Angelides to head financial crisis investigation

WASHINGTON -- Congressional lawmakers released the names Wednesday of 10 members of the Financial Crisis Commission, a body set up to investigate the events that led to the monumental collapse of the financial markets last year.

Former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides is to chair the group. Joining him is former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and the ex-chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born.

Representing the business community are Heather Murren, a retired managing director at investment bank Merrill Lynch, and John W. Thompson, chairman of Symantec Corp., a business-software provider. The sixth member of the panel will be Byron Georgiou, a Las Vegas businessman and attorney.

The Republican appointees to the commission are former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Bill Thomas, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) during last year's presidential campaign, former director of the Bush White House's National Economic Council Keith Hennessey, and Peter Wallison, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The panel was created by Congress earlier this year. Lawmakers demanded a full investigation into how one of the greatest collapse in the financial markets occurred. It is mandated with reporting back to Congress by Dec. 15, 2010, with a series of conclusions about what occurred, and recommendations as to how to avoid future market breakdowns. There have been some fears expressed that the committee's work will be outpaced by efforts already under way to completely overhaul the regulation of the financial sector.

The Obama administration has revealed details of its planned rewriting of the regulatory framework which would see the Federal Reserve given the authority to oversee firms deemed systemically risky, and the creation of a new consumer financial protection regulator.

It is modeled on the Pecora Commission, a Senate panel that investigated causes of the Great Depression during the 1930s. The Pecora Commission led to major changes in federal law, including the creation of Securities Exchange Commission.

Write to By Corey Boles at Corey.Boles@dowjones.com

Michael Jackson, R.I.P.

Michael Jackson wasn't just the King of Pop, he was also the King of Humanitarian Service and Ambassador to the World. His beautiful music and his dedicated service to the least of these touched our hearts, tore down barriers of all kinds, and inspired so many of us to serve humanity. Back in the day I had the privilege of seeing MJ perform at the Fabulous Forum, not far from where Micahel's friends and family said goodbye on Tuesday. Watching Michael Jackson, the greaters entertainer in history, was truly an unforgettable experience.

It's important to remember that Michael Jackson -- and every American born before 1965 -- grew up in a society where Black people were not citizens, were denied basic human rights and were subjected to racial terrorism on a daily basis. Yet like Dr. King, Fannie Lou Hamer and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, Michael Jackson responded not with hatred but with love -- through his music of peace and solidarity and his unparalleled charitable giving. As Rev. Al Sharpton explained so so eloquently at the Memorial Service, without Michael Jackson's pioneering work as a pop culture trailblazer there could never have been a President Barack Obama. Michael Jackson, gone too soon... far too soon. Heal the World. MJ, thank you and R.I.P.

Happy 4th of July from President Obama!

Is the U.S. becoming more socialist?

Well informed debaters;

Medicare for All

Nurses, Progressive Dems Seek Stepped Up Action for
Real, "Robust" Healthcare Reform

Single-Payer, Medicare for All, as Best Solution to Crisis

WASHINGTON - June 24 - With action heating up in
Washington for enactment of comprehensive healthcare
reform, the nation's largest RN union and professional
association joined with progressive Democratic Party
activists today in calling for the most "robust" reform
of all to repair the nation's healthcare crisis, by
enacting a single-payer system in the form of an
expanded and updated Medicare for all.

In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing
Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive
Democrats of America announced they are stepping up
calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional
leaders to include discussion of the single-payer
option in upcoming deliberations on the healthcare
reform legislation now advancing in Congress.

As President Obama holds several public healthcare
events, major committees in Congress unveil
legislation, and some liberal constituency groups set
to rally in Washington Thursday, NNOC/CNA and PDA said
that a single-payer/Medicare-for-all approach is "the
best way to achieve goals of universality, effective
cost controls, and improving the quality of care for
all Americans."

