Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, July 17, 2010 7:59:32 AM
I've gone on at length here in the past about what was at the center of this economic problem here, the subprime mortgage mess and the housing crisis. I've also ranted often about the players in Washington DC that used the Credit Reform Act to create this problem, most prominently Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank. So, when this bill passed and I saw the two of them posing for victory pictures on the Hill, I started getting night sweats.
But I try to be a reasonable guy, so I waited until I could actually get a chance to read through the bill. It took me a few days, and I'm here to tell you that this is worse than their health care. 2300 pages of gobbledygook.
First of all, some of the clearest things there (there is a lot of fuzz) involves providing legal access into corporate board rooms by unions and outside activist groups. But that's politics, you know? I guess they want to use their friends to maintain some sort of transparency.
Secondly, there is not a fargin' word in there about the two monstrosities that were at the center of all this: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. THEY don't need to be regulated. Are you kidding me?
But the really crazy thing is the eternal hodge podge of new regulatory bodies that are given birth by this thing. Dozens and dozens of them. Many of them are simply given a mission, and no guidelines at all reagrding exactly what they are supposed to oversee, and how. If the authors of the bill know what they want these groups to do, I'm guessing they are either going to get verbal instructions, or they're going to be allowed to make things up as they go along.
That is where the willful economic ignorance of these politicians comes into play. In the financial world, you make decisions regarding capital formation that go years out, and what you hope for from government is some predictability. If your leaders are trying to be Hugo Chavez, but you can depend on them for that, at least you know where they are going, and you can react the best you can.
This government is not allowing anybody to see their cards. It's as if they want to keep it dark, and have the power to spring out any time and do what they did to most of the auto industry. Corporations are sitting on tons of cash here. They are not expanding and they are not hiring. They waited to see what was being done to them with health care, they waited to see what was being done to them with this mess, and now they are waiting to see what is going to happen with tax levels next year. All of it is being done without any consultation, and hint of predictability, and in an atmosphere where businesses are being spoken of as the Antichrist.
So, in the meantime, unemployment levels stay near 10% and we all pay for extended jobless benefits. And Obama goes to factories and touts how his policies saved us all and "created or saved" three million jobs. And he wonders why only the true believers are dancing to that tune any more.
This is crazy, folks. This not only doesn't focus any where near the original problem, it makes things worse. I have come to expect no less from government. The new thing here is the level of ambition in their direction. Audacity is truly an appropriate part of Obama's biography summation.