Feeding Frenzy
Wall Street firms may not actually no anything about how to manage money in a profitable way, but they do seem to understand the basic principle of investing heavily in lobbyists to get what they want from congress:
Wall Street firms, commercial banks and insurers are lobbying on an array of issues — from beating back proposals to make it easier to reduce mortgage debts in bankruptcy courts to fighting, unsuccessfully so far, to retain control over executive pay. [...] Consumer groups say the bankruptcy measure would help reduce the number of foreclosures and ease the financial crisis. “Why is anyone listening to the people who brought us this problem?” asked Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, which supports the bankruptcy change.
Why is anyone listening to the people who brought us this problem? They’re listening because they’re being bribed to listen.
22 Responses to “Feeding Frenzy”
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September 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Myself, I’m going to look for finding out indicators of the yacht industry, and see if new orders start coming in, in order to figure out how much of the $700+ billion rotating account will be left by inauguration day.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am
FROM: http://www.opensecrets.org
From their Top All-Time Donor List for 1989 – 2008:
Goldman Sachs $29,322,212 Dems 63% GOPs 36%
Citigroup, Inc. $24,751,845 Dems 49% GOPs 49%
American Bankers Association $19,973,343 Dems 40% GOPS 59%
JP Morgan Chase $18,510,240 Dems 50% GOPs 48%
Morgan Stanly $17,006,587 Dems 45% GOPs 54%
Bank of America $15,294,250 Dems 46% GOPs 52%
Merrill Lynch $13,734,924 Dems 35% GOPs 63%
Credit Suisse Group $11,437,818 Dems 43% GOPs 55%
Freddie Mac $9,735,290 Dems 43% GOPS 56%
Total comes to $159,766,509
September 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Wall Street firms may not actually no anything about how to manage money in a profitable way
Maybe if they’d decided to “no” some of those crappy MBSs, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Treasury Secretary Paulson was Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs from 1998 to July 2006. Where he accumulated a reported net worth of over $700 Million.
Do you notice that NO ONE at Chris Dodd’s hearing –INCLUDING the Democrats — asked Paulson what he had personally done to cause this mess?
September 25th, 2008 at 9:42 am
What do you expect Wall Street firms to do?
I’m in favor of good regulatory measures to prevent something like this from happening but it’s not as though this whole mess is solely the result of Wall Street evildoers. I don’t recall even Democrats insisting on better regulation of investment banks until well after Bear Stearns blew up.
Now that everyone’s paying attention everyone saw this coming.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:45 am
“Wall Street firms may not actually no anything…”
Via chronic spelling disorder, Matt stumbles into insight on the essence of the problem.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
lowellfield: Us crazy extremist liberal dirty hippie Democrats have been screaming about investment bank deregulation ever since it was a mantra of crazy old man Reagan.
People seemed to listen to us when it destroyed an entire section of our banking system known as the “Savings & Loan Industry”, but the cleanup went so smoothly that everyone decided that losing $200 billion on that wasn’t so bad — after all, a lot of really rich people got even richer during that plunder.
We can’t help it that part of our party was taken over by people who thought crazy Republican ideas of deregulation and corporate misrule were really great ideas.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Re lowellfield’s comment “Now that everyone’s paying attention everyone saw this coming.”
————-
That’s bullshit. There were plenty of people warning about the Wall Street casino in years past –they just couldn’t get on the floors of COngress or on the TV screens or get a hearing in the New York Times.
And the situation WON’T get fixed. I saw this same shit with the Savings and Loan crisis in 1989 — McCain was there then as well, with his guilty look and rich campaign donor.
This is all a two-faced play. Democrats will claim to be for the common citizen — then will Whore themselves in the back rooms to rich men and fuck us again when the bill comes due.
Nothing changes –not even our ignorance and gullability.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I’m not making this up:
FROM: http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/71835/Bush-Scares-Nation%2C-Bailout-Gains-Momentum
“Bush Scares Nation, Bailout Gains Momentum”
Pelosi & Reid must be shaking, just shaking I tell ya!
September 25th, 2008 at 9:55 am
There were plenty of people warning about the Wall Street casino in years past –they just couldn’t get on the floors of COngress or on the TV screens or get a hearing in the New York Times.
But that’s just my point. If our government isn’t going to demand that banks have sound lending and capitalization practices, we shouldn’t expect banks to have sound lending and capitalization practices. And everybody was making money on the way up, not just Dick Fuld.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:58 am
A condition for the firms taking money in the bailout should be a suspension of political contributions (including those from senior executives) and lobbying expenditures until they have repaid the money they received. Why should these firms use American taxpayers’ money to undermine our democracy and work against our interests?
justin
September 25th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I wonder if an emergency resolution to clear the Capitol building of all non-government employees for the next 72 hours would be legal. There might be implications about the citizenry having access to their representitives, but hearings and votes would still be accessible to the public via c-Span.
I don’t think they need outside “Wall Street expert” advice, since there is so much of that on the staffs of Bernanke and Paulson.
I’m still up in the air about this bailout, but one thing I know, the less input from lobbyists the better the bill will be.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Investing in lobbying should hardly surprise us. The return on investment is often upwards of 10,000% Who wouldn’t invest in something like that?
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