All other proposals, the groups said, suffer the same
limitations. They:

* Leave the insurance industry, with its emphasis
on generating profits and revenues rather than
providing care, in control of our health. * Fail to
assure financial security of American families by
not cracking down on insurance pricing practices. *
Avoid the strongest cost controls that are achieved
in a single-payer system with one shared risk pool
that covers everyone, elimination of the
administrative waste associated with private
insurers, and use of the power of the public entity
to negotiate lower costs. * Does not protect choice
of doctor, hospital, and other providers, as occurs
in a single-payer system, because insurers can
still limit choice to their own approved network of
doctors and providers.

Even the public option favored by the President and
leading Democrats would not achieve these goals, said
NNOC/CNA and PDA. Private insurers would still be able
to cherry pick healthier patients through their
aggressive marketing techniques, with sicker patients
likely being dumped into the public plan. The result is
the public plan would face higher costs and the
likelihood of having to cut or ration services to stay
financially afloat.

PDA and NNOC/CNA are asking people to continue to call
Congress and the White House to insist that single-
payer, and the single-payer bills in Congress, HR 676
in the House and S 703 in the Senate, be given equal
consideration in the legislative review process this
summer.

The two organizations have worked together since early
last year on a variety of healthcare projects,
including pressing the Democratic National Party to go
on record in "support of guaranteed healthcare for all"
at the national convention in Denver, campaigns on
behalf of single-payer candidates across the country in
the fall, and rallies and forums in cities throughout
the U.S.

"The time is ripe for real reform. For our personal
well-being and for the sake of our great nation, now is
the time to institute a real healthcare system instead
of tweaking the patchwork of corporate non-care that
now envelopes us," said NNOC/CNA Co-President Geri
Jenkins, RN.

Jenkins will be attending the ABC White House Town Hall
meeting with President Obama on healthcare reform
tonight, along with Patty Eakin, RN, President of the
Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied
Professionals and an NNOC/CNA board member.

"As long as a profit-motive is the centerpiece of our
system, as it is and will be with healthcare
corporations calling the shots, we entertain no notion
that a public option will be the fix that so many
Americans desperately need and want," Jenkins said.
"Medicare for all is the only solution to what ails
us."

"Regardless of the claims that the majority of people
want a 'public option,' what most people really want is
a system of healthcare that covers everybody, and they
believe the government can do a better job of it than
the healthcare corporations can. It's time for
Congress to stop nibbling around the edges of reform
and provide real leadership toward enacting healthcare
reform for the people, instead of yet another windfall
for wealthy corporations," said Tim Carpenter, national
director of PDA.

The Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign presses forward
with a "Week of Action for Medicare-for-All - H.R.
676." Participating organizations will make calls to
Congress asking representatives to provide leadership
in the healthcare debate. On July 30, the 44th
anniversary of Medicare will be celebrated with a rally
and lobby day in Washington, D.C. ### The California
Nurses Association, and its national arm, the National
Nurses Organizing Committee, is one of the nation's
premiere nurses' organizations and health care unions.
One of the fastest growing health care organizations in
the U.S., CNA/NNOC presently has 80,000 members in 50
states, representing nurses at scores of hospitals,
clinics, and home health agencies.

__________________

Can the Democrats lose in 2010?

Mark Weisbrot
Plans are already being made for the 2010 elections for the U.S. Congress, and the Democrats would appear to have some advantages. They have a popular president, a 6-percentage-point lead in party identification and 9 points for a generic Congressional ballot. Majorities of the electorate see both Obama and the Democratic Party as pushing for a change from the failed policies of the past. The Republicans seem divided and confused over a recovery strategy, plagued by high-level defections (such as Senator Arlen Specter) and spokespeople (such as Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney) that seem too extreme to win over the necessary swing voters.

But the president's party almost always loses Congressional seats in non-presidential-year elections. And if next year's elections reduce the Democrats' margin, it would be even more difficult to make progress on important reform legislation, such as health care. At the end of the day, the ability to deliver reforms that actually improve the lives of the majority of Americans will most likely determine their long-term success as a political party.

