Letter: Financial czar's actions illegal

Obama's socialist czar was sent after Wall Street bums who helped cause the financial crises that lost everybody's retirement while later accepting taxpayer money to keep their "too big to fail" business afloat.

[Born in a hospital]

I believe the President is doing a great job ! It is about time he cut the salaries of those fat cats who have been lining their wallets with our money.

[Devout Catalyst]

Make a citizen's arrest, Mr. Brooks. Find out what those who administer the Law say about it.
And while you're playing the speechifying mouse, bell the Cat as well.

"Republicans" and "Conservatives" have as much respect for the Law as the Mafia: they're all in favor of whatever profits themselves or can be used as excuses for their harming of others - it serves no other purpose.(Ditto their notions of "religion" and "God").

[Gagthemaggot]

Nice take BK, you dazzled them with facts, the bane of liberalism. Get ready for the personal attacks!

[Come on now]

Gagthemaggot wrote:

Nice take BK, you dazzled them with facts, the bane of liberalism. Get ready for the personal attacks!

Facts?

[Fedupwithitall]

Gagthemaggot wrote:

Nice take BK, you dazzled them with facts, the bane of liberalism. Get ready for the personal attacks!

Ditto. Especially the devout crapalist.

[Rush Limbaugh]

And folks, you have to remember this is all Obama's fault.
The White president, Bush, NEVER had czars--this is all brand new.
Keep blaming Congress too BK--right before you vote to re-elect YOUR Congressman--then try to tell everyone how that makes sense. I'll help you there.
You may be an ignorant, RACIST, tea bagger, BK, but MOST of my listeners and LTTE writers are.
With you and me, the democrats are sure to win!!!

[skimmerrch]

Rush for President...that way we can throw his a** out too! The only good politician is the one that's collecting unemployment and has lost his health insurance.

[Joe Sixpack]

You have to undestrand something about how Wall Street works. Under deregulation, they fashioned new instruments called derivatives. They are securities based on an underlying commodity or financial product, such as gold or a mortgage.

The problem was the young MBAs went wild and ran up fantastic risk without sufficient capital backing. Much of this gambling was off the books and uncontrolled.

All of this worked until oil started coming down from its speculative perch of $147 a barrel, and housing prices began their descent from 50% overvaluation.

Thereafter, these derivatives were worth pennies on the dollar after the crash of last summer. The big Wall Street banks lacked the capital base to meet their obligations.

So Bush (Paulson, his treasury secretary) pushed through a rescue plan that gave the government stock in these failing companies in exchange for government loans.

Meanwhile, these execs still paid themselves and their cronies big bonuses and salaries - reward for colossal failure. The government, as majority shareholder in these ailing banks, can cap executive compensation.

[Max]

Obviously Mr. Brooks is a broadly disgruntled citizen carping about a mess that merits his dissatisfaction. Brooks comments are appreciated in that while he's probably to the right, he's somewhat even handed in his bellyaching. He says, "They [government officials] are all [dems and reps] at fault."

We might go even further than Brooks to include many in the public. Don't the mortgage brokers deserve blame for signing up people who never should have qualified and never understood the terms of their mortgages (or cared)? Weren't there a whole lot of people who could see the whole real estate market was inflated beyond all reality and were happy to profit from it? As critics of the awful mess, aren't we better at venting self-gratifying hostilities at government to "throw the bums out" than discerning the most effective people to send into government?

There's always blame to go around in a democracy.

[Frank]

Brooks makes a point of cutting the pay for politicians. This is exactly the wrong approach.
If their pay was cut they would be even more dependent on, and beholden to, their campaign contributor’s interests.
They would have even less loyalty to the American people than they fail to demonstrate already.
A much better plan would be to outlaw campaign contributions entirely, as the bribery that they so obviously are.
Campaigning should be limited to public appearances, debates, and candidates statements both in the news and in voter pamphlets distributed before elections.
This would result in far more honest governance by our elected "representatives".
They actually would be ours, rather than the corporation’s representatives that have bought them off.

[gossamer]

Devout Catalyst wrote:

Make a citizen's arrest, Mr. Brooks. Find out what those who administer the Law say about it.
And while you're playing the speechifying mouse, bell the Cat as well.
"Republicans" and "Conservatives" have as much respect for the Law as the Mafia: they're all in favor of whatever profits themselves or can be used as excuses for their harming of others - it serves no other purpose.(Ditto their notions of "religion" and "God").

Your not very smart are you?

[Just Think]

B.K. Go away.

[Ha Ha]

Rush Limbaugh wrote:

And folks, you have to remember this is all Obama's fault.
The White president, Bush, NEVER had czars--this is all brand new.
Keep blaming Congress too BK--right before you vote to re-elect YOUR Congressman--then try to tell everyone how that makes sense. I'll help you there.
You may be an ignorant, RACIST, tea bagger, BK, but MOST of my listeners and LTTE writers are.
With you and me, the democrats are sure to win!!!

Poor BK. I wonder how he manages to stay so uninformed. I keep looking in the archives for his angry letters about George Bush's czars. You know, his abstinence czar, birth control czar, all collecting fat salaries while the "conservative" Republicans expanded government as fast as they could get their buddies on the big payrolls.

Some other illegal things BK forgot to mention in his letter are the torture of prisoners, war crimes, and the illegal use of the Department of Justice for political gain.

