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Maria Cantwell In The Spotlight

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November 9, 2009

Meghan McCain’s recent lament in The Daily Beast struck me as rather strange.  She really should know better.  Ms. McCain expressed her frustration over mainstream media treatment of “two of the most prominent women in politics — Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin”.  Ms. McCain felt the coverage received by those two politicians has been so misogynistic that she has nearly given up on the possibility that she may ever see a woman get elected to the Presidency:

It seems to me the male-dominated media suffers from a Goldilocks Syndrome that keeps women from shattering the glass ceiling.  Worse, I fear it will prevent tomorrow’s female leaders from even seeking office.

Of course, if one can see no further than Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin when seeking female Presidential candidates, then despair is inevitable.  In the summer of 2008, after Ms.Clinton faced up to the reality that Barack Obama had won the Democratic nomination, we heard similar doubts expressed by many despondent female supporters of Hillary Clinton — that they would never see a female elected President within their own lifetimes.  At that point, I wrote apiece entitled “Women To Watch”, reminding readers that “there are a number of women presently in the Senate, who got there without having been married to a former President (whose surname could be relied upon for recognition purposes).”  One of those women, whom I discussed at that time, was Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington.  Maria Cantwell has been in the news quite a bit recently and the coverage has been favorable.  As I said in June of 2008, those holding out hope for a female Presidential candidate should keep an eye on her.

In our highly-partisan political climate, one rarely hears a national politician break from “party line” rhetoric and talking points while being interviewed by the news media or when writing commentary pieces for news publications and blogs.  Nevertheless, Senator Cantwell has taken the bold step of criticizing, not only the administration’s handling of the economic crisis, but the K Street payoff culture enlisting her fellow Democrats as enablers of the status quo.

On October 30, Senator Cantwell wrote a piece for The Huffington Post, decrying the fact that those financial institutions benefiting from the massive bailouts from TARP and the Federal Reserve “have resumed their old habit of using other people’s money to gamble with the same risky unregulated derivatives that led us into this crisis.”  The reason for the failure at every level of the federal government to even consider appropriate legislation or regulations to rein-in continuing irresponsible behavior by those institutions was candidly discussed by the Senator:

Look no further than the powerful lobbying arm of the financial services sector, which has spent at least $220 million this year lobbying Congress to stave off new rules to prevent another collapse.  That is over $500,000 in lobbying for every member of Congress, which might help explain why, to date, nothing has been fixed in our porous financial regulatory system.  Americans want to know when Congress will put an end to the Wall Street’s secret off-book gambling schemes and restore our capitalist system by requiring real transparency and true competition.

Senator Cantwell’s essay is essential reading, coming on the heels of a rebuke, by her fellow Democrats, against efforts at requiring transparency in the trading of credit default swaps:

Imposing full transparency and true competition will require moving derivative trades onto regulated exchanges.  That would mean full transparency of trading prices and volumes, reporting requirements for large trader positions, and adequate capital reserves to protect against a default.  The government needs full anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority.  Giving regulators this power will ensure a transparent and competitive marketplace and will ensure that violators will go to jail.

On November 2, Senator Cantwell appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan.  At that time, Mr. Ratigan had just written a piece for The Business Insider, expressing his outrage about recent statements by Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner, supporting House bank reform legislation allowing credit default swaps to continue being traded in secret.  Since Senator Cantwell had previously discussed that subject with him on October 16, Mr. Ratigan focused on Geithner.  Ratigan noted Geithner’s endorsement of the proposed House “banking  reform” legislation on the previous day’s broadcast of Meet The Press — despite the bill’s “massive exemptions” allowing opacity in the trading of credit default swaps.  Ratigan then asked Senator Cantwell why Tim Geithner still has a job, to which she replied:

I’m not sure because David Gregory had him almost — trying to get a straight answer out of him.  What the Treasury Secretary basically said was:  yes, banks should take more risks and we should continue the loopholes — and that is really appalling because, right now, we know that lack of transparency has caused this problem with the U.S. economy and Wall Street is continuing, one year later, continuing the same kind of loopholes.  And so if the Treasury Secretary doesn’t come down hard against these loopholes and advocate foreclosing them, then we’re going to have a tough time closing them in Congress.  So the Treasury Secretary is dodging the issue.

Senator Cantwell sure isn’t dodging any issues.  Beyond that, she is demonstrating that she has more cajones than any of her male counterparts in the Senate.  So far, all of the publicity concerning her position on financial reform has been favorable.  After all, she is boldly standing up to the lobbyists, the Congress they own and a White House that received nearly a million dollars in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs.

Back in Senator Cantwell’s home state of Washington, The Seattle Times praised her co-sponsorship of Senate Bill 823, the Net Operating Loss Carryback Act, which has already been passed by both houses of Congress.  This bill increases the corporate income tax refunds for businesses that were making money during the pre-2008 era but now operate at a loss.  As the Seattle Times editorial explained:

The national unemployment rate is still rising.  It has just gone double-digit for the first time in 26 years, and is at 10.2 percent.

This is not recovery.

The new law does not have taxpayers underwrite credit default swaps or any of the other alchemic creations of Wall Street investment banks.  It is not more aid and comfort for the nationalized and quasi-nationalized corporate giants; it specifically exempts Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and any company in which the Treasury has recently become an owner.

