Banks run Congress, top Democrat says
Published: June 1, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the banking and financial services industry has an outsized influence in Congress.
Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase each got bailouts of $25 billion in government bailouts last year. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs got $10 billion apiece. And AIG, the mammoth insurer that lost billions in bad derivatives bets, has sucked in more than $170 billion.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is reticent about bailing out an American state — California.
Collin Peterson, Democratic Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, says he knows who to blame.
“The banks run the place,” Peterson told the New York Times in Monday’s editions. “I will tell you what the problem is — they give three times more money than the next biggest group. It’s huge the amount of money they put into politics.”
Peterson has introduced a bill to regulate derivatives trading — the pesky financial instruments that nearly brought down the US financial system. Derivatives involve writing insurance on various complex financial transactions, such as providing insurance to investors in the event of massive defaults on home mortgages.
But he says that Republicans have watered down his bill. He wants derivatives trading to take place on public exchanges — much like the New York Stock Exchange — rather than through private clearinghouses, which are managed by banks.
Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, meanwhile, would prefer the transactions be monitored by the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. Bankers appear to prefer this option, given that the New York Fed has been lenient on them in the past.
Geithner has been criticized for his close relationships with banking industry executives. His proposal to regular derivatives traded through private clearinghouses mirrors that of the bank’s own proposals.
How much did President Barack Obama receive in contributions from those employed in the financial sector?
$69,823,872 if you include real estate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Sen. John McCain got $60,605,254, with the total between the two exceeding $130 million).
The biggest donor to the presidential campaigns? The banks. Followed by lawyers and lobbyists, at $95 million. The banking and financial services industry have their own lobbyists, so the total donations of the industry are undercounted.
All told, according to the New York Times, financial sector employees gave $152 million in political donations from 2007 to 2008. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Credit Suisse gave $22.7 million and spent a combined total of $25 million on lobbying activities — in a single year.
And President George W. Bush’s largest individual donor employer in 2004? MBNA, the credit card behemoth that was bought up by — Bank of America.
Remarkably, though, it’s the secretive, private trading of derivatives — where those buying insurance have no idea what others are paying, and those buying bank stocks have no idea what they’re actually buying — that nearly brought the US financial markets to their knees.
“Peterson’s bill specifically bars derivatives trading in a clearinghouse regulated by the New York Federal Reserve, which he said in an interview ‘is a tool of the big banks’ that ‘wouldn’t do much’ to regulate the contracts,” the Times wrote. “Because the banks’ lobbyists persuaded some of his Republican colleagues to resist more sweeping changes, Mr. Peterson said, he has had to modify a bill he introduced that is similar to Mr. Harkin’s in calling for wide-ranging limits on derivatives.”
The banks have had their heyday in Congress in recent years. This year, they succeeded in preventing the Senate from passing a provision that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to unilaterally reduce the principal amount on mortgages. And in 2005, the massive “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention” bill passed by Congress made it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy.
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Guess who is Obama’s biggest contributor????
read this please, if you know a better journalist than Greg Palast drop me a reply would you.
Screw the autoworkers.
They may be crying about General Motors’ bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won’t spoil Jamie Dimon’s day.
Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders - led by Morgan and Citibank - expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.
The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.
I smell a rat.
Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama’s ‘Car Czar’ - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.
When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what’s left. That’s the law. What workers don’t lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.
But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.
Here’s the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM’s stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.
Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.
Preventive Detention for Pensions
So what’s wrong with seizing workers’ pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it’s illegal.
In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can’t seize workers’ pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that’s because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.
The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as “fiduciaries.” Here’s the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government’s own web site under the heading, “Health Plans and Benefits.”
“The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.”
Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it’s not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank’s a little short. A plan’s assets are for the plan’s members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.
Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker’s spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another “Guantanamo” moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.
Filching GM’s pension assets doesn’t become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must
“…act prudently and must diversify the plan’s investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.”
By “diversify” for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company’s stock.
This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.
House of Rubin
Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don’t even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren’t asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?
As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who’ve already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama’s point-man in winning banks’ endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).
With GM’s last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank’s “finest year ever.”
Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?
And it’s been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner’s youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. “Owning” is a loose term. Cerberus “owned” Chrysler the way a cannibal “hosts” you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany’s Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler’s bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.
(”Cerberus,” by the way, named itself after the Roman’s mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)
While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner’s personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama’s working class hero.
If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers’ funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat’s plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.
It doesn’t make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.
Too bad you’re not a member of the White House Press Corps, natty.
Somebody with ammo like this needs to get in their face on the public record. Raw Story is a great site, but the cattle don’t feed here.
Interesting..
So does anyone still doubt this is a plutocracy, owned by business interests? It doesn’t matter which political party is in power, it doesn’t matter how many promises are made, in fact, nothing matters. The American people will continue to get fucked on a daily basis as they try to live their increasingly difficult lives, and greed will continue to destroy our democracy and the planet.
