[tomder55]

So you are saying banks that have all these defaulted subprimes did well when the bubble burts ? Or maybe some banks stood firm and refused to succumb against HUD and ACORN pressure.

Since the backbone of our economy is the mom and pop small business ,lets make the ceiling at 50 employees . Anything over that break them up !

The other obvious question is why is it OK for government to be big but not business ? I'm all in favor of breaking up big government . Maybe that's the compromise we need to break this deadlock.

[excon]

The other obvious question is why is it ok for government to be big but not business ? I'm all in favor of breaking up big government . Maybe that's the compromise we need to break this deadlock.

Hello tom:

No problem here. I'll put up the DEA, the Bureau of Prisons, the Energy Department, the Education Department, and about half of our intelligent services. That'll still leave us with about 15 different spy agencies.

What's your bid?

excon

[Catsmine]

Hello tom:

No problem here. I'll put up the DEA, the Bureau of Prisons, the Energy Department, the Education Department, and about half of our intelligent services. That'll still leave us with about 15 different spy agencies.

What's your bid?

excon

I'll see those and raise the State Department umbrella organizations such as US AID and Voice of America (and there goes about four more spy agencies)

[speechlesstx]

Keep going, throw in the EPA, NPR, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

[tomder55]

Consolidate DEA ATF into homeland security . I agree with the rest of the above.

Reinstall Glass-Steagall Act or force investment banks that want to operate like commercial banks to fund FDIC .

Most important of all . End the revolving door of bankers and lawyers becoming lawmakers or government policy makers . Here are the current G.S. Obots .

* Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama's Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. He was confirmed despite heated congressional grilling over his role, as Reuters described it, "as a high-level Treasury official in a 2000 law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight. The financial instruments have been blamed for amplifying global financial turmoil."

Gensler said he was sorry -- hey, it worked for tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner -- and was quickly installed to guard the henhouse.

* Goldman kept White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a $3,000 monthly retainer while he worked as presidential candidate Bill Clinton's chief fund-raiser, as first reported by Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney. The financial titans threw in another $50,000 to become the Clinton primary campaign's top funder.

Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in campaign contributions from Goldman during his four terms in Congress -- investments that have reaped untold rewards, as Emanuel assumed a leading role championing the trillion-dollar TARP banking bailout law.

* Former Goldman lobbyist Mark Patterson serves under Geithner as his top deputy and overseer of TARP bailout -- $10 billion of which went to Goldman Sachs.

Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based think tank devoted to transparency in government, noted that, while Patterson agreed to recuse himself on any Goldman Sachs-related issues or related policy concerns, it "still creates a serious conflict for Geithner, as Treasury is being partly managed by a former Goldman lobbyist. Geithner is also placed in a tough position considering that his chief of staff is limited in the areas in which he can work (supposedly)."

* National Economic Council head Larry Summers reaped nearly $2.8 million in speaking fees from many of the major financial institutions and government bailout recipients he now polices, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and Goldman. A single speech to Goldman in April 2008 brought in $135,000.

Summers has prior experience negotiating government-sponsored bailouts that benefit private concerns. In 1995, he spearheaded a $40 billion Mexican peso bailout that bypassed Congress.

Summers personally leaned on the International Monetary Fund to provide nearly $18 billion for the package. Summers' boss, then Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, was former co-chairman of Goldman -- the Mexican government's investment banking firm of choice.

Rubin continues to mentor another of his former employees with regular visits and chats -- Treasury Secretary Geithner, who was head of the New York Federal Reserve in 2008 when it ordered bailed-out AIG not to disclose its sweetheart payments to big banks including, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs.

All the President's Goldman men - NYPOST.com

[excon]

consolidate DEA ATF into homeland security . I agree with the rest of the above.

Hello again, tom:

You YELL about big government, but when it comes to government you LIKE, size doesn't matter. I understand. Really, I do.

excon

[tomder55]

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." Thomas Jefferson

[excon]

Hello again, tom:

"I think we have more police agencies than are necessary for the well being of our citizens. Too many causes the opposite effect."

