Wall Street Watchdog Too Broke to Do Its Job Thanks to GOP Cutbacks

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by Agent_286, Nov 2, 2013.

  1. Agent_286

    Agent_286 New Member

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    Wall Street Watchdog Too Broke to Do Its Job Thanks to GOP Cutbacks

    The Huffington Post | By Mark Gongloff | 11/01/2013 3:04 pm EDT
    Excerpts:

    “Austerity isn't just hurting the U.S. economy: It's also starving Wall Street's watchdogs.

    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has decided not to press charges against two traders in the "London Whale" case partly because it is so strapped for cash, its former chief enforcement officer, David Meister, told the Wall Street Journal. The CFTC is also slowing down investigations and laying off staff as a result of its funding crunch.

    "We will do everything we can… but we have limited staff and limited resources," Meister, who stepped down this week, told the WSJ. "Ultimately, it comes down to the math."

    House Republicans, as you may know, have made it pretty hard for the CFTC to do its job lately.

    They've repeatedly rejected requests for more CFTC funding and most recently turned down a raise for the agency to $315 million from $195 million. Of course, the agency's budget was already squeezed by the automatic spending cuts of the sequestration.

    Republicans seem to think that the CFTC's budget, up from just $111 million five years ago, is more than enough. But as Bloomberg Businessweek pointed out on Friday, the markets under the CFTC's jurisdiction have gotten more than ten times bigger. (And as the WSJ notes, CFTC fines have paid for the agency's $195 million annual budget many times over.)

    During the government shutdown, which was caused by House Republicans, the CFTC was unable to watch markets for several weeks.

    And as the government shutdown began, the CFTC was handed a critical new task, based on the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, of watching the $600 trillion market for swaps. These derivatives were at the heart of the financial meltdown in 2008. The CFTC was already struggling to keep an eye on the $37 trillion futures market.

    Just last week the agency said it will have to furlough its workers for 14 days during the current fiscal year, simply to make ends meet.

    "In handing the swaps market to the CFTC, Congress gave its biggest, hardest regulatory task to one of the smaller agencies in Washington," Bloomberg Businessweek's Matthew Phillips wrote.

    Despite limited funds, the CFTC has been a remarkably aggressive regulator, especially in the three years of Meister's term as enforcement chief, when it filed nearly 300 enforcement actions, roughly double the amount of the previous three years.

    It took the lead on cracking down on manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, a key short-term interest rate that is apparently just manipulated constantly by every major bank in the world, raising $1.8 billion so far in fines.

    It also got JPMorgan to pay $100 million in fines in the "London Whale" case, making use of a brand-new law, much-hated by Wall Street, against market manipulation.

    But the agency's enforcement was down by a fifth in the latest fiscal year, according to the WSJ, largely due to budget constraints. And it has the same staffing level it had in 2002, when financial markets were much smaller and much less complex.

    Now Meister is leaving, and he will soon be followed by CFTC chief Gary Gensler, who has been a surprisingly tough regulator in his four years at the helm.

    The CFTC's paltry funding makes recruiting replacements for them even tougher than usual. Hopefully there are plenty of smart, civic-minded people out there who like a challenge. The problem is that the challenge may be impossible.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/01/cftc-broke-london-whale_n_4191210.html
    ......

    IMO: How any sane American can say that the sequestration, shutting down of the government, flirting with another great recession, and defunding many departments, failing to vote in new judges to fill vacant seats, furloughing thousands of government workers, and leaving primary security protection (Benghazi) unfunded, is good for this country is a person that is either hopelessly brainwashed, (and not in a good way) and by their silence are helping those that work against Democracy.

    There will be retribution coming from the American citizens that are really bored with the tparty’s childish maneuvers, and what is more revealing is the fact that they are totally and completely unaware of the damage they are doing to this country as they deliberately oppose everything but their own bills which come from the House regularly without any chance of being passed.

    They persist in their childish pranks to appear busy when they have obstructed every useful program that would have helped America for the last five years, and still collect their paychecks

    If we allow these radical tyrants to close the government again, Congress’s inaction in stopping it will bring the American citizenry right up to the steps of the Capital Building and we will let them know some things about Democracy in Action.
     
