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Out of respect for Zeev, this board has been disabled from further posts.
This spirit of this board has gotten far away from the type of discussion that Zeev would approve of. There's simply too much hate and infighting. He had a very special way of moderating and interacting and we are quite sure this is not the vision he had for a board of his namesake.
Below is a link to our Political Boards. Amongst these you should be able to find another board that suits your views and posting style.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/boards.aspx?cat_id=123
The recent Moderators are commended for their valiant attempts to maintain some control over this board, but even a couple of them agree this is the right decision at this time. Thank you all for the time and energy you dedicated here.
Ok so I went overboard (again) praising Reagan's foreign policy prowess...
Ordinary
yes but you have to try and let them down easy
can't give em the worst stuff first
Well he does have the reputation of cutting taxes but he was one of the biggest raiser of taxes in our history. He took many working and getting a payroll check and increased payroll taxes tremendously.
Tax Increase #1
KRUGMAN: The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton’s 1993 tax increase.
Tax Increase #2
KRUGMAN: I’m referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.
For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent—but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.
Raygun raised taxes 4 times
That piece was much too kind to all his failures.
"Reagan Was the Butcher of My People:" Fr. Miguel D'Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua
The 8 years Reagan was in office represented one of the most bloody eras in the history of the Western hemisphere, as Washington funneled money, weapons and other supplies to right wing death squads. And the death toll was staggering — more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, 30,000 killed in the contra war in Nicaragua. In Washington, the forces carrying out the violence were called "freedom fighters." This is how Ronald Reagan described the Contras in Nicaragua: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/8/reagan_was_the_butcher_of_my
"I agree he let spending get out of control, and
was totally his fault, but he also cut taxes and
brought prosperity to this country, and not to
just the rich, everybody, no, and it will never
be that way, under anybody, under Capatilism,
Socialism, a Dictatorship, until Heaven, it
will never be equal and fair."
When it came to domestic policy issues, he gets an "F".
In terms of foreign policy issues....well..that's a TOTALLY different story...
Ordinary
Ronald Reagan: a legacy of crack and cheese
June 16, 2004
by Bob Fitrakis
The mainstream media spent an entire week mythologizing Ronald Wilson Reagan. Why did the corporate for-profit media spend so much time creating a cult of personality around a former President with an estimated 105 IQ? Because the actual historical reality of Reagan’s life are so shockingly reactionary you need the pageantry, majesty and imagery of a Hollywood-scripted finale to cover up the thousands of damning facts.
Reagan was a snitch during his Hollywood years. As Anthony Summers makes clear in his book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, the “Gipper” had his own code name – “T-10” – and regularly provided the FBI with information on Communists, real, imagined and manufactured. Victor Navasky’s Naming Names documents as well how Reagan, then the head of the Screen Actors Guild, kept the FBI well informed about “disloyal” actors. During Reagan’s Moscow Summit, the President met with Russian students to discuss communism and capitalism. In a speech too simple to be included in Communism for Idiots, the President dusted off his old theoretical writings from Reader’s Digest and Boy’s Life and told the students why Marx was evil and unbridled capitalism good.
As his B-actor career faded, Reagan became a mouthpiece for General Electric, one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers. Reagan’s one clear talent was the ability to read a Teleprompter or memorize his lines on the glories of free enterprise. While his skills were sub-par by Hollywood standards, he was able to parlay bad acting into good politics. Reagan understood the uncritical nature of the American public and their appetite for neo-American hokum. As E.L. Doctorow pointed out in his 1980 article, “The Rise of Ronald Reagan”: “…his tenure as GE spokesman overlapped the years in which the great electrical industry price-fixing scandal was going on.”
“While Reagan extolled the virtues of free enterprise in front of the logo, G.E., along with Westinghouse, Allis-Chalmers and other giant corporations, was habitually controlling the market by clandestine price fixing and bid rigging agreements, all of which led, in 1960, to grand jury indictments, in what was characterized by the Justice Department as the largest criminal case ever brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,” Doctorow noted.
As a child I watched Reagan pitch the joys of 20-mule team Borax on Death Valley Days, two reoccurring themes on the Old West show were the joys of imperialist conquest and genocide against indigenous people. All of it was served up by the smiley-faced Gipper. Bertrand Gross would later assess the Reagan administration as “friendly fascism.”
