“The thing we learn from history is that no one learns from history.” – Credited by the Internet without confirmation to Alan W. Watts (But it’s still a good quote regardless.)
Tonight, I indulged in the vexing practice of trying to voice out reason amidst a public ruckus over President Trump’s intended move of gutting, if not outright getting rid of, the Dodd-Frank Act. This act took place tonight on social media and many people who were debating were omitted as they were either discussing irrelevant subjects or were gung ho in their desire to question other people’s mental facilities and adequacy of education. Names were changed to protect the other person’s identity.
Now, I have never claimed to be 100% spot on about everything, but I do at least try to research, or at least have a creditable passing knowledge on, a topic before I approach it. However, in this case, my brow furrowed mightily as everything I tried to convey was incidentally or intentionally misinterpreted. This begs me to question myself about why I furrow my own brow intentionally by diving into situations like this.
Why do I do this? Something inside me compels me to try present facts and history to educate those who swear they know best in their opinion. Even in the face of overwhelming fact that proves their notions false or flawed. Whether I am successful or not, I will never see because there is no way over the Internet that I will see any changes in someone’s stance or behavior over simple social media.
A Flower of Indiana Why didn’t Obama send several Bankers and Wall Street leaders to jail since they almost sent our country into a depression???
Wrinkled Brow Curator For those whom lack the historical knowledge to understand why people are up in arms over Dodd-Frank being killed. This is why people who remembered the Great Depression were up in arms when the Glass-Steagall act was nixed. Long story short: a bank that has your money AND gives out loans/plays the stock market has a gross conflict of interest when it comes to YOU. Banks who merely keep your money safe theoretically do not gamble with it – gambling being ‘investing in stock market’ or use your funds to issue loans to people who cannot afford it to repay their loans but were given the go ahead by the bank to do so. In short, they use your money on risky ventures that led to issues like the Great Depression.
Long story long: With this FIAT system, when you give money to a modern bank, you are only Promised that you will given back a sum they vouch for through a legal contract and they give the illusion that you have money in a vault someplace. You do not. Your money goes into their general funds to do with as they please. Remember this, a bank is a For Profit Business, and it has to earn money somehow. Enter Stock markets and Loans. Your money becomes the Credit they use to invest in stock market shares and give out loans that receive interest (loan accounts later to be sold to a 3rd party). Under normal circumstances, this might not seem too bad. However, the BIG banks, using insider trading and other fun methods, saw a potential for profit by A) manipulating the stock market to over-inflate stock, and then dump it for mass profit for themselves (a problem that exacerbated the Recession into the Great Depression), and B) make outrageous loans available to people who clearly could not afford them (more of a modern problem).
Easy source to read: http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression
These practices lead to two instances of guttering the economy because there was only two entities left to hold the bag when the value of stock shares plummeted to null and overwhelming loans default – the common man and small business (businesses that generate less than 1 million in net revenues by modern standards).
Smaller banks in the great depression (there were a lot of them at the time) could NOT pay back the people who had given them money for ‘safe keeping’ because they had used this money to gamble with on the stock market. This is why the Glass-Steagall Act was created and forced regulations on banks to either focus on investments (lending/stock market) or banking (keeping the peoples money safe) but could NOT combine both in one business. They also put in place the insurance we see today that the government guarantees to repay up to 250,000 of lost money in case the banks did fail again.
Easy source to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall…
Then the Glass-Steagall act was repealed. Guess what? The big banks immediately recombined everything under one roof again and then had the brilliant idea of predatory house loans at exorbitant rates. And guess what? It happened again, and forced America into a Great Recession this time that made the economy teeter on the brink of a Depression. This time, those in government DID NOT wait like they had back in the 1920s, hoping everything would get better on its own through sudden epiphanies of ethics and American goods suddenly become in demand again, and passed the Dodd-Frank Act. This once more brought some kind of regulation on the big banks. However, due to lobbying, the Dodd-Frank Act was little more than a token gesture of the former Glass-Steagall Act and was only meant staved off the ending effects of the Great Recession and buy America enough time to recover economically.
