Volcker Rule

There is a rule proposed in Washington that would prohibit banks from engaging in speculative investment strategies. It would in effect shut down the derivatives trades that forced we the people to bail out the banks that are too large to fail. Except, fail they would, had our government not stepped in with our money. The more time passes the more this seems to me to have been a truly duff idea. Looking back at my posts I hesitated to support to TARP funding but like legislators, Republicans were in charge at the time, I eventually agreed in my own mind that the bailout would probably save us extreme grief in the long run.

I guess I was wrong. The grief looks set to continue, as those same bankers are now saying they don't like the Volcker Rule, it is too restrictive and they bitch about Depression Era Big Government regulations and so forth. The funny thing is that thus rule comes from the Grand Old Man of Federal Reserve caution, Paul Volcker, not any one of President Obama's inner circle of Goldman Sachs alums who give him their financial advice. What a sorry bunch of Marxists these people are. Dear Leader continues to insist we give the store away to the bankers because they will save us from ourselves. Even as the complaints flow in that ordinary people are walking away from failed housing investments as though that is some moral failing. The social contract has been broken by the banks, not the homeowners, in my opinion. My aggravation at this situation has got some backing, unwittingly from Elizabeth Warren, the academic truth teller who has been quoted thusly:

"The problems could not be more obvious, and quite frankly, the solutions are just about that obvious, but we just can't seem to get the two together...The reason that we are not changing things right now is because the banks have lobbyists in Washington in numbers I have never seen...People who just want to advocate for American families, people who want some changes to level the playing field do not have that kind of lobbying power. And so what we are really watching here is a David and Goliath story."

The most frustrating thing about this ongoing and worsening economic death spiral is that solutions seem obvious, implementation seems simple enough. Yet we can never seem to quite get there, which would give weight to the explanation that lobbyists are blocking our path here as in health care reform. There is an absence of morality in all upper echelons, in business and industry most especially and for a citizen like me to suggest that there should be a moral component to financial decision making sounds extremely quaint indeed. That's how far into this morass we find ourselves. It no longer matters to our rulers that people are going hungry, that people are unemployed, that people have no access to health care. It may matter to President Obama but clearly he is as much governed by Goldman Sachs as we are in our misery.

Perhaps I am jumping the gun but I do wish there was an alternative, not just to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens but to the Tea Partiers too. For though they peddle freedom as their watchword their social attitudes are anything but free unless you are white straight and Christian. If there is a revolution in the air it bodes nothing any good to those of us that want the freedom to be immigrants, gay and literate. It seems we are sidelined, those of us that prefer our politics with a touch of humanity and old fashioned decency. We face a future as serfs of the corporate profit machines or at the hands of proto-fascist Republicans in a minor key who want to lead us through revolution to a brave new world that I am pretty sure is not where I want to spend my golden years. even if my golden years are looking pretty brass-colored about now. Bloody hell I must be felling moody tonight. Someone tell me I'm wrong.