Liberals, Independents and Progressives 2010
           
                                 
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
This site is dedicated to every person who has lost their job, their savings, their house, their limbs in Iraq and feeling like they're just about ready to lose their mind. No one in power is spared the lampoon on this site. We're mad as hell at all of them with the exception of a rare few. So, as Sarah Palin would say, "It's satire."... but you can wear it.  

CONGRESSMEN
WITH GUTS.COM
This month, Sarah Palin came to Orlando and promised to take out Alan Grayson. Corporate America can now help her. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court got rid of all restraints on corporate power, allowing independent spending by corporations that had been outlawed since March 27, 2002.
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INSANITY by Howard Greene
Email:  mccgreene@aol.com

I have almost 40 years of experience as a retail banker and financial services provider.  I opened, managed and served as country head for a multinational bank in Spain, Korea, Canada and the US.  In early 2009 I contacted my congress person, the NY Times, CNBC and MSNBC leaving a message saying that I had 40 years of experience, understood the causes of the problem, understood who was responsible, how to measure the magnitude of the toxic assets (in trillions of dollars) and what should be done to fix the economic meltdown (in fact, I knew a dozen ex-bankers who knew the same things). No one so much as returned my calls

Our Economic Meltdown

The presidents of all banks that participated in the approval of mortgages with substandard credit criteria and the packaging and selling of such mortgages as asset backed securities are responsible.  The presidents of banks claiming that they didn’t know what was happening in their credit departments (the life blood of every bank) is like the presidents of airlines claiming they didn’t know the engines they were buying for their planes never underwent any quality control tests.  Additionally, all of these banks had, or should have had, senior risk asset management committees who were setting all credit policies and in each case understood the mortgage credit risks but didn’t care as long they increased compensation for themselves and their company

As for the politicians, 2 of them bear the primary responsibility of these bankrupting financial policies.  We need look no further than John McCain’s financial advisor Phil Gramm.  Gramm, on Dec. 15, 2000 snuck into a congressional bill an act which prevents the government from regulating investment banks’ credit swaps.  Gramm is the one who called Americans whiners and told us that the crisis was in our heads. McCain considered him for the position of Secretary of the Treasury. Equally responsible for our economic crises was the SEC chairman (Christopher Cox) who changed a key regulation in 2004. Under pressure from those who wanted to please their campaign contributing Wall Street buddies, the SEC approved a measure that let investment banks lend out 30 times the amount of capital they had backing up their loans.  Before 2004 they could only lend out 12 times the amount of capital.

The bastions of last resort were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, created by the U.S. Congress to create credit criteria for purchasing mortgages ($12 trillion at last count), package them and resell them to third party buyers to keep enormous amounts of liquidity in the market place.   They too completely failed.

A solution to the banking melt down that I supported 12 months ago and also support today is:

  1. Reinstate the 2000 and 2004 regulations (see above) of CDS’s and CDO’s.  Add skilled financial analysts and auditors.
  2. Require increased capital reserves by “riskiness of product” where the riskier assets require more capital reserves
  3. Create a regulation that requires each sale of packaged assets by a bank or investment broker to provide some percentage of recourse to the purchaser.
  4. Make the CEO and board of directors have fiduciary responsibly to stock holders and face fines and civil charges for violation of their responsibilities.

    INSANITY - PART 2
    INSANITY - PART 3



 
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Mortgage relief for
only a few?

Dec. 10, 2009 AP -WASHINGTON -

Just over 31,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications since March under the Obama administration's mortgage relief plan, spotlighting some of the program's failures. Among big lenders Bank of America Corp. had the worst results. The nation's largest lender had only completed 98 modifications for the 160,000 borrowers who had signed up by the end of November. GMAC Mortgage had the most of any lender, just 7,100.
ening Somewhere

ALAN GRAYSON-- A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME!
Florida House Rep. says imminent SCOTUS decision 'a potential threat to our democracy'
Responding to a Supreme Court case that could result in most of the US's restrictions on campaign spending being tossed off the books, US House Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has introduced a series of bills that would severely curtail the ability of corporate donors to influence the outcome of elections.

"We are facing a potential threat to our democracy," Grayson told the Huffington Post's Arthur Delaney. "Unlimited corporate spending on campaigns means the government is up for sale and that the law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable."
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