Tag Archives: Glass-Steagall

It’s the Demand, Stupid

04 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by in Clinton, economy, Financial Crisis, too big to fail

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Bill Clinton blathers:

“President Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive,” and called for a lower rate as part of a “mega-deal” to raise the debt ceiling.

“When I was president, we raised the corporate income-tax rates on corporations that made over $10 million [a year],” the former president told the Aspen Ideas Festival on Saturday evening.

“It made sense when I did it. It doesn’t make sense anymore – we’ve got an uncompetitive rate. We tax at 35 percent of income, although we only take about 23 percent. So, we SHOULD cut the rate to 25 percent, or whatever’s competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a FAIR amount, and there’s not so much variance in what the corporations pay.”

Paul Krugman responds:

“Over the last two years profits have soared while employment has remained disastrously high. Why should anyone believe that handing even more money to corporations, no strings attached, would lead to faster job creation?

[…]

[T]he evidence strongly says that the real reason businesses are sitting on cash is lack of consumer demand. In any case, if corporations already have plenty of cash they’re not using, why would giving them a tax break that adds to this pile of cash do anything to accelerate recovery?

[…]

Lack of corporate cash is not the problem facing America. Big business already has the money it needs to expand; what it lacks is a reason to expand with consumers still on the ropes and the government slashing spending.

What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government and mortgage-debt relief for stressed consumers. What it very much does not need is a transfer of billions of dollars to corporations that have no intention of hiring anyone except more lobbyists.”

BTW Bill, I don’t think we need economic advice from the president who set “too big to fail” in motion with the repeal of Glass–Steagall, or the president who lit the fuse on the derivatives time-bomb with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, or the president who fired Brooksley Born when she tried to warn us about what would happen if derivatives weren’t regulated. Keep it to yourself. Please.

Senator Sanders on the Class War

11 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Clinton, Congress, economy, Financial Crisis, Obama, Politics, special interests, Taxes, too big to fail, Wall Street

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Just one small segment of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ marathon speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, dealing with the class war and the winners and losers in that war:

“…in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income–more than the entire bottom 50 percent.”

“From 1980-2005, 80% of all income went to the top 1%.”

Not much question who the winners are, and not much question now whose side President Obama is on. Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, wrote in Salon:

“It is…overwhelmingly clear that President Obama and his administration decided to side with the oligarchs — or at least not to challenge them. This raises the question of why they have made this choice, and whether it is a correct (in the sense of rationally self-interested) calculation on their part.

As to the “why,” several explanations have been proposed. One is that the president, as a matter of individual psychology, is extremely conflict-averse, preferring to avoid fights no matter how important. A second hypothesis is that the president is simply doing the most he can, given the political climate and the furious lobbying effort with which he is confronted. This explanation, however, is belied by [his] personnel appointments, among other evidence.”

The latest example of this is in President Obama’s choice for director of OMB. The new one, Jacob Lew, came from Citigroup. The old one, Peter Orszag, went to Citigroup. More Ferguson:

“A more disturbing possibility is that the Obama administration has simply codified a new strategic equilibrium in American politics, one first devised by the Clinton administration, in which both parties are supine with regard to the financial sector and the wealthy.”

President Obama brought out former President Clinton yesterday to endorse his “deal.” Bill Clinton, whose “bi-partisan outreach” during his administration left two ticking time bombs in the economy in the form of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which created “too big to fail,” and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned the regulation of derivatives.

Sen. Sanders brought up the subject of free trade. Just last week President Obama signed the South Korean version of NAFTA. I hear Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound again.  All you need to know about the South Korean “deal” it is that it got two thumbs up from those two staunch defenders of the middle-class and working people–the Chamber of Commerce and Mitch McConnell.

As good as it was to hear Sen. Sanders’ speech yesterday, I fear he is just a voice crying in the wilderness. The president’s “deal” is now being loaded up with enough pork to buy enough votes to win passage. In short, the fix is in, the wealthy and powerful will win again. We keep going back to George Carlin, “It’s a big club and we’re not in it.”