- Begin Excerpt
-
- The lackluster Republican opposition to Senator Dodd's
Financial Reform bill is focused on whether or not the Democratic proposal
allows for or prohibits additional bailouts. A secondary hot topic is the
supposed derivative limitations. Frankly, these are both red herrings.
They serve to mask an even larger danger that no one is talking about:
a huge new government agency that will control all financial institutions
in the US--and not just the "too big to fail" ones. It's called
the Financial Institutions Regulatory Administration (FIRA), and its authority
absorbs and supersedes every other banking, thrift and stock market regulatory
agency including the SEC--though it technically doesn't actually eliminate
any agency (as we might expect of government).
-
- Shannon Croll tells us the establishment excuse given
for the new regulation scheme: "The Financial Institution Regulatory
Administration proposes that a single U.S. bank regulator would combine
parts of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Since regulatory supervisory duties are split between four independent
agencies this allowed for Banks to shop for the supervisor of their choice;
certain regulatory agencies have been known to be easier in the examination
process than others."
-
- While that may be true, this new proposal does much more
that is dangerous and doesn't even close that minor loophole--since insiders
from the big banks will always control FIRA and secretly grant exceptions
to their friends. The language in this bill is so general as to give FIRA
virtually unlimited powers to expand into any area of regulation and control.
The record keeping requirements it can mandate will make the IRS look benign.
And, because this bill contains no specific limiting criteria, this agency
will still be able to do almost anything with total discretion--including
covering for the financial evils of the insider banks that brought on the
financial crisis of 2008, just as the SEC did before. This is a con job
folks and is just as big a leap into socialism as the Health Care reform
bill was to medical freedom. The Republicans, as usual, are utterly failing
to oppose it properly.
-
- The closest thing I can come to describing the scope
of this mega-agency (which could easily absorb all of the $50B premiums
taken from the largest banks just for administrative costs) is to compare
it to the creation of the huge umbrella agency over national security in
the USA --The Department of Homeland Security. It's just that big in both
scope, cost, politicization, and potential bureaucratic inefficiency.
-
- The reason I sought out a copy of the bill was to see
for myself whether or not it allowed for future bailouts or not. Yes, there
was non-binding language that indicated it was the intent of the bill:
"To promote the financial stability of the United States by improving
accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end 'too big
to
-
- fail', to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts,
to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for
other purposes."
-
- But it is those "other purposes" that should
worry us--and there are bailout provisions which I will cover later. In
the name of protecting us from these Wall Street predators (which are real)
it encircles us with new agencies that have the power to mandate all types
of compliance and record keeping requirements that eliminate one's liberty
to do business without big brother watching over us.
-
- What the bill actually does: The general powers of FIRA
are huge:
-
- 1) power to collect any information from any other agency,
including state government agencies--giving it superiority in scope in
all investigations,
-
- 2) mandate companies who "pose a threat to the US
financial system" (which could be widely applied to almost anything)
to register with FIRA and submit to FIRA risk management policies--yet
to be written. Later portions force the inclusion of all "private
pools of capital".
-
- 3) mandate record keeping on all private entities with
no limitations on what government may require.
-
- 4) monitor all financial services
-
- 5) promulgate regulations to establish heightened risk-based
capital, leverage, and liquidity requirements that increase on a graduated
basis for certain bank holding companies (totally arbitrary, with no guarantee
that the real problem ones like Goldman won't be let off the hook);
-
- 6) regulate derivatives and hedge funds (these are so
complex, however, that loop-holes will surely abound)
-
- 7) control all banking and thrift institutions of whatever
size
-
- 8) control issuance of Municipal securities
-
- 9) regulate all credit practices, and mortgages
-
- 10) control credit rating agencies
-
- There is no doubt that certain controls are necessary
to prohibit fraudulent practices (naked shorts, no capital backing, collusion,
misrepresentation etc), but with virtually no specific language in the
bill for us to determine if it will do as claimed, passage of this bill
is simply a carte blanche grant of unlimited regulatory power.
