Monday, July 23, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 23, 2012


America 2012 - The Age of Obama

(Newsbites are in the Comment Section...)

By the way, folks... I do hope you are reading the newsbites... because things sure as hell ain't copacetic!

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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/business/neil-barofskys-journey-into-a-bailout-buzz-saw-fair-game.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

It might seem remarkable that there’s more to say about our late Bailout Age. But there is more — a lot more.

Nearly four years after Washington began its huge rescues of banks with taxpayer dollars, an important player in this, one of the great financial dramas of all time, is offering a damning account of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the whole episode.

* LIKE I SAY, FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... THE OLIGARCHY.

He is Neil Barofsky.

(Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program?)

And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” - to be published on Tuesday - is a must-read.

His story is illuminating, if deeply depressing. We tag along with Mr. Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, as he walks into a political buzz saw as the special inspector general for TARP. Government officials, he says, eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. He says he was warned about being too aggressive in his work, lest he jeopardize his future career.

* WARNED BY WHO EXACTLY? (HOPEFULLY THE BOOK NAMES NAMES... OTHERWISE...) (*SHRUG*)

And so Mr. Barofsky, who formerly prosecuted Colombian drug lords as an assistant United States attorney in New York City, is schooled in the ways of Washington. One telling vignette comes early on in his book, when he is advised by inspectors general in other agencies about how to do his job.

As Mr. Barofsky writes, he had assumed that his assignment to oversee TARP meant that he should be fiercely independent from the Treasury Department, and vigilant against waste, fraud and abuse. But after canvassing other inspector generals for guidance, he writes, he learned of different priorities: maintaining and possibly increasing budgets, appearing to be active — and not making enemies.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... THE NAMES PLEASE!

“The common refrain went like this,” Mr. Barofsky writes. “There are three different types of I.G.’s. You can be a lap dog, a watchdog or a junkyard dog.” A lap dog is seen as too timid, he was told. But being a junkyard dog was also ill-advised. “What you want to be is a watchdog,” he continues. “The agency should perceive you as a constructive but independent partner, helping to make things better for the agency, so everyone is better off.” He also learned, he says, that success as an inspector general meant that investigations come second. Don’t second-guess the Treasury. Instead, “focus on process.”

Thus the collision course was set between Mr. Barofsky and a crew of complacent, bank-friendly Treasury officials. He soon discovered that the department’s natural stance of marching in lock step with the banks meant that he had to question its policies and programs repeatedly to ensure that taxpayers weren’t at risk for fraud and abuse.

“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true,” Mr. Barofsky said in an interview last week. “It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”

* LET'S HEAR ABOUT THE BANKERS - NOT JUST THE BANKS. LET'S NAME NAMES!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

July 23, 2012 at 8:54 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

To be sure, Mr. Barofsky and his team were up against a powerful status quo. And that meant that they ran into plenty of brick walls.

“Bailout” covers a lot of ground, running through attempts of the inspector general’s office to ensure that additional rescue programs suggested by the Treasury had safeguards in place to avoid conflicts of interest, collusion and fraud. One battle involved the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to get troubled mortgages off banks’ balance sheets by encouraging private investors to buy them using mostly taxpayer dollars.

(*DISGUSTED SNICKER*)

When the inspector general’s office recommended ways to protect against fraud and to fix other flaws in the program, Mr. Barofsky writes, the Treasury rejected the suggestions, maintaining that they would gut the programs and reduce participation.

* WHOSE TREASURY? WHICH TREASURY? WHICH INDIVIDUALS...?!?!

Another skirmish involved the department’s ill-conceived loan modification plan, known as the Home Affordable Modification Program. When the Treasury began discussing the program’s outlines, Mr. Barofsky said he became concerned that it would open the door to fraudulent foreclosure rescue schemes, in which large upfront fees could be extracted from desperate borrowers eager to participate in what was supposed to be a free government program. When his office recommended fraud-prevention measures, several were ignored, he writes.

* IGNORED BY WHOM...?!?!

A few months after the modification plan was announced, his office began a preliminary audit of its rollout. “We soon verified what we had suspected,” Mr. Barofsky writes. “Treasury had failed to ensure that the servicers had the necessary infrastructure to support a massive mortgage modification program.” It barely got off the ground, and few homeowners have received the help they hoped for.

This was just one of many examples from Mr. Barofsky’s 16-month tenure, during which, he says, Washington abandoned Main Street while rescuing Wall Street.

* "WASHINGTON" IS NOT A PERSON. I WANT NAMES NAMED. LET'S FOCUS THE SPOTLIGHT ON THOSE RESPONSIBLE! ENOUGH WITH THE RHETORIC!

