Beware of bankers and their ‘centrism’
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Obama and his crew had better be nicer to the banks, or the banks will stop shovelling money to the Democrats’ side of the trough.
“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” a bank CEO has told the New York Times.
So what does the CEO mean by balance and centrism? He means caring at least as much about the banks as you care about the nation’s poor. Worry about the mortgage lenders and foreclosure artists as much as you worry about the struggling homeowners and piss-poor former homeowners. Preserve the multimillion-dollar incomes as you try to give a hand-up to those who lost their working-class jobs.
Cuz, you know, there are always two sides to consider. The plutocrats deserve just as much consideration as the poor.
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Oh, the derivatives crap irritates me too, SJ. Partly because the word always conjures an image in my head of the suit-and-tie A-holes who dream up derivatives. My jaw always tightens when I think of them.
@Stimpson, Holte, Bee, Lazer, Oso, Mad Mike-
How quickly that talk of outlawing “derivatives” died eh?
Derivatives are really a phenomenon of the 21st century here in America right after the dotcom bubble when everybody was losing confidence in the markets. Then bam, a new bullshit financial product/instrument to believe in… It’s like the steroids proliferation in baseball after the strike. Everybody wanted to believe again, and lets face it, without all the juicing we would probably have entered an era of dominant star pitchers… who are never as exciting as power hitters, -pitchers don’t even play often enough for one thing.
We knew Sosa and McGuire were loaded with drugs, and then pretended it was a scandal in 2007, 2008, 2009.
It’s the same deal with derivatives, they operate as hedges on hedges at times and what is lost is a very important but hardly ever discussed concept in finance called “chain of origination.”
Chain of origination is the connective distance (in interceding instruments or institutions) between an indidivual investor or lender and the initial base asset of value itself, the thing, the investment.
Derivatives can put so much distance between an investment that started with: a high interest bank loan/ on a overvalued home/ residing in a fund / bought into by a hedge fund / that is traded as a stock / that is insured by a holding company / that is in turn sold as a stock again / that is part of a retirement fund and so on until the moment a little old lady in Harlem, New York City contributing to her municipal fund has no idea she is 20 steps removed from investing in a summer house for white supremacists in Orange County, California.
Sorry for the long reply, this is a subject that really puts a weed up my ass.
-SJ
There was a time when the banks depended on the people to put money in their bank so the they could operate. Now it seems that the banks have somehow gotten all of the money and we have none. I say we go back to the Mason Jars in the back yards folks. They don’t pay any interest but they don’t rip us off either.
Holte and Stimpson,I agree. I don’t like to hear of profiting on someone else’s loss. Say if a company lays off its workers, and the value of their stock goes UP?
That’s effing obscene.
Aaargh, that derivatives nonsense! It’s just side bets on the financial markets. I’m no high-finance genius, but it seems to me that derivatives trading shouldn’t even be allowed.
Derivatives shouldn’t be allowed, nor should short trading, which was actually banned in Australia after the crash, they just can’t be satisfied with making a profit, it has to be a massive profit, which leads to massive bonuses.
They got some shenanigans going on with HR 4173,financial reform bill.
one of the reforms is to make derivatives trade thru an Exchange rather than Over The Counter (OTC).So instead of Party A trading with Party B, they trade thru an Exchange which verifies each parties ability to pay and that the derivative is properly structured.Not perfect but it’s something.
Apparently the Agriculture committee has the “Peterson Amendment” to HR 4173 which changes the wording for the Finance bill’s Exchange from an “entity” to “a person or an entity”. So to my somewhat addled brain this means you can take some guy off the street,make him put on a shirt and hand him a phone and Voila the guy’s an Exchange and can now handle derivatives trading regulation.
These bastards got to be watched every minute!
“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” a bank CEO has told the New York Times.
This is the first of many threats that will result from the SCOTUS’ latest ruling that allows corporations to give as much as they wish to candidate’s campaigns.
Quite frankly Obama is too much of a “centrist” for my liking. Apparently the banking Fat cats want him to swing to the right….
Stimpson, you nailed that one. “what support” is what I have to ask. I work for a bank, and I can tell you this. Every single person in my office, with the exception of myself and the Jehovah’s Witness (who doesn’t involve herself in politics at all) is a republican. Half are what some might call “moderate” republicans. The other half are stark raving loony teabaggers. The upper echelons…well, they wouldn’t stoop so low as to be a teabagger, but they certainly have no problem promoting their myths.