  2. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And as the government shutdown began, the CFTC was handed a critical new task, based on the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, of watching the $600 trillion market for swaps. These derivatives were at the heart of the financial meltdown in 2008. The CFTC was already struggling to keep an eye on the $37 trillion futures market.


    Who was in charge of the Senate banking committee back in the late 1970's to 1980 when the banks got into all these bad derivatives and there was no cut backs?
     
  3. Agent_286

    Agent_286 New Member

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    .....

    Who was president in 2000-2008 when the actual meltdown occurred while alot of golf was being played?
     
  4. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Don't put the blame on him. He wasn't in charge of watching what these banks were doing now was he? You want to play that game, lets blame Obama for everything that goes wrong.
     
  5. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    this is a typical gop boondoggle


    his people were
     
  6. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Democrats were ahead of the Senate Banking Committee.
     
  7. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    they're involved with congressional legislation, not actually regulating banks
     
  8. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban ...
    www.banking.senate.gov Cached
    Committee has jurisdiction over banking, economic policy, financial institutions, price controls, deposit insurance, economic stabilization and defense production
     
  9. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    policies, not enforcement

    non-partisan agencies handle that

    guess who's chief of them
     
  10. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If we had not changed the Taft Hartley Act put in place since the great depression to protect the public from banks getting into high risk securities and then not monitoring them, we wouldn't have to worry about the banks. That was a banking policy.
     
  11. Grokmaster

    Grokmaster Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you're still trying to "Blame Bush" for the fraud perpetrated by the ENTIRELY DEMOCRAT EXECUTIVES at Fannie/Freddie, that was the lynchpin of the economelt?

    Let us know when Obama gets us to 4.5% unemployment WITHOUT pretending the lowest workforce participation rate since the Great Depression isn't a problem.
     
  12. Wolfpack

    Wolfpack Banned

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    Who was president in 1999 and pressured banks to provide more and more mortgages to poor people and low-income minorities? This is from a NY Times editorial from 1999:

    Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

    In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
     
  13. reallybigjohnson

    reallybigjohnson Banned

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    The Republicans and the WH both tried to pass legislation to regulate Fannie and Freddie and that was opposed by the Democrats. The Democrats are the ones that prevented reforms to Fannie and Freddie. Even Barney Frank finally admitted that they were wrong and should have let the Republicans try and fix the problems. Your side were the ones standing in the way of trying to fix the issues.
     
  14. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    bush certainly could have done something about that, he didn't


    they didn't cause the crisis, private banks did

    [video=youtube;wxfjXWmVOnY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfjXWmVOnY[/video]
     
  15. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why should banks worry about taking on home loans from people who couldn't afford them when they know Fannie Mae is there to take them over if they default?
     
  16. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The actual melt down started a year after the Democrats took over Congress if that's what you mean.
     
  17. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    why didn't bush do something about it?


    and the practice that caused it started years before that
     
  18. Professor Peabody

    Professor Peabody Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    [video=youtube;cMnSp4qEXNM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&feature=related[/video]

    The Democrats fought the reforms that would have prevented the meltdown.
     
  19. eleison

    eleison New Member

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    From a candidate who said:

    [​IMG]

    To the president who is now saying:

    [​IMG]

    All I can say to the liberals is to have fun trying to find employment:

    [​IMG]

    It's going to be a fun 3 more years :)
     
  20. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  21. Radio Refugee

    Radio Refugee New Member

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    It's called LEADERSHIP, something Obama knows not at all.

    Want $$$ for the CFTC? Give up something else.

    Quite whining. Grow freeeeekin up.
     
  22. DonGlock26

    DonGlock26 New Member Past Donor

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    Warning the Democrats and being ignored:

    [video=youtube;-8neuaP6GnU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8neuaP6GnU[/video]
     
  23. AmericanNationalist

    AmericanNationalist Well-Known Member

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    It would be mightily impressive(though impossible) at this point to get the Democrats to take responsibility for anything.

    If there's even 1 "Tea Partier" left in office, it's one tea-partier too many! It'll still obstruct! It's still their fault!

    Absurd. I don't elect people based on how they can blame others, but on how they can get results to show. And the Dems clearly failed after their '08/'12 mandates.
     
  24. dujac

    dujac Well-Known Member

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    what a joke
     
  25. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What a joke? Democrats were warned many times. At the hearing when regulators also told them the trouble F/M was in, they virtually called the regulators liars.
     

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