Easy source to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall…
tl;dr Now, the point of that long history is TWICE in RECENT history (past 100 years), unregulated profiteering by what is now known collectively as Wall Street (big financial firms that give out business/home loans, bank, invest in stock shares under various names, AND sign out credit cards, another form of short term loaning) has caused two major economic collapses as they manipulated the markets to profit, but at the expense of public’s pocketbook and welfare. This is why protesters began the Occupy Wallstreet movement, if anyone still remembers that. Ironically enough, it’s because of this profiteering that we have the ‘much hated tax drains’ known as social programs today: social security, food stamps, and so forth – all born by the government to combat another Great Depression, if one ever happened again.
And now President Trump wishes to gut this regulation to once more unleash Wallstreet so that they can, once more, seek ways to profiteer in a way that will most likely impact US Citizens. Remember: we’re STILL in the Great Recession – that label has not been removed and is one of the big hoopla why ‘immigrants are taking our jobs!’ is still a topic of big discussion. One more financial setback of any sort has a very good chance of prolonging our Great Recession, and may very well land us back into a Depression.
For that reason, based on pure recorded history, this is why people are up in arms over the gutting of the Dodd-Frank Act. And yes, everyone, be Republic, Democrat, Independent, or whatever, should be worried about this.
/Edit
I was informed that the modern banks hurt the American people when as they were bailed out by the US government. Who does the government tax to get the funds to pay these bailouts? The American people. So, in essence and truth, we, the people, were double dipped by these profiteering entities.
A Flower of Indiana Who was President when the Glass- Steagall Act was repealed? Why wasn’t anyone investigated and hopefully charged in 2008 for almost causing a depression? Did Tax Cheat Timmy protect the banks and Wall Street?
Wrinkled Brow Curator “Who was President when the Glass- Steagall Act was repealed?”
To quote the information contained in the wiki link: “…Separately, starting in the 1980s Congress debated bills to repeal Glass–Steagall’s affiliation provisions (Sections 20 and 32). In 1999 Congress passed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999,[22] to repeal them. Eight days later, President Bill Clinton signed it into law.” Note, it wasn’t Just Bill Clinton. It was the entirety of the elected Congress at the time. Coincidentally, the Senate and House were both Republican Majority when the Glass-Steagall act was signed as ‘dead’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress
Is it entirely too coincidental that we’re in another Republican dominated house/senate and Dodd-Frank, another financial regulatory act, is priming to be gutted? I leave this for history to consider.
“Why wasn’t anyone investigated and hopefully charged in 2008 for almost causing a depression?”
One person was – Kareem Serageldin. However, his arrest was more token than anything. The reason why the Justice Department in 2007-2008 did NOT go after big banks was they suffered a huge setback in 2002 when they successfully prosecuted Arthur Andersen for fraudulent business practices. The success of this trial cost 10,000 people their jobs as Arthur’s business went under. Naturally, business and politics happened, and the phrase ‘These banks may be too big to fail’ was coined in 2003 to encompass the idea “maybe we shouldn’t decapitate corporate heads because it might cost the American people too much…”
This was the Judicial Branch’s baby to throw out with the bathwater and caused future issues later in 2007-2008 when the American people had to bail out these big banks for their own wrong doing in profiteering and unethical practices. The Justice Department was too afraid of causing another repeat of this incident, coupled with the public backlash of so many jobs lost. Add this to a Great Recession and you have a bunch of lawyers who are reluctant to make major moves against ‘job makers’.https://www.nytimes.com/…/only-one-top-banker-jail…
“Did Tax Cheat Timmy protect the banks and Wall Street?”
Timothy Geithner has an exceedingly long history of employ in the Federal banking service. However, before that, he was a banker. By his actions, it would seem that yes, he did orchestrate several methods of helping big banks during the financial crisis and in the Great Recession. However, he orchestrated the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (bailout) that was signed into action by Former President George W. Bush Jr. in 2008.
