Obama was in a position to hold Wall Street accountable.
He could have placed conditions on the bail out.
It was the moment of truth for a true leader.
We bail you out, you provide financial relief to the public.
He was in the position to hold their feet to the fire.
Instead, nothing. WEAK.
And no meaningful regulation since???
Not if it will happen again, just when.
izonfire wrote:
Dude, for real? I'm guessing you watch Fox "news".
This is an extremely complex subject, and I'm only going to be able to scratch the surface here, but a little research shows those statements to be utter excrement. I don't mean this to be personal, as I think anyone who likes "Tropic Thunder" has a good core, but your intel is bad. I'm going to cut and paste from Wikipedia here mostly for shorthand. You can confirm or refute this summary with more extensive research, but this is a decent thumbnail of SOME of what happened under Obama's watch.
Before I go there, please keep in mind that it wasn't like Obama got elected and then the economy went to cr@p. The recession was foreseen by many experts in advance, and by September, Obama's best ally in the election was the mess Bush 43 was leaving him. It's as if you came upon a train wreck, learned that the shift change happened two minutes before the wreck, and wanted to blame the relief engineer who was just coming on shift. Keeping in mind the steaming heap that Bush left, let's dig in a little bit:
...The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank) is a United States federal law that was enacted on July 21, 2010. The law overhauled financial regulation in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and it made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation's financial services industry.
Dodd-Frank reorganized the financial regulatory system, eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision, assigning new responsibilities to existing agencies like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and creating new agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB was charged with protecting consumers against abuses related to credit cards, mortgages, and other financial products. The act also created the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Office of Financial Research to identify threats to the financial stability of the United States, and gave the Federal Reserve new powers to regulate systemically important institutions. To handle the liquidation of large companies, the act created the Orderly Liquidation Authority. One provision, the Volcker Rule, restricts banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments. The act also repealed the exemption from regulation for security-based swaps, requiring credit-default swaps and other transactions to be cleared through either exchanges or clearinghouses. Other provisions affect issues such as corporate governance, 1256 Contracts, and credit rating agencies....
The amount of financial regulation was left wanting in some areas, IMHO, and possibly a bit heavy-handed in others. You can also make compelling arguments both for and against the bailouts, especially since it wasn't just banks, which the FDIC would have presumably had to bail out if they failed. However, given the depth and breadth of the recession, and the relative brevity of the time it took to recover, I think Obama did a pretty damned good job. Other than getting the foot in the door with the ACA, as parts have been killed off by Trump, but much of the country has begun to see affordable health care as a right (the main thing I had personally been hoping for from the ACA, especially as someone who has battled chronic illnesses), I don't think Obama's admin was all that impressive. At least not until Captain Dumpster Fire took over. What Obama did NOT do now pales by comparison.
So, what has Trump (and for 2 years a Republican legislature, further enabled once the effing Dems took over the House) done with those reforms? Wiped out as much as possible. Quoting from CNBC here, and yes, you can research the veracity of this as well,
...It raises the threshold to $250 billion from $50 billion under which banks are deemed too important to the financial system to fail. Those institutions also would not have to undergo stress tests or submit so-called living wills, both safety valves designed to plan for financial disaster. It eases mortgage loan data reporting requirements for the overwhelming majority of banks....
More? Tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, with negligible tangible benefits to the 99%, and now the corporations are afraid to hire, build infrastructure, amass inventory to a reasonably comfortable degree, etc., all because the guy who thinks Chaos = Genius keeps farking up trade. Did anyone even notice when India lost preferred trade status with the U.S. a couple weeks back? Didn't think so.
I could go on here, but there is a 32767 character limit here, and I don't want to multipart this. Trump has done everything he can to undo anything Obama did, and I suspect it is not only to make conservatives and businesses happy, including his own businesses which he still holds and those of his family and friends, but I think he is fixated with wiping out as much of Obama as he can. It started with the birther garbage and probably included burning all of the furniture the Obamas used and replacing it with new stuff. Probably all gold-plated.
Trump failing to pass "meaningful regulation" would actually have been an improvement over what he HAS done, which is drag us backwards. This is, after all, a guy who loves coal and thinks windmills kill birds and give off noise that causes cancer. Calling Trump a moron is an insult to morons. Sorry. Just couldn't let that sit unanswered.
Edited by user
7 years ago |
Reason: Not specified
