Clueless about the economy

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-17-2006
Clueless about the economy
175
Tue, 09-16-2008 - 7:37am
Does John McCain really believe that our economy is fundamentally sound? Is this guy out of his freakin’ mind? He is either too old or too stupid to be president. Umployment is down. Wages are down. The price of everything is up. The deficit is up. The national debt is up. Yeah, sounds like the economy is in great shape, John. Perhaps it is time for another tax break for those who make over $250,000 a year. We could use some of that Reagan trickledown voodoo economics about now.
Perhaps when McCain is elected, his new treasury secretary Phil Gramm will straighten all of us whiners out?
The guys seem to be clueless about the economy.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 4:32pm

John McCain has been railing against these practices for years. I don't understand what you are talking about when you say a decade ago he was "embracing" legislation to broadly deregulate the banking industry. Your link surely didn't explain it. And what exactly do you mean when you say "embrace"?

Here is proof that McCain saw the problem coming and tried to stop it, here's something from 2006:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060525-16&bill=s109-190

"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay."

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 4:35pm

I already posted what I think about it here:

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-elpoliticsto/?msg=16680.73

I also know that John McCain has been railing against this practice for years and has been fighting against it. But due to greed (and political points) neither side has been very receptive.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-23-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 4:36pm
I guess I'm clueless.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 4:46pm

From the Center for Responsive Politics - Open Secrets (who is contributing to which candidate):


http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638


Top Contributors

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.


Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees (and their families). The organization may support one candidate, or hedge its bets by supporting multiple candidates. Groups with national networks of donors - like EMILY's List and Club for Growth - make for particularly big bundlers.


...so while employees of those companies give to a specific candidate, that does not translate to the company-itself making the contribution.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 4:59pm

<I guess I'm clueless.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 5:07pm

From Open Secrets (thanks for the link, it is very interesting)

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/aig-government-bails-out-a-hea.html

AIG: Government Bails Out a Heavy Hitter
Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on September 17, 2008 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Federal Reserve announced today that it's coming to the rescue of American International Group (AIG) to the tune of $85 billion. The nation's largest insurer, which asked the Fed for emergency funding in the midst of financial hardships, hasn't had trouble over the years giving money to lawmakers, however. AIG is on CRP's Heavy Hitters list, which profiles the 100 all-time contributors to federal candidates and committees.

Of all of the companies facing major transitions over the last week, lawmakers owned the most stock in AIG. Twenty-seven lawmakers owned stock in AIG last year, worth between $6.4 million and $20 million. Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), one of the richest members of Congress, was at the top of the list of congressional investors, owning stock worth between $2.8 million and $11.5 million, while Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) followed with stock valued around $2 million.

Of all the companies making headlines this week, AIG has been the most nonpartisan in its contributions, splitting evenly the $9.7 million it has contributed over time. Sen. Chris Dodd, chair of the Senate banking committee, has racked up the most from AIG, with a total of $281,400, while Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of both the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, takes second with $116,400. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama collected $103,000 and $82,600 from AIG, respectively.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-23-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 6:49pm
Another thing I'm clueless about is energy.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 7:15pm

<>


If you read the entire article, the link surely did explain it:


<Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies. >>


"For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay."


Well it appears he is talking out of both sides of this mouth.

 

 

Guild Member since 2009

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 7:39pm

In 2002 he introduced a bill about the INTERNET??? Please explain how that effects the current crisis.

And... I was curious as to what you were talking about so I did a little googling. Looks like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Bill passed almost unanimously by BOTH Democrats and Republicans. (The senate vote was 90-8, House 362-57)

And for those Daily Kos readers:

How a Bill Becomes a Law
A Constitution Day lesson for the DailyKos Kidz.
By JAMES TARANTO


In yesterday's column we noted that some supporters of Barack Obama, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, were blaming the current crisis in the financial industry on the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a law whose chief Senate sponsor was then-Sen. Phil Gramm, who until July was an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign. (The chief House sponsor was then-Rep. Jim Leach, now co-founder of Republicans for Obama.)

This was curious, we noted, since Graham-Leach-Bliley passed the Senate on a 90-8 vote, with both Reid and Obama running mate Joe Biden casting "aye" votes. One Andre Neil, a contributor to the Angry Left Web site DailyKos.com, thought he had caught us in an error--or, as he put it, "James Taranto is a liar. The Wall Street Journal just allowed one of its staff to perpetuate a blatant lie on its behalf." There followed a flood of angry spam from dozens of DailyKos readers; to get a sense of the tone, click on Neil's name and peruse the comments.

Trouble is, it is Neil who has misled his readers. He claims that the page to which we linked "is not a transcript to the roll call for the bill":

This is. It took place on May 6, 1999. The page that Taranto linked to was a vote on the conference report, which took place 6 months after the bill had already passed in the senate, and just over a week before it was signed into law. The bill was not passed 90-8; it was passed 54-44, almost strictly down party lines.

Neil and most of his readers do not seem to know what a conference report is. As a public service on this Constitution Day, we therefore present a lesson for DailyKos readers (and anyone else who could use a refresher) in How a Bill Becomes a Law:

America has what is known as a bicameral (two-chamber) legislature. In order for a bill to become a law, it must command a majority of voting members in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. A bill that has the support of only one chamber is a legal nullity. This much you could have learned by watching "Schoolhouse Rock," which seems to be where the Kos Kidz' education ended. In real life, though, things are a bit more complicated.

The way the process works is that before voting on a bill, each chamber debates it separately, considering and voting on amendments (changes) introduced by members. The result in many cases is that by the time the House and Senate each vote on a bill, it become two different bills: one that passed the House and one that passed the Senate. Since each bill has passed only one chamber of Congress, neither one can become a law.

Enter the conference committee. This is a group of representatives and senators who meet to hash out the differences between the House and Senate bills. They produce a compromise: a bill on which both houses vote, so that it can become a law. The bill that actually becomes a law is known as a "conference report."

This is what happened with Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The Senate-only version of the bill did pass on May 6, 1999 by a near-party-line vote of 54-44. The House-only version passed, 343-86, on July 1. Neither of these bills, however, became a law. The bill that did become a law--the law about which Sen. Reid and others are complaining now--was the conference report, the bill the Senate approved by 90-8 on Nov. 4. The House passed it the same day, 362-57.

Neil seems to have mistakenly thought that the "conference report" was a mere procedural action, when in fact it was a vote on actual legislation. One of his readers tried to clear up his confusion but failed, as evidenced by Neil's response:

Update 3: I'm seeing a lot of comments about the significance of Democrats having voted for the Conference Report. I'll just go ahead and repost my reply to robertacker13:

"The Conference Report is nothing but an editing session. During the session, a a team picked from both the House and Senate meet in order to reconcile differences between the versions of the bills already passed in both chambers. This is the reason it took from May until November to get the bill passed. This is the reason GLBA passed that 4 November vote with such an overwhelming majority--it had already been approved in both houses, and the only formality left was for language to be amended by the conferees.

The 4 November vote was not a vote on the merits of the bill. It was a vote on the language of the bill.

Blocking the conference report does not kill a vote. Even if the report was voted against by every last Democrat, it was going to get pushed through anyway."

In fact, had the Senate voted down the conference report, the legislation would have been dead, since the bill that previously passed the Senate was different from the one that passed the House. Neil's distinction between the "merits" and "language" of the bill lacks any basis in reality. A bill and its language are one and the same thing.

Moreover, Neil errs in implying that the Republicans could have passed Gramm-Leach-Bliley without Democratic help. It is true that the Republicans held majorities in both congressional chambers in 1999. Yet as hard as it may be to believe now, the president, Bill Clinton, was a Democrat. It was Clinton's signature that made the bill a law. Clinton could have refused to sign ("That's called a veto," as "Schoolhouse Rock" teaches).

In that case, it would have taken a two-thirds vote in both houses to make the bill a law--which means the votes of 34 Democratic senators would have been sufficient to block the legislation. Between May and November, 37 Democrats, including Reid and Biden, switched from opposing Gramm-Leach-Bliley to supporting it. Had 27 or more of them stood their ground, their numbers would have been sufficient to sustain a veto.

In fairness to Neil and the other Kos Kidz, it's probably true that hardly anyone knows what a conference report is. Yet while their ignorance may be excusable, the self-righteousness and bluster with which they express it ought to embarrass even Markos Moulitsas.

Several readers called to our attention two other points relevant to our item yesterday. First, it seems Peter Fitzgerald, the Republican who preceded Obama in the Senate, voted "present" because his father was in the banking business and thus the senator believed it was a conflict of interest for him to vote on legislation affecting the industry.

Second, without Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which abolished the barrier between commercial and investment banking, the recent deals that saved Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch would have been impossible, since both of them involved a commercial bank acquiring a troubled investment bank.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122167514301648581.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2008
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 8:17pm
eye roll~~~~ How did Clinton messing around with Monica effect your life negatively?If Hillary and Chelsea forgave him who the heck are you to hold it against him?? I 'd rather have Clinton hurt 3 people then cause death to over 4000 people and heartache to thousands of others for a made up war.

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