Caught up in the Goldwater conservative movement, Reagan realized that he could deliver the right-wing reactionary script better than the much more intellectual Senator from Arizona. Thus, in 1966, Reagan took his highly-honed hokum and became the ultimate shill for the far right. As the New Republic pointed out during his 1966 campaign for Governor of California, “Reagan is anti-labor, anti-Negro, anti-intellectual, anti-planning, anti-20th century.” Reagan campaigned against the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the student rights movement and the Great Society. In his fantasy world, Reagan equated giant price-fixing corporations with small town entrepreneurs. As every long-hair in the late 60s knew, Ronald Reagan was “the drugstore truck-drivin’ man, the head of the Ku Klux Klan.” He said if the students at Berkeley wanted a bloodbath, he would give them one. James Rector was shot dead soon after.
The real legacy of Reagan can be found in Philadelphia, Mississippi where he announced his candidacy for the Presidency in 1980. Previously, the most important political event in Philadelphia had been the deaths of civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney in 1964. Reagan appeared, sans hood, to talk in those well-known racist code words about “state’s rights.” This was no mistake or misunderstanding. Reagan was signaling the right-wing movement that he would carry their racist agenda. Remember in 1984, his political operatives accused Walter Mondale of being “a San Francisco-style Democrat.”
Reagan reached out and embraced the racist apartheid government of South Africa through his policy of so-called “constructive engagement.” Reagan’s solution to the de-industrialization of America was to build the prison industrial complex. His centerpiece was a racist so-called “War on Drugs” while his friends in the CIA used narcotics peddlers as “assets.” And then Reagan’s El Salvadorian Contra buddies began bringing in crack.
Reagan's response to the 1981-1982 recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, was to declare ketchup a vegetable, release federal cheese surpluses, and shackle the strike leaders of the air traffic control union hand and foot and lead them off to jail. My most pronounced memories of the Reagan years are the three hour cheese line and the German care packages to unemployed workers in Detroit.
In the first two years of the Reagan administration, his policy was a forced economic recession and de-industrialization of the United Stated. He cut federal low income housing funds by 84%; his tax cuts for the rich, his “trickle-on” the poor and working class economics ended up tripling all previously existing U.S. government debt. So, when I think of the Reagan legacy, I think of urban decay, crack, homelessness, racism, rampant corporatism and the destruction of the American dream. Amidst the growing homelessness and despair, I remember seeing graffiti all over inner-city Detroit that simply said: “Ronald Wilson Reagan 666.” Reagan’s policies so marked him as “the beast” in Detroit, blue-collar workers actually cheered when he was shot. The hottest song on underground radio was “Hinckley had a Vision.” The song’s refrain, “He knew, he knew.”
When the mainstream media was analyzing Reagan's legacy and actively participating in the mythologizing of the 40th president, they conveniently ignored volumes of work by mainstream reporters. Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer and Los Angeles Times reporter Doyle McManus documented Reagan's diminishing mental capacity in Landslide:
In March 1987 a memo was written by Jim Cannon to Howard Baker, Reagan's new Chief of Staff. His first recommendation: "Consider the possibility that section four of the 25th amendment might be applied." The amendment allows for the removal of the president when "the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." Mayer and McManus reported that staffers told Cannon in confidence that Reagan had become "inattentive and inept ... He was lazy; he wasn't interested in the job ... he wouldn't read the papers they gave him - even short position papers and documents ... he wouldn't come over to work - all he wanted to do was watch movies and television at the residence." Scholarly works have been written on Reagan's confusion of facts with Hollywood images.
The problem with the great communicator was the content of his messages. Reagan was a paid shill of the plutocrats, who used his charm and acting skills to hawk, like soap, mean spirited social policies and sell a fantasy version of the American Dream to common folk that trusted him.
--
Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press (http://freepress.org), a political science professor, attorney and co-author with Harvey Wasserman of George W. Bush vs. the Superpower of Peace.
Reagan voted as one of two best presidents ever....
your feelings are in a minority
What is is about Reagan you did not like.
I agree he let spending get out of control, and
was totally his fault, but he also cut taxes and
brought prosperity to this country, and not to
just the rich, everybody, no, and it will never
be that way, under anybody, under Capatilism,
Socialism, a Dictatorship, until Heaven, it
will never be equal and fair.
Ah yes. Heard of both of them....
Ordinary
The politicans. You ever hear Jindal or Barbour? BITCH and BITCH.
