Obama says both left and right are wrong on Wall Street rules

[IDemo]

Source: Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday defended his efforts to rein in Wall Street, telling Americans that his administration cracked down effectively on banks and trading firms after the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

Obama, now in the last 10 months of his presidency, met at the White House with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and other top regulators to talk about their progress implementing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act he signed into law in 2010.

He railed against rhetoric in the Nov. 8 presidential election campaign suggesting that Dodd-Frank failed to work.

"I want to emphasize this because it is popular in the media and the political discourse, both on the left and the right, to suggest that the crisis happened and nothing changed. That is not true," Obama told reporters after the meeting.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-wallstreet-idUSKCN0W91ZL

[TM99]

1. Typical neoliberal dribble.

He wants to please both sides and neither.

[Carolina]

35. Exactly

Middle of the road BS from someone who peopled his cabinet with Wall St types and put everything on the table!

Nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos -- Jim Hightower, a true liberal

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Laugh.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday defended his efforts to rein in Wall Street, telling Americans that his administration cracked down effectively on banks and trading firms after the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

Which is why the TBTF corps are now even bigger, and the finance execs are still raking in billions in bonuses.

Yeah, they've really been 'cracked down on effectively'.

[Maedhros]

6. Note that after Obama took office, the gigantic banks and financial firms at the center of the crash

were made whole within 6 months. Some of the consumers who took it in the teeth because of the actions of those banks and financial firms are just now recovering.

Shows you where Obama's priorities lie.

[DhhD]

23. And look at the huge number of Democratic Office holders across America.

Obama could not be called on the campaign for Democrats in 2014 because he had moved so far Right; especially embarrassing was his Social Security fix.

[7wo7rees]

29. What about all those that have still not recovered and never

will? What about them?

[jwirr]

37. And many did not recover at all. I see where he is coming

from - he wants a legacy that tells how he got Dodd-Frank passed and fixed the problem. But all Dodd-Frank does is make it so that the banksters cannot demand that we bail them out again. It did not make them stable.

Besides that even with Dodd-Frank we will end up being forced to bail them out due to the fact that we cannot afford a crash that causes a world-wide depression.

I will say that I don't think Obama could have gotten anything tougher into law due to the hate the Rs have for him.

[7962]

16. And how many have been charged with anything? Or jailed?

Not nearly e-damn-nough

[Red Oak]

20. And are the biggest banks then even bigger now? Yes, very much so.

Obama accepted plenty of money from Wall Street and look what it bought them:

Stay out of jail and grow much larger.

Pricey deal at $5.3B for Goldman Sachs alone, but well worth it to stay out of jail and proceed with business.

[silvershadow]

21. There was much swept under the rug. Without a full accounting, charges filed, perp walks

then nothing will really change much. Oh, sure, they will have some rules to go by, but bet my ass those rules only attempt to provide framework for what they are already doing/have done.

I will never recover. My home was flat out stolen from me. The chance I will ever recover is highly doubtful. Had sand kicked in my face too, with the false meme that homeowners caused it.

[JackRiddler]

22. None at the banks responsible for the crisis.

Their poor institutions had to give up medium-big chunks in settlements, basically as a replacement tax bill for the plunder, and these agreements allowed all the human miscreants, the ones who can actually make harmful decisions and did, to escape with their earnings and bonuses and no charges whatsoever.

Nice incentive system! It can never go wrong again, I'm sure. The more thousands of pages in rules you write without ever punishing violators, the more effective, surely!

[7962]

24. Agreed

[edhopper]

3. yeah

but he didn't rein in squat.

[Vincardog]

4. OK how many banksters went to jail?

[GoneFishin]

5. Bullshit. nt

[Raster]

7. With all due respect, Sir....

....BULLSHIT!

[chapdrum]

8. Any pol ramming TPP down our throats

has zero credibility on this topic.

Just effing zero.