[Ha Ha]

Joe Sixpack wrote:

You have to undestrand something about how Wall Street works. Under deregulation, they fashioned new instruments called derivatives. They are securities based on an underlying commodity or financial product, such as gold or a mortgage.
The problem was the young MBAs went wild and ran up fantastic risk without sufficient capital backing. Much of this gambling was off the books and uncontrolled.
All of this worked until oil started coming down from its speculative perch of $147 a barrel, and housing prices began their descent from 50% overvaluation.
Thereafter, these derivatives were worth pennies on the dollar after the crash of last summer. The big Wall Street banks lacked the capital base to meet their obligations.
So Bush (Paulson, his treasury secretary) pushed through a rescue plan that gave the government stock in these failing companies in exchange for government loans.
Meanwhile, these execs still paid themselves and their cronies big bonuses and salaries - reward for colossal failure. The government, as majority shareholder in these ailing banks, can cap executive compensation.

Yes, it seems like BK has forgotten that Bush urged that bailout it happened when he was president. He wanted to make sure all of his corrupt bank buddies got their money before he finished looting the country like a Ferdinand Marcos of the phillipines. At least when Democrats spend money it is on the citizens of America, and not on the rich friends of GOP politicians or no-bid contractors in Iraq and AFghanistan.

[Max]

Ha Ha wrote:

<quoted text>
Yes, it seems like BK has forgotten that Bush urged that bailout it happened when he was president. He wanted to make sure all of his corrupt bank buddies got their money before he finished looting the country like a Ferdinand Marcos of the phillipines. At least when Democrats spend money it is on the citizens of America, and not on the rich friends of GOP politicians or no-bid contractors in Iraq and AFghanistan.

Some might say Bush's decision on his bailouts were a demonstration of virtue in the man, too often obscured by his less admirable qualities. Bush was advised by his economic team that the country was on the brink of economic catastrophe and they gave Bush their recommendations for a bailout and associated actions to save the economy. It couldn't have been easy for Bush to violate his long held free market ideology and accept these recommendations. I recall Bush stating that given the apocalyptic economic threat he felt he had to do what the country needed regardless of his personal ideology. If the consequences of his (and Obama's) bailouts were imperfect, no one should expect perfection from any economic plan. America is not now in Depression and we have Bush's bailouts partly to thank for that.

[disgruntled]

whenever anyone uses Republican and bipartisan in the same sentence they lose all creditability.

[Fred C]

From Daniel Gross, Newsweek 10/2/2009:

"Goldman Sachs is setting aside nearly $20 billion in compensation this year-most of it in bonuses. Morgan Stanley set aside $5 billion for bonuses in the third quarter alone. At most companies, bonuses are paid out of profits. No end-of-year profits, no bonuses. But on the island nation of Wall Street, they're paid out of revenues. In normal industries, discretionary compensation would decline when companies suffer losses and their stocks crater. But most Wall Street firms still paid out bonuses in 2008 as shareholders and taxpayers suffered. Every dollar they pay out in compensation is one fewer they have to pay back the taxpayer".

[Max]

Fred C wrote:

From Daniel Gross, Newsweek 10/2/2009:
"Goldman Sachs is setting aside nearly $20 billion in compensation this year-most of it in bonuses. Morgan Stanley set aside $5 billion for bonuses in the third quarter alone. At most companies, bonuses are paid out of profits. No end-of-year profits, no bonuses. But on the island nation of Wall Street, they're paid out of revenues. In normal industries, discretionary compensation would decline when companies suffer losses and their stocks crater. But most Wall Street firms still paid out bonuses in 2008 as shareholders and taxpayers suffered. Every dollar they pay out in compensation is one fewer they have to pay back the taxpayer".

There's a kind of geometric simplicity to Wall street and true capitalists: everything is directed at profit. Most live lives in a confusing mixture of goals, standards, and taboos, but for the Wall street true capitalist it's all rather simple, focused and predictable: maximizing profit. Nothing Wall street has done should surprise anyone. Personally, I appreciate this aspect of Wall street and capitalists. They're entirely predictable.

On health care reform of the private health care insurers you can be absolutely certain every decision made by these companies will be directed at their profit and at the expense of everything that detracts from their profit. If these private insurers can figure out at way to continue to betray their subscribers and would be subscribers to enlarge their profit, they'll do it. This isn't Christian, benign or moral, but neither is it heretical, malignant nor immoral. These capitalistic entities are simply performing with sewing machine precision according to their design. If these companies behaved differently and sacrificed profit for humanitarian ideals they'd actually be diminishing their single virtue of maximizing profit.

Our problem with capitalism isn't with the capitalists but with our government and public, too dumb, lazy or corrupted to pursue their self-interest with the same passion and clarity.

[katter47]

There are a substantial number of economists who quietly concede that U.S. and global financial institutions, risking it all on the dubious financial instruments they had created, very nearly plunged the whole world into an economic meltdown that would have made the Great Depression look like a tea party. Although I believe that George W. will be ranked as one the ten worst presidents in U.S. History, he has to be given credit for listening to his handlers and bailing us out of a desperate situation.(Maybe it will move him up to 11th worst!) It was too late to do anything else. Now we need to take steps to re-institute the protections that were removed in recent years by under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

[katter47]

p.s. There were strings attached to the bail-out money. One of those was that, until the loans are paid back, the government is a share holder and has a say in things like C.E.O. compensation. Once the loans are paid back, all the Obama folks can do is reflect the public outrage at the obscene compensation these guys are getting. It is about time we shine some light on the astronomical increases in C.E.O.'s salaries that have occurred in the last couple of decades. Some of these guys have become billionaires while driving their companies into bankruptcy.