The 2010 elections will very likely be about who gets blamed for the current economic disaster. Even if the economy is recovering in the latter half of next year - and that is a big "if" - it will not feel much like an economic recovery for most Americans. The labor market will still be very weak, with unemployment projected to pass ten percent and rising in the second half of next year. Millions will have lost their homes and their jobs, and many millions more will have lost most of the equity that they had accumulated in their homes - the main source of retirement savings for most households. The party that gets blamed for the mess will be most likely to lose seats in Congress.

The Democrats have a chance to defy electoral history and increase their Congressional lead next year, and perhaps even push the GOP toward the status of a permanent minority party. Celinda Lake, one of the Democratic Party's leading pollsters and political strategists, has recently found that 71 percent of voters want Congress to hold investigations into the "events leading up to the Wall Street financial crisis." More importantly, the proportion is just as high among swing voters.

A Congressional investigation, if done right, would probe the errors, excesses, fraud, corruption and other abuses that led to the country's worst recession since the Great Depression. There is plenty of blame to go around, but much of it would probably land on Wall Street and the country's bloated financial sector. The vastly overpaid executives, who made ever-increasing bets on the proposition that obviously over-valued house prices would continue to rise indefinitely, would come under fire.

Some of them were rewarded for their failures with high positions in government: for example, President Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who made $164 million in 2006 at Goldman Sachs during the peak of the housing bubble, helping to steer the economy into an iceberg and then coming to Congress to ask for a blank check of $700 billion to bail out his Wall Street friends.

The most important policy makers, such as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan - who has to some degree fallen from grace - but also current Chairman Ben Bernanke, might also be asked to explain how they failed to notice the biggest asset bubble in the history of the world as it swelled over a period of several years to obviously threatening proportions.

The obvious analogy to such an investigation would be the famed Pecora commission during the 1930's, as some have pointed out. It was named for its intrepid chief counsel Ferdinand Pecora, who went after the Wall Street titans of that era and helped pave the way for the nation's most important financial regulatory reforms, such as the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis, and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Bailing out Wall Street

Arianna Huffington
Posted: June 18, 2009 07:20 PM
Mission Shrink: We've Gone From Saving Wall Street in Order to Save Main Street to Just Saving Wall Street
digg stumble reddit del.ico.us
Read More: Barack Obama, Economic Recovery, Economy, Foreclosures, Housing Market, Joe Biden, Recession, Tim Geithner, Unemployment, Business News

Remember how, back when taxpayers were being asked to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street, we were told it was essential to saving Main Street?

Well, in just a few months, we've gone from saving the banks in order to save the economy to just saving the banks. It's the opposite of mission creep.

In announcing his proposed "overhaul of the financial regulatory system," President Obama said, "Financial institutions have an obligation to themselves and to the public to manage risks carefully. And as president, I have a responsibility to ensure that our financial system works for the economy as a whole."

But parsing through his 85-page plan, it's not clear how these reforms will ensure that our financial system works for the economy as a whole.

"The Obama plan," writes Joe Nocera in the New York Times, "is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself." For Obama's plan to have any lasting value, says Nocera, "he is going to have to make some bankers mad."

We are already hearing the usual whining from the financial industry about too much regulation and the dampening of incentives. And we are already seeing a concerted push from the banking lobby to kneecap the newly proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. But, all in all, there is little there to make bankers mad.

I don't expect there will be too many on Wall Street unhappy with the massive loophole the new plan leaves by calling for so-called plain vanilla derivatives to be traded on an exchange but allowing customized derivatives -- which were at the heart of the financial meltdown -- to remain largely unregulated. This is very good news for the wheelers and dealers who helped turn Wall Street into a casino.

The larger problem continues to be the administration's habit of conflating the health of the Wall Street economy with the health of the real economy -- when, in fact, the two economies have become decoupled. The Dow may be up 30 percent since March, but the numbers that matter most to everyday Americans continue to tell a very different tale.