[Broward]

9. Obama always wants to position himself in the middle.

Well, when both sides are much further right than 35 years ago, his middle is to the right of Nixon on many issues.
As the Repubs move further right, these "centrists" will keep moving along with them.

[dogman]

10. This is what Bernie says at every stop.

"Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or a Tea Party member or a socialist, if you are concerned about making sure that Wall Street is doing the right thing, check to make sure that your member of Congress is not trying to cut the budgets of these various agencies," Obama said.

I think that Obama's "I got this" attitude failed to keep his supporters involved. Bernie tells people that they are the power and it is up to them to demand change.

[jwirr]

38. People involvement is the only way we are going to get this

mess straightened out. And I wish the President Obama would have turned to us for help and then gone left. By failing to do that he had no choice but to go right.

Which is very puzzling considering he is a community organizer.

[MisterP]

11. the crisis happened and VERY LITTLE changed: there

also the party's now endorsing payday lenders

[Skittles]

12. complete bullshit

[tularetom]

13. LOL, he's feelin the bern!

He never before felt he had to come out and defend his administrations inaction, so something has got under his skin.

His credibility is in the shitter so his self serving explanation won't win him any converts.

And it won't help Hillary Clinton, if she is attempting to portray herself as the natural heir to Obama's policies.

[Skwmom]

14. John Stewart nails it. Dodd-Frank is......

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ss6u07/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-uncensored---three-different-kinds-of-bulls--t

[Geronimoe]

15. How many bankers were indicted?

none.

[PatrynXX]

17. On this issue and TPP

his comments land with a deafening thud

[Kelvin Mace]

18. Ah, dude?

It is just that kind of middle of the road nonsense that cost us dearly in 2010 and 2014.

[swilton]

19. Rec'd for all the above comments

Specifically 1-18.

[Akicita]

25. "Cracked down effectively on Wall Street"?

Not a single indictment. Then there was the Swiss Bank that was involved in all sorts of illegal activity including laundering drug money, evading Iran sanctions, and much more. Nobody was indicted because Holder said any indictments might roil the markets. That was actually too big to jail. It was un-American and corrupt to let those bastards go. I was so disappointed in Obama for not holding Wall Street accountable. He became one of them.

Bernie is the only one I trust that will actually hold Wall Street accountable and work to break their stranglehold on our politicians.

[PoliticAverse]

26. The banks are even too bigger to fail now. Mission accomplished? n/t

[JackRiddler]

31. Yes, no, just wait.

Dodd-Frank will allow Clinton to draw up a list of TBTFs... soon as the next crash has come and it's time to bail them out again.

[Hydra]

27. Just wait until the next, and bigger economic meltdown

When Lloyd, Jaime, Summers and the rest of the Ghouls of Wall St. will demand all the losses be pushed onto the workers yet again.

[7wo7rees]

28. BS. Sorry, not this time. No way, no how!

You did not, dear Mr. President!

Don't say you did!!

[Baobab]

30. America is spun out - the spin is making us dizzy..

Elizabeth Warren was right -

[pampango]

32. Krugman: Half A Loaf, Financial Reform Edition

I’ve been on record since early days saying that too-big-to-fail is not the key issue, so that the fact that big banks remain big is, um, no big deal. The real question — or so I’d argue — is leverage within the financial sector, and in particular the kind of leverage with no safety net that characterizes shadow banking.

So Matt O’Brien weighs in with evidence that leverage has in fact declined substantially, and continued to decline even as the economy expanded — probably because of Dodd-Frank. This is certainly right; the same decline shows up in other measures, as in the chart above showing financial sector debt securities as a percentage of GDP.

Should we have had a stiffer financial reform? Definitely — required capital ratios should be a lot higher than they are. But Dodd-Frank’s rules — especially, I think, the prospect of being classed as a SIFI, a strategically important institution subject to tighter constraints, have had a real effect in reducing risk.