Who? The (Alabama) citizens affected by the worst environmental disaster this country as ever seen, or the National Guardsmen sent out to "knock" on people's doors?
Ordinary
No idea but all they do is complain and yet they won't even send out the troops to help. The would just rather bitch!
"...Alabama has deployed 432 troops of 3,000 available."
Are they still going around knocking on people's doors telling them about their rights to file (for claims) against BP?
Ordinary
As of May, the six largest US banks and their trade associations spent approx $600million lobbying against financial reform.
Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) refused to meet with any financial reform lobbyists, per CNBC - 06/25/10.
And you expected to use them???????? LOL
As of today, the federal government has authorized a total of 17,500 National Guard troops across four Gulf states, all to be paid for by BP.
But CBS News has learned that in addition to Louisiana's 1,053 troops of 6,000, Alabama has deployed 432 troops of 3,000 available. Even fewer have been deployed in Florida - 97 troops out of 2,500 - and Mississippi - 58 troops out of 6,000.
oh okay, so you came up with the idea all by yourself
it was just a coincidence that Limbaugh also called on his "troops" to try and rig the vote
sure, I guess we'll just take your word for it
LMAO!
Gulf Coast Governors Leaving National Guard Idle
Thousands of Troops Called Up to Fight Oil Spill Haven't Been Deployed
(CBS) All along the Gulf coast, local officials have been demanding more help from the federal government to fight the spill, yet the Gulf states have deployed just a fraction of the National Guard troops the Pentagon has made available, CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.
That's a particular problem for the state of Louisiana, where the Republican governor has been the most vocal about using all resources.
Gov. Bobby Jindal's message has been loud and clear, using language such as "We will only be winning this war when we're actually deploying every resource," "They (the federal government) can provide more resources" and "It's clear the resources needed to protect our coast are still not here."
But nearly two months after the governor requested - and the Department of Defense approved the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops - only a fraction - 1,053 - have actually been deployed by Jindal to fight the spill.
"If you ask any Louisianan, if you said 'If you had those troops, do you think they could be put to good use? Is there anything they can do in your parish?' I think they'd all tell you 'Absolutely,'" Louisiana state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, said.
As of today, the federal government has authorized a total of 17,500 National Guard troops across four Gulf states, all to be paid for by BP.
But CBS News has learned that in addition to Louisiana's 1,053 troops of 6,000, Alabama has deployed 432 troops of 3,000 available. Even fewer have been deployed in Florida - 97 troops out of 2,500 - and Mississippi - 58 troops out of 6,000.
Those figures prompted President Obama to weigh in.
"I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible," Mr. Obama said.
It's believed officials in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi and are reluctant to use more troops because their presence could hurt tourism. In hardest-hit Louisiana, however, Jindal is pointing fingers.
"Actually we asked the White House to approve the initial 6,000," Jindal said. "What they came back and said is the Coast Guard and BP had to authorize individual tasks."
But Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the government's response to the spill, said Jindal is just flat wrong.
"There is nothing standing in the governor's way from utilizing more National Guard troops," Allen said.
In fact, the Coast Guard says every request to use the National Guard has been approved, usually within a day. Now Jindal's office acknowledged to CBS News the governor has not specifically asked for more Guard troops to be deployed.
Whether it's simple confusion or the infusion of politics into the spill, the fact remains thousands of helping hands remain waiting to be used.
(Scroll down to watch the report CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian filed) June 24, 2010
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/24/eveningnews/main6615414.shtml
Boat Captain: A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive
Venice, Louisiana, Boat Captain/ by Catherine Craig
A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP's controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts.
Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles.
"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," Ellis said in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig.
I've been following this guy's blog
he's put up some interesting posts
from what I gather he is volunteering his time and effort to do this
Drew Wheelan
http://birding.typepad.com/gulf/
"there is none" - That's when a pol has to create a boogeyman, someone the gullible can be made afraid of and it helps greatly if a media outlet supports everything a pol does/says, without question.
Pols also use the illegal immigrant as a boogeyman, and again it works on some as we see..."free education", "free medical", "welfare checks" etc. etc. Those who do the hiring and contribute to pol campaigns are not forced to accept any responsibility, the illegal immigrant is the boogeyman - end of story.
Most understand Mexico's economy benefits from those who come into the US to work and send money back home.
QUESTION: Then, why don't/didn't they take the initiative to make their lives better in their country?
seems to me, your equation for work and a better life is to take advantage of OUR PROSPERITY....
why aren't they fixing THEIR COUNTRY?