Later on, yes, he was sworn in by Former President Obama as Treasury Secretary. This, in conjunction with the mentality that big banks were ‘too big to fail’ led on to the bailout being carried out as it had been.
https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Emergency_Economic…
However, all these questions do not change the fact that the Big Banks (Wallstreet) were using unethical and profiteering practices that landed themselves in hot water in the first place. Would we have needed the Dodd-Frank Act if they had not been doing Bad Things that screwed themselves, and America, up?
A Flower of Indiana So Clinton, DEMOCRAT, could have used a VETO and stopped the repeal? And Clinton , this same DEMOCRAT signed NAFTA that let Mexico’s economy boom right now while ours has been limping along? I remember the 15 bankers meeting with Obama expecting to get a scolding and willing to do anything he demanded and they came out smiling because he absolutely held them not accountable !!!! Remember that famous press conference?Another DEMOCRAT!!! Who was running the Justice Department when they decided not to charge a lot of people ??? If they had frog marched more than one person to jail, maybe there wouldn’t have been a need for more legislation ??? I’m suck of the Democrats and Republicans do I was willing to take the chance in something completely different am pleased with almost everything Trump has done especially illegal immigration which is ruining southern Indiana!!
A Flower of Indiana (To Betty Bystander) I don’t understand you. I can click on Wikipedia . I would rather get an opinion than a cut n paste!!!
Wrinkled Brow Curator My apologies for using wikipedia – I dislike doing so, but they do a wonderful job, so far, at summarizing the books, newspapers, reports, and so forth over the years. As for desiring an opinion… opinions do not need facts to back them up. Opinions can be born and die in an instant. Living life based on an opinion is living on the back of a bull – one moment, it’ll carry you high and mightily. The next, it may buck you off and gore you for having rode it.
And yes, Clinton could have vetoed it. But why should he have? Everything was basically A-Okay in his day and as far as I recall, the majority of political parties, business, and constituents for both sides wanted what they thought was an ‘archaic’ law to be gotten rid of. And under the guise of ‘It’ll help business boom!’, they got rid of it.
And once again, what did the big banks do with this newfound freedom? They orchestrated a drastic, terrible profit plan that involved exploiting the American Dream (work hard, own a house, raise a family) utilizing bad loan practices and misinformation to the public about what they could Truly afford. Basically put, they used an American Ideal to lie and cheat people. Getting back to the point, for all of its pitifulness and flaws, the Dodd-Frank Act is the last gasp to keep these same people away from exploiting the American Dream again. Like it, hate it, that’s the sum total of the DF Act.
A Flower of Indiana So you’re blaming the Banks for using the laws and not the politicians who passed the laws?
Wrinkled Brow Curator “So you’re blaming the Banks for using the laws and not the politicians who passed the laws?”
No, I’m not blaming the banks for using the law. That’d be silly.
I’m blaming the banks for unethical business practices that created verified and recorded incidents of disaster for the Public of the United States. I blame banks for prizing profit above public decency in Doing Right by their Fellow Man by creating loopholes or outright vulnerabilities through excessive lobbying and putting people in government agencies that have an ulterior agenda other than serving the American people and furthering American goals.
Jon Stewart gave the best example of these loopholes on the topic of Inversion by big businesses: http://www.cc.com/…/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart…
This video deals with corporations seeking asylum overseas in foreign countries to avoid up to 50% or better US taxes. Big banks are several of these. US citizens even paid these businesses money for having Left the US and do this. It’s this profit mentality that I am blaming that causes political upheaval as we know.
/Edit Yes, Jon Stewart is a satirist, but by this stage in his career, he didn’t HAVE to satire much anymore. He simply played public records and stated the obvious about these situations. So much so that he finally left because he saw that nothing was being done about the issues he reported on. Even if you dismiss him based on his profession, the facts still remain in public record via IRS reports, public reports by 3rd parties and such.
A Flower of Indiana I don’t plan on getting my information from Jon Stewert. According to my reading comprehension, you have been complaining and worrying about the banks not the DEMOCRATS that passed a lot of the legislation .
Wrinkled Brow Curator Ah. Well, I suppose I must respect your opinion about what you feel I may or may not have said and bow out of this. Be well and good evening to you.
– Conversation Recorded over Facebook on February 3, 2017.
The Wrinkled Brow 