Arithmetic- 2012 Election

Video uploaded by CSPAN

Well alrighty then, good skit by Eastwood and great speech by former President Bill Clinton where some are saying they would vote for him again for president. Lets look at the reason to why no president could fix the economy in just four years. Here is one answer, The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

Many commentators have stated that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s repeal of the affiliation restrictions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 was an important cause of the late-2000s financial crisis. Some critics of that repeal argue it permitted Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors' money that was held in affiliated commercial banks. Others have argued that the activities linked to the financial crisis were not prohibited (or, in most cases, even regulated) by the Glass–Steagall Act. Commentators, including the American Bankers Association in January 2010, have also argued that the ability of commercial banking firms to acquire securities firms (and of securities firms to convert into bank holding companies) helped mitigate the financial crisis.

President Bill Clinton’s signing statement for the GLBA summarized the established argument for repealing Glass-Steagall Section’s 20 and 32 in stating that this change, and the GLBA’s amendments to the Bank Holding Company Act, would “enhance the stability of our financial services system” by permitting financial firms to “diversify their product offerings and thus their sources of revenue” and make financial firms “better equipped to compete in global financial markets.”

Robert Kuttner, Joseph Stiglitz, Elizabeth Warren, Robert Weissman, and others have tied Glass-Steagall repeal to the late-2000s financial crisis. Kuttner acknowledged “de facto enroads” before Glass-Steagall “repeal” but argued the GLBA’s “repeal” had permitted “super-banks” to “re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s”, which he characterized as “lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way.” Stiglitz argued “the most important consequence of Glass-Steagall repeal” was in changing the culture of commercial banking so that the “bigger risk” culture of investment banking “came out on top.” He also argued the GLBA “created ever larger banks that were too big to be allowed to fail”, which “provided incentives for excessive risk taking.” Warren explained Glass-Steagall had kept banks from doing “crazy things.” She credited FDIC insurance, the Glass-Steagall separation of investment banking, and SEC regulations as providing “50 years without a crisis” and argued that crises returned in the 1980s with the “pulling away of the threads” of regulation. Weissman agrees with Stiglitz that the “most important effect” of Glass-Steagall “repeal” was to “change the culture of commercial banking to emulate Wall Street's high-risk speculative betting approach.”

Proposed reenactment:

During the 2009 House of Representatives consideration of H.R. 4173, the bill that became the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) proposed an amendment to the bill that would have reenacted Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32 and also prohibited bank insurance activities. The amendment was not voted on by the House.

On December 16, 2009, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced in the Senate the “Banking Integrity Act of 2009” (S.2886), which would have reinstated Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32, but was not voted on by the Senate.

Before the Senate acted on its version of what became the Dodd-Frank Act, the Congressional Research Service issued a report describing securities activities banks and their affiliates had conducted before the GLBA. The Report stated Glass-Steagall had “imperfectly separated, to a certain degree” commercial and investment banking and described the extensive securities activities the Federal Reserve Board had authorized for “Section 20 affiliates” since the 1980s.

The Obama Administration has been criticized for opposing Glass-Steagall reenactment. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified to the Joint Economic Committee that he opposed reenacting Glass-Steagall and that he did not believe “the end of Glass-Steagall played a significant role” in causing the financial crisis.

On April 12, 2011, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced in the House the “Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2011” (H.R. 1489), which would amend the Federal Deposit Insurance Act to add prohibitions on FDIC insured bank affiliations instead of reenacting the affiliation restrictions in Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32, direct federal banking regulators and courts to interpret these affiliation provisions and Glass-Steagall Sections 16 and 21 in accordance with the Supreme Court decision in Camp, and repeal various GLBA changes to the Bank Holding Company Act.

On July 7, 2011, Representative Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY) introduced in the House the “Glass-Steagall Restoration Act of 2011” (H.R. 2451), which would reinstate Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32.

Conclusion: 

Well now this is very important to the financial world and with all these entities regulating themselves under the umbrella of The Federal Reserve, their not in trouble, the American taxpayers are the FED has them covered, Bail Out. So Bill Clinton is right no president can fix this in 4 years and with that we hear once again the word change. The Republicans blame the Democrats and vice-a-versa, we hear the same thing every 4 years.

You know something, both parties are at fault and so are we, the American people. We're not going to see change anytime soon instead of listening to political body's blaming each other we need to fix just that. Since the government has taken on the role of business and many are not happy with business today, you can vote every day in America or the world for that matter by simply not doing business with the entities who are screwing up.  All the bills, amendments to the pile of laws governing this luxury of business won't amount to a hill of beans if you don't buy. We don't have to wait for another politician to save our ass from either party, once you know the game you know the players, pick who you will do business with, your stronger at this point instead of listening to the sound of change.

Bill Clinton mentioned arithmetic, neither side knows arithmetic. My third-grade teacher gave us a tip to help with the spelling of arithmetic, little did she know she was envisioning the future of our country, here is that spelling tip.

A rat in the house may eat the ice cream.

Government, Corporation, Consumer, Unity