-
- The bill also creates a Consumer Financial Protection
Agency (CFPA) which has wholesale powers to regulate all sales claims,
and business practices of any company of any size. "It shall be unlawful
for any person to advertise, market, offer, sell, enforce, or attempt to
enforce, any term, agreement, change in terms, fee or charge in connection
with a consumer financial product or service that is not in conformity
with this title." The actual regulations and rules, however, are not
in the bill. They will be written later. This supposed consumer watchdog
has the power to impose fines, and record keeping requirements on all business
transactions.
-
- An Office of National Insurance is created as well which
appears to be a larger and more powerful FDIC, supposedly funded by $50B
in fees from the "too big to fail" institutions. $50B is peanuts
compared to the $500B -and still counting--in funds the FDIC has gone through
in the past two years. It is in this provision that bailouts will still
occur.
-
- The Hill.com reported on Sen. Mitch McConnell's similar
objection. McConnell "argued that the bill's $50 billion industry-supported
fund wouldn't be enough to cover the costs of future crises and that taxpayers
would be left to foot the rest of the bill." However, "Deputy
Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin sought to refute several arguments made by
the senator, saying: 'The legislation makes clear that if the $50 billion
fund is insufficient, then the institutions themselves, the industry, will
be assessed to make up the difference... There are no more taxpayer-funded
bailouts. Period,' Wolin said."
-
- It certainly isn't that cut and dried. As Andrew Cockburn
wrote for CounterPunch: "More recently, there are reports that the
bill will be stripped of a provision requiring a levy on the 'too big to
fail' banks as an insurance fund in the event of possible future defaults.
However, anyone who believes official trumpetings about ending mega-bank
bailouts should take a look at the paragraph on page 1379: 'During times
of severe economic distress,' it reads, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
[under the new direction of the Office of National Insurance] 'shall create
a widely available program to guarantee obligations of solvent insured
depository institutions orsolvent depository institution holding companies
(including any affiliates thereof)...' In plain English, this means that
the next time they bring the system to ruin, the banks and bank holding
companies will get bailed out by the taxpayers, just like this time. However
disgruntled they may feel, the banks are not undone just yet."
-
- I expect we have the same feigned cry of protest that
the big banks put on in 1913 to make the public think they were against
the passage of the Federal Reserve Act--which they had in fact conceived
at the secret meetings on Jekyll Island.
-
- For arguments sake, let's suppose that large scale bailouts
won't be forthcoming even if still permitted by the fine print as a "just
in case" clause. Certainly, there would be a huge public outcry even
though the PTB know the public can't do anything about it even if it happens.
The point is: the bailouts have already been done. The worst offenders
of these huge speculative con-jobs that brought down the economy have already
been made whole and are prospering like no other banks--not only because
of their access to TARP funds and other off the books bailouts, but zero
interest loans from the FED, to which they have applied to low risk carry
trade investments that have reaped steady profits in the billions.
-
- If FIRA makes good on its promises to start liquidating
problem firms, who will be the beneficiaries of that liquidation process?
The big banks, of course--because only they have the new liquidity to be
offered first choice in buying up the good assets of the failing institutions.
This is precisely how the FDIC is operating today. Slowly but surely, the
good assets of all failing banks are being transferred to the stronger
and the poor taxpayer is having to pick up the tab for the bad assets nobody
wants. This is the process that is being institutionalized on an even larger
scale in this phony reform bill. Result: the big get bigger and the small
get smaller and can't compete.
-
- Also, it is important to note that the Senate version
of Ron Paul's Audit the Fed proposal, it would not allow the GAO to look
into the Fed's massive purchase of toxic assets, its hundreds of billions
in foreign currency swaps with other central banks or its open market operations,
among other restrictions.
-
- Andrew Cockburn tries to give some perspective on the
convoluted and technical attempts to control the derivatives trade--which
is a hot topic now that Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were caught selling
packaged mortgages that they knew in advance were certain to fail and which
they had shorted in the markets in order to profit from both sides of the
transactions.
-
- "Amid the SEC's indictment of Goldman-Sachs and
consequent reminder to the citizenry of the crookedness rampant in the
financial 'services' industry, a hitherto loyal ally, Senate Agriculture
Committee chair Blanche Lincoln, has proposed legislation requiring major
banks to divest themselves of their vitally lucrative derivatives trading
desks.
