it really be enforced? Already the opposition are lining up to criticize the new law. I really hope that sometime soon we give this new president some credit. He really IS trying!

When I read this article this morning I once again thought, "Wow, he may not always be right, but he's not afraid to move forward on something he thinks is right"

What do you think? leave your comments below

June

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President Obama signs Wall Street reform bill

By Carrie Budoff Brown & Kendra Marr | 7/21/10 12:40 PM EDT

Almost two years after a near-collapse of the American economy, President Barack Obama signed into law a historic rewrite of the regulations governing the nation’s financial system, declaring the end to an era of antiquated rules that left Americans vulnerable.

Obama described the law as a triumph for consumers and a necessity for business, saying the financial system “only works – our markets are only free – when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system.”

“And that is what these reforms are designed to achieve: no more, no less,” Obama said during the ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building “Because that is how we will ensure that our economy works for consumers, that it works for investors, that it works for financial institutions - that it works for all of us.”

Read More

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There are lots of opinions around about this new bill. Tell me what you think

June