Bill Moyers said it best: “Money ruined democracy.” Nader said, “One Party-Two Suits”. IL Sen. Dick Durbin said, “The banks own this senate.” Joe Biden voted for the Bankruptcy Bill to screw the American consumer.-joined by the two Walton Arkansas puppets-both Democrats of course. Chris Dodd & Bill Clinton both helped Phil Gramm in 1999 to end regulations for the banking industry. It goes on & on. Campaign $$$=election=power=re-election=forget The People.
Well… duuuhhh!!!
Where has this guy Collin Peterson been since he was born that he just now realizes the banks run Congress without noting that they have run the entire planet since way before his entry into this world.
It all started with a small tax dispute case, Santa Clara County V Southern Pacific Railroad. and a little bit of court shenanigan by a court clerk named Bancroft Davis
Who had his own agenda, because he had served as president to the board of directors for The Newburg & New York Railroad Co. What in blazes he was doing there as a court clerk to begin with is unknown.
Anyway, in the preamble to the case, Chief Justice Morrison Waite said “We can all agree that equal protection under the law applies to these corporations as well.” After the case was decided, the foot notes were put together by none other than a railroad man who took it upon himself to include the equal protection under the law quote from the preamble as part of the summary judgment handed down. Its all the more amazing considering that the case wasn’t about equal protection at all. In fact the court skirted the issue altogether.
With that small act Mr. Davis, opened a gargantuan can of worms that spawns the corruption of government officials and all forms of sordid affairs too numerous to mention.
The immutable facts are …corporations exist and do business by the good will of the state. A corporation cannot exist without the consent and authority of the state. They can’t hold elective office, they can’t be sworn as citizens, nor can they be arrested. And most importantly they don’t enjoy the right to vote.
If they can’t be sworn in, hold office, be arrested and can’t vote, tell us how did they get the right to petition the government to redress a grievance?”
Read this and pay close attention to the date…
Full press pool report:
Pool report #5
November 10, 2008
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
President Bush escorted President-elect Obama out of the Oval Office and walked him to down to the motorcade waiting on the south driveway.
(Josh Bolten separately escorted John Podesta to a car much further back in the motorcade.)
As they walked down the path, the president could be seen pointing things out to his soon-to-be successor.
They did not linger at the car and the motorcade took off at 3:45 p.m.
Michelle Obama left before her husband for her own separate schedule in Washington for the remainder of the day and will be traveling separately back to Chicago later tonight.
We’re not being told what she will be doing in her extra time here, so we leave it to your imagination and reportorial instincts.
The motorcade encountered crowds of people gathered outside the White House as it made its way off campus and headed toward Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
After arriving, President-elect Obama went into a previously unannounced “private” meeting at the airport’s Fire Station 301.
We’re not being told who it’s with but it will last about an hour. Podesta was not in the meeting, or at least did not stay around in the meeting,
because he was spotted walking the other direction down the tarmac a few minutes after we arrived.
O Force One Frequent Flier Bonus Points to the first blogger to post 10 guesses about the identity of today’s future cabinet secretary.
I’ll bite. This has been posted numerous times. Not sure if it’s been you each time, regardless…what exactly are you saying? If there was someone in there that you have proof about, spill the beans!!!!
Either give some facts or quit the bullshit seedlings that report nothing and offer speculation on everything!
This is the whole problem.. We’ve been sold out, by BOTH PARTIES.
Worse still, the only people who can fix the mess are the ones profiting from it… Toss in the collusion factor from their pals who own the main stream press, and there’s no hope for reform.
What the hell are we supposed to do, lobby our own congress for the representation we are owed?
This is terrible and its only going to get worse.
The only hope we have is to just throw incumbents out in 2010.. But in this politically polarized atmosphere, I doubt that will happen.
We’re just sunk.
Honest Abe I don’t get it. Podesta maybe? What are you trying to say? that obushama is the same snake eyed beast whose mother lives under the sea with seven heads?
So, let’s see. We vote for Congressional and Executive leaders, who pay no attention to those who vote them into office. Instead, these elected leaders pay attention to the corporations who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to their campaigns. Why? Because it’s the money from corporations that are being used to influence US to vote for them.
The voter doesn’t count. The voter is being used through a collusion between politician and corporation. The corporations make the deals with the politicians. If those deals mean that workers lose their pensions, if workers lose purchasing power, or if workers lose their jobs, then that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Voters have no power. The democratic republic has become a fascist state.
Corporations gave us the financial meltdown, but don’t want Congress to pass reform. So what happens? Reform that looks good on paper, but it’s the kind that will have plenty of loopholes for corporations to again send the economy into yet another tailspin. Why? Because, as two Congressmen have now concluded, “the banks own Congress.”
They select so we may elect.
Rigged game.