Do you think it could be the same reason that 'our' so called 'puritans' or whatever you want to call
them came here .....INSTEAD of "fixing THEIR COUNTRIES" ..?
seems to me, your equation for work and a better life is to take advantage of OUR PROSPERITY....
Absolutely NOT .. WE take advantage of their illegal status.
Alex, You missed the lie part....
You seem to like to omit things and distort things...
"because "dear leader" Limbaugh told you to
how'd that strategy work out for the Limbaugh dittoheads?"
Do you really have any intent on discussing the topic of this board or are you more interested in personal attacks with bogus statements and wild accusations?
THEY COME HERE FOR THE SOCIAL BENEFITS....
free education...
free medical....subsidized housing...
welfare check...
food stamps...
free cell phone...
Simply NOT TRUE ..they come here for work and a better life.
Immigration restrictionists argue, not without some merit, that illegal immigrants don’t fully pay into the social-welfare system from which they benefit. Restrictionists tend to overstate the effect of illegal immigrants on American wages and they understate the amount of taxes even illegals pay. About two-thirds of illegals pay Medicare, Social Security, and income taxes. All pay sales taxes and property taxes (directly if they own property, or, more likely, indirectly via rents that reflect property taxes). And since 1996, the only public funds illegals can really access are for emergency medical care and primary and secondary education (and only 10 percent of illegals send kids to public schools).
But the most efficient way to address those concerns is by making it easier for illegals to function in the light of day, where they would have every reason to pay all the taxes the rest of us do. And to enter the country through official checkpoints (and to leave the country through the same gates). This isn’t just idle guesswork. In October 2005, the National Immigration Forum and the conservative Manhattan Institute surveyed 233 illegal Latino immigrants in Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Fully 98 percent of respondents said they would legalize their status if given the opportunity. (81 percent said they would “live and work in the United States” for the rest of their lives.) Ninety-one percent said they would pay a $1,000 fine to come clean and 96 percent said they would submit to a criminal background check. Seventy percent said they would pay any back taxes they owed as a condition of legalization and 87 percent said they would enroll in an English class. A vanishingly small proportion of illegal immigrants come here to live in the shadows of American prosperity.
Any immigrant, legal or not, will tend to be a producer of some good an American wants to pay him or her for, and simultaneously a consumer of some good an American wants to sell. Businesses can and do arise out of supplying the wants and needs of legal or illegal immigrants; what they directly pay in taxes or take in social services is no meaningful measure of what they are adding to or subtracting from the commonweal; human beings are indeed the ultimate resource, green card or no.
The free market, as it usually does, has created a system of mutually satisfactory interdependence, all of us serving each other and helping each other get what we want.
http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/20/immigration-now-immigration-to/
Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers.
What's more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers — that the Social Security administration stashes in the "earnings suspense file" — added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.
Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children. The non-partisan National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled immigrant families � most of whom are illegal — are factored in, they contribute on average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume.
at least Nixon passed some positive legislation such as women's rights and positive environmental legislation
i can't think of anything positive Reagan or the two Bush's left us with
unless you like never ending wars, shipping jobs overseas, environmental destruction, financial calamities, handing over pallets of cash to Wall Streeters, Banksters, corporate buddies, and warlords etc etc
Visitors to the coastal communities of southern Louisiana report an eery silence.
The people are still there, but they're not talking.
It's been made clear to them that their only hope of economic salvation - now that the fishery that provides 30% of the US seafood has been destroyed - is clean up work.
And that work is controlled by BP.
"Talk and your lifeline is cut."
Here's one person willing to talk...
DUH.....what a revelation!
Oh I bet you hate em all, don't you?
...........hate is your bag. reviewing statistical information is mine.
Better yet, Lincoln was a Republican, come one..
He helped free the slaves, but I'm sure there
was a Caveat to that, some kick back, something
we can blame him for.
Lincoln would be classified as an eastern democratic elitist now. After all He moved harshly against
the south AGAINST southern democratic slave owners ..& now the south is republican .. lmao. They LOST
..and still can't get over it ..
Banks ‘Dodged a Bullet’ as Congress Dilutes Rules
June 25, 2010, 11:25 AM EDT
By Christine Harper
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-25/banks-dodged-a-bullet-as-congress-dilutes-rules.html
June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Legislation to overhaul financial regulation will help curb risk-taking and boost capital buffers. What it won’t do is fundamentally reshape Wall Street’s biggest banks or prevent another crisis, analysts said.