The reality of the Obama era, for progressives, is a series of half loaves. But after all the defeats over the previous 30 years, aren’t those achievements something to celebrate?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/half-a-loaf-financial-reform-edition/

From 2014:

Obama’s Other Success
Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Is Working

But what about the administration’s other big push, financial reform? The Dodd-Frank reform bill has, if anything, received even worse press than Obamacare, derided by the right as anti-business and by the left as hopelessly inadequate. And like Obamacare, it’s certainly not the reform you would have devised in the absence of political constraints.

But also like Obamacare, financial reform is working a lot better than anyone listening to the news media would imagine. Let’s talk, in particular, about two important pieces of Dodd-Frank: creation of an agency protecting consumers from misleading or fraudulent financial sales pitches, and efforts to end “too big to fail.”

Bankers, of course, hate this idea; and Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell tried to help their friends with the Orwellian claim that resolution authority was actually a gift to Wall Street, a form of corporate welfare, because it would grease the skids for future bailouts.

Did reform go far enough? No. In particular, while banks are being forced to hold more capital, a key force for stability, they really should be holding much more. But Wall Street and its allies wouldn’t be screaming so loudly, and spending so much money in an effort to gut the law, if it weren’t an important step in the right direction. For all its limitations, financial reform is a success story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/opinion/paul-krugman-dodd-frank-financial-reform-is-working.html

[raging moderate]

33. I think we should remember that somebody SHOT A BULLET at this man's house.

I remember all the threats against the lives of Barack Obama and his wife and their LITTLE GIRLS. And I remember those men with knives who came frighteningly close to their living quarters in the White House. And then there was that BULLET they found, shot into the window of the White House. I think there were no arrests on that one, but that bullet was real.

And the Republicons did vow, on the day of his inauguration, to wreck his presidency. And they kept that vow.

I have profound respect for Barack Obama. I believe he REALLY tried hard, and actually succeeded, with various clever ploys, in stopping the efforts of our corporate psychopaths to wreck our economy and plunge most of us into the poverty they believe we deserve.

At the start of that last debate against Mitt Romney, did anyone else notice Barack's unusual mood when he first came onstage. He apologized profusely to Michelle Obama as she sat in the audience. It occurred to me at the time that something odd must have happened just before he appeared, perhaps some really odd message or memo. There have been rumors of almost constant hideous threats during the course of this presidency. And we have seen almost constant unprecedented thwarting by the Republicons, to the point of violating the oath of support for the US Constitution they took upon taking their offices. This Supreme Court stall is just the latest one.

[mtasselin]

34. sorry

Sorry President Obama you are wrong on this there is one thing that people fear and that is going to prison and being held accountable for their misdeeds. And you sir allowed this to happen by not prosecuting these wall street thug's and yes I know why you let them off the hook because these are the same asshole's that gave you the money to get elected. You are on this path of selling out America to the highest bidder and I get no pleasure stating this because I voted for you twice and now to top it off you sir are pushing tpp even though you know it will destroy America, but what the hell do you care you got your's, right.

[Baobab]

36. Obama is "the right" these days, pushing further financial deregulation- and he's wrong

Last edited Tue Mar 8, 2016, 12:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Elizabeth Warren was the only Senator who explained the truth..

The WTO does change US laws, it did in 1999 and the US pushed them into it.

We make them do it.

So, if we want to remain a world leader it is absolutely essential that we need to change our entire way of thinking and become responsible again. And back off of the push for financial deregulation and trade deals that overrule democratic rule and national sovereignty.

We have existed for hundreds of years without special corporate rights, we don't need them now.

With great power always comes great responsibility.

[creon]

39. I agree with PBO

Both left and right are wrong.
They usually are; although for different reasons

If people have a problem with the laws that are passed - go talk to Congress.
It is the legislative Branch that enacts Legislation; not the Executive Branch.

Better yet, get involved, get elected and pass the Legislation that want you want.

[dmosh42]

40. Yeah, right, from the guy who wants us to have TPP!