“There has to be wide-scale acknowledgment that regulatory capture exists, dominates our system and needs to be eradicated,” Mr. Barofsky said in the interview. “It was my job to bring as much transparency to taxpayers so they knew what was going on. Writing the book, I tried to bring the same level of transparency so people understand how captured their government has become to the financial interests.”

I asked Mr. Barofsky, now a senior fellow at the N.Y.U. School of Law, what could be done to get regulators to man up, as it were.

“We need to re-educate our regulators that it’s O.K. to be adversarial, that it’s not going to hurt your career advancement to be more skeptical and more challenging,” he said.

* BUT... BUT... BUT... THE REGULATORS ARE THE "WE!" THEY ARE THE "THEY!" WHAT... IS THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE GONNA HIRE ANOTHER FOX TO ACT AS CONSULTANT...?!?! SERIOUSLY... THIS IS FRIGGIN' ASININE!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

July 23, 2012 at 8:55 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

“It’s implicit in so much of the regulatory structure that if you don’t make too many waves there will be a job for you elsewhere. So we have to limit those job opportunities and develop a more professional path for regulators as a career. That way, they won’t always have that siren call of Wall Street.”

* I'M WILLING TO LISTEN. LET'S HEAR THE DETAILS.

Mr. Barofsky’s assessment of his former regulatory brethren is crucial for taxpayers to understand, because Congress’s financial reform act — the Dodd-Frank legislation — left so much of the heavy lifting to the weak-kneed.

“So much of what’s wrong with Dodd-Frank is it trusts the regulators to be completely immune to the corrupting influences of the banks,” he said in the interview. “That’s so unrealistic. Congress has to take a meat cleaver to these banks and not trust regulators to do the job with a scalpel.”

* BUT... FINE... TAKE A MEAT CLEAVER TO THE BANKERS... BUT WHAT ABOUT THE REGULATORS WHO REFUSED TO PROPERLY REGULATE? WHAT ABOUT TAKING A MEAT CLEAVER TO THEM?!

Finally, Mr. Barofsky joins the ranks of those who believe that another crisis is likely because of the failed response to this one. “Incentives are baked into the system to take advantage of it for short-term profit,” he said. “The incentives are to cheat, and cheating is profitable because there are no consequences.”

* TIM... THE TAX CHEAT... GEITHNER... (*PAUSE*)... IS OBAMA'S TREASURY SECRETARY.

* JON... EX-DEMOCRAT-U.S.-SENATOR... EX-DEMOCRAT-GOVERNOR OF NJ... IS AT THIS MOMENT A KEY OBAMA BUNDLER!

Despite all of this, Mr. Barofsky ends on something of a positive note. Meaningful changes to our broken system may finally come about, he writes, if enough people get angry.

(*JUST ROLLING MY EYES*)

His conclusion is this: “Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we sow the seeds for the types of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.”

* BLATHER. PURE, UNADULTERATED BLATHER.

That’s not much of a silver lining. But I guess it’s better than none.

* WHAT A SHITTY ARTICLE. I TELL YA... MEDIA STANDARDS... ATROCIOUS...

July 23, 2012 at 8:56 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8191027/penn-state-hit-60-million-fine-4-year-bowl-ban-wins-dating-1998

The NCAA has hit Penn State with a $60 million sanction, a four-year football postseason ban and a vacation of all wins dating to 1998, the organization said Monday morning.

* WHAT...?!?! WTF...?!?! ARE THEY CRAZY...?!?!

* CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR DESERVES CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT - JAIL TIME. FINING THE "INSTITUTION" AND NOT CHARGING THE MEN AND WOMEN RESPONSIBLE FOR LAPSES WITH CRIMES... THAT'S A COP-OUT.

Penn State must also reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period.

* AND THIS IS FAIR TO INNOCENT WOULD-BE RECEIPIENTS HOW...???

Penn State, in a statement released less than an hour after the sanctions were revealed, said it will accept them...

* SURE! WHY NOT! NONE OF THE PERPS ARE BEING GOING TO JAIL OTHER THAN SANDUSKY! NONE OF THE UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS - PAST OR PRESENT - ARE BEING HELD PERSONALLY ACCOUNTABLE!

* FOLKS... AMERICA IS A SICK, SICK COUNTRY.

The NCAA took unprecedented measures with the decision to penalize Penn State without the due process of a Committee on Infractions hearing, bypassing a system in which it conducts its own investigations, issues a notice of allegations and then allows the university 90 days to respond before a hearing is scheduled.

* SURE! BECAUSE THIS WAY NAMES DON'T HAVE TO BE NAMED! INDIVIDUAL BLAME DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ASSIGNED! FOLKS... THE FIX WAS IN...!!!

July 23, 2012 at 10:25 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MARINES_LAW_ENFORCEMENT_BATTALION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-22-17-33-46

The Marine Corps has created its first law enforcement battalions - a lean, specialized force of military police officers that it hopes can quickly deploy worldwide to help investigate crimes from terrorism to drug trafficking and train fledgling security forces in allied nations

* OR... THAT CAN BE "DEPLOYED" HERE AT HOME SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (OR RATHER JUST THE PRESIDENT AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF) SO DECIDE...???

The Corps activated three such battalions last month. Each is made up of roughly 500 military police officers and dozens of dogs. The Marine Corps has had police battalions off and on since World War II but they were primarily focused on providing security, such as accompanying fuel convoys or guarding generals on visits to dangerous areas, said Maj. Jan Durham, commander of the 1st Law Enforcement Battalion at Camp Pendleton.

* YEP... (*SIGH*)

* FOLKS... IF THIS DOESN'T SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.. (*SHRUG*)

* FOLKS... WE'RE NOT TALKING CREATING NEW INVESTIGATORS. THESE ARE TROOP BATTALIONS! UNLESS OBAMA IS PLANNING ON EXPANDING OUR ROLE AS "POLICEMAN OF THE WORLD" WITHOUT PUBLIC OR EVEN CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE... (*SHRUG*)

* FOLKS... WHETHER IN THE END WE'RE TALKING FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC USE... WE'RE TALKING YET ANOTHER EXPANSION OF THE EVER-EXPANDING U.S. "SECURITY" STATE.

The battalions will be capable of helping control civil disturbances...

* FOLKS... THAT'S THE FIRST LINE OF PARAGRAPH 8. (*PURSED LIPS*) I'M NOT PARANOID.

...they could assist local authorities in allied countries in securing crime scenes and building cases so criminals end up behind bars and not back out on the streets because of mistakes.

* AND THAT'S FROM THE END OF PARAGRAPH 8!

* FOLKS... THIS IS HOW TOTALITARIAN STATES OPERATE - BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN POLICE AND MILITARY... BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN POLICE, MILITARY, AND "SECURITY" SERVICES.

Durham said the Marine Corps plans to show off its new battalions in Miami later this month at a conference put on by the Southern Command and that is expected to be attended by government officials from Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.

* THAT'S PARAGRAPH 10, FOLKS... (*PURSED LIPS*)

* FOLKS... DOES THIS SOUND LIKE THE WAY A REPUBLIC OPERATES? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE FBI? ATF? EVEN CIA!? WHAT ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY? WHAT ABOUT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT? AGAIN... WHAT'S THE END GAME WHEN CLEARLY WHAT WE'VE BEEN EXPERIENCING IS POLICING GETTING MILITARIZED WHILE THE MILITARY GETS INTO POLICING. SEEMS TO ME THE PERFECT WAY TO CREATE A "UNIFIED" NATIONAL SECURITY STRUCTURE THAT - IF THE WORLD WERE EVER GIVEN - WOULD QUICKLY OVERWHELM STATE NATIONAL GUARD AND STATE POLICE AND LOCAL POLICE FORCES - WHICH IN ANY EVENT WOULD BE USED TO "FOLLOWING FEDERAL ORDERS." FOLKS... I'M A HISTORIAN. I DON'T LIKE WHAT I'M READING HERE.

July 23, 2012 at 10:48 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/20/morning-bell-dodd-frank-financial-regulations-strangling-economy/?roi=echo3-12608060191-9202333-cef2fdfb45e6aacb98bf49b2f4c63244&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Dodd–Frank does not end bailouts and taxpayer support for big banks.

Under the act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is permitted to purchase the assets of a failing firm, guarantee the obligations of a failing firm, take a security interest in the assets of a failing firm, and borrow on the failed firm’s total consolidated assets. (For Bank of America, that would be $2 trillion in bailout authority to be paid by taxpayers.)

[I]n its haste to appear relevant and on top of things, Congress has unleashed a staggering amount of new regulations that are actually harming — not helping — the economy.

There’s a reason the financial regulation law has been called “Dodd-Frankenstein.” This monstrous creation will swell the ranks of regulators by 2,849 new positions, according to the Government Accountability Office. It created yet another new bureaucracy called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that has truly unparalleled powers.

This new bureau is supposed to regulate credit and debit cards, mortgages, student loans, savings and checking accounts, and most every other consumer financial product and service. And it’s not even subject to congressional oversight.

Frighteningly, the CFPB’s regulatory authority is just as vague as it is vast.

More than half of the regulatory provisions in Dodd–Frank state that agencies “may” issue rules or shall issue rules as they “determine are necessary and appropriate.” This means, as The Economist put it, “Like the Hydra of Greek myth, Dodd-Frank can grow new heads as needed.”

Congress avoided making real law here and passed the responsibility for “fixing” the financial sector to these newly minted bureaucrats. And that hasn’t been going too well.

As Heritage’s Diane Katz explains in a two-year checkup of the law:

As of July 2, 63% of the deadlines have been missed, which has intensified the cloud of uncertainty enveloping the finance sector — and the economy — since passage of the act. Thousands of businesses do not know what the government demands they do differently or when they must do it.

The results of this haphazard regulation are dire, Katz says, because “consumers will experience tight credit, higher fees, and fewer service innovations. Job creation will suffer.” She adds that “financial firms of all sizes are shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for regulatory compliance officers and attorneys rather than making loans for new homes and businesses.”

So the law that was supposed to fix the financial sector — and created something called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — is hurting consumers rather than “protecting” them.

Has your bank raised its fees or stopped offering free checking accounts in the last couple of years? If so, you can thank the regulatory boondoggle that is the Dodd-Frank financial law. Since its passage two years ago tomorrow, the number of large banks that offer free checking has declined sharply. In 2009, 96% of them offered free checking, but just 34.6% did in 2011.

Congress should repeal Dodd-Frank before it can do any more damage.

July 23, 2012 at 11:07 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/8753935-workers-disability-set-another-record-july-exceed-population-39-states

The number of workers taking federal disability insurance payments hit yet another record in July, increasing to 8,753,935 during the month from the previous record of 8,733,461 set in June, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.

(*SIGH*)

When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, there were 142,187,000 people actually working and 7,442,377 workers collecting disability — a ratio of about 19 to 1.

In June, there were 142,415,000 people actually working and 8,733,461 workers claiming disability — a ratio of about 16 to 1.

In July, in addition to the 8,753,935 workers who received federal disability insurance payments, there were also 165,564 spouses of disabled workers and 1,850,653 children of disabled workers who received payments. That brought the total number of disability beneficiaries to 10,770,152.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The Social Security System’s Disability Insurance Trust Fund has run deficits in each of the last three fiscal years, meaning the government has needed to borrow money to pay disability benefits to the workers claiming them. In fiscal 2009, the Disability Insurance Trust Fund ran a deficit of $8.5 billion. In fiscal 2010, it ran a deficit of $20.8 billion. And in fiscal 2011, it ran a deficit of $25.3 billion.

* SEEING A TREND THERE, FOLKS...?!

July 23, 2012 at 3:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.suntimes.com/13817699-761/prosecutor-teens-killed-man-in-knock-em-down-game.html

Three teenagers accused of killing a 62-year-old father of twelve in West Rogers Park (Chicago, Il.) were playing a "game" called “Pick ‘em out and knock ‘em down” when they videotaped themselves punching him in the face, prosecutors say.

The three were playing a “game where the offender picks an innocent victim and knocks him out by striking him and likely robbing him as well,” Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Terry Clancy told Judge Israel Desierto in court Monday.

* THERE'S THAT "GAME" THING AGAIN.

Similar attacks — some resulting in death — have previously been reported in Missouri, New Jersey and Decatur.

* PREPARE TO BE SICK, FOLKS... (READ ON... BUT REMEMBER I WARNED YOU!)

“We know that juveniles don’t think out consequences clearly,” Beth Huebner, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told the Associated Press after a 72-year-old Vietnamese immigrant was killed in another “Knock ‘em out” case in St. Louis last year.

* "JUVENILES."

* LET'S HOPE THAT ONE OF THESE DAYS BETH GETS TO EXPERIENCE "Y0UTHFUL EXUBERANCE" SUCH AS THIS IN PERSON!

“They see something on YouTube and say, ‘I want to get that sort of attention, too.’ They don’t think about the person they’re attacking maybe hitting their head.”

* JEEZUS, CHRIST... SICK... SICK, SICK, SICK LIBERAL CLAP-TRAP.

* I WAS ONCE A "YOUTH." YOU WERE ONCE A "YOUTH." DID YOU ENGAGE IN THIS SORT OF ANIMALISTIC BEHAVIOR?

* FOLKS... THIS IS AMERICA 2012 - THE AGE OF OBAMA.

July 23, 2012 at 3:26 PM

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