A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds.
Banks “dodged a bullet,” said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy and a former Deutsche Bank AG executive. “This has to be a net positive.”
Hashed out almost two years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the legislation shepherded by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank places limits on potentially risky activities such as proprietary trading or over-the-counter derivatives and gives regulators new powers to seize and wind down large, complex institutions if needed.
The overhaul, which still requires approval from the full Congress, won’t shrink banks deemed “too big to fail,” leaving largely intact a U.S. financial industry dominated by six companies with a combined $9.4 trillion of assets. The changes also do little to solve the danger posed by leveraged companies reliant on fickle markets for funding, which can evaporate in a panic like the one that spread in late 2008.
‘Fig Leaf’
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, whose 79 companies include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., rose 1.1 percent at 10:50 a.m. in New York.
The legislation is “largely a fig leaf,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “Given where we were when this got started, I’d have to imagine the Wall Street firms are pretty happy.”
Banks avoided drastic curbs on their highly profitable derivatives businesses. Lenders including JPMorgan and Citigroup Inc. will be required to move less than 10 percent of the derivatives in their deposit-taking banks to a broker-dealer division during the next two years, which may require additional capital.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which were the two biggest U.S. securities firms before converting to banks in September 2008, won’t be as affected because they kept most of their derivatives in their broker-dealer units.
‘Pennies’ of Dilution
“There’s going to be some adaptation, but I don’t think there’s going to be any colossal impact,” said Benjamin Wallace, an analyst at Grimes & Co. in Westborough, Massachusetts, which manages $900 million and holds stakes in Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan and Wells Fargo & Co. Derivatives rules mean “there’s going to be a capital raise, but the analysis we’ve seen suggests we’re talking in the pennies in terms of dilution” of earnings per share.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, had originally advocated forbidding banks that receive federal support such as deposit insurance from trading swaps, a rule that could have required banks to spin off those businesses.
The final agreement provides a number of exemptions: Banks can continue trading derivatives used to hedge their risks and can keep trading interest-rate and foreign-exchange contracts. Banks will have up to two years to move other types of derivatives, such as credit default swaps that aren’t standard enough to be cleared through a central counterparty, into a separately capitalized subsidiary.
97% of Market
U.S. commercial banks held derivatives with a notional value of $212.8 trillion in the fourth quarter, of which 92 percent were interest-rate or foreign-exchange derivatives, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The five U.S. banks with the biggest holdings of derivatives -- JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo -- hold $206.2 trillion, or 97 percent, of that total, the OCC said.
The rules are “nowhere as bad as what the banks might have feared as recently as a week ago,” Bill Winters, the London- based former co-chief executive officer of JPMorgan’s investment bank, told Bloomberg Television today. “Banks have pretty much factored in already the idea that most derivatives will have to be cleared through a central clearing counterparty. Not a huge surprise and probably not a huge cost either.”
Volcker Rule
Derivatives are contracts whose value is derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in interest rates or weather. They include credit-default swaps, which act like insurance for investors in case a debt issuer can’t repay.
Swaps sold by American International Group Inc. that later went sour helped push the insurer to the brink of bankruptcy and triggered a $182 billion federal bailout of the New York-based company during the near collapse of the financial system in 2008.
Another portion of the legislation that was amended in the final conference was the so-called Volcker rule, named after Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who championed it. Originally the rule would have prevented any systemically important bank holding company from engaging in proprietary trading, or bets with its own money, as well as investing its own capital in hedge funds or private-equity funds. Goldman Sachs executives have estimated that about 10 percent of the firm’s annual revenue comes from proprietary trading.
3% Rule
In the final version, the banks will be allowed to provide no more than 3 percent of a fund’s equity, and will be limited to investing up to 3 percent of the bank’s Tier 1 capital in hedge funds or private equity funds. That represents a ceiling of about $3.9 billion for JPMorgan, $3.6 billion for Citigroup and $2.1 billion for Goldman Sachs, according to the companies’ latest quarterly reports.
“I don’t think it will have any impact at all on most banks,” Winters said of the amended Volcker rule. “It’s a pragmatic solution that will result in the banks having no big issues.”
While the rule has been watered down, it still represents an important change in direction for a financial industry that had been allocating a larger and larger portion of capital over the last decade to making bets and investments with their own money, said James Ellman, president of San Francisco-based hedge fund Seacliff Capital LLC, which specializes in financial industry stocks.