Multi-millionaires run our Government, and continue to profit before, during, and after their terms in office. All of this paid for by those that have never respected human rights, or even thought of those without money and property as “human”. The Feudalistic world we left in Europe when we came to America followed us here, used the vast resources to build a massive empire, and are now choking out all those that might stand against them (including those that raised them to power).
The rest of the world will quickly catch on to what America is doing, and since she put most of her industrial production (except a lot of the big military machines) off shore, she will be ill suited to care for her own once the rest of the world cuts her off. Of course, with a massive military and lots of Nukes, you don’t really care about the dirty masses.. the ruling elite will always be taken care of (with the deaths of the dirty poor fodder left in America).
Well, they have accumulated all of that wealth by stealing it from the people. The people need to grow a spine and take back that which is ours–and time is of the essence. I think people need to realize that with victory comes sacrifice and if they are unwilling to make the sacrifice, then we’ll deserve what we get.
It seems more and more to me that the war on terror has really been a war on the citizens of western democracies, such as the UK. They have been experiencing similar problems with their leaders–corruption, police state-like stuff, loss of rights all to “keep us safe” from faceless terrorists (the boogeyman). And what made the war on terror possible on a global scale?
I find it very interesting that just when the riots were really starting to break out in the UK and Europe, suddenly the Swine flu pops up on the scene and everybody runs home in fear of a “pandemic.”
I think this is a pivotol moment in history and how the people respond to this difficult situation will determine the order of the world for generations to come. Do we want freedom or do we want servitude for our children and future generations to come? It’s up to us. Nobody is going to save us; we must save ourselves.
The big question is how?
I fear the “how” is untenable.. in that, we simply have too many people (most of whom are woefully undereducated) and no way to gain a consensus.
When this country was founded, there were only about 3 million people in the entire nation; a billion and a 1/2 world wide.. Scarcity caused problems but the abundant space in places like this (America) let everyone just go off and do their thing; consumption wasn’t the driving factor, production was. As technology moved us forward, it also caused a population problem; that unchecked problem led to a massive education problem and the consumption motivation to keep everything running means we have way too many people that all just “want stuff” and aren’t very educated nor smart.
Said another way, 250 years ago a few great men could speak to the small total population and everyone was on the same page, they all wanted to be, it mattered to them (their survival kind of depended on it). …. today, the few great men are shouting to the din of hundreds of millions of brain-dead shopping cart pushers driving along in their loud bling-machines and the masses have decided that “technology” is just some magic box that takes care of their needs.. TV, refrigerators, microwaves, cars, cell phones, iPods, etc. etc.
Too many too stupid and willfully ignorant people means there isn’t a “solution”, there isn’t a “how”. We live in a house of cards; illusions created on unsustainable foundations that, unfortunately, will have to crumble before anything ’substantial’ happens. The ruling elite are simply doing their best to keep the lid on the pressure cooker while also living like gods.. We’d have a lot more time if the ruling elite were willing to sacrifice a little, but most of the world has almost nothing to sacrifice.
Guess who is Obama’s biggest contributor?
And how much money they’ve donated
$69,823,872
Do Banks Run Congress?
http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5412
.
Ummm, yeah…those “employed by the financial sector” also include tellers making minimum wage, secretaries and administrative assistants who pay more taxes percentage wise than their bosses, and a whole lot of other hourly employees who work “in the financial sector” but don’t have the benefit of top 1% salaries.
I was in a family for more than 26 years who after marrying in jolned a huge criminal system which included the big banks. Their job back then was to launder criminal money into property using high administer in big banks to hide property ownership using mortgage fraud schemes. The Chicago Tribune did a nice investigation about Mortgage fraud some time ago but failed to surface the big bank high administrators who are involved in World Wide Drug Distribution.
Meet the family:
Mexico drug plane used for US ‘rendition’ flights: report
Sep 4, 2008
– http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg
Please note the family are considered CIA Assets and add that they are linked to big banks among many others too. Don’t forget to notice that ~4 TONS of cocaine too. Clyde O’Connor is my ex-sister-in-law’s brother and her husband is my ex-wife’s brother who is a business partner and money man with Clyde. Also, who prepared and setup their air distribution business in Florida was Obama while he worked at a law firm in Chicago in the 90’s. Dr Orl Taits, attorney in Cal, researched and found more than 130 properties owned by Obama. Please note that property is used as payment for services done.
The purpose for the huge drug shipments is to FUND Black Operations here in the US in support of another White House Coup. They started their criminal operations in the late 70’s and were part of Iran/Contra in the 80’s while I was still married. They were scared during that time and worried they were going to be arrested but nothing ever happened — guess why?
Back in the 90’s through the end of 1996, I was told about 911 in detail, other State Run Terrorist acts and much more. The family still continued to launder drug money and remains at large to this day. Being a CIA Asset says you never have to pay any consequences.
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
“The more corrupt the state, the more laws.” Tacitus, Publius Cornelius
http://quotationsbook.com/quote/22717/