The continuing saga of political class incompetency and embarrassments starts here:
1) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 30, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, banks, insurers, and other financial institutions have ponied up $10 million to members of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Pretty disgraceful show of business cronies supporting their political cronies for favorable government treatment.
The really embarrassing part of this bribery scheme is that there are a whopping 61 Congressmen and women that actually sit on this committee. 61 members is about 14% of the entire House of Representatives. These 61 obviously know where to go to get the money they need to stay in office. You can bet if this committee had something to do with an insignificant part of the economy, unlike financial services, there would NOT be 61 members clamoring to get on the committee. Disgraceful.
2) In a related set of insanity involving the financial services industry, consider an article from the latest edition of Business Week. The Dodd-Frank legislation that was supposed to fix all of the problems in the financial services industry so that another “Great Recession” never happened again, was passed into law three years ago. We have shown numerous times how the tenets of this law are already proving inadequate to stop financial services misdeeds with the collapse of MF Global being just one glaring example.
However, according to the article, one reason why this legislation may not be working, besides the fact that is was a horrible piece of legislation, is the fact that less than 40% of the processes and regulations that are needed to implement Dodd-Frank have not yet been written. At this rate, it will take at least 7-8 years to implement the legislation, a time length that will likely render anything positive in the law, if there is anything positive, obsolete, as the world moves on.
How poorly is a piece of legislation written if it takes years and years to make it operational> In 7-8 years, the country will likely have gone through at least two more recessions, given historical patterns, any one of which could be caused by the same factors that caused the Great Recession.
Obama recently called a meeting to find out what the problem is and the attendees at the meeting are a good indication of why this is a snail-like process. At the meeting were people representing the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Bureau, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nine Federal bureaucracies are working on operationalizing Dodd-Frank and they cannot get out of their own way.
Nine Federal entities and less than 40% of the way there after three years. And many of these entities were the very ones that should have seen the Great Recession coming and were asleep at the wheel until the recession hit them in the face. What are the odds they can even operationalize the legislation, given their history of ineptness?
Thus, we have legislation written by people that probably never read it or understood what was in it which was then handed off to massive Federal bureaucracies that have to make it work even though they have not done their watchdog jobs in the past. Oh yeah, this is going to work out fine. Just like Obama Care, this is what happens when politicians pass bills that are well over a thousand pages long.
3) Staying with the financial services industry again, a recent article in Business Week reported on a Federal Reserve analysis and conclusion that five years after the Great Recession began, major U.S. banks are still not fully ready for the next economic disaster.
The Fed found that although these banks have increased their capital levels, recent financial stress tests indicate the banks have not done enough to test for and anticipate major changes and trends in the economy. This puts them on a par with the Washington political class and the nine Federal bureaucracies listed above who are also not prepared to protect Americans from the next economic blow up. Failure all around.
4) Over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed. This pathetic situation has resulted in many, many Americans defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes or putting them under intense financial pressure to make their house payments. A very sad situation as the dream of home ownership is shot down by the economy.
But, that has not stopped the Obama administration from spending $313 million of taxpayer wealth on mortgages …for Palestinian homeowners. Yes, American taxpayers are paying for the funding of $313 million in home mortgages for Palestinians living in the West Bank, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report .
And to add insult to injury, the U.S. will also guarantee $110 million in loans to small- and medium-sized businesses located on the West Bank. The mortgage and business-loan activities will be managed by the Federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). “OPIC is the U.S. Government’s development finance institution,” says OPIC’s website. “OPIC provides financial products, such as loans and guaranties; political risk insurance; and support for investment funds, all of which help American businesses expand into emerging markets.”
Home mortgages for Palestinians, the same people that hate us for our support of Israel? Small business funding for Palestinian businesses when small businesses in America are being smothered and stamped out by Obama Care and other onerous government regulations? Hundreds of millions of dollars going to the one of the most corrupt government entities in the world? Ridiculous.
These wastes of money could have helped some struggling American families and small businesses. These wastes of money could have helped pay down the debt or provided tax relief to American taxpayers. These wastes of money could have kept White House tours operational for over 400 hundred years. But no, it will be sent half way around the world to people that hate us and our country. Pathetic.
5) Former Speaker of the House and current Congressional member, Nancy Pelosi is estimated to be worth in excess of $35 million according to the website, Celebrity Worth. In a “60 Minutes” report that we reviewed in this blog:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html
it was shown that she participated in up to nine different corporate IPOs, getting special insider financial advantage not available to ordinary Americans. In the space of a few days, she made over $100,000 by participating in the VISA credit card IPO. According to the Celebrity Wealth website, including in her wealth of $35 million is a multimillion dollar winery in California.
Her husband is very active and very wealthy in the California real estate market. Her Congressional salary is less than .5% of her family’s net worth. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is rich beyond most Americans’ dreams.
But ask her to take a pay cut for the good of the country and she goes ballistic. Earlier in the year when the sequester was requiring the Federal government to reduce the overall Federal budget by a nominal amount, Ms. Pelosi had this to say: “I don’t think we should do it [cut the pay of Congressional members, people who earn more than three times the average U.S. household income]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”
Rather than cut their salaries, at least this member of Congress thinks it would be a blow to their so-called dignity. Apparently it is better, as a result of the sequester, to terminate White House tours, cut air traffic controller resources to inconvenience millions of America travelers, cut educational aid to native American schools, etc. than it is to ask a Congressional member worth over $35 million to give back a few thousand dollars to the American taxpayer in these times of economic stress.
Given the low performance of the current set of Washington politicians in Washington, there are many other words that I would use to describe their performance and results and none of them include the words dignity, respect, and reward. If these people were paid for the work they do in a merit based system, they would starve to death. The arrogance of these politicians is beyond disgraceful.
So, let’s review. Politicians that fight to be on the best Congressional committee to extort money for reelection purposes. Politicians that write cumbersome, inane laws that cannot be put into effect three years after they are passed. Politicians that fund home mortgage loans and small business loans for foreigners halfway around the world while American families and businesses suffer. And at least one politicians that thinks she is too valuable to have a pay cut despite being worth over $35 million. Pathetic is too kind of a word to describe these people.
And we are still not done for their insanity this month, more to follow at least through tomorrow.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
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Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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