‘Casino’ Must Go
“You’re going to be taking out of the banks areas of investing that every 10 years or so, at certain points in the cycle, tend to have dramatic losses,” Ellman said. “Effectively you’re telling the system: We have to take the casino out of the utility.”
While Ellman said the legislation will help to make the financial system safer, he added that “it won’t satisfy anybody who wanted really strict additional regulation of banks.”
The new version of the Volcker rule also incorporates changes proposed by Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Carl Levin of Michigan that aim to curb conflicts of interest by preventing firms that underwrite an asset-backed security from placing bets against the investment. In April, Levin presided over a hearing in which Goldman Sachs executives were accused of betting against some of the same collateralized debt obligations that they underwrote; the executives responded by saying they were acting as market-makers.
Market-Based Funding
While requirements for an increase in capital will provide banks with a bigger cushion to absorb losses, the legislation does little to reduce banks’ dependence on the markets to finance their balance sheets. It was that market-based funding that made firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley vulnerable to the panic that spread in 2008.
“Something has to be put in place to cause banks to have deposit-based liabilities and not market-based liabilities,” Grimes & Co.’s Wallace said.
The effects of the legislation won’t be seen for several years as new regulations are drafted and implemented, analysts said. New international capital requirements under consideration by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which could be implemented by the end of 2011, will also be important.
Investors and analysts including Optique Capital Management’s William Fitzpatrick said bank stock prices have already factored in any likely reduction in revenue from the changes.
“Profitability is indeed going to take a hit and we’re going to see more stringent capital requirements,” said Fitzpatrick at Milwaukee-based Optique, which oversees about $800 million including stock in Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. “The changes are most certainly necessary. They can certainly lead to a more stable and predictable earnings stream.”
Still, he added, “this doesn’t remove all of the elements of financial distress that could lead to some of the challenges we had in 2008.”
Oh I bet you hate em all, don't you?
moral justification for war....there is none....
but, more interestingly....I completely disagree with:
Nixon was a Saint compared to the other trash teabaggers elected !
.......Your words are an excellent exposure of who you are.
LOL He and his pimps weren't as bad as Reagan! Aren't you glad about that?
There you go Alex...good boy!!!!
Here's another bone for you....NIXON!
Yeah, there's a crook that put our country
back 50 years. There should be some
reparations from that time period.
FinReg Complete, and Banks Stuck With $20 Billion Tab for Implementation
6/25/10 9:18 AM
It is over. After a marathon 20-hour session, the conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of financial regulatory reform completed their work. All Democrats and no Republicans voted for the final package, and conference committee wrapped up around 5:40 a.m.
A version of both the Volcker Rule — banning banks from proprietary trading — and a provision to force banks to spin off swap desks made it into the final day, and I’ll look more closely at what language actually made it through later on.
But one small detail: At 2:52 a.m., Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the head of the conference committee, inserted a provision into the bill. It sticks banks with more than $50 billion in assets and hedge funds with more than $10 billion in assets with the costs of implementing the reforms. It made it in.
http://washingtonindependent.com/88447/finreg-complete-and-banks-stuck-with-20-billion-tab-for-implementation
actually you would be right
it was Reagan who really got the deregulation craze going
we mustn't forget him
Good one. bp! Hey, I got an idea...let's go back
as far as Ronald Reagan. Let's blame him.
Better yet, Lincoln was a Republican, come one..
He helped free the slaves, but I'm sure there
was a Caveat to that, some kick back, something
we can blame him for.
BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky
Damon Winter/The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/24rig.html
The future of BP’s offshore oiloperations in the Gulf of Mexico has been thrown into doubt by the recent drilling disaster and court wrangling over a moratorium.
Damon Winter/The New York TimesThe BP drilling station on the artificial island in the Beaufort Sea. Because of its location on the artificial island, it has been exempted from the moratorium on offshore drilling.
But about three miles off the coast of Alaska, BP is moving ahead with a controversial and potentially record-setting project to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.
All other new projects in the Arctic have been halted by the Obama administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling, including more traditional projects like Shell Oil’s plans to drill three wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort.
But BP’s project, called Liberty, has been exempted as regulators have granted it status as an “onshore” project even though it is about three miles off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. The reason: it sits on an artificial island — a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water — built by BP.