This law is for the businesses that suffer in the recession, not the ones that caused it.  It is one of the few things Congress has done that reaches directly to Main Street America. It is a big deal to many local businesses, including businesses here.

Congratulations, Senator Cantwell!

To Meghan McCain and other women remaining in doubt as to whether they will ever see a female sworn in as President:  Just keep watching Maria Cantwell as she continues to earn well-deserved respect.



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Offering Solutions

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October 22, 2009

Many of us are familiar with the old maxim asserting that “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”  During the past year we’ve been exposed to plenty of hand-wringing by info-tainers from various mainstream media outlets decrying the financial crisis and our current economic predicament.  Very few of these people ever seem to offer any significant insight on such interesting topics as:  what really caused the meltdown, how to prevent it from happening again, whether any laws were broken that caused this catastrophe, whether any prosecutions might be warranted or how to solve our nation’s continuing economic ills, which seem to be immune to all the attempted cures.  The painful thorn in the side of Goldman Sachs, Matt Taibbi, recently raised an important question, reminding people to again scrutinize the vapid media coverage of this pressing crisis:

It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality.

*   *   *

In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage.

That quote inspired Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism to write a superb essay about how “access journalism” has created a controlled press.  What follows is just a small nugget of the great analysis in that piece:

So what do we have?  A media that predominantly bases its stories on what it is fed because it has to.  Ever-leaner staffing, compressed news cycles, and access journalism all conspire to drive reporters to focus on the “must cover” news, which is to a large degree influenced by the parties that initiate the story.  And that means they are increasingly in an echo chamber, spending so much time with the influential sources they feel they must cover that they start to be swayed by them.

*   *   *

The message, quite overly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority.  The country has moved on.  Things are getting better, get with the program. Now I saw the polar opposite today.  There is a group of varying sizes, depending on the topic, that e-mails among itself, mainly professional investors, analysts, economists (I’m usually on the periphery but sometimes chime in).  I never saw such an angry, active, and large thread about the Goldman BS fest today.  Now if people who have not suffered much, and are presumably benefitting from the market recovery are furious, it isn’t hard to imagine that what looks like complacency in the heartlands may simply be contained rage looking for an outlet.

Fortunately, one television news reporter has broken the silence concerning the impact on America’s middle class, caused by Wall Street’s massive Ponzi scam and our government’s response – which he calls “corporate communism”.  I’m talking about MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan.  On Wednesday’s edition of his program, Morning Meeting, he decried the fact that the taxpayers have been forced to subsidize the “parlor game” played by Goldman Sachs and other firms involved in proprietary trading on our coin.  Mr. Ratigan then proceeded to offer a number of solutions available to ordinary people, who would like to fight back against those pampered institutions considered “too big to fail”.  Some of these measures involve:  moving accounts from one of those enshrined banks to a local bank or credit union; paying with cash whenever possible and contacting your lawmakers to insist upon financial reform.

My favorite lawmaker in the battle for financial reform is Congressman Alan Grayson, whose district happens to include Disney World.  His fantastic interrogation of Federal Reserve general counsel, Scott Alvarez, about whether the Fed tries to manipulate the stock markets, was a great event.  Grayson has now co-sponsored a “Financial Autopsy” amendment to the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency bill.  This amendment is intended to accomplish the following:

– Requires the CFPA conduct a “Financial Autopsy” of each state’s bankruptcies and foreclosures (a scientific sampling), and identify financial products that systematically led to a large number of bankruptcies and foreclosures.
– Requires the CFPA report to Congress annually on the top financial products (the companies and individuals that originated the products) that caused consumer bankruptcies and foreclosures.
– Requires the CFPA take corrective action to eliminate or restrict those deceptive products to prevent future bankruptcies and corrections

– The bottom line is to highlight destructive products based on if they are making people “broke”.

From his website, The Market Ticker, Karl Denninger offered his own contributions to this amendment:

This sort of “feel good” legislative amendment will of course be resisted, but it simply isn’t enough.  The basic principle of equity (better said as “fairness under the law”) puts forward the premise that one cannot cheat and be allowed to keep the fruits of one’s outrageous behavior.

So while I like the direction of this amendment, I would put forward the premise that the entirety of the gains “earned” from such toxic products, when found, are clawed back and distributed to the consumers so harmed, and that to the extent this does not fully compensate for that harm such a finding should give rise to a private, civil cause of action for the consumers who are bankrupted or foreclosed.

It’s nice to know that bloggers are no longer the only voices insisting on financial reform.  Ed Wallace of Business Week recently warned against the consequences of unchecked speculation on oil futures:

Is today’s stock market divorced from economic reality?  Probably.  It is a certainty that oil is.  We know that because those in the market are still putting out the same tired and incorrect logic that they used successfully last year to push oil to $147 a barrel while demand was plummeting.

Because oil is not carrying a market price that fairly reflects economic conditions and demand inventories, overpriced energy is siphoning off funds that could be used for corporate expansion, increased consumerism and, in time, the recreation of jobs in America.

Did you think that the “Enron Loophole” was closed by the enactment of the 2008 Farm Bill?  It wasn’t.  The Farm Bill simply gave more authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate futures contracts that had been exempted by the loophole.  In case you’re wondering about the person placed in charge of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by President Obama  —  his name is Gary Gensler and he used to work for  …  You guessed it:  Goldman Sachs.



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