-
- "Only at the very end of the senate Democrats' enormous
1408 page financial reform is there a hefty chunk of solace for the bankers,
in the form of Section 1155, a generally unnoticed provision clearly mandating
another taxpayer-funded bailout all round the very next time disaster strikes.
Although there may be a lifeboat ready for future emergencies, bankers
are currently feeling 'quite undone,' one lobbyist with a fine eye for
Wall Street's Washington operations told me recently. 'Lincoln's proposal
is their worst nightmare.
-
- "Up until now 'reform' has been going fine for them.
The administration and congress have largely been proposing what the banks
wanted,' such as leaving them under the benign regulatory supervision of
the Federal Reserve. Thanks to masterly work by the lobbyists, it seemed
that the world would be kept safe for derivatives trading operations. True,
Senator Chris Dodd's 'Restoring America's Financial Stability' bill makes
popular noises about forcing derivatives trading into clearing houses and
onto exchanges, but the big dealers were not unduly worried. After all,
they already controlled major clearing houses, such as ICE, the Intercontinental
Exchange, and anything too unwholesome in Dodd's banking committee bill
could be purged in a companion bill emanating from the Agriculture committee.
-
- "Readers will recall that this was the tactic adopted
in emasculating the derivatives-trading provisions of the house financial
reform bill, which defined an exchange as two dealers talking on the phone.
Ready and apparently willing to supervise the same operation in the senate
was Arkansas' Lincoln. 'We always considered her reliable,' sighed my lobbyist
friend. But Lincoln's re-election campaign is in serious trouble, not least
because her primary opponent has been harping on Lincoln's warm relations
with Wall Street [all kinds of politicians are pretending to change in
order to win votes]. Even so, she had shown every sign of hewing to the
derivatives traders' policy of highlighting the requirements of 'end-users'
in making the case for keeping things as they are (in the dark, with no
public disclosure of market prices, thus preserving the opportunity for
profitable gouging of customers.) '
-
- "'End users' in this context are businesses which
in theory at least use the commodities they are betting on -- thus Coca
Cola might buy derivatives on the price of sugar to hedge on future prices.
Such corporations, wrangled into the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users
by the bank lobbyists, dutifully broadcast the case that mandatory exchange
trading would cramp their style and 'hurt the consumer.' In reality, the
end-user argument has always been an almost total sham, since derivatives
trading has been overwhelmingly a matter of speculation, with little discernable
effect on the consumer -- apart of course from the derivatives-induced
financial crash.
-
- "Unfortunately for the banks, Lincoln was so energetic
in touting the end-user line that even Timothy Geithner grew a little uncomfortable.
So, accompanied by Commodities Futures Trading Commission Gary Gensler,
Geithner called on the senator and brusquely informed her she was being
'"too soft' on the issue. Her reaction was not at all what the treasury
secretary expected, still less desired. Piqued beyond measure by his graceless
approach, Lincoln not only abandoned the cause of the end-users altogether,
but inserted the requirement, thermonuclear in its implications for the
profitability of JP Morgan and others, that banks dump their derivative
trading operations. Adding insult to injury, the legislation clearly defines
an exchange as a 'trading facility,' another unpleasant surprise for the
banks. ... Sad to say, the proposal is far too sensible and necessary for
the health of the financial system to be allowed to stand, and will doubtless
disappear in some administration-brokered compromise in pursuit of Republican
votes."
-
- In the end, we have to look at all these attempts to
reform major corrupt institutions by Congress as futile or worse. Campaign
Finance Reform didn't stop the political payoff system and only restricted
private political speech. Health Care Reform did nothing to stop all of
the evils of the government and business subsidized insurance system, but
it did destroy our liberty to choose. Likewise, Financial Services reform
was written many months ago by insiders who will give it the appearance
of reform, but it will do nothing by put a regulatory noose around those
few financial institutions that remain in this country-who were not part
of the problem.
-
- End Excerpt
-
-
- World Affairs Brief - Commentary and Insights On
A Troubled World
-
- Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution
permitted.
-
- Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
-
- World Affairs Brief, 290 West 580 South, Orem, Ut 84058,
USA
|