I said that. My name is

excon

PS> The DEA isn't a police agency anyway. It's a bureaucracy designed to affect social change with a gun.

[tomder55]

It depends on what you define as the proper role of government I guess. Primary among them to my way of thinking is national security, enforcement of contracts, defense of property, and, protection of the right to life.
Therefore if I can justify any agency of the government it is the security ones.

[excon]

Primary among them to my way of thinking is national security, enforcement of contracts, defense of property, and, protection of the right to life.

Hello again, tom:

And, the DEA does exactly WHAT in support of those goals??

excon

[tomder55]

Drug trafficking and smuggling is as much a national security issue as any other smuggling .

[excon]

drug trafficing and smuggling is as much a national security issue as any other smuggling .

Hello again, tom:

In other words, you learned NOTHING from our previous experience with prohibition.

excon

[tomder55]

Even if it was legal the smuggling across the border is still a national security concern. That's part of the reason for border patrol and the Coast Guard.

[Catsmine]

border patrol and the Coast Guard.

THAT'S where you should put your DEA cowboys, and teach them some discipline at the same time.

[tomder55]

Cats ;and that's why I said DEA should be absorbed into DHS

[Catsmine]

Cats ;and that's why I said DEA should be absorbed into DHS

DHS isn't that much better. All the civilian "agents" that I've ever had any dealings with needed adult supervision. Some of the Fibbies can put their socks and shoes on by themselves but not until they make Special Agent usually. Most of them make me think of the movie Super Troopers.

Edit: make that "socks then shoes"

[tomder55]

Right . But we do have posse comitatus to deal with .

[Catsmine]

right . but we do have posse comitatus to deal with .

In the original meaning of the term, I consider Sheriffs to be adult supervision. They aren't "Agents," they are Officers.

[excon]

Hello again, righty's:

Let's get back on track.

The Dem's have learned a thing or two lately. As I've said MANY times here on these boards, during the health care debate, the Democrats LET the Republicans WIN the talking point battle. It's STILL having major repercussions, too because a lot of people, primarily the tea partiers, still BELIEVE the lies that were told. Don't believe it? Go see the tea party video that NK posted.

Nonetheless, Mitch McConnell, being the ever dutiful right wing spouter, was spouting the lie, that the financial reform package being considered contained "permanent government bailouts", repeating the Frank Luntz talking points verbatim. Read about it here. I don't blame McConnell, though. Hell, it WORKED once on those dumbocrats (and the nation).

This time, however, the Democrats jumped on it, and called him out. The pres did it, specifically and the Democratic Senators did it in Washington.

Good for them.

excon

[tomder55]

And ? The truth is that unless the provision for permanent bailout... ooops I mean “Orderly Resolution Fund”is removed from Dodd's bill then it will be a bill that promises a subsidization of moral hazard and their vision of too big to fail becomes self fulfilling... and they get to decide who falls into that category . Government Sucks gives millions $$ to their campaign... BAM! Too big to fail!

Let the Dems take that provision out and we'll see if there can be real free market reform . But they won't because the simple correct and reasonable answer is to let crappy companies fail. And don't talk about too big to fail. There wasn't a bank in America in 1929 that anyone would call too big to fail ;but we still had a financial collapse.

I'll add one more caveat.Government policies should not be the reason a company fails. When they talk of perp walking bankers they conveniently forget their own complicity .

If they want to identify an Orderly Resolution to a failing business. It's called Chapter 11 .

This is amazing to me... for all their bleating and demogoguing against business it is the Dems that carry the water for the ones they claim to despise the most.

A perfect example of this is GM. They took TARP and paid it off this week with bailout funds instead of with earnings . Everyone thinks GM must've recovered because of all the fan-fare over their announcement . But in truth they are still a zombie dependent on Gvt.