The project has already received its state and federal environmental permits, but BP has yet to file its final application to federal regulators to begin drilling, which it expects to start in the fall.
Some scientists and environmentalists say that other factors have helped keep the project moving forward.
Rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling.
The environmental assessment was taken away from the agency’s unit that typically handles such reviews, and put in the hands of a different division that was more pro-drilling, said the scientists, who discussed the process because they remained opposed to how it was handled.
“The whole process for approving Liberty was bizarre,” one of the federal scientists said.
The scientists and other critics say they are worried about a replay of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because the Liberty project involves a method of drilling called extended reach that experts say is more prone to the types of gas kicks that triggered the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.
“It makes no sense,” said Rebecca Noblin, the Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental watchdog group. “BP pushes the envelope in the gulf and ends up causing the moratorium. And now in the Arctic they are forging ahead again with untested technology, and as a result they’re the only ones left being allowed to drill there.”
BP has defended the project in its proposal, saying it is safe and environmentally friendly. It declined to respond to requests for further comment.
Extended-reach drilling has advantages. Drilling at an angle might be less threatening to sensitive habitats. But engineers say that this type of drilling is riskier and more complicated than traditional drilling because it is relatively new and gas kicks are more frequent and tougher to detect.
And because of the distance and angles involved, drilling requires far more powerful machinery, putting extra pressure on pipes and well casings.
Several companies have built artificial islands to drill offshore in the Arctic and elsewhere, in part because surging ice floes can destroy conventional floating or metal-legged offshore drilling platforms.
Critics say that such islands are so tiny that a large oil spill will quickly flow into the surrounding waters.
BP officials say that by accessing the Liberty oil field from far away, the project reduces its environmental impact in the delicate North Shore area.
The Liberty field lies about five miles from land under the shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea in an area populated during the winter by seals and polar bears and covered by thick floating ice.
During the summer, bowhead whales migrate through the region.
“The overall Liberty Project has been planned and designed to minimize adverse effects to biological resources,” BP wrote in 2007 in the development proposalto federal regulators. “Impacts to wetlands have been significantly reduced including shoreline and tundra habitat for birds and caribou.”
The project will also involve nearly 400 workers in a region where jobs are scarce, according to BP.
But concerns exist about the project’s oversight and critics say the project offers another example of dangerous coziness between industry and regulators.
For example, the federal scientists say that BP should never have been allowed to do environmental reviews that are the responsibility of the regulators. And yet, the language of the “environmental consequences” sections of the final 2007 federal assessmentand BP’s own assessmentsubmitted earlier the same year are virtually identical.
No such overlap existed in the documents for other major projects approved by the same office around the same time, a review of the documents shows.
Both assessments concluded that the effects from a large spill potentially could have a major impact on wildlife, but discounted the threat because they judged the likelihood of spill to be very remote.
They also asserted that BP’s spill response plan would be able to handle a worst case — which BP estimated as a spill of 20,000 barrels per day.
Officials from the minerals agency declined to answer questions about the handling of the BP’s environmental assessment, but they added, “In light of the BP oil spill in the gulf and new safety requirements, we will be reviewing the adequacy of the current version of the Liberty project’s spill plan.”
In promotional materials, BP acknowledges that the Liberty project will push boundaries of drilling technology.
To reduce weight on the rig, BP has developed a new steel alloy for the drill pipe.
So much force is needed to power a drill over such long distances that BP had to invest more than $200 million to have a company build what it describes as the largest land rig in the world.
The drill’s top drive is rated at 105,000 foot-pounds of torque, while North Slope rigs are typically rated at 40,000 foot-pounds.
“It will take all of this technology that we’ve developed and exploited in Prudhoe Bay and extend it to a new realm,” Gary Christman, BP’s director of Alaska drilling and wells, told Petroleum News in 2007.
But engineers say that realm includes greater risk.
John Choe, an expert in extended-reach drilling and director of the department of energy resources at Seoul National University, said that it was less safe than conventional types of drilling because gas kicks that can turn into blowouts are tougher to detect as they climb more slowly toward the rig.
“So, you may not detect it until it becomes serious,” he said. “In that case, the kick or drilling related problems become too big to be managed easily.”
A 2004 study commissioned by the Minerals Management Servicecame to a similar conclusion.
“A gas kick represents probably the most dangerous situation that can occur when drilling a well since it can easily develop to a blowout if it is not controlled promptly,” it said. Extended-reach drilling wells “are more prone to kicks and lost-circulation problems than more conventional and vertical wells, but have some advantages when the well takes a kick because gas migration rates are lower.”
Despite these concerns, the Liberty’s 614-page environmental assessment says nothing about how the project would handle the unique risks posed by this type of drilling.
Mike Mims, a former owner of a company that specialized in extended-reach drilling, said he believed that the worries about this type of drilling were overblown. “The kicks can occur but they move slower and the bubbles don’t expand as fast,” he said.
“It all comes down to personnel,” he added, “If your people understand the risks and handle the work carefully, this drilling is entirely safe.”
BP discovered the Liberty oil field in 1997, began construction of a rig there in 2008, and was nearing final preparations this April when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.
Two weeks after the Obama administration declared a moratorium on offshore drilling on May 27, BP announced that the Liberty project would continue, with drilling scheduled to start in the fall, generating its first oil production by 2011. By 2013, BP estimates, Liberty will yield 40,000 barrels of oil per day.
If approved, the Liberty will be the longest horizontal well of its kind in the world. BP’s production planfor the Liberty notes that drilling studies only support horizontal wells up to 8.33 miles. Any horizontal wells longer than that, the plan says, “have not been studied.”
State regulators have faulted BP for not being prepared to handle a spill at a similar, though less ambitious project, known as the Northstar field. That project involves vertical drilling and sits on an artificial island six miles northwest of Prudhoe Bay in the Beaufort Sea.
The Liberty project will tie into the Endicott pipeline when complete. On April 20, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration warned BP that it was in “probable violation” of federal standards because of corrosion found on its Endicott oil pipeline and a lack of records indicating corrosion protection and monitoring efforts.
BP has faced a number of challenges at its Alaska facilities. The company sustained two corrosion-caused leaks in its rigs in Prudhoe Bay in 2006, including a leak of over 200,000 gallons that cost the company around $20 million in fines and restitution. This was the largest spill to have occurred on Alaska’s North Slope.
But to liberals it will be NEVER.
You live in the past, and you bring MISERY on
everyone else.
If we were more responsible for our own behavior,
(and before you start attacking all the conservatives
whose behavior was as bad as most liberals, both of
em do it) we would not be in the mess we are in.
It is like racism. It will never end. White guys
will always be slave owners until they are wiped
off the face of the earth.
That's what you want, isn't it.....all white guys
gone, except very liberal ones of course.
The blame game has got to stop, and it has to rest
on the MAN IN CHARGE----in this case, my and your
president.
So in 50 years, this answer of yours:
NOT one minute before!
Will still be alive and well.
I guess he also likes to forget about all the other Reps. of the last 40 years of failures they have given us. Takes years!
Please give me a statute of limitations so you
libs will take a drink of 'shut the hell up'
on this stuff so we can move forward, together,
as a country.
How many times do I have to say this? I will "shut the hell up".. when we are done paying the consequences
for the bush disastrous years. NOT one minute before!
Good Post. Would you also be in Favor of Tort Reform?
Am sure women appreciate this comment of yours:
"rape them for their oil"
One of us Conservatives makes that same comment..
the post is deleted, or we are banned forever
from IHUB!
Well done
it's the right wingers who cannot except responsibility
if the right wingers would stop posting constant lies that the deficit and the economic collapse was Obama's fault we wouldn't have to remind people that it's all a big fat lie by the Bush sychophants
so NO... we will not forget the disaster known as "the Bush years"
fortunately most people know the truth and don't spout constant lies like the wingers on this board
More Americans blame GOP for the bad economy
Earlier this week, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) criticized President Obama for blaming the nation's economic troubles on the previous administration. "It's childish," said Bush. "This is what children do until they mature. They don't accept responsibility." The former governor's comments echoed other Republican leaders, who claim that Obama's policies have "failed" while averting any blame for the disastrous policies that led to the downturn.
However, a new CNN poll shows that the American people aren't fooled by the Republican spin. Asked which party is "more responsible for the country's current economic problems," 41 percent faulted Republicans as opposed to just 28 percent who faulted Democrats.
I think I'll choose to remember who got us into this mess. This is what a country looks like after an idiot has been in charge for 8 yrs.
This thread was designed to take politics out of the turnip Patch thread.
Naturally, the TOU rules apply here. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/Terms.asp
Finally, out of respect to Zeev, any reference to Nazis will be reviewed for context.
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