Wall Street Reform Bill / The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

WALL STREET REFORM BILL / THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY



















The so called Wall Street Reform bill passed but it was actually a victory for the Lobbyists, who literally bought the Senate who defanged the House Bill and left America vulnerable to eventually another financial crisis: Allen L Roland

I guess this was all you could expect from an Obama administration who would much rather deal with the corporate owned old boy network in the Senate than the upstart will of the people in the House so here it is ~ the good, the bad and the ugly. The Bill ( The Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, H.R.4173 ) appears to be a feeble attempt to get Wall Street to invest in a productive job-creating economy versus gambling on risky investments ~ by using increased regulation without badly needed incentives.

The Good ~ The bill includes Bernie Sanders' amendment lifting the veil of secrecy at the Federal Reserve.~ in that American people will finally know all of the names of the financial institutions, corporations, and foreign central banks that received over $2 trillion in secret loans and other financial assistance from the Fed ~ but not until after the mid-term elections on December 1st.

The creation of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is good, but it could have been much, much better. Unfortunately, it will be housed at the Fed and it won't be able to regulate interest rates on credit cards. Right now, over 25% of American credit card holders are paying more than 20% interest on their credit cards.

Huffington Post reports that on the very day the Senate passed Wall Street reform and created a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner is urging President Obama NOT to appoint the most credible person as its leader ~ Elizabeth Warren.
Warren's credentials are impeccable. She was the one who came up with the idea for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ~ which is perhaps the best piece of this bill and obviously a threat to the financially elite.

Elizabeth Warren should be Main Street's voice at the Financial table and the financial elite, led by their lackey, Tim Geithner, are terrified of that prospect ~ and well they should be ! Here's a short video clip of Warren in action quizing a visibly nervous and defensive Geithner about Bank accountability ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZWSi9HL_Y

In short, Warren is perfect for the position and most financial insiders have just assumed she would get it. That's why it's so outrageous that Geithner ~ a longtime Wall Street insider ~ would attempt to sabotage her appointment. Sign our petition to President Obama in support of Elizabeth Warren today. Click here -- then tell your friends.

The Bad ~ The bill does not do enough to stop too big to fail banks from gambling trillions of dollars in risky derivatives and credit default swaps ~ whereas banks will still be able to keep gambling a substantial amount of money in derivatives while having access to the discount window at the Fed as well as deposit insurance protecting them if their risky bets don’t pay off.

The Ugly ~ The bill does not break-up too big to fail banks that nearly drove the entire economy off of a cliff nearly two years ago. Right now, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are bigger today than they were before the financial crisis. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, by the Clinton administration in 1998, effectively removed the separation that previously existed between Wall Street investment banks and depository banks which led to the dangerous financial excesses of the Bush years. That ugly reality still exists and could eventually lead to another financial crisis.

Once again, Americans wanted real change with teeth and got token change with lip service ~ which seems to be the ongoing theme of the Obama administration as well as the President himself.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/wall-street-reform-bill-good-bad-and.html

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476 Also accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover .

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Cartoon courtesy of Tom Toles / Washington Post

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

Wall Street Casino Rigged And Dangerous

WALL STREET CASINO RIGGED AND DANGEROUS

The May 6th 700 point intraday Dow Jones slide begs investigation into Wall Street's predatory algorithmic High Frequency Trading (HFT) programs which make up 75% of daily trading and are rigged for and by the house of Goldman Sachs: Allen L Roland

Wall Street is not only a rigged Casino game but in the hands of its principle dealer, Goldman Sachs ~ its a weapon of financial terrorism as witnessed on 9/29/09 and most recently on 5/06/10.

David DeGraw & Max Keiser, AmpedStatus Report , lay out the details in their devastating expose Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10 ~ which is part 3 of a six part series entitled “The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States.”

Excerpts: "If you recall, back in September ‘08, as Congress was voting down the first bailout, the big banks made the market plunge a record 778 points in one day. Fear and panic then led Congress to pass the bailout. Trillions of our tax dollars, the money that we desperately need to keep our society functioning over the long run, then went out the window and into the pockets of the very people who caused the crash. What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever... "

So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was again threatened on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop, a precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.
If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low-level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst your bubble, but this was a direct attack.. "

So where does Goldman Sachs come into the picture ?

" In a market where 70% of all trades are executed by computer algorithms via High Frequency Trading (HFT), Goldman Sachs has the power to make the market crash or rise at will. In fact, Goldman has a major Weapon of Mass Destruction in its Program Trading monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange, as Tyler Durden described on Zero Hedge:

“Goldman’s dominance of the NYSE’s Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity, and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration benefits.

Yesterday [5/6/10], Goldman’s SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse….

Here is the most recently disclosed NYSE program trading data….

What is notable here is that of the 1.4 billion in principal shares, or shares traded for the firm’s own account, Goldman was the top trader by a margin of over 100% compared to the second biggest program trader.
We have long claimed that Goldman is the de facto monopolist of the NYSE’s program trading platform. As such, it is certainly the case that Goldman was instrumental in either a) precipitating yesterday’s crash or b) not providing the critical liquidity which it is required to do, when the time came. There are no other options.”

For further investigation, I turned to Max Keiser, who has written and authored similar Program Trading and HFT computer algorithms. I asked him if he thought this was an attack. Here is what he had to say:
“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy. To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced... "
I can tell you that Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks; all the ’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.... "
Click on here and read this full explosive report ~ http://ampedstatus.com/high-frequency-terrorism-how-the-big-banks-and-federal-reserve-maintained-their-death-grip-over-the-united-states

So now you know how Goldman Sachs (GS) traders made at least $25M every single trading day in Q1, and made more than $100M per day on 35 out of the 63 working days. JPMorgan's trading unit was also loss-free in the first quarter, making an average of $118M daily. They control a computerized market ( Casino ) that is both rigged and dangerous for our financial health.

So here's the bottom line, as David and Max conclude their blockbuster article ~ The bottom line: " the United States has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. Let’s face it, we are all hostages of these financial terrorists and their puppet politicians would rather be in on the scam than defend our interests."

Here's what we are up against ~ $600 million has been spent in bank lobbying, trade association activity and political contributions since March 2008 ~ and that is just from the six biggest banks. The entire financial industry is spending an estimated $1.4 million a day, hiring 70 former members of Congress to make their case.

Nothing will change until truth and transparency are brought to Wall Street, the Glass Steagal Act is restored, criminal charges are filed and the Fed is audited.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wall-street-casino-rigged-and-dangerous.html

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476 Also accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover ~ call (707) 935-1908.

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on http://www